Reincarnated as an Elf Prince-Chapter 118: Travel (4)

The first thing he felt was weight.

Heavy. Crushing.

Not the weight of his body, but something pressing from all sides. Cold against his arms, his legs, the side of his face.

Snow.

He opened his eyes.

Grey light seeped through a thin layer of white above him, faint and lifeless. His eyelashes stuck together, crusted with frozen tears.

He lay still a moment longer, heart sluggish in his chest. Breathing shallow and ragged against the scarf frozen stiff against his mouth.

'Still alive,' he thought, forcing the words through the slow churn of his mind.

'Barely.'

The storm had buried him during the night.

Only the thin shelf of rock overhead had kept him from being crushed completely.

He shifted his hand first. Gloved fingers curled weakly. Numb. More like stone than flesh.

The motion dislodged some of the snow packed against his shoulder.

Small avalanches of powder fell into the crook of his neck, down the collar of his coat.

The shock of cold was sharper than any blade.

He gritted his teeth, breath catching.

'Move. Now.'

Slowly, he braced his elbows under him. The blanket wrapped around his body clung stiffly, soaked through and half-frozen. It tore with a soft ripping sound when he pushed up against the weight.

Snow poured off his back as he broke free.

The world outside was white.

Nothing else.

No trees. No horizon. No road.

Only endless snowfields rolling under a low grey sky.

He forced himself into a crouch. Muscles shaking violently. The effort felt endless, every breath scraping against the rawness in his lungs.

His side throbbed. The wound had stiffened overnight, freezing at the edges. Blood loss had slowed, but only because it had nearly frozen in place.

He tightened the scarf higher across his face.

'No stopping. No waiting. Keep moving.'

He unwrapped the blanket from around his shoulders and shoved it into the pack, clumsy with numb hands. It wouldn't help anymore. It was just a frozen rag now. Extra weight.

The blade at his hip was stiff in its sheath, the leather strap iced solid. He worked it loose with slow, careful fingers, flexing the hilt once to make sure it still drew clean.

Still serviceable.

'Enough for one more fight, maybe.'

He didn't let himself think longer than necessary.

Thinking meant stopping.

And if he stopped now, he would die.

He turned away from the hollow that had saved him. Stumbled once. Caught himself on one knee. The snow swallowed his foot up to the ankle in the first step.

The storm had left thick, uneven drifts across the land. Each footfall was a fight. Each breath another small wound torn open inside his ribs.

He leaned into the walk. Head low. Scarf pulled tight across his mouth and nose.

No footprints to follow.

No direction but forward.

The charm Rhea had given him bumped faintly against his chest again, muffled under layers of cloth and leather.

He almost laughed.

'What a stupid thing to carry.'

He touched it once through the coat anyway. Not for luck.

Just to feel something that wasn't cold.

The wind had dropped, but the sky warned of more waiting. Clouds pressed low and unbroken above him. A ceiling he would never reach.

He kept walking.

Step after step.

There was no rhythm now. Only motion.

No goal except away. Away from the dead man. Away from the village. Away from everything that could find him and finish what had started in the academy courtyard.

Minutes bled into hours.

Or maybe it was less.

Time meant nothing here.

Pain gnawed slowly into his side, sharper with every slip and stumble.

He tried not to think about it.

Tried not to think about the warmth draining from his limbs either.

'Body can heal,' he thought. 'If you give it a chance. If you get out of this cursed place.'

A simple promise.

A quiet one.

And so he walked.

One foot dragging behind the other. Shoulders hunched. The storm's ghost still biting at the edges of the world.

—

The snow blurred everything into sameness.

Lindarion dragged his boots through another half-buried ridge, feeling the crust break under him in loud cracks that vanished almost instantly under the hush of the empty woods.

His legs hurt.

Not just the sharp pain of cuts or bruises.

A deeper kind. The kind that settled into the joints and tendons, threatening to seize them if he let himself stop even for a second.

He gritted his teeth and pressed forward.

'One day without getting stabbed would be nice,' he thought bitterly.

'Maybe two if the gods are feeling generous.'

The thought tasted dry in his mouth.

His stomach cramped suddenly, sharp and mean.

Hunger.

He hadn't eaten properly since he left the village.

He slid the pack off one aching shoulder and dug through it, fumbling past the frozen cloth of the bedroll and the cracked leather of his rations.

A strip of dried meat surfaced.

Hard as stone. Grey around the edges.

He stared at it a long moment.

'Appetizing,' he muttered in his head.

'Five stars. Would recommend.'

He bit into it anyway. Teeth working slow. The meat tasted like salt, old leather, and regret.

But it filled a hole that had been widening inside him all morning.

Barely.

He shoved the rest into his pocket and hoisted the pack back up, wincing as the motion pulled at the torn skin under his ribs.

The landscape ahead rolled unevenly.

Small rises and dips hidden under snowdrifts that rose taller than a man's chest in places. Climbing them felt like scaling mountains. His breath steamed thick against the inside of the scarf.

At the top of one drift, he paused.

Nothing ahead but more endless white.

No landmarks.

No shelter.

No shapes except the gnarled black skeletons of trees half-drowned by snow.

He felt the world tilt slightly around him, not from the slope, but from the bone-deep exhaustion pulling at every nerve.

'Keep moving,' he told himself.

'You stop, you die. That simple.'

Still, the idea of sitting down for just a second was dangerously tempting.

One second to close his eyes.

One second to let the cold cradle him down into something slower, something easier.

He shook his head sharply, blinking against the sting of frozen lashes.

'No,' he thought. 'That's not how you get to the next place.'

He started down the far side of the drift. Legs slipping a little, arms out for balance. The blade at his side bumped rhythmically against his hip.

The movement soothed him in a strange way.

Familiar.

Comfortable.

It reminded him of other days. Days when his hands had been steady around a sword grip, body loose, mind sharp.

Not fighting to survive. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

Just moving for the sake of moving.

For the sake of perfection.

That life felt very far away now.

And yet.

The instincts remained.

In the way he leaned into a fall instead of fighting it.

In the way he adjusted his center of gravity without thinking.

In the way he refused to waste energy when it counted most.

Snow spilled down around him as he skidded the last few feet down the slope. His boots struck hard earth hidden under the drift. The shock traveled up his knees, rattling his teeth.

He staggered.

Caught himself.

Kept walking.

'Not pretty,' he thought.

'But I'm still upright.'

The storm had left behind a sky so low it felt like it might fall on him at any moment.

Clouds dragging just above the treetops, bruised grey and sickly.

Ahead, the ground flattened out into a shallow valley. Snow lay thick and undisturbed across it, a blank sheet. No signs of life. No trails.

He stepped forward, boots sinking deep.

Every breath hurt now.

Every motion felt like swimming through syrup.

His side burned hot where the wound rubbed raw against the coat.

It wasn't bleeding out fast enough to kill him today.

Tomorrow might be different.

He smiled thinly behind the scarf.

'One day at a time, then. One bad decision after another.'

The thought didn't even make him angry.

It just felt true.

He kept walking.

Because the alternative wasn't something he was willing to accept.

Not yet.

—

Snow drifted against the high windows of Evernight Academy as the storm roared outside.

Thin slivers of ice crawled the edges of the glass, spiderwebbing the corners, delicate and cold.

The great hall stood silent except for the low scrape of chairs moving, the occasional muffled cough.

No laughter.

No raised voices.

Just the heavy quiet that had taken hold the morning after the attack.

And never really left.

Luneth sat at the end of the long table reserved for first-years, her hands folded neatly atop a worn book. She had not turned a page in ten minutes.

Across from her was Cassian who had been released from the infirmary.

He tilted his chair back, balancing on two legs with the easy recklessness that only he could make look half-natural. His eyes flicked toward her briefly.

"Still nothing," he said under his breath. Not a question. Just fact.

Luneth shifted her gaze to him. Cool. Steady.

"No."

Cassian let the chair drop back onto all four legs with a soft thump. He slouched forward, elbows resting on the table, hands buried in the sleeves of his academy robes.

"They're not even pretending anymore," he muttered. "No search parties.. No updates. Nyx won't answer anything. Thalorin's just…gone as well."

Luneth tilted her head slightly, watching the slow curl of frost creep farther down the glass.

"They want us to forget maybe."

The words came out flat, precise.

Cassian gave a dry snort. Shook his head.

"Good luck with that."

At the far end of the hall, a professor crossed the marble floor, boots echoing faintly. Not one of the combat instructors. Not their homeroom teacher either.

Just another robed figure moving through a daily routine that felt more like a funeral march.

Most of the first-years had adapted.

Or pretended to.

Vivienne still threw herself into training sessions with a sharpness that made even senior students wary.

Jack picked fights twice as often, laughed twice as loud.

Elara smiled too much.

Too bright.

Too fast.

Rowan stuck to Jack's shadow like glue, eyes twitching toward every shadowed doorway.

None of them spoke Lindarion's name anymore.

Not in the halls.

Not where anyone could hear.

But it lived behind every glance.

Every unfinished sentence.

Luneth traced one pale finger along the edge of her book.

She remembered the last time she had seen him.

Still as stone.

Sharp-eyed.

Carrying more weight than the rest of them combined.

She wondered, not for the first time, if he was dead.

And if he was—

Was he better off than the rest of them, trapped here under walls that no longer felt like protection?

Cassian nudged the table lightly with his foot, pulling her attention back.

"You think he's still alive?"

She met his eyes.

No hesitation.

"Yes."

Cassian studied her a second longer, then nodded.

Once. Slow.

Not a boy who wanted to hope.

Just a boy who wasn't ready to grieve yet either.

Above them, the storm raged against the windows.

And Evernight Academy stood silent.

Waiting.