Chapter 2: No reason why

Vaste didn't sheathe her blade. She looked at the girl.

White hair. White as fresh snow no one had ever walked on. She wore simple linen clothes in a pale pink, barefoot on the rough stone of the broken pillar, rubble and bone fragments scattered around her feet. She didn't seem to notice.

She looked about fifteen or sixteen. A gold-rimmed pendant hung at her chest. Her eyes caught the dim light and held it—blue as a sea you could fall into. At the corners of both eyes, strange birthmarks traced patterns that looked almost deliberate.

She was tilting her head, studying Vaste.

Her gaze was unguarded, pure, curious—the way you'd look at an animal you'd never seen before.

Vaste's grip on her cleaver didn't loosen. She didn't say thank you. She didn't exchange pleasantries. In the space between breaths, she met that gaze with the same eyes that had survived a hundred life-or-death fights.

The girl spoke first.

"Back there," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but in the sudden silence of the ruins, it carried clearly. "Why weren't you afraid?"

Vaste said nothing.

"So many people," the girl continued, tilting her head a little further. "Enemies that strong. Your companions were afraid. You almost lost. But you didn't."

She wasn't praising. She wasn't questioning. She was simply observing, like a natural phenomenon that needed categorizing.

Vaste was quiet for three seconds.

"Used to it."

She sheathed the cleaver.

The swordsman and the mage lay crumpled on the stone, lifeless. The scout looked at Vaste, her lips moving—maybe gratitude, maybe apology, maybe something she didn't have words for—but nothing came out. She hadn't pulled herself out of that terror yet.

Vaste checked her quickly. No serious wounds. Then she turned to the remains of the three Rottenbone Riders. The salvage was worth something—the lance metal could be melted down, and certain undead tissues had value at the Guild. She crouched, pulled out a short knife, and began assessing each carcass, calculating what this job would actually pay.

Footsteps behind her. Light and steady. Barefoot on stone sounded nothing like boots.

Vaste didn't turn.

She hadn't fully lowered her guard around this strange girl who'd appeared out of nowhere—mage, probably, but something about her didn't fit the type. Even if she had just saved Vaste's life.

"What are you doing here?" Vaste asked.

"Looking for you."

"...Who?"

"I don't know." The girl's voice stopped behind her. "But I found you."

Vaste's hands paused.

The answer made no sense. But she couldn't hear any joke in the girl's tone, any act. She meant it. She genuinely didn't know who she'd been looking for—then she'd seen Vaste and decided the search was over.

"You are..."

"Glaze." The girl bounced around to crouch in front of her, trying to meet Vaste's downward gaze. "Glaze Pearl Froalson Varnish."

Vaste's hands paused again.

That kind of name—too many pieces, too formal—belonged to nobility. To royalty. But this girl in plain clothes, barefoot, speaking like she'd never had a conversation before...

"Who are you, exactly."

"You already asked that."

Vaste gave her a flat look.

Glaze blinked, those sea-blue eyes wide. "You're bleeding."

"It's nothing."

"Oh."

A beat of silence. Vaste went back to her salvage work. Glaze stayed crouched, watching.

Then Glaze spoke again. "What are you doing?"

"...Collecting the useful parts."

"These bone fragments?"

"Yes."

"Can you sell them?"

"Not always."

"Were those people your companions?"

"In a sense."

"Why didn't you help her? There's still one more."

"..."

Vaste pocketed the last salvageable piece of metal, stood, and walked toward the still-shaken scout.

"Let's go. Back to town."

The scout looked up with trembling eyes. It took her a long moment to find her feet. Then she remembered—the bodies, the blood—and vomited onto the stone.

"What happened to her?" Glaze pointed at the retching scout, her tone one of pure curiosity.

"Shock."

By now Vaste was already annoyed, even a little unsettled. How could this girl know nothing? She was a mage, wasn't she? Probably?

She fell in behind the scout, who staggered forward, and they began making their way back through the ruins.

Ten steps. A third set of footsteps joined theirs.

Twenty steps. Still there.

Fifty. Still there—light and steady, bare soles on stone, landing just out of sync with her boots.

Vaste stopped. Didn't turn.

"Why are you following us."

"I don't know."

"..."

"You're walking." Glaze's voice came from behind her, calm as a fact that needed no justification. "So I'm walking too."

Vaste closed her eyes.

She turned, ready to say something—a refusal, a boundary, a clear direction for the girl to go back where she came from.

"Oh—you still haven't told me your name!" Glaze said, her tone almost theatrical.

"Vaste..."

Vaste's mind ran through every way she could tell this girl to leave. But looking at her—harmless on the surface, a girl who looked like she'd never been told no—she couldn't bring herself to say the harsh words.

Three seconds. Something in her chest softened.

She swallowed the words she'd been about to say.

"...Fine. Do what you want. Just don't cause trouble."

She turned and kept walking.

"Okay." Glaze hopped onto a fallen pillar, then down again, light and sure. Within two strides she was behind Vaste again—the same distance, close enough to be noticed and far enough not to touch.

They walked until the grey mist thinned. They walked until sunset caught them before the border town. The scout went her own way. Glaze stayed three steps behind Vaste, matching her pace.

Troublesome.

That's what Vaste kept thinking. If she could, she'd tell the girl to stop following her. She hadn't expected the girl to persist even after they reached the town.

But she remembered that strike.

A spellcaster who could freeze A-rank undead in an instant, wandering alone in the City of Dead, with no wariness toward strangers, latching onto the first person she saw. Who would believe it?

She ran the mental math on how much trouble this would cost her. The answer came back too big to calculate. She'd just wait for the girl to get bored and wander off.

The border town's lights flickered in the dusk. Two shadows stretched long and thin across the cobblestones, one following the other, neither quite knowing why.