Chapter 42
"The Heelia Stone Born of Grain and Blood"
-Part I-
"I recall hearing that it is proper etiquette for ladies to go first."
Fleur let out a disgruntled sigh and muttered something under her breath, yet she still stepped forward, taking the lead into the slanted passageway that descended into darkness.
Abel waited a few seconds before following.
Their steps slowed every few paces as their gazes swept across the unfamiliar surroundings they now found themselves in.
The "walls" surrounding them were far from smooth. In truth, it would have been inaccurate to call them walls at all.
What rose on either side resembled veins of stone, long carved by water that had flowed through hidden channels over countless years.
Even so, the place did not quite resemble a cave or a tunnel.
'It nearly appears more like the remnants of an ancient drift… the remains of some old, collapsed corridor,' Fleur thought.
The passage was narrow, leaving only a straight path ahead.
After a few moments, Fleur slowed to a stop.
Abel noticed immediately and halted as well before turning toward her puzzled.
"What—?" he began.
She snapped her head toward him and pressed her finger to her lips in warning.
Puzzled, Abel tilted his head, then followed her gaze to the clearing's edge.
There stood a tall, silent figure, radiating an uncanny calm that set the ambience taut.
The figure faced away, where the black floor met a dripping stone wall, slick and striated with pale, iridescent growths.
Its form was unnaturally elongated, clad in a gown that pooled from behind.
Its hair fanned out in luminous stillness, as if caught in a frozen breeze.
Its arms hung limp at its sides, gaunt and branchlike.
The sleeves were draped at their wrists with veins of silver woven into the fabric.
It carried nothing. Yet below the palm turned toward the ground, a ghostly ripple shimmered across the wet surface.
Abel whispered with tension in his voice: "Is … that a person? I didn't even see her approach—"
Without thinking, Fleur's hand drifted toward her elixir, however, she didn't summon it.
Abel swallowed and nervously queried, "She looks female… or it looks—what even is that?"
"Is she breathing?"
Fleur nodded and remarked sharply, "She's breathing, I can see her hair moving just barely against her shoulders."
Anticipation coiled in their bones as they straightened, hoping the tall stranger would turn so they might judge her intention.
But she remained utterly still without so much as twitching a muscle.
Abel suddenly spoke up, his concern evident, "Fleur… look at the walls behind her…!"
Fleur's gaze drifted from the figure to the cavernous walls encircling her.
"…!" She dropped her chin and massaged her eyes with one hand, as though to expel some stubborn illusion.
But nothing changed.
The walls, concave and breathing, undulated like a great slumbering beast.
Gossamer roots slithered overhead, curling into the endless gloom.
"Do you think she's doing it?" Abel's voice slipped over her discomposure.
Fleur sighed, uncertain. "I don't know."
The figure within the shadows stirred unexpectedly, raising an arm.
Her elbow arced upward with fraught slowness.
The twins scrutinized closely, drawing in their hostility with clenched fists, as her fingers peeled open and pale blossoms curled out.
Each of them cradles a rouge berry no larger than a teardrop.
Abel's spine straightened. "Nah, we should leave. This isn't okay."
However, Fleur's temper stayed calm and unreadable. "She isn't doing anything."
Abel's tone dropped further. "But she's blooming flowers from her fingers."
"She's not hurting us."
"Blooming from her fingers, Fleur." Each of his words had become dramatically edged with dread.
Fleur retorted again, "She's not hurting us… yet."
Her hand slipped to her side before she took a cautious step forward.
On the contrary, Abel held back and hastily called her name. "Fleur—!"
"She must be waiting."
"For what, a handshake?" his sarcasm cracked, but couldn't hide the quaver in his chest.
Fleur vigorously turned her cheek, displaying an unspoken irritation directed at him. "You don't have to come. But heading back towards a dead end won't help either of us."
An unvoiced protest dangled at the edge of Abel's resolve, as he parted his lips.
In the end, he swept back a strand of black hair and muttered a soft curse before following.
Ahead, the giantess whisked onward, leaving her dark hair to flow behind her like moonlight over a still pond.
Abel's voice resided at a low intensity as he trailed her: "If this is a Hansel-and-Gretel trap and we end up being eaten, I want it on record that I objected."
Fleur's gaze clouded momentarily as she inclined her head. "Noted."
. . .
Although the path itself had remained straight, after a while it suddenly tilted like a ferry drifting off course on a vast, uncharted sea.
The flat ground beneath them seemed to slide sideways.
Abel froze mid-step and inquired suspiciously, "That's not just me, right? The floor… It's slanting."
Fleur shifted her weight, testing the terrain. "It feels tilted."
"It's the same thing!"
"No," she replied. "I don't mean the ground, I'm not sure why, but I feel like we're—"
She trailed off, and Abel mirrored her pause.
Adjoining the path ahead of the woman, the canopy transformed.
Where vines once dropped against sultry stone, the ceiling had vanished entirely into an abyssal dome with no stars.
Darkness stretched infinitely above, imbued with vertigo.
Occasionally, at the periphery of their vision, a pale silhouette drifted languidly, but it was always too distant for either to fully discern.
Despite a lack of "natural" lumination, intermittent rays of light filtered from some undetectable origin beyond the walls.
Their source was both drawn out and iridescent and appeared in strokes of chalk‑blue, bone‑white, and distant rose, colors that seemed impossibly vibrant against the mellow atmosphere.
Fleur inhaled slowly and noted inwardly that the air had started to taste faintly stale.
Abel's gaze flickered toward her as though drawn by a quiet tremor in her movements. "Are you all right?"
Her lips curved in a small, composed smile. "I'm… fine. A bit restless, maybe."
He pressed his lower lip between his teeth and gazed toward the soft rustle of the woman's gown over the uneven stones.
After a heartbeat, he met her gaze again. "We'll get through this. I have a sense she's guiding us outside of this place. The entire structure has been eroding as we've walked."
Fleur emitted a soft hum before casting her eyes downward toward her boots.
Their boots sank into terrain that refused to stay static.
Over time, the slick stone yielded to moss, which in turn cracked into shards of silvery, wood‑like splinters beneath their weight.
It wasn't until later, much later, that the walls themselves evolved.
The rough-hewn rock gave way to towering white columns that were staggered and vertebral in their rhythm.
They formed into a deteriorating barricade that guided their procession through the corridor.
The figure strode between two pillars, distanced far enough to match the breadth of her shoulders.
For some inexplicable reason, the oxygen felt dense after crossing them.
Abel slowed and lifted his hand toward Fleur's shoulder, only for his arm to tremble and fall back to his side.
"H‑hey, I'm not just whining this time, I swear. Is it… getting hard to breathe?"
Fleur's throat strained as she expelled air. "Yes."
Abel frowned and paused before adding, "I feel like I'm wearing a corset."
For a temporary duration, neither knew what else to say.
Then Fleur coughed once, followed by a brisk exhale, as though stifling a laugh.
"You're so dramatic," she said sluggishly.
Abel declared in response, "Thank you, I do my best."
Suddenly, the tall woman stopped.
The twins froze mid-step, before exchanging wary glances.
In unison, they lifted their heads and narrowed their senses as distant water drips reached their ears.
Abel's shoulders hunched reflexively, all at once small and cautious under her imposing presence.
They weren't in a clearing, and yet she stood there, as if what lay before her mattered more than what lay behind.
Her fingers interlaced and became poised in a manner of petition.
Abel's eyes slowly traced her from the ground to the top of her head.
Fleur stepped back and grazed the side of his shoulder.
"Don't ask her anything."
Abel tilted his head dismissively. "I wasn't going to."
"You were," Fleur replied, narrowing her eyes.
He cocked one eyebrow. "Well… now I want to."
"Abel." She said his name firmly.
He clicked his tongue and straightened with a furrowed brow. "She's just… so tall. Do people that tall even have knees? Where do they bend?"
Fleur's eyes flashed. "Speak a word to anything other than me and I will stick your legs again."
"…"
Abel pressed his tongue flat against the roof of his mouth, sealing thoughts.
That hitch allowed Fleur a moment's respite, which she utilized to scan the shadowed corridor for any hint of meaning behind the woman's sudden stillness.
Finding nothing, she lowered her hand and let her fingertips trace the grooves of a carved column, and paused.
A sticky residue clung to her skin.
Pulling back, she saw amber‑tinged sap oozing into her palm.
At the same time, a darker secretion seeped from the crevices above.
Fleur winced as she wiped her hand on her sleeve.
The chill scent of damp soil filled the air, growing heavier as the ruined passage stretched on.
"May I say something peculiar?" Abel ventured warily.
"You've never asked before," she replied with a tight smile.
"True," he conceded, shifting his weight, "but it feels as though we're stepping into another kind of forest or perhaps a garden."
Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Sap… water… and that musty scent of damp soil. It becomes more obvious as the corridor becomes less of what it is."
A flicker of doubt passed over Fleur's face, but then she stiffened. "We should remember: everything in this Mantra is governed by a Demi‑Aeniphant. Its Invocation is potent precisely because it's rooted so deeply in the land she has claimed. Her power comes from cursing nature."
Her voice carried more resentment than her heart intended, as she drew her explanation to a close. "So yes, there is only nature here."
Abel raised his hands in mock surrender, though his eyes remained vigilant. "I warned you it would be peculiar."
Fleur paused, restraining her irritation into a cold whisper. "Did you glean anything of worth from that?"
Abel parted his lips to speak, but at that precise instant, the corridor behind them dissolved into nothingness.
There was no swirl of dust or grate of shifting stone.
It was as if the ruin had retracted its silhouette in the span of half a heartbeat.
Their soles sank slowly into the sodden silt that lay beneath a ceaseless avenue of water.
Fleur steadily raised her foot and hovered it over the water, as if to discern whether the damp descent was a brief mirage.
The water level was high enough to shroud a couple of centimeters above her ankle.
Along the bank, leaves lay strewn like abandoned cloaks.
Their veins shimmered violet‑blue beneath a dark green surface of water that lay mirror‑flat.
When Fleur resumed her step, she noted beneath the glassy façade that there were no stones, nor darting fish.
Rather, there had been nothing but opaque emptiness.
Yet, as if to contradict such, drenched feathers and empty seedpods clung to her boot side and tip of her boot.
Abel's attention tarried overhead on the massive trunks that were twisted upward into a cathedral of foliage.
The canopy appeared so thick that it nearly swallowed the dome whole.
Moss-draped limbs and strangling vines clung to every branch, and both had picked up the sweet fragrance that lingered about.
In stark contrast to its scent, it imparted a sensation of suffocation.
Fleur's gaze strayed along the creek and paused at a lone flower leaning over the water's edge.
As though summoned by her attention, it unfurled, releasing a cloud of golden dust that spiraled gently into the stream and disappeared into the current.
At that moment, the tall woman at the water's edge lifted her hand a second time to point forward.
Fleur's collarbone fell as she relaxed her shoulders. "She wants us to go on by ourselves."
Abel's hand swiftly grasped her sleeve. "Wait—"
She leveled her gaze, tugged the sleeve aside before he could interrupt, and added, "I know what I'm doing."
"How can you be sure?" He inquired with evident doubt
"Perhaps I'm not."
She drew her leg through the water, and the woman's head dipped, almost imperceptibly.
"But I'm moving forward, with or without permission, and you'd do well to follow."
His protest lodged in his throat, and he swallowed forcefully.
Eventually, he puffed, his lips pressed in mild discontent, and let his arm tumble limply back to his side.
"If anything happens, I want it on record as well."
She offered a half‑smile. "Very well, but nothing will happen. Having been paired for the Fourth Passage, avoidance is now almost impossible. We've spoken enough to have already tipped the scales."
Abel swallowed before meeting her gaze and offering a passive nod.
Despite his address, Fleur's quiet reassurance had partially unraveled the tension coiled in his chest.
The twins lumbered forth into the creek's muddy banks.
Having trudged through the water longest, Fleur couldn't avoid inquiring, "It's odd… the water doesn't feel warm or cold. Have you noticed?"
Abel paused, glancing down as the wet creek seeped into his pant cuffs.
His lips curved in a thoughtful hum. "Perhaps it's tied to these flowers, I'm beyond certain that we've never seen anything like them."
As they passed the cluster, the petals continued to spread, casting pale strokes atop the water.
A thoughtful frown tugged at Fleur's lips. 'This must be what lit the corridors after the ceiling gave way.'
Yet it wasn't only the temperature that they altered.
Following each flower that unfurled, the act of breathing became more laborious.
The sensation had felt like an invisible seal tightening inch by inch around them, compressing the air until it became an opaque weight
To be continued…