The blood in my veins froze, a chill deeper and more paralyzing than Astraea's own winter.
Before me stood not the pragmatic heroine I had expected, but the silent nemesis whose path in the game was marked by manipulation, power, and a cold, calculated cruelty.
Reza Frest.
Jonas and Yordi bowed instinctively in her presence, a gesture of respect that bordered on subservience. The hierarchy within the caravan was clear and absolute.
"Miss Reza," Jonas said, his once-harsh voice now laden with deference.
"Just a minor setback. We found this boy being hunted by the Mist Raiders. We were verifying the situation."
Reza's eyes, a pale violet that seemed to absorb the light, moved from Jonas to me.
There was no curiosity or pity in her gaze; it was the scrutiny of a predator assessing something that had trespassed into its territory. The wound on my shoulder, the dirt on my clothes, the fear in my eyes—none of it seemed to stir any emotional response on her porcelain face.
"Hm. I heard 'Ethereal Weaver,'" she said, her voice soft and melodic yet devoid of warmth.
She wasn't asking; she was stating, her eyes fixed on the letter Yordi still held. "Rare. And apparently, troublesome."
Yordi stepped forward, offering the scroll to Reza.
"He has an invitation to the Lumina Academy, miss. His village was destroyed. He's the only survivor."
Reza took the invitation with slender fingers, her movements precise and economical.
She read it, and for a brief moment, a glimmer of interest, cold and analytical, like that of a scientist observing an anomaly, passed through her eyes.
"Baelen Jean-Klerk," she read my name aloud, the sound strange and formal on her lips."Admitted for 'potential that cannot be ignored.' Headmistress Vancroft has always had a weakness for exotic curiosities."
She folded the scroll and fixed her gaze on me.
The world seemed to shrink, the sound of the wind and the muffled voices of the soldiers fading into a distant background noise. There was only me and her, the prey and the predator who had not yet decided whether to strike.
"You are a target, Baelen Jean-Klerk," she declared with chilling finality.
"The noble families do not tolerate what they cannot control. Your very existence is an affront. The Mist Raiders were only the beginning. You will not survive the journey to Lumina on your own."
Each word was a blade of ice, precise, cutting. She wasn't speculating; she was presenting me with an undeniable truth, the same truth my player knowledge had already whispered to me.
A tense silence settled.
Jonas looked ready to throw me out at any moment, while Yordi gave me a look of powerless compassion. The final decision, I knew, wasn't theirs.
"We are heading to Lumina," Reza continued, her tone unchanging. "House Frest has business in the capital before the Winter Solstice. We can offer you protection and transport."
Hope—fragile, desperate—tried to bloom in my chest, but Reza crushed it with her next words.
"However," she said, stepping toward me, the emblem of the raging bear on her clothes seeming to mock her lethal calm, "House Frest's protection is not free. Nothing of value is."
My heart pounded. I knew what was coming. An agreement. A bargain with someone who, in the game's future, would become one of the greatest threats to the realm.
"We will take you to Lumina. Ensure that you reach the Academy's gates alive," she offered, her violet eyes locking onto mine.
"In return, you will incur a debt. Not to House Frest, but to me. A favor debt, to be called upon whenever and however I see fit."
That was it.
The web.
She wasn't rescuing me; she was recruiting me.
An Ether Weaver, a rare and potentially powerful piece on her chessboard.
My gamer's mind screamed in alarm, listing all the quests and storylines in which Reza used pawns for her own dark ends, discarding them once they were no longer useful.
But what was the alternative? Gambling alone on the frozen roads, with assassins at my heels and no mana to defend myself? Death was a certainty. With Reza, death was merely a possible future.
I swallowed hard, the phantom pain in my shoulder reminding me of my vulnerability. I looked at Reza's expressionless face—a perfect mask of beauty and danger.
"I… I accept," my voice came out steadier than I expected.
A minimal smile, almost imperceptible, touched the corners of her lips. It wasn't a smile of joy but of satisfaction—the kind of smile a spider might give upon feeling the vibration of a fly struggling in its web.
"Excellent," she said, turning away. "Jonas, prepare a place for our guest. Yordi, see that his clothes are changed. He cannot arrive in Lumina looking like a beggar."
Without another word, she climbed back into the carriage, the door closing with a soft click, leaving me outside in the cold, the weight of an inescapable pact upon my shoulders.
I had escaped the wolves' teeth only to willingly fall into the web of a silver spider.