Seven thousand, six hundred and forty-four (7,644) kilometers.
That was the exact distance between the Imperial Capital of Vireldria and the tiny, forgotten kingdom Aria called home.
It had taken six grueling months by carriage, crossing two distinct sovereign borders, enduring torrential rains, and camping under the stars every single night to keep the horses from collapsing.
Foraging on roadside grass simply did not provide enough raw fuel (calorie) for beasts pulling a heavy cart across a continent. They spent a significant amount of their quest rewards buying heavy sacks of calorie-dense oats and dry grain at every town just to keep the horses fueled.
But even with the heavy feed, the only reason the horses hadn't died from exhaustion was Elen, their healer, sitting at the front of the cart every day, constantly feeding the horses her mana to forcibly knit their tearing muscles back together.
But as Aria looked up at the colossal, white-stone gates of the Imperial Capital, every ache in her sixteen-year-old bones vanished.
"We made it, Aria," whispered Elen, a Level 4 mage, clutching her wooden staff with trembling hands. Beside her, three other girls—a Level 3 archer, a Level 4 healer, and a Level 3 thief—stared at the towering walls in absolute awe.
Aria placed a hand over her chest, feeling the heavy, Level 5 Adventurer's badge pinned to her tunic. In their home country, she was a celebrity. The undisputed Sword Prodigy. The youngest Level 5 in recorded history. She was the pride of a kingdom that barely registered on a map.
But all of that prestige meant nothing compared to the true reason they had crossed the continent.
She closed her eyes, and the memory from four years ago played in her mind like a holy scripture.
The memory always started with the smell of dry earth and rotting leaves.
She had been twelve years old. The sun was a pale, sickly yellow disk hanging over the village of Oakhaven. Aria knelt in the center of what used to be her family's wheat field, her small hands digging frantically into the brittle, gray dirt. Her fingernails were cracked and caked with ash.
"Just one," she whispered, her throat raw from the dust. "Please, just one."
She pulled up a root. It crumbled into black powder between her fingers. The blight had taken everything. It wasn't just a bad harvest; the soil itself felt infected, completely drained of life.
"Aria. Stop."
She looked up. Elder Corin stood at the edge of the field, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. He looked ten years older than he had a month ago. His eyes were sunken, and his breathing carried a wet, rattling wheeze.
"There is nothing left in the dirt, child," Corin said gently.
"There has to be," Aria argued, wiping a mixture of sweat and ash from her forehead. "If I dig deeper... maybe the blight didn't reach the lower roots. Mother needs to eat. She didn't keep the broth down yesterday."
The old man closed his eyes, a profound exhaustion settling over his slumped shoulders. "The sickness is in the water, in the air. Food will not cure the decay. You need to save your strength, Aria."
"The Lord will send help," Aria snapped, though her voice trembled. She stood up, brushing the useless dirt from her knees. "He has to. We pay our taxes. My father died fighting in his vanguard.
He wouldn't just leave us to rot."
Corin looked away, staring toward the northern road. "The barricades went up three days ago. Lord
Vane's knights felled the trees across the pass. Anyone who tries to leave Oakhaven is to be shot on sight to prevent the spread of the epidemic. We are sealed in."
Aria stared at him. The sheer weight of the words refused to register in her twelve-year-old mind.
"Shot on sight? But... what about the healers? From the capital?"
"They aren't coming." Corin's voice cracked. He sounded entirely defeated. "No one is coming, Aria.
We have been abandoned."
A cold numbness spread through her chest. She turned and ran. She ignored Corin calling her name, sprinting past the rows of empty, silent houses. Doors were nailed shut. Faint, agonizing coughs drifted through the cracks in the wooden walls of her neighbors' homes.
She burst through the front door of her own small cottage. The air inside was stifling, thick with the sharp, metallic stench of the decaying sickness.
Her mother lay on the narrow cot in the corner. She was so thin she barely disturbed the blanket covering her. Her skin had turned a horrifying shade of ashen gray, and dark, necrotic veins spiderwebbed up her neck.
"Mama," Aria rushed to the bedside, dropping to her knees. She grabbed the damp rag from the wooden bowl on the floor and began to dab her mother's burning forehead.
Her mother's eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes, once a bright, vibrant green, were clouded and sunken. She looked at Aria, and a terrible, heartbreaking sorrow washed over her frail face.
"Aria..." Her voice was barely a whisper, a dry rasp that sounded like dead leaves scraping against stone. "You shouldn't... be in here. I told you... stay outside."
"I'm not leaving you," Aria said fiercely, though tears were already welling in her eyes. "I checked the fields again. I'll go to the forest next. I can find some wild berries, or—"
Her mother weakly raised a hand, her trembling fingers brushing against Aria's dirty cheek. "My brave girl. You are... so stubborn." She drew in a jagged, painful breath, her chest convulsing. "Listen to me. The chest... under the floorboards."
"No, stop talking. Save your strength."
"Listen," her mother insisted, her grip on Aria's sleeve tightening with a sudden, desperate strength.
"There are three silver coins left. When the sun sets... go to the northern woods. You know the hunting trails. Bypass the barricade. Do not let the knights see you."
Aria shook her head frantically. "I can't carry you that far. You're too weak."
"I am not going."
The words hung in the stifling air. Aria stared at her mother, the tears finally spilling over her eyelashes and cutting clean tracks down her ash-covered face.
"No," Aria sobbed, burying her face in the edge of the blanket. "No, Mama, please. You promised. You promised we would go to the royal capital together."
"I'm sorry," her mother whispered, a tear escaping her own clouded eye. "I am so sorry to leave you alone in this cruel world. But you have to run. If you stay... the decay will take you too. You have to live, Aria. Promise me."
"I won't leave you!" Aria screamed, her voice cracking with the raw, unfiltered agony of a child losing her entire world. "I won't! I'll find a way! I'll get water from the deep well. It's clean. It has to be clean!"
She pulled away from her mother's grasp, grabbing the wooden bucket near the door. She didn't look back as she ran outside, her vision blurred with tears. She stumbled blindly toward the village square, where the old stone well sat beneath a dead willow tree.
Her chest heaved. Her lungs burned. She tied the rope with shaking hands and lowered the wooden bucket into the dark, echoing shaft. She waited for the familiar splash.
The rope went slack. There was a dull, hollow thud of wood hitting dry stone.
Aria froze. She pulled the rope back up. The bucket was empty. Just dry, cracked mud clinging to the bottom.
The well had dried up.
The final pillar of hope snapped. Aria dropped the bucket. Her knees gave out, and she collapsed onto the hard, unforgiving dirt.
The world around her was a graveyard. Her mother was dying in a dark room. The lord had barricaded them in to rot. Even the earth had cut off their water. Hope wasn't just a foreign concept; it was a cruel, distant joke.
She pressed her forehead against the rough stones of the well and wept. It was a guttural, ugly sound, the sound of absolute, unconditional defeat. She was twelve years old, and she was going to die here in the dirt, completely alone.
Then, he appeared.
Aria remembered she was standing near the village well and was about to cry when she felt a sudden, terrifying pressure in the air.
A young man, barely older than she was now, had sprinted past the village borders. He was moving with a frantic, desperate speed.
They had collided.
Aria had fallen into the dirt. The young man stumbled, dropping something heavy onto the ground. The stranger froze.
Aria looked at him, terrified of what a the stranger might do to a clumsy village girl.
But the young man didn't look angry. In fact, his face was completely, utterly blank. A mask of absolute, terrifying calm. Yet, beneath that emotionless exterior, Aria noticed his hands were trembling.
He is shivering, the twelve-year-old Aria had thought, her breath catching. What could possibly make a man with such a calm face tremble?
The man stared directly into her eyes. He didn't look at the dirt, or the cursed village. He looked straight into the absolute depths of her soul. He let out a long, heavy exhale.
"Strong..." the young man muttered, his voice flat but carrying an undeniable weight. "Aura..."
A heavy, glowing silver necklace had slipped from Kian's pocket during the fall, landing in the dirt between them.
Aria glanced at it.
Kian looked down at the heavy, incredibly expensive Pendant of the Uninterrupted Nap he had dropped in the dirt.
"You can have it!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Just take it!"