❝𝐈𝐟 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐬𝐨, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚.❞
Selfishly fascinated with her own strength, Valen Ferreira is willing to do nearly anything and everyth...
THE RISING AND falling of a cicada's evening song ringing in her ears, Valen placidly drank in the sight of Wall Sina's swelling landscape from atop her horse.
Valen softly dug the heel of her boot into the mare's side, edging it onward. Enclosing her on all sides was a field of swaying grass basked in gold, studded by bushes and whispering groves. Northward, a throng of hawthorns was clustered around a winding brook, the water's slender, stone-rimmed body worming into an imposing woodland that bordered the field's eastern edge. As far as she could discern, there were hardly any animals prancing about—by now, they'd likely taken refuge in their dens for the night.
It was all so stunning Valen nearly forgot why she'd come.
Levi, who rode his horse ahead of her, veered his horse to the left; Valen lightly tugged on the reins of her own, following right behind him. Once Historia had subdued Rod, and Orvud's civilians had returned to their homes, Levi had expressed that he worried that some of the Anti-Personnel Squad had survived the collapse of the cavern, so about ten other Scouts—Valen among them—agreed to help Levi scour the countryside for any surviving MPs. The goal was to track down everyone before dusk slipped in. Considering the sun was just barely setting, they had some time before they'd be forced to call it quits.
Before crossing the brook, Levi hopped off from his horse, dipping his shoe into the running water, checking its depth. He nodded, wordlessly confirming that the water would not be too deep for the horses, and mounted his horse again. Aside from a debriefing back in Orvud, Valen and Levi hadn't exchanged much conversation, but the silence was far from strained. It was almost comforting, Valen wanted to say. It proved that they could peacefully coexist, even when they had contrasting values.
She wished they'd learned that earlier.
If the horses hadn't liked walking through the water, they'd shown no sign of it. Up ahead, a dense band of oak trees waited for them. Fallen twigs crunched softly under horseshoes as they moved through a slim gap between the trees. They stumbled upon a broad, abyssal opening in the ground defined by earthy, rugged edges that scored the field for a couple of hundred yards. It exposed a peculiar underground cavern, icy blue—nearly alabaster—pillars supporting what remained of the ceiling. The pillars glowed so brightly that they illuminated the cavern on their own, which Valen suspected spanned the whole field. It was something taken from a page of a children's fairy tale book.
