This is not treachery.
This is freedom.
In the middle of Heaven and Hell, the days of rain and mist are long gone. Now, the Gap World is a kingdom of light and darkness, goodness and evilness, sunshine and clouds. When clandestine forces weave toget...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THERE WAS SOMETHING about this particular midsummer night in the woods that seemed ideal for whispers of tales and myths. I didn't know if it had something to do with the crimson moon, the fireflies and the way they created golden halos around the tree trunks or the sound of a stream flowing somewhere nearby, but tonight everything felt eerie.
As I was passing cypress after cypress, I could clearly hear voices weaving together folk songs and nocturnal fantasies. I could hear the grumbling of elegies in the reeds, threaded with curses and rogue warnings. The howl of the wind and the rustle of leaves carried to me the whispers of mystical creatures that enjoyed roaming in the woodland at midnight.
They murmured about the new kingdom and the way it had been bettered. They murmured about the fact that its location, the ground, the mountains, the lakes and the street planning had remained exactly the same. They also murmured tales about the old kingdom, the rain-kissed one, and the way it had been cursed by the creators of the cosmos to sink in poverty and thunderstorms until a golden rose had bloomed in Hell. When that had happened, divine forces had replaced the ramshackle buildings with new ones, had filled the empty and old chests of the poor with silver and gold coins, and had turned the frenzied patter of the rain to sunlight.
For the first time, folk songs held the truth. For the millionth time, I ran faster, not taking my eyes off the path ahead of me, ignoring what was going on around me because I didn't care.
I had once believed I would somehow find a way to free myself from the undesirable destiny of restraints and wild expectations, a life in the spotlight, a life in the Gap World's court would offer me. I'd been wrong. Terribly, absentmindedly and fully wrong. I couldn't even avoid the chuckle that destroyed the cavernous silence of the forest as the echo of my false beliefs lingered in the back of my mind.
Tonight, the dense forest on the north side of the kingdom was my secret getaway route to Lantra and then back to the Castle of Sunlight. It had been that way for four months now.
Looking up at the sky, I didn't pray to whatever good was left in this world to let me return to the capital unharmed, or empty the streets that would get me there from any possible threat. Prayers and wishes upon shooting stars were of no use to me anymore. I knew what I was doing, and if something went wrong, I'd make it go right.
Wearing a hooded coat to hide my face on the cusp of summer had me gasping for air. And even though it hadn't been long since the moment I'd come back to the Gap World and started running, I already needed to stop.
I didn't, though. Instead, I ran even faster, the wind chasing after me, but never actually catching me.
During the four months I'd been back and forth from Lantra, I'd walked countless times this remote path so late in the night. But tonight, the ancient cypresses looked like they were welcoming me to an ancient graveyard that was riddled with the mightiest monsters and villains of human history. I let them guide me through it, knowing well enough that I would go down in history as one of the greatest traitors, as well.
