Surviving As The Villainess's Attendant

One Weeks Later...

The journey to the West hadn’t been easy.

In fact, just leaving the North was a battle in itself.

Endless snowstorms pounded the land with icy winds, turning roads into shifting white sheets. Visibility dropped to nothing more than a few feet, and sometimes we had to stop for hours—sometimes days—just to wait out the blizzard. Every night felt like a gamble: whether our tents would hold, whether we’d wake up buried in snow or missing someone to the cold.

And if the weather wasn’t trying to kill us, the beasts surely were.

I had heard rumors about the creatures of the North, but living among nobles and stone walls made it easy to forget how real those stories were. Out in the open wild, they were anything but stories.

We were attacked more than once on our way down the mountain paths—by frost wolves, blizzard lizards, and something that moved like a shadow under the snow, snapping at the horses’ legs.

But none were as deadly as the one we faced on the fourth night.

The Snow Lion.

A beast straight from old northern tales, as large as a carriage and twice as fast. Its fur was pure white, blending into the snow almost perfectly—except for its eyes. Piercing silver, like polished steel.

We had stopped to camp near the foot of the ridge, trying to find shelter beneath a frozen cliffside. I remember Darion had just finished inspecting the perimeter when we heard it.