Harem System In A fantasy World

The woman did not look back as she crossed the cavern.

Below her, the town continued its restless business beneath the pallid glow of the hanging lamps.

People moved between narrow dwellings, gathered around stalls, and carried their burdens through streets that had existed for only as long as they could remember, if they could remember,

From this height, their voices blended into a low, indistinct murmur, gradually fading as she approached the spire.

She intended to report to the master immediately.

That foolish girl had returned despite her banishment, bringing outsiders with her and breaking yet another of the master’s prohibitions.

The woman’s mouth scowled at the thought, though it was the young man who occupied most of her thoughts.

By strength alone, he should not have troubled her.

She had felt the mana gathered around him, considerable enough for someone of his age, but hardly sufficient to threaten her.

Yet something about him had unsettled her from the moment their eyes met, an elusive component beneath his courteous words and carefully arranged demeanour.

He had smiled at her, bowed his head, and spoken with an admiration that should have been reassuring. Remembering it now only deepened the crease between her brows.

The spire loomed ahead, rising from a broad foundation of dark stone that swallowed the surrounding lamplight.

Its fluted sides narrowed toward a summit lost in the cavern’s upper gloom, while slender buttresses projected from its base, enclosing recesses too deep for the town’s feeble illumination to reach.

At its foot stood a single entrance.

The doorway was an immense, tapering arch, its sides carved with interwoven lines that disappeared beneath piles of blackened mineral deposits.

Above it, angular reliefs crowded the stone, their overlapping forms resembling figures pressed together so tightly that individual bodies could scarcely be distinguished.

She landed beneath the arch, her robes settling around her ankles.

A breath of cold air passed over her face as she stepped inside, carrying the dry smell of stone and a faint metallic scent. Behind her, the sounds of the town diminished abruptly, leaving only the whisper of cloth against the floor.

The entrance opened into a narrow vestibule whose ceiling rose beyond any reasonable need for height.

Long grooves marked the walls, converging overhead in a vault of severe, almost skeletal beauty, while the floor sloped toward the beginning of a spiral stairway.

There were no lamps.

No torches burned in the wall, and no luminous growth softened the darkness. It lay thick and undisturbed throughout the interior, filling the corners, the ceiling and the open spaces between the steps.

The woman could still see, of course.

To her crimson eyes, the staircase was as distinct as though it stood beneath daylight; every worn edge and fine fracture was visible within the tenebrous stone.

She gathered the front of her robes in one hand and began ascending, her other hand passing briefly over the cold inner wall.

The stairs wound around a central shaft.

It extended upward through the heart of the spire, its sheer sides disappearing beyond her sight, while below, the opening descended into an equally inscrutable depth.

No railing separated the steps from that abyss, though she kept close to the wall without giving it a glance.

She had passed the first bend when a soft sound reached her from above.

Bare feet touched stone with an unhurried rhythm, descending toward her.

The woman stopped beside a shallow recess and waited, her expression darkening as the approaching figure emerged around the curve.

He was a young man, though the delicacy of his features could easily have suggested otherwise.

His face was smooth and narrow, his lips finely shaped beneath a slender nose, and his hair fell loosely around a countenance that would have seemed almost gentle were it not for the setting in which she found him.

His upper body was bare.

Black ink covered the skin beneath his neck, spreading across his shoulders and torso in dense patterns of hooked strokes, concentric bands and slender, intersecting lines.

The markings continued over his arms and hands, their intricate arrangement lending him the appearance of a figure drawn from some obscure ceremonial text.

A simple dark thong was his only clothing.

He stood comfortably on the cold stair, his bare feet resting near the unguarded edge. His eyelids remained closed as he inclined his head toward her, smiling with the ease of someone who had recognised an acquaintance long before she came into view.

"You seem displeased," he observed.

His voice was soft, almost melodious, and it carried strangely through the stairwell.

The woman could hear its faint echo returning from above, though she had no patience for the amusement beneath it.

"On the contrary... Outsiders have entered the town," she replied. "The girl brought them through."

His smile widened.

"Outsiders you say?" he repeated, drawing out the word as though savouring an unexpected gift. "How many?"

"Seven of them."

"And she brought them all the way inside?"

"She did." The woman folded her hands beneath her sleeves, resisting the urge to glance back down the stairway. "Apparently, being forbidden to return was not clear enough for her, but she has unknowingly done us a great service."

A quiet laugh escaped him, and then his eyelids opened.

The sockets beneath them were eerily empty.

There was no glimmer of an iris, as one would have expected.

Two vacant hollows occupied the places where his eyes should have been, their depth obscured by a darkness that seemed denser than the gloom surrounding his head.

Nevertheless, he looked directly at her.

The woman’s expression did not change, though her fingers tightened beneath the fabric of her robes.

He tilted his face slightly, and she had the uncomfortable impression that he was examining more than the words she had spoken.

"They haven’t caused any trouble?"

"Not yet. They claim they wish to pay their respects to the master."

"How courteous."

She ignored his tone.

"They have been given rooms," she continued. "I was on my way to report their arrival."

The young man’s smile remained on his lips as he descended another step, bringing himself almost level with her.

The black markings across his chest moved with his breathing, their curves briefly changing beneath the movement of his skin.

"What are they like?"

"They are just as you’d expect from travellers. Armed, reasonably capable, and far too interested in things they do not understand."

"That describes most travellers indeed."