Chapter 99: Return to Civilian Life
The first sound outside the tent woke Uriel up.
He unzipped the flap, ducked out yawning, and stretched until his spine popped in three places.
Seraphina was already sitting on the flat rock from the night before. Hair combed without a single strand out of place, collar folded down with geometric precision, a palm-sized notebook open across her knees. She was writing something. When she heard him, she stopped and turned those flat, dead eyes directly onto him.
"You have a remarkable lack of survival instinct, Uriel."
She closed the notebook and tucked it into her hip pouch.
"You were lucky, though. You slept through the night in a monster cave without anyone standing watch, and nothing ate you. Impressive, in its own way."
Uriel scratched the back of his head where his hair had gone sideways overnight. "Ha. Yeah. Probably just wiped out from all the running. No news is good news."
He dug out rations and a water flask. Breakfast was what it was — travel biscuits and cold water. He had barely taken one bite when Seraphina's gaze landed on him.
"Eye crust."
Uriel set the biscuit on his knee and scrubbed his eye with the back of his hand. Second time she'd done this.
"Eat fast. Then we move."
Uriel held the biscuit halfway to his mouth. "Move where? More materials? What time is it? Shouldn't we wait here for a rescue team?"
Seraphina answered each question in order, her pace never changing.
"Find an exit. No more materials. Should be dawn by now. This fissure is too hidden for a search team to locate quickly. Better to walk out ourselves."
He had no response to that. He shoved the rest of the biscuit into his mouth in two bites, washed it down with cold water, and stood up.
They took an unexplored passage on the far side of the chamber. It was narrower than anything they'd used the day before — low ceiling, sharp rock jutting down every few feet, walls slick with moss. Uriel had to duck to keep moving. The floor tilted unevenly underfoot, and two sections were almost straight climbs up loose scree.
Twenty minutes in, the end of the tunnel went white.
They came out into open air and a wall of wind carrying the damp smell of leaves and wet earth.
The view opened up.
They stood on a shelf of rock that jutted from the mountainside — wide enough for a few tables pushed together, edge dropping off into open sky. A few steps forward and there was nothing. The drop wasn't dramatic — thirty meters, maybe forty at the outside. Below the cliff face, seven or eight meters down, the forest canopy spread out in an unbroken layer, branches locked together like a thick green mattress. Further out, the ancient rain forest stretched across the whole valley floor. The canopy rose and fell in different shapes — round crowns, pointed towers, one broad tree covered from crown to base in purple flowering vines. A pair of birds the size of—what were they called?—pterodactyls?—circled slowly in the distance. Dawn light was still coming in at a low angle.
Uriel walked to the edge and looked straight down. The rock face was nearly vertical. No handholds. But the canopy below was dense enough to catch a person, and the gap wasn't unreasonable.
He turned back to Seraphina.
"No path down. The canopy should break the fall. Can you manage it? I can go first and be there when you land."
Seraphina shook her head. She reached into her hip pouch and produced a smooth, perfectly polished transparent mana crystal.
"No rush. The view is good. Photo first."
Uriel stared at the crystal. "...How does that work?"
No explanation. She moved to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and held the crystal out in front of them. She judged the distance perfectly—close enough that he could catch a faint trace of soap, but not close enough to touch.
"Look at the light point."
Uriel looked up. A fist-sized sphere of pale light had appeared in the air above them, right on cue, blinking softly at both of them like a tiny captured moon. He automatically put on his standard photo smile — the same one he used for student ID cards and guild registration documents. Functional. Inoffensive. Communicating nothing.
Click.
Seraphina crushed the crystal. A burst of white light hit him full in the face and he squinted against it.
She opened her cupped hands. The crystal dust drifted down. She pressed her palms together, a faint shimmer of mana running between them, rubbed once, and opened her hands again.
A small flat rectangle rested in her palm. Thin as paper, warm to the touch.
Uriel stared at it.
A magical Polaroid. This world has magical Polaroids. What else is this place hiding from me?
Seraphina turned it toward him before he could finish processing.
Technically, the composition was perfect. Emotionally, it was a complete mystery. Both of them upright on the cliff shelf, shoulders almost touching, no lean, no tilt, no concession to warmth of any kind. Two people standing exactly as straight as they would for a guild ID card. Uriel's smile looked like a man trying to close a sale. Seraphina's was the practiced smile of a noble daughter who'd been photographed at formal events since she could stand. Neither of them looked particularly happy. Neither of them looked unhappy.
It was impossible to tell what to make of these two people.
"Do you want one?"
That was actually a good question.
Uriel considered it honestly for a moment.
His mother would be thrilled. She would hold it in both hands and rotate it for thirty minutes and then find a frame for the sitting room. And it would serve as extremely solid evidence the next time anyone implied he lived like a hermit — pulling out a cave-exit photo of himself standing next to a nobleman's daughter would end that conversation immediately.
Not taking it would say something. Not anything dramatic, just — that he'd filed the whole incident under professional interaction, no artifacts retained.
Seraphina watched him stare at the photo, then, without waiting for him to finish thinking, placed it in his hand.
"Let's go."
She walked to the cliff edge and jumped without pausing, dropping cleanly out of view. The canopy below erupted in a sequence of crackling sounds as branches gave way in a chain.
"Hey —" Uriel stuffed the photo into his pocket and followed her off the edge.
After that, things went smoothly.
They navigated out by map. Less than an hour of walking and they ran into a fully armed search party moving the other way, led by someone carrying a triangular rescue flag. The team leader spotted Seraphina from a distance and came forward at a jog, already pulling out a report board, already asking about the collapse and the route and whether anyone was injured.
Seraphina delivered her report in four sentences—collapse, cave layout, exit bearing. The team leader took frantic notes. No one asked Uriel a single thing.
No one asked Uriel a single thing.
The adventurers in the back kept glancing at him, their expressions making it very clear what they were wondering about. He drifted to the tail end of the group and looked at the trees until they stopped.
They walked the rest of the way out without speaking to each other.
---
Several carriages bearing the Waldrich house crest were waiting at the forest edge, lined up with the kind of quiet efficiency that implied they had been there for some time. Seraphina dealt with the search team's paperwork, then walked over to him.
"I'm heading back. Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
The same tone as every other time. End of a lecture. Passing in a corridor. Finishing lunch at a shared table and going separate directions. It was exactly that tone.
She boarded the first carriage. The driver clicked the reins, and the wheels began to turn, and Uriel stood in the road and watched until the carriage rounded the bend and disappeared.
He stood there for almost a full minute without moving. The whole thing was over, but somehow it didn't feel over.
Eventually he turned around to find transport back to the city.
Halfway to the public carriage stop, he remembered she'd had an entire carriage he could have asked to share.
He boarded the public coach and settled into the hard wooden bench as it lurched into motion over the cobblestones, the wheels hitting every loose stone on the road with uncanny precision, bouncing his spine against the seat with every one.
Actually fine.
Sharing a carriage back would have needed some kind of ending. This is the right vehicle for someone firmly stuck in the supporting cast.
He leaned against the wall and let the road rattle him all the way home.
---
It was past midday when he got back into the capital.
Uriel was rotating his lower back and thinking about a bath when a figure stepped into his path on a quiet side street without any warning at all.
He stopped. Looked up.
Green hair. Pointed ears. An expression like a statue that had decided to be politely disappointed in everyone.
Lumina.
Every alarm bell in his head went off at once. Lumina showing up personally to intercept him on a side street meant exactly one thing.
Something had happened.
She pressed one hand to her chest, inclined her head slightly, and kept her voice exactly low enough to carry to him and no further.
"Scribe. The Witch has relocated. I'm here to take you to the new position."