Chapter 51: The Champions
The figures finally emerged from the blizzard. There were ten of them, their bodies appearing almost as though they had been carved from stone, their rough features barely visible beneath the layers of thick frost covering them. They rode a variety of mounts, the larger beasts carrying several people while the smaller ones carried only a single rider. They were heading straight toward them, cutting through the whiteout.
One of the rock-skinned figures raised a hand, shouting over the gale. "Hello! Fellow challengers!"
Leon froze, his eyes widening slightly as his hyper-intuition processed the phrase. *Challengers.* He had been wrong, but he had also been right; there were other survivors, just not from Earth. They were Champions from another world entirely.
"There's no time to talk!" Leon shouted. "Run!"
Lyra reacted instantly, driving her mount forward so that the two military mounts surged ahead. The other rock-skinned Champions followed as quickly as they could, but their beasts struggled to match the pace. The group pushed through the blizzard for several minutes before Lyra finally slowed them down to a steady trot, recognizing that their mounts were tiring. The other Champions remained a safe distance behind them, tracking their trail through the deep snow.
For a while, nobody spoke, leaving the storm to fill the gap. Then Lyra looked back at Leon, Maya, and Adrian, her expression entirely different now—suspicious.
"I've been thinking," she said, her voice dropping into a sharp register.
Leon glanced at her calmly.
"Back there, I would've suspected you were some of those crazy fanatics trying to feed the Night Guest," Lyra continued.
Maya frowned. "Feed it?"
Lyra nodded, her posture rigid against the wind. "There are people who believe the Night Guest can be appeased, and some of them deliberately lure travelers toward it. I thought perhaps you were doing something similar—maybe you were leading me here intentionally." She shook her head. "But no. You genuinely didn't know."
Lyra's gaze hardened as she narrowed her eyes. "And I didn't notice something earlier. When we were riding together, you told me a story," she said, looking directly at Maya. "About something that happened a year and a half ago."
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Maya's expression changed, her breathing catching as she slowly nodded.
Lyra stared at her, her voice growing uncomfortably quiet. "How would you remember that if you had encountered the Night Guest? Anyone who has encountered it loses their memories. That's one of the few things everyone across the continent agrees on." Her eyes narrowed to slits. "So you weren't touched by it."
She looked over at Adrian, then back at Leon. "None of you were. Which means your story about being touched by the Night Guest was a lie."
Maya's expression tightened in a panic. "We never said—"
"You said it rang a bell," Lyra cut her off flatly. "And I believed you. That was my mistake."
The wind howled around them, and Lyra's fingers tightened around her reins until the leather groaned. "Now I'm wondering why. Why are you hiding your origins? Because the more I think about it, the stranger it becomes. You don't know what the Night Guest is; even small children know the stories."
Lyra's expression darkened as she swept her gaze over the three of them. "And yet three people appear out of nowhere in the Frost Expanse with no identity, no known origin, and barely any understanding of one of the oldest legends in existence. That's already strange. But there's something else."
Leon waited, his amber eyes completely unbothered.
"I've been taking risks," Lyra said, her tone dropping further.
Maya frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Risks I normally wouldn't take," Lyra's voice became quieter. "Following the spirit wolf this far into the wilderness during a blizzard. Staying in this hostile region. Fighting high-tier beasts that I normally would've avoided entirely. Continuing forward even when the tactical situation became increasingly dangerous. And I've been wondering why."
Leon understood the behavioral math immediately: his calming aura, the Leon Effect.
Lyra looked directly at him, pointing a gauntleted finger. "Then I realized something. It's you."
Maya's expression immediately soured. "Leon isn't doing anything to you."
"I'm not accusing him of consciously doing it," Lyra's gaze didn't leave Leon's face. "You calm people. You make people relax, and you make them feel entirely safe." Her expression hardened into a military scowl. "That's a sinister power to have in a place like this."
Maya's face tightened in anger. "Sinister?"
Leon raised a hand, his voice steady. "Maya."
She looked at him, biting her lip, before Leon turned back to the guide. "You know us, Lyra. We aren't going to harm you."
Lyra gave him a cold, unyielding look. "Do I really know you? I know nothing about you. I don't know where you came from, I don't know who trained you, and I don't know why you've never heard basic legends that even children know. I don't know why you hid your identities, and I don't know why you've been able to do things that people with your supposed background shouldn't be able to do."
She stared directly into his honey-colored eyes, her fingers locked around her weapon. "And now I'm realizing that I've been making lethal decisions I normally wouldn't make simply because I'm around you. That isn't something I can ignore. Come to think of it. Speaking of decisions I wouldn't normally do...this whole trip. Did you purposely make the arrangement of only taking Adrian and Maya with you so that I would come without asking any questions? What were you hoping to get out of this trip? "
The storm raged violently around them, and for several seconds, nobody spoke. Then Lyra finally asked the ultimate question.
"Who are you, Leon?" Her eyes narrowed. "If that's even your real name."
Maya shifted uncomfortably in her saddle, and Adrian remained entirely silent.
Lyra's voice became ice-cold as she delivered her ultimatum. "I want a proper explanation. Right now."
The blizzard swallowed the silence that followed, leaving them frozen on the trail.