Chapter 192 : Chapter 192

Much as she hated to admit it, Cecilia was an excellent partner.

Or rather, that woman showed a very real degree of sincerity toward anyone willing to cooperate with her. Over these past few months, she had given Ilis more than enough respect. She had let her enroll normally, forged her a flawless identity, and freed her from ever having to worry about being exposed again.

The fear buried in her bones, the nerves that always tightened whenever she walked through a crowd, the instinctive hand that used to reach for her ears whenever she jolted awake in the middle of the night—

All of it had slowly begun to loosen.

What surprised Ilis even more was how much else Cecilia had done for her.

After learning that she was interested in anything left behind by the elves, that woman had mobilized every resource she could. Ancient books, manuscripts, survey reports on ruins, lists of excavated relics—every scrap of information currently available that had anything to do with the elves had been delivered to Ilis, one bundle after another.

Those yellowed parchments, those rubbings of stone tablets, those hastily copied manuscripts piled up across the tables in her room.

Every night, Ilis would read until very late, deciphering those ancient Elven texts one word at a time by candlelight. Some she could understand. Some she had to guess. And sometimes, halfway through reading, her eyes would inexplicably begin to sting.

Those things had been left behind by her people.

They were marks carved into stone stroke by stroke by those who shared her bloodline hundreds, even thousands of years ago.

She had never imagined that, within her own lifetime, she would be able to see such things.

Cecilia never asked anything.

She simply had more sent.

Ilis owed her.

And so on this expedition into the ruins, she was more serious than anyone else. She wanted to obtain that thing, the thing Cecilia wanted. Whatever it was, she had to bring it back.

She wanted Cecilia to feel that this bargain had been worth it.

There was another matter that had been circling in her heart for a very long time as well.

At that dance, she had seen Ryan.

Through the crowd, through the swirling skirts and the dazzling play of lights and raised glasses, she had seen him standing there, still wearing that same detached expression, as though nothing in the world had anything to do with him.

But she had felt it.

The thing he carried on him was truly there. That fluctuation, one only an elf could perceive, that familiar sensation that made her heart miss a beat, could not have been mistaken.

It was something of the elves.

Something that belonged to her people.

She wanted to get it back.

Not for Cecilia.

For herself.

But she did not know how to ask.

After all, it was his. He had bought it. It belonged to him. By what right could she demand it back?

And more than that—

Ilis stood deep in the Sea of Trees, leaning against a thick trunk and breathing lightly. Sweat slid down from her brow and traced the curve of her cheek. She raised a hand and wiped it away, then lifted her head to look toward a certain direction.

There was nothing there.

Only those silver-gray trees, standing one beside the next, stretching endlessly into the unseen distance.

Ilis let out a sigh. It was a very light sigh, and the wind carried it away.

She did not know what she was hoping for.

Perhaps she wanted to confirm that he was safe.

Perhaps she wanted a chance to finally speak.

Or perhaps—

She only wanted, in a place like this, to see a familiar face.

She crushed the thought down.

Took a deep breath.

And leaped onward.

Just before her feet touched down, a branch beneath her extended of its own accord, firmly supporting her weight. She used it to spring forward and landed on another trunk more than ten meters away. The branches and leaves parted by themselves just before she would have collided with them, opening a gap exactly wide enough for her to pass.

The entire Sea of Trees was cooperating with her.

She had traveled very far.

But her heart was not here.

It was in that ruin, somewhere she could not see.

It was with someone who might never come.

She passed through stretch after stretch of silver-gray forest, crossed stream after stream whose destination was unknown, and skirted those marshes where monsters lurked in ambush. She did not know how long she had been running. She only knew that her direction had never changed—

North.

That was the deepest part of the Sea of Trees. Seen from above, the crowns there were darker, higher, denser, packed together like a wall of dark green, blocking out half the sky.

And now she stood before that wall.

Those trees were taller than any she had seen before. Their trunks were so thick that it would take dozens of people linking arms to encircle one. Their bark was dark brown, rough as the bed of a dried-up river. They stood shoulder to shoulder, pressed together so tightly that there was almost no gap between them.

Not no gap.

The spaces were simply too narrow, too narrow even for a hand to slip through.

It looked like a wall.

A wall made of living trees.

Ilis stood before it and tilted her head back, looking up at the canopies that vanished into the clouds. Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the branches and shattered into countless flecks of light, falling over her, over that wall of trees.

She did not continue leaping forward.

She only stood there, looking at them.

Looking at the coarse纹路 on the trunks, which flickered in and out of shadow like some ancient totem.

Looking at the vines growing from the cracks in the bark, thin and soft, swaying gently in the wind.

Looking at the leaves, layered one above another, blocking out the sky, as if they meant to cover the entire world.

The longer she looked, the more familiar it felt.

That sense of familiarity did not come from memory. It came from something deeper, like a stirring in her blood, like an echo from within her soul.

She stepped forward and placed a hand against the trunk before her.

The bark was rough, rough enough to sting her palm. But that sensation climbed up her nerves, along her arm, over her shoulder, and into her heart.

She closed her eyes.

Her lips parted slightly, and a few syllables slipped out.

The sound was light and soft, like wind brushing through leaves, like a stream running over stone, like someone singing from a place very, very far away. The syllables flowed together, rising and falling, carrying an ancient, distant rhythm that did not belong to this age.

It was not an incantation.

It was poetry.

A song passed down through the Elf Race for countless generations, used to communicate with nature itself.

A pale green light glowed from her palm.

It was faint and gentle, the color of the first tender shoots of spring. It spilled out from her hand and spread along the rough纹路 of the bark, crawling over the trunk as though it were alive, climbing up the branches, climbing into the layers of leaves overhead.

More pale green light began to shine.

From the tree beneath her hand it spread to the one beside it, and then to the next. Those lights streamed between the trunks like glowing rivers, or like countless fine threads, wrapping the airtight wall of trees in a luminous web.

Then the trees began to move.

A slight trembling, the kind that seemed to come from something being roused out of sleep. Their leaves rustled in that trembling. Their vines swayed gently. And the纹路 along the trunks seemed to come alive within the pale green glow, slowly flowing.

Then the tree before her moved.

It shifted aside, as though some invisible hand had pulled it from the earth and set it down elsewhere. As it moved, soil and roots turned and tore beneath it, tangling, parting, and then digging back into the ground again.

One tree moved aside.

Then a second.

Then a third.

One after another, the trees slid away, like a gigantic door slowly opening. Behind them, a downward opening was revealed. It was huge, more than ten meters across, with a spiral stairway descending around its edge. The steps led down and down into darkness so deep she could not see the bottom.

Ilis stood there, staring at the opening.

The pale green light gradually faded. The trees stopped trembling and stood silently once more, as though they had never moved at all. Only the opening remained, gaping there, waiting.

A clear note of delight appeared on her face.

The smile was faint, only the slightest upward curve of her lips, but her violet eyes brightened with a light that had not appeared in them for a very long time.

Just as she thought.

Her instinct had been right.

Ilis took a deep breath and stepped into the opening.

Her boots touched the stone stairs with a very soft sound.

The steps were ancient, their edges weathered, but they were steady underfoot. One step at a time, she descended, and her figure was slowly swallowed by the dark.

The opening remained behind her, still open.

Wind moved through the trees, and the branches whispered.

A long time passed.

Roughly a quarter of an hour or so.

Then another figure emerged from the depths of the Sea of Trees and landed before that wall of trees.

The newcomer stood there, looking at the still-open hole, looking at the trees that had shifted aside only moments before.

Then that person walked in as well.

Lightly. Swiftly.

Like a shadow disappearing into the dark.