Avoid the courier.
The engraved marks on the lamppost glowed with an eerie pale white, standing out against the black iron pole with near-blinding prominence. The chaotic fog around them slowly flowed and churned. In this silent, fog-shrouded dead city, that simple line of letters suddenly seemed extraordinarily sinister—so sinister that both Wasp and Night Owl felt a chill run through their bodies.
But they did not stop. Instead, they continued briskly toward the southeastern district. The dim yellow light of the streetlamps traced an unbroken path of faint radiance through the dense fog, while weak lights also spilled from the buildings lining both sides of the road. Those lights vaguely illuminated the dark street, yet the road... seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance.
Wasp lowered her voice as she asked—she did not know why she was speaking so quietly, as if she did not want to disturb something lurking in the fog. "The courier... do you mean the one who disappeared many days ago?"
In Plander, "couriers" had not appeared for a very long time.
It was a highly unusual profession. Unlike ordinary couriers on the Loren Continent, the "couriers" of this Mage Country traveled specifically between inland cities and border cities, wielding unimaginable power and authority to pass through restricted areas.
The cities within Violet were isolated from one another, while endless forests and magical locks filled the wilderness. With those barriers in place, outsiders could not even pass through the border cities into the inland regions. Even locals rarely left the cities where they lived unless necessary. Couriers... were the "bridges" connecting those isolated cities.
They delivered letters between cities, transmitted orders from the City of a Thousand Towers to every frontier region, and opened "passages" through the endless forests and magical locks of the wilderness