Good Child, We Meet Again

"Grand Master! What are you doing here?"

Mentor Zerby Ortega's startled cry sent a flock of sparrows fluttering up from the deep, secluded woods, chirping as they flew through the hazy morning mist between the trees.

Amid the same mist, besides the birds, stood an ordinary little wooden hut whose outer walls were covered in moss and vines.

With no fence around it, it was no different from any hunter's hut at the edge of a forest.

Yet this was the hut where the once-devout Lydia had lived. Perhaps it concealed Gwendoline, Daughter of Spring, the Child of Miracle, and secrets concerning the White Frost and the end of the world...

But when Ailin first looked over, his gaze did not fall upon the Wooden Hut he had long been thinking about, but on the strange creature standing before it.

It was a reindeer, yet it was difficult to call it one.

Golden sunlight pierced the hazy, gradually dispersing morning fog and streamed through gaps in the leaves overhead, shining upon its immense ebony antlers draped with hanging moss.

Azure and gold intertwined. Rather than antlers, they seemed more like a crown upon the strange creature's head.

Its holy white fur shimmered with a unique radiance, outlining the handsome and powerful lines of its muscles.

Wild, beautiful, and majestic.

Anyone who saw it could not help but fall silent, as though a traveler returning from afar had beheld nature's magnificent mountains and rivers. How could they not be awed?

But Ailin was not...

The instant his gaze landed on that magnificent creature, his heart skipped a beat and every hair on his body stood on end.

He knew it. He had seen it before, beside the lake in the deepest part of the Sacred Forest...

He knew it was the