Eternal XXI

"Brando, did you sense it?"

The hunter girl's slight figure struggled along the cliff ahead, swaying precariously. She had said that in her dream, she had seen her younger brother pass through an ice wall as steep as if carved by blades. The bitter wind howled, and the surrounding environment resembled a maze-like hall formed from hundreds or thousands of ice pillars.

The group passed through an ice cavern tunnel strewn with ancient remains. What appeared before them was precisely such a scene:

The underground glacier seemed to have been abruptly sliced apart, its entire cross-section exposed before them. The cut extended from the ground all the way to the surface nearly a thousand feet above, forming an abyss like a sheer cliff. Standing at the edge of the ice wall, they saw a dim, gray sky howling with freezing wind above and a bottomless abyss below. The north wind, carrying disordered magic, shrieked past several hundred feet away, white as snow and resembling tens of thousands of Ghosts.

It was like the winter colts that drew the chariot of Jupiters, goddess of the north wind, in mythology—or perhaps an ice-blue river, surging endlessly like rolling waves.

The scene was exactly as Peya had described. When everyone arrived, they could not help but freeze in place.

Seeking answers through dreams sounded absurd. Although the witches firmly believed that dreams foretold reality, most people considered it preposterous. Even Veronica, who supported Brando, could not help thinking that the young lord's idea was overly presumptuous. Laurenna and Shido were even more doubtful.

The Empire's First Prince neither approved nor disapproved, as though that indifferent expression were his trademark.

The only people who supported Brando, aside from subordinates like Qian and Medisa who had followed him from the beginning and never doubted his