An encounter with the moon

Late the following night, most of the tribal camp had fallen asleep, leaving only scattered torches and the footsteps of patrolling warriors.

The group preparing to migrate west had long since assembled, their supplies securely bundled. The old, the weak, the women, and the children had been placed in the most heavily protected central area of the camp, ready to depart at any moment.

Incidentally, the shamans who had been treated lacked fighting ability, and most would also accompany them west.

Horace Loux's tent was empty.

He checked his belongings one last time: several rolls of tanned leather recording the preliminary outline of his precepts and information on Liurnia, along with some emergency herbs and dried provisions.

He had changed into dark leather armor suited to long journeys and covert movement, with an unremarkable gray cloak over it.

He lifted the tent flap and took one last look at the camp where he had lived for so long, which he was about to leave behind forever.

Cool moonlight spilled over the hide tents and crude wooden palisades, lending them an unreal tranquility.

He disturbed no one, including the tribespeople who had decided to follow him-they would meet at the appointed time and place.

For now, he needed to do something alone: verify the "fate" the Gate of Myriad Laws had "forged" with the enormous energy it had "squeezed" from the Formless Mother.

Like a ghost, he slipped into the camp's shadows, avoided the patrol routes, and silently left the tribe's grounds, heading toward a stretch of higher hills to the west.

He needed an unobstructed view, needed to be far from people, needed to face the full moon hanging high in the night sky over the Lands Between.

Atop the hill, the night wind was biting.

Horace Loux stopped and tilted his head toward the heavens.

The full moon hung silently in the sky like a vast, cold silver platter, shedding its eternally unchanging light.

Beside him was another, dimmer moon, the Dark Moon. (Before Marika, both moons should have been in the sky.)

He drew a deep breath of icy air and calmed his somewhat turbulent thoughts.

Then he sank his consciousness into the depths of his soul and touched the Gate of Myriad Laws, which had finished "charging."

Let's begin, he said silently.

An eerie sheen began flowing across the previously dormant surface of the Gate of Myriad Laws' "doors," as fine as quicksilver and as brilliant as starlight.

Horace Loux felt a gentle tug on his soul, as though an invisible thread had been drawn from the depths of his consciousness and cast into the river of light flowing within the gate.

Immediately afterward, a vast yet subtle power flowed back into him, acting not upon his flesh or his ordinary powers, but directly upon the "conceptual" level of his very existence.

He felt a slight dizziness, and the scenery before him began to warp and stretch.

In his "perception," the full moon and the Dark Moon in the sky suddenly grew enormous!

They were no longer unreachable celestial bodies, but seemed to break through the constraints of space and draw right before his eyes in an instant!

The dim sphere and the silver lunar surface filled his entire field of vision, their ringed mountains and impact craters clearly visible. Their cold radiance enveloped him completely, like tangible quicksilver.

This was no physical approach, but an "encounter" on the level of perception, a moment when the trajectory of fate was forcibly distorted to form a deep connection with the concept of the "moon."

In that instant, he "heard" faint whispers that seemed to come from an ancient starry sky.

It all happened extremely quickly, as though he had merely lost focus for a moment.

When Horace Loux abruptly came to his senses, stumbled a step, and steadied himself against a cold rock beside him, the scene before his eyes had already returned to normal.

The two moons still hung high in the sky, cold and distant. The stars still twinkled.

The night wind still howled.

But something had changed completely.

An indescribable "feeling" had been branded into the depths of his soul.

It was a mysterious "guidance," vague yet firm, pointing west, toward Liurnia, and beyond that toward certain "coordinates" hidden behind the veil of reality, closely connected to the "moon."

The Moon Boat-he knew now.

He had not gained its exact location, but inexplicably had a sense of how to "find it."

Like a migratory bird instinctively knowing its migration route, he now seemed to have had a "program" for finding the Moon Boat "written" into him.

He had succeeded. Using an Outer God's energy obtained through something close to "fraud," the Gate of Myriad Laws had forcibly forged a false fate connected to the "Moon Boat" for him, a transmigrator who originally had no trajectory of fate.

Now he had become the "bearer" of this fate, naturally gaining the right to pursue its corresponding "fortuitous encounter."

Horace Loux stood still for a while, carefully savoring this novel and strange feeling.

There was no discomfort, only a sense of detachment from having been "marked" by some vast, cold existence.

He tugged at the corner of his mouth. Was this perhaps a side effect of receiving the "moon's favor"?

Or was it simply the roughness of a forged fate?

He delayed no longer and retraced his steps to the tribe, taking even greater care.

But when he reached the vicinity of his tent, he paused slightly.

Firelight shone from within.

It was not the basin of nearly extinguished coals he had left behind, but a fire that had been freshly fueled and was burning brightly.

More importantly, inside the tent... there was not even a single shadow.

The fire illuminated the entire interior, every corner clearly visible, in complete defiance of common sense.

This was plainly deliberate, using intense light to dispel every blind spot where shadows might hide.

Maliketh... had been specifically "asked" to leave, or at least could not conceal himself in an environment so devoid of shadows.

Horace Loux's heart sank a little. He lifted the tent flap and went inside.

Hoarah Loux sat on the rough wooden stump beside the hearth, his greataxe leaning within reach.

Rather than sitting with his clothes casually open or wiping down his weapon as usual, he sat perfectly straight, hands on his knees, watching the dancing flames with a calm gaze.

The fire painted half his face red, while the other half lay hidden in shadow, making him look particularly solemn. Hearing movement, he turned toward Horace Loux, his usual hearty smile absent, replaced by a rare calm.

"You're back?" Hoarah Loux's voice was quiet, yet carried clearly over the crackling flames.

"Sit."

Horace Loux obeyed, sitting on a cushion opposite him as a faint alarm sounded in his mind.

His elder brother was acting very unusually tonight.

"Hesa," Hoarah Loux began without preamble, shifting his gaze from the flames to his younger brother's face.

"You're taking people away tomorrow. There are some things I need to talk to you about tonight."

Horace Loux nodded silently, bracing himself.

Was his elder brother going to offer precautions for the journey west, or express his reluctance to part?

"You must have been wondering all this time," Hoarah Loux said evenly, with an almost contemplative tone.

"Why I brought our entire tribe to the Lands Between."

Something stirred in Horace Loux's heart. This was indeed a question he had harbored for a long time.

He raised his eyes toward his elder brother.

Hoarah Loux was looking at him too, a profound light now shining in those eyes that usually burned with fighting spirit.

"The reason is actually very simple," Hoarah Loux said slowly.

"Because of you."

Horace Loux shuddered all over and abruptly raised his head, meeting his elder brother's meaningful gaze.

"You've always been clever, Horace," Hoarah Loux continued, his voice still even, yet striking Horace Loux's heart like a heavy hammer.

"Too clever. Clever enough to... know things no one in our tribe could possibly know. When you talked in your sleep as a child, you'd come out with words none of us could understand. After you grew up, those 'precepts' you tinkered with in private, and the strange things you occasionally blurted out about this world... or even beyond it-they formed sentences and made sense, but it was certainly not sense we should have understood."

Cold sweat instantly soaked Horace Loux's inner shirt.

He felt as though he had been stripped naked and thrown into a world of ice and snow, all his secrets laid bare.

He had always thought he had concealed himself well, that his identity as a transmigrator was a perfectly guarded secret.

He had never imagined that this seemingly rough and reckless elder brother had long since noticed the clues.

"Brother, I..." He opened his mouth to explain, only to find his throat dry, unable to say anything.

How could he explain? Say he was a soul from another world? Say that, in his eyes, this world was a game?

"No need to say it." Hoarah Loux waved a hand, interrupting him, but his gaze swept with utmost seriousness across every brightly illuminated corner of the tent as he pointedly lowered his voice.

"Beware of shadows."

Horace Loux understood at once. His elder brother was warning him that Maliketh's surveillance—or rather, Marika's surveillance behind him—was everywhere.

Some things could not be said outright.

He closed his mouth, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

There is very little text about the Moon Boat. The author does not know exactly what it looks like either, so I simply wrote it as a fog gate.