Book One – Chapter 13

Midnight had traversed sections of the Snowtrail with Yves in the past. The path from the Albweiss Mountain Guild to the Barnstream Guild was familiar to her from those journeys. They had walked this route extensively six years ago, after spending nearly a year in the northeastern settlements.

Now, she would walk alone. As the darkness that was Midnight attempted to seeped through the outer face, she encountered an immediate and potent barrier. It was not the witch magic, but a force external to the mountain, beyond the reach of her darkness sense.

Intuitively, Midnight understood. While the darkness had thrived within the confines of the mountain, extending its territory far into the depths and heights of the Albweiss and granting her unhindered passage, the southern mountain face was claimed by the clearest of light. This display of radiance manifested in intricate prismatic patterns and beams that sprang from the myriad of reflections cast by the ice and snow that covered the mountainside. These luminous displays spanned the sky in an exhibition of natural energies that not a thousand wizards, with all their shards and light magic, could imitate.

Midnight knew that these energies belonged to uncharted domains. Emerging a few hundred meters below the realm of the dragons yet far above the Snowtrail, she found herself in a place where the boundaries between the physical and ethereal realms blurred. The mountain’s essence seemed to bleed into the sky, where it met the Raja Siena — the circular seal roumored to encircle the world like a coat of spells, dividing earth from sky and separating lesser beings from dragons; though three exceptions remained: 𝑬𝒑𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒎, 𝑵𝒆𝒉𝒆𝒓, and 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒂𝒉𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒂𝒏, who roamed below.