In a swift motion, I turn towards the powerful yet gentle voice.
A new nymph, with the exact appearance of the previous one, stands a few meters away from me. Her hands are behind her back, her face and posture neutral.
'Do you want to follow me?' asks the woman as her hand disappears from behind her back, pointing towards the river.
'Why should I?' I snap at the woman.
'Because time is running out,' the woman replies, pointing to the black veins on my arm that have now spread to my hands.
In the back of my mind, while facing that mirror, I knew there would come a time when the viante would wear off. Slowly, I feel the pain resurrect during my conversation with the nymph, and it's now rising rapidly.
'What benefit do you get from giving that to me? Or, a better question: what do you want for that antidote?' I exclaim irritably. The games, illusions, and riddles, I'm tired of it all.
'That you follow me and listen to the story I have to tell you,' is her dead serious answer before she puts her hands behind her back again and starts walking into the forest to the right.
With hesitation, I watch the woman before deciding to follow her, somewhat curious about the story and desperately in need of viante.
My bare feet on the wet, icy grass cause goosebumps all over my body. The faint path through the forest makes the dark way navigable, aided by the glowing butterflies and flowers here and there.
The large river and houses give way to an increasingly darker forest where nothing and no one is visible except nature. Even the path disappears as we progress into the grass and plants, and the number of glowing flowers and butterflies decreases.
The energy in this part of the forest is different—denser and oppressive. As if there's less oxygen or as if someone is trying to push you down.
The forest grows darker, the trees denser, but also, traces of the mountains become visible. Large stones lie in the grass here and there, some as tall as a meter. The terrain becomes steeper, making walking harder.
The white mist returns, and it's the first thing that truly makes me doubt how dangerous it could be here.
'Fear not, we're almost there,' the woman says without me having said anything or her turning towards me.
After what feels like an endless walk, where the stones grew larger and the path steeper, the woman stops at a steep rock wall at the beginning of a steep forest path into the mountains.
At first glance, there's nothing special about this wall until the nymph places her hand against the gray stones. The material starts emitting white sparkles, eventually shining a white-blue light in a rectangular shape from the stone. The white-blue light seems to suck the stone in until an opening appears, as wide as a small narrow door for children.
'Mind your head,' warns the woman before bending down and stepping through the opening.
Doubtful, I glance around, wondering if I'll ever return alive from this opening. Still, I have little to lose, so I bend down and step into a small, pitch-dark open space.
The only light is the light from outside, but even that disappears as the opening in the stone closes not even a minute later.
I feel somewhat relieved when small lights come on. Astonished, I look around the space, which is not much bigger than an average shed.
As if the stars have carved themselves into the stone wall, shining against the dark sky. The sight is so breathtaking that it seems to draw you in. As if you can do nothing but stare at it and lose yourself in it.
I take a step back, looking at the hundreds of yellow sparks in the stones. What I didn't expect is that I step on something hard and hear a loud crack.
'Mind George,' I'm surprised by the years-old skeleton sitting against the wall behind me. No flesh, skin, or any sign that the person ever lived remains, only the remaining pieces of torn clothing full of holes.
'George?' I ask incredulously while the nymph places her hand again against the stone wall.
'That's what we call him.' In a new wall, leading us further into the mountain, a new small door appears.
I want to ask more about the skeleton, but as the stone turns into an opening, an enormous pressure hits my lungs. It feels like someone has given me a hard punch in my chest, and I gasp for air. It's freezing here, as if I'm lying in ice-cold water and will never get warm again.
'What kind of place is this?' I ask, for the first time in months, with genuine fear in my voice.
'See for yourself,' replies the woman as she steps through the opening into the new space.
Every part of my body screams to leave, to run and never return. Stepping into that space feels like the worst mistake I could make.
Yet I do it.
I step into a much larger space than the previous one. The stars in the wall are replaced by a large sphere of light at the highest point above my head. The yellow light illuminates the stone space with a small frozen pond in the middle.
The oppressive feeling in my chest and the alarm bells in my head are much stronger in this space. My hands sweat, my muscles tense, and the feeling that I'm going to be murdered at any moment rushes through me.
I wrap my arms around myself and look at the blue ice in front of me. It doesn't take me long to recall Alisha telling me about shadow ice and connecting the ends to realize this is no ordinary ice.
'Normal people and creatures would suffocate the moment they enter this space,' the woman tells me as if it's the most normal information she could give me. Slowly, she takes a step closer to the ice.
'Why?' I struggle to keep thinking rationally.
"Because the magic in this space is so dark that a normal, living body or soul will succumb to the pressure. It devours the white magic from you in seconds, followed by everything that makes you human." I gulp, knowing she's speaking the truth. My magic is no longer white or pure, my body has never been human.
'Why am I here?' I ask.
The woman reaches out her hand, pointing to the pond with the ice. Doubtful, I take a few steps forward until I'm close enough to the ice to see what lies beneath the water.
A pure white, shining, large fish with long graceful fins swims alongside a pitch-black, so dark that you can barely see the definition of its scales, similar large fish.
Although I recognize these fish immediately from the illusion shown to me earlier, I'm almost certain that they
are real at first sight. The dark aura around the fish, how automatic and unnatural their movements are, and the glow surrounding them.
These are the real Yin and Yang.
'The ice you see is driven by magic, magic that holds the two darkest and strongest spirits in the world. The ice is melting, eaten away by the spirits' magic. We feed the magic, but as the original spell ages, we need more, especially with the decline of the night riders. Once the ice melts, the spirits can escape, and our world will be anything but safe. I have an offer for you: I'll give you the nymph on your list, and you'll bind a portion of your magic, the moment the spell succeeds, and your magic is pure, to this ice.'