CHAPTER 199: FROM GRASSLANDS TO MOUNTAINS

The smell of smoke still lingered faintly on the wind as they left Ylthara behind. The ruins of the city were little more than a distant silhouette now, a smudge of black and grey against the horizon. The faint column of ash twisting toward the clouds was the last trace of what had been.

Ahead, far in the distance, the Ironforge Mountains rose like jagged sentinels, their snow-dusted peaks glinting beneath the morning sun. Even from here, they looked cold, sharp, and distant—an unforgiving wall of stone separating them from whatever waited beyond.

Kai sat at the front of the carriage, the reins loose in one hand as he worked the other against the sigil etched into his chest. The sigil was a permanent scar of his own making, burned into his flesh through careful precision and weeks of trial and error. A lattice of blackened lines twisted over his sternum, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of his mana flow.

He traced one of the outer arcs, and the lines shifted, just slightly.

The sigil thrummed, heat building under his fingertips. Kai winced but didn’t stop. He pulled one segment inward, altering the spiral to open a new channel for the ambient mana around him.

The change was immediate.

A whisper of power slipped through the air, feeding into his veins.

Not an overwhelming feeling of power, but steady, like a slow current pooling into a reservoir. Enough to keep his reserves stable without drawing too much attention.

"Better," he muttered, and then let his will expand.

Mana coalesced above and around them, converted from his life essence that was now being continuously fuelled by his sigil.

The mana spilled outward to form a translucent dome, a barrier of faint, shifting shadows that moved with the carriage as it rolled down the road. To anyone looking, it would appear as a shimmer, like heat distortion. But its purpose wasn’t to hide them entirely. It was to mask them from the divine gaze. The eyes that might still be searching for the ones who had turned Ylthara into a graveyard.

Kai pictured it like a dead zone of magical energy from the view of a satellite.

Inside the carriage, Vepice stirred from her rest.

Kai looked through the small glass window between them.

She’d been lying on the cushioned bench for hours, eyes closed, hands clasped loosely across her lap. When the wheels slowed and she heard the subtle shift of Kai adjusting the reins, she knocked gently on the wall.

"Coming up," she called.

Kai eased the horses down to a steadier pace as she emerged from the carriage and, climbed up gracefully to the bench beside him.

Her cloak was drawn close, the wind tugging strands of her illusioned dark hair across her face. She brushed them back and glanced toward the mountains.

’Hopefully once we’re in Sala, we won’t need to disguise ourselves like common criminals...’

"You think we’ll find this place we’re looking for?" she asked, her tone quiet but not uncertain.

She broke him from his anguished thoughts.

Kai’s eyes stayed fixed on the horizon. "We have to. I’ll need more strength before I can help my mentor or have a chance of surviving Sala. Whatever lies in the Ironforge range, it might be the key."

She nodded, though her gaze lingered on the peaks with something like unease.

The road beneath them began to change.

What had once been the soft, gravel-strewn path of the plainslands, wide, worn smooth by merchants, travelers, and wandering herders, slowly gave way to harder, rockier earth.

The ground rose and dipped in uneven patterns, and the carriage wheels jolted with each new ridge.

The grasslands they had crossed earlier were gone now. The rolling, vibrant fields of green had thinned into sparse, brittle stretches of yellow and brown. Small clusters of trees, once abundant, now stood stunted and wind-worn, their branches twisting in unnatural angles as the winds swept colder and sharper from the north.

A thin mist began to gather along the ground, first only in hollows and shaded areas, but gradually becoming a persistent veil over the land, curling around the carriage wheels as if reluctant to be left behind.

The air grew colder with each passing hour.

To their left, the land dropped into steep ravines where shallow streams cut through the stone, glistening in the fading afternoon light. To their right, jagged ridges rose higher, layered with loose shale and boulders as if the earth itself had fractured long ago and never healed.

The road narrowed.

Each turn revealed more signs of abandonment, a collapsed wooden bridge beside a newer, narrower stone one; moss-covered posts where waymarkers once stood, their inscriptions long since weathered to illegibility; and, once, the broken shell of a caravan wagon, half-buried in the dirt as though nature had tried to erase its passing.

Kai’s barrier rippled faintly overhead, a steady, silent hum against the rising tension in the air.

"This road feels... old," Vepice murmured, her eyes scanning the looming cliffs. "Like no one’s traveled it in years."

"Not many do, I suppose," Kai replied. "Not with the forests to the south and the beasts that wander near the mountains. The merchants prefer the long way around."

"And us?"

"We’re not merchants," Kai said simply. "And we don’t have time to waste."

Vepice tilted her head toward him, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "You always make it sound so easy."

Kai tugged gently on the reins, guiding the horses around a jutting outcrop of stone where the road narrowed so tightly it could only fit the carriage by inches.

"Easy?" he said. "No. But necessary."

Behind them, the wind swept across the open land, carrying with it the last faint trace of ash from Ylthara.

And then the cold came. The mountains, even though occupied by much heat and the best smiths of the continent, were covered in white.

Ahead, the shadow of the Ironforge Mountains grew longer, deeper, and darker with every mile.

And the path forward promised more than just stone and snow. It promised secrets of his mentor’s master.

A master necromancer.