Kyle, drunk on the atmosphere, told me more stories than he usually would.
Birthdays he never expected anything from, birthdays that gradually lost their meaning, and the nostalgia he felt for a past where he lived recklessly—when I heard these things, I patted his back a few times and let him know that the long tunnel was finally behind him.
I don’t know why celebrating a meaningless day and forgetting joy has become such a trivial thing in this world. Maybe my life was the same.
We lazily tossed words back and forth in drowsy voices, half-asleep. To an outsider, it might have seemed like pointless chatter, but for some reason, it felt comforting.
“Still, I think you should go all out for your birthday at least once in your life…….”
Kyle chuckled softly, his already drunken self made even tipsier by my words.
“If it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I should’ve taken better advantage of it.”
“……Damn. What else were we supposed to do here?”
“Your words are quite inappropriate.”
“What, why? Are you about to enforce some great moral lesson from the bed now? Have you forgotten? I am a proud citizen of the now-abolished Republic of Korea. No one above me, no one below me, just me, myself, and I. Got it?”
“……”
“Why, what? What now? What?!”
“Is this really my final birthday present?”
Kyle pouted, dragging his eyes toward me.
Beep, beep, beep! I poked his forehead before he could frown any further.
“No sad faces! No ‘Did you not like it?’! No asking! No trying to confirm whether I meant it or not! All of that is strictly forbidden!”
He responded with an infuriatingly casual tone.
“But you’re weak to this kind of thing. What can you do?”
“Then make it off-limits!”
Annoyed, I cried out and smacked his shoulder. But Kyle, still looking drowsy, just gave me a blank stare from below.
‘Ah, seriously…….’
If I let my guard down against that face even once, I was done for.
The problem was, no matter how many times I braced myself, when I finally came to my senses, I always found myself completely done for.
“Annoying.”
I grabbed his collar and pulled him in, and Kyle, with a smile, pressed his lips against the tip of my nose.
“Annoying?”
“……Annoying but nice.”
“I love you too.”
At some point, as we exchanged our bittersweet stories, I must have fallen asleep. It felt nice having his empty presence filled beside me, as if warmth had seeped into the cracks of loneliness.
Before falling asleep, we had some kind of conversation. When he asked me when my birthday was, I remember answering, “March 10.”
It felt a bit strange to say it out loud. Back in school, it always came up awkwardly at the start of the semester, and then as an adult, I never really saw the need to celebrate, so I just let it pass without much thought.
But for Kyle, my birthday seemed to mean something else entirely. Since he always kept me close, he suggested that we spend the day together. In return, I handed him an ultimatum.
It was strange. A day I had always thought of as just another chilly date on the calendar suddenly felt like it had some kind of meaning—just because I would be spending it with him.
“That sounds nice, Kyle.”
“Alright. Let’s do that.”
Kyle tugged me into his arms, pulling me close in a gesture that was all too familiar.
“You won’t be busy tomorrow, right? Wake me up.”
“……Okay.”
***
That night, I had a dream.
I don’t know if it was a nightmare or not. I was standing in a landscape that felt both familiar and foreign, scanning my surroundings in a frantic search for something.
It felt as though I had lost something incredibly important. Snow was falling from the sky, people were casting me strange glances, and a bitter cold had seeped deep into my bones.
And then, as if emerging from the darkness, a black dog came charging toward me…
“Shu.”
“……”
“Shu!”
“……Hngh.”
A warm hand grasped my shoulder and shook me. I startled awake, my cheeks burning as if I’d been scalded.
“Shu.”
“You’re sweating like crazy. Are you okay?”
Kyle’s soft, furrowed expression came into focus as he wiped my face, studying my reaction.
I tried to recall what I had seen in the dream, but the vivid scenes that had played so clearly in my mind just moments ago now faded into fragments, scattering like mist.
“It felt like… I lost something important……”
My voice was hoarse as I mumbled uncertainly.
“Forget about it.”
Kyle offered me a faint, reassuring smile.
“A dream is just a dream. It’s alright.”
I blinked a few times, the lingering haze of sleep clearing from my mind, sharpening my vision. The passage of time became clearer—Kyle’s clothes had changed from casual wear to something more formal.
“……Is it morning already?”
“No. I just got back from a meeting.”
A meeting. Right.
After the grand meeting ended, Kyle began drafting a formal strategy for the northern expedition. Departure was set for early spring. Only a small, essential team was chosen, with Kyle at the center of it.
The objective: to find the “Undertaker,” Salina.
While locating Rosalia was also important, if Salina wasn’t using Lukit, then there was no way to communicate with the Mages either. That left no choice but to go in person.
Leaning against him, half-listening to the meeting, I absentmindedly opened the system window floating near my elbow.
[(>﹏<)]
[G◎go]
‘Figured you’d tag along anyway.’
As I flicked the window with my finger, it shimmered and darted away.
“If the system suddenly reconnected… maybe it has something to do with whatever changes are happening up north.”
If there was a problem brewing, it was best to deal with it before it got worse.
Kyle brushed back my tangled hair, momentarily lost in thought. Judging by the faint crease in his brows, he understood that I had to go with them, even if he didn’t like it.
I knew he was worried, but there was no helping it.
“It’s okay.”
I reassured him, wrapping my arms around him.
“You can protect me from over there too.”
Kyle lowered his gaze and smiled faintly.
“Right. I’ll protect you. No matter what happens.”
***
“Cold!”
A shrill voice echoed through the serene snowy mountains.
“C-Cold! Hold on! At this rate, I’ll freeze to death!”
Even with magic woven into the thick layers of my coat, the bitter chill was relentless. It was a piercing cold that seeped through my bones, numbing even my toes inside my sturdy boots.
The razor-sharp wind threatened to freeze everything in existence. Half-collapsed Mage towers loomed in the distance, filling our vision.
After trekking northwest from the “Tower of Sery,” we discovered a Mage that was far less impressive—nothing more than an abandoned structure with a single crow perched atop it, adding to its eerie desolation.
“This is the place… So, Salina passed through this Mage Tower?”
Unlike the previous ones, this Mage Tower had no residual energy or scent. Kyle seemed to have reached a similar conclusion, his expression subtly twisting in thought.
“……According to the records, there are three Mage Towers noted: ‘Tower of Sery,’ ‘Tower of Pado,’ and ‘Empty Mage Tower.'”
“So this is where Salina and Lukit passed through. Well, more precisely, it’s where Salina brought Lukit.”
With Lukit’s spirit having faded and his body left behind, who knew if the Undertaker had built this Mage Tower to house him or for some other purpose?
“It’s a relief that there was still some information left in the Tower of Sery.”
Thanks to the records we found in the Tower of Sery, we had managed to pinpoint the approximate location of the Mage Rosalia had passed through. The fact that we wouldn’t have to wander aimlessly in this freezing cold was already a huge comfort.
Hugging the bundle of documents to my chest, I muttered hoarsely through parched lips.
“I really don’t want to come here twice.”
People could barely survive in this frozen wasteland.
‘Then again, the dead probably don’t feel cold.’
As I let my mind drift into pointless thoughts, Kyle drew his sword and scanned the surroundings cautiously. There was no immediate sign of an ambush, but it was always wise to be wary—especially in a place like this, where anything could happen.
“Knights, maintain defensive formation and approach the Mage Tower carefully.”
“Awaiting orders from the commander!”
I watched the ancient Mage, its brittle form resembling a giant’s snapped-off fingers, then quickly closed the distance to Kyle’s side.
It felt inappropriate to have such a thought in the tense atmosphere, but…
“It feels more like a place for discarding things.”
Or maybe a nest of ghosts. Either way, it was clear the inhabitants of this place had been dead for quite some time.
Kyle’s crimson eyes gleamed sharply as he surveyed the area. I raised my hand, activating a magical lamp to illuminate the darkness. Pale green light flickered across the stone walls, casting jagged shadows around us.
The Mage Tower was completely abandoned, filled with nothing but dust and the lingering presence of death. From the outside, it had seemed relatively intact, but inside, there was no sign of the frozen corpses we had seen in the Tower of Sery.
“Nothing… There’s absolutely nothing.”
It hit me. The realization settled in with chilling clarity—this wasn’t just a matter of nobody being here. This entire stronghold had been emptied.
“Yeah. Looks like they’ve been gone for a few months.”
Kyle’s voice carried a rare note of tension.
“Gone? But why?”
Had they scattered after Lukit’s death?
But according to Lukit himself, the Undertakers—and Rosalia, in particular—wanted to remain as separate from the world as possible. He had also explained that the Mage dwellers weren’t bound to any one leader but instead followed necessity, grouping together only when required. That had made them seem more like a loose alliance than a structured organization…
So why would they abandon their Mage Tower just because Lukit had died?
“If they left, where did they go?”
There was no way a group of people who had fought through death itself would simply run without a fight. Kyle seemed to be thinking the same thing.
At that moment, a system window trembled into view, breaking the silence.
[You have entered a Deviation Zone!]
The connection to the system has begun to stabilize.
