Following the Mirage, Part 3
Damp air clung to my skin, and the light filtering through the cracks in the collapsed wall illuminated my surroundings.
There was barely enough space to rest the tips of my toes, let alone stand.
I raised my head and looked to my left and right, then up and down.
"Don't you have some kind of magic for situations like this?"
Beside me, Luke whispered. He seemed to have found a somewhat comfortable position in the meantime, hanging at an angle while clinging to the chain connected to his handcuffs.
He was clearly under the firm, mistaken impression that I was a mage.
A colossal tower.
The floors that should have been on each level were completely gone, hollowed out from top to bottom.
Only a few bricks, barely forming a modest ledge, remained to help gauge the dizzying height.
"If we fall from here, they won't even be able to sweep up our bones."
Hanging side by side at a height of roughly five stories were Luke, Bran, and myself.
Immediately after entering the rebel camp, we had been surrounded and dragged straight to this place.
I had let them take us, thinking that if the Prophet were still in the rebel camp, she would likely be kept where they held their prisoners.
I immediately channeled energy into my eyes to scan the prisoners.
"..."
There was no sign of red hair.
All I could see was a woman sobbing in agony.
A man wailing as he futilely tugged at the chains bolted deep into the stone wall.
A skeletal old man hanging limp, completely motionless, unable to find any footing.
On every level, those who had lost all will to live hung in dense, miserable clusters.
But the moment I looked toward the very top...
My eyes met those of a girl around my age, her hair disheveled, muttering something to herself.
Across her frozen, pale face, and peeking through the gaps of her heavily scorched clothes, I could see angry, red burn scars.
A dancer... perhaps?
She had clearly been subjected to brutal torture; there wasn't a single unmarred spot on her body.
Hideously puckered wounds ran down her neck, shoulders, and arms, weeping yellow fluid.
And following her gaze, in her hands...
...Books?
A pristine, dark blue book that looked brand new, and a tattered brown one.
Her tiny hands clung to the two volumes with all her might, as if she would rather die than let them go.
"Um, Lord Kamil?"
I snapped my head around at Bran's cautious voice.
"Do you happen to know her? You've been staring for a while..."
"Me?"
Though she stood out remarkably, she was a complete stranger.
I shook my head in response to Bran's question, then calmly assessed the situation.
Since the rebel leader, Taren Mors, had placed bounties on the heads of the commanders, I doubted this place was built for extracting information.
It was likely a dungeon meant to contain those who stood in the way of his plans, or perhaps traitors and spies.
It certainly didn't look like a place meant for negotiations or prisoner exchanges.
"By the way, what are we going to do now?"
Luke asked, his face unusually serious.
"If you have no further business here... Oh, there we go."
With a sharp clink, one of his handcuffs popped open.
Bran turned pale as Luke momentarily lost his balance, but the rogue's sly grin and comment about almost cracking his skull open seemed to drain all the tension from the soldier.
"Where on earth did you learn to do that?"
"A man's got his ways. Lean a bit closer to me. Hold on tight to whatever you can so you don't fall."
Holding a tool that resembled a bent needle in one hand, Luke shuffled closer to me.
Just then, a man watching us from the opposite side of the same level shouted in excitement.
"Me too! Get me out of here too! If I can just get out, money... gold! Yes, I'll give you gold! Gold from Mount Caldaros! All of it!"
The man's raspy voice echoed through the tower, drawing the attention of the other prisoners who had been staring blankly down into the dark abyss.
Suddenly the center of attention in his awkward posture, Luke licked his dry lips.
"Well, this is great... So much for a quiet escape."
The desperate pleas for rescue and the final, dying shrieks of those who had lost all strength tangled together, making my head throb.
At this rate, we were going to attract the attention of the rebels who were currently busy fighting outside.
Grimacing, I ripped the handcuffs—chains and all—straight out of the wall.
There was no reason to linger here any longer.
Dumbfounded by the sight, the prisoners instantly fell silent.
Luke and Bran were no exception.
His raised hand suddenly looking awkward, Luke smoothly shifted targets and unlocked Bran's handcuffs instead, while I quickly pondered how to reach the exit.
The lower-level exits, where not a single ray of light penetrated, were completely blocked with debris and dirt.
I immediately looked up at the ceiling.
In the end, escaping through the same entrance we had used to get in seemed to be our only option.
A towering spire with barely any footing.
The rebels had used a pulley system to suspend people here.
Like drawing water from a well, they would place the prisoners on a platform attached to the end of a long rope, lower them from the top, and hang them in whatever space was available.
However, since the transport mechanism was already stuck at the very top, we had to find another way up.
Crunch.
I ripped out the handcuffs Luke had been hanging from.
Then, I fastened one of the dangling cuffs around my left arm.
"You can hold onto this, right?"
"...What?"
Clinging to the wall and watching blankly, Luke instinctively grabbed the other cuff dangling below my wrist with both hands.
I then handed the cuff on my right arm to Bran, who grabbed the cuff and chain with a dazed expression.
"If you fall, don't blame me."
"Wait, what do you mean by—!"
And so, with Luke and Bran hanging from my arms, I began to scale the wall.
It was a bizarre sight, resembling a giant lizard crawling upward.
The ascent was surprisingly quiet.
It wasn't as if I could dig my fingertips into the solid stone wall to climb, so I simply relied on my grip strength to hold onto whatever tiny crevices I could find, pulling us up inch by inch.
The prisoners could only blink in disbelief or hastily avert their eyes.
Only the girl at the very top, clutching her two books, watched me as if possessed.
"...A mage?"
I heard her murmur in a faint voice.
Her voice was surprisingly beautiful, contrasting sharply with her appearance. I paused my climb and looked back at her.
Up close, her injuries were even worse than I had thought.
The hands clutching the thick books were bloodless, pale, and trembling. The burn scars branded across her entire body, along with deep puncture wounds from something sharp, were weeping yellow pus.
"How did you end up locked in a place like this?"
I wondered what a seemingly powerless girl could have possibly done to be hung here, and at the very highest point, no less.
Ignoring Luke, who was making a fuss on my left, I waited for her answer.
"I swear to God, I didn't do anything... Suddenly, the soldiers... they set fire to everything, and the older girls...!"
Her face contorted, and her scarred eyes began to redden.
Just before the tears pooling in her eyes could spill down her jawline—
"Witch! That girl is an evil witch!"
"I'm not!!"
Someone shouted from far below, and the girl screamed back with a shocking amount of fury.
"What do you know?! I don't even know your face! Don't you dare talk when you don't know anything!"
It was a cry that sounded like a sob.
As her shrill voice burst from her hoarse throat, it felt as though the very air around us vibrated.
But the voice from below, seemingly oblivious to the tremor, continued to mock her as if her reaction were amusing.
"Then how do you explain the rampaging soldiers dying right in front of you? How do you explain what took my husband's life?!"
"Shut up! How should I know?! I didn't do it!"
"If that's not the case, why else would they hang you at the very top?"
The girl tried to argue back, but she couldn't find the words.
A hollow, mocking laugh of self-proclaimed victory echoed from below.
It was suffocating.
After a brief hesitation, I ripped out the handcuffs holding the girl and slung her over my left shoulder.
Suddenly pressed against the girl's back, Luke glared at me with a look of deep resentment.
And with that, we reached the summit.
The moment they managed to step onto the tower's roof, Luke, Bran, and the nameless girl collapsed onto the ground.
"Whoa... A second later, and we would've been dead."
"Thank you. You saved our lives."
Leaving behind Luke, who was grumbling with an exaggerated expression, and Bran, who looked like he had a lot to say but chose to express his gratitude first, I walked over to the girl.
She was sobbing, clutching the books tightly to her chest.
"Tell me your name."
She gasped for air, barely managing to stop crying, before she answered.
"...Aria."
"Is what they said true?"
I circulated the energy throughout my body to its absolute limit, preparing for any sudden development.
Aria shook her head meekly.
"...No."
"What about the soldiers dying?"
"I don't know if they died. But really, I didn't do it."
My thoughts grew complicated.
Just then, Luke, who had crept up behind me, whispered cautiously into my ear.
"Pardon me... I know it's not my place to say, but what if she's lying?"
He had a point.
And yet, the reason I had pulled her out of that deep abyss was because there was a compelling reason to do so.
I turned back to her and asked.
"You asked me earlier if I was a mage, didn't you?"
I couldn't tell if it had been a genuine question or just a slip of the tongue born of shock.
Aria raised her head and met my gaze.
"Have you met a mage before?"
"...Probably."
She fidgeted with her right hand, rubbing a ring on her finger.
A small blue crystal caught the sunlight and sparkled.
"When and where did you last see them?"
"Why are you asking me that?"
Aria stumbled to her feet.
While there were undoubtedly countless mages in the capital, I was certain there was only one who would have set foot in this pleasure quarter.
After a brief moment of deliberation, I revealed my purpose for coming here.
"I'm looking for a mage with red hair."
Aria's hand froze as she was brushing away the hair that the sea breeze had whipped across her face.
Her dress—heavily scorched, soaked in fluid, and stained with dried blood and pus—fluttered like broken wings.
As the wind finally died down, her clear voice drifted over.
"Yesterday. At the edge of the shore."
Lost in thought, Aria did not look back at me.
"Can you guide me there?"
"No."
"You don't have to guide me in person. If you can just tell me which direction..."
"I can't do that."
Did she mean she couldn't even tell me?
She was the one who knew the Prophet's last whereabouts.
I silently stared at Aria's back.
I noticed her plain, unadorned clothes.
The hem of her dress, hanging below her thighs, was stiff and charred from fire, and her soot-stained feet were covered in scabs of dried blood.
Aria turned her head, her gaze meeting mine.
Her eyes were slightly bloodshot.
Yet when she spoke, her voice was remarkably calm and steady.
"Because I have no home left to return to."