Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 238: Ch236. What lies beyond

Chapter 238: Ch236. What lies beyond

The forest did not speak.

For the first time since their arrival, there were no whispers, no distant rustles, no lurking presence in the dark.

The roots beneath their feet were still. Watching, yes, but no longer weighing them down.

They had finally been acknowledged.

Miles, Sarissa, and Dee walked in silence through the grove beyond the plateau, a strange light filtering through the canopy above. Morning, maybe, or something close to it.

It was hard to tell time apart in Tir’Serene.

Miles had a hand resting loosely at his side. There was a rhythm to his step now, not practiced like when he was a fighter, not cautious like when he was a survivor. Just... Forward.

As if the path behind him had ended long ago, and he had just realized that.

Sarissa limped slightly, favoring her bad leg, but she didn’t ask for help.

The pain was hers, a reminder, a tether to the choice she had made and the world it brought them to.

She let the ache settle into her bones like weathered armor.

Dee padded ahead of them, its tail occasionally flicking and wagging. The little drake had grown during their time in the deep woods. Not in size, but in presence.

Or maybe it had grown a little bit in size, too. There was something different in the way it moved now. Something patient, deliberate.

Dee no longer chirped or whimpered.

It even had a pair of something like bony sprouts growing on his back. Maybe, one day, it would have wings, perhaps?

They passed beneath an archway of living trees, whose branches had bent and woven into a single great vault over the trail. The leaves shimmered faintly, not with color but with memory, pale images flickering through them like a dream half-remembered.

Sarissa laughing on a rooftop, Miles sitting beneath a scythe-shaped constellation, Dee curled in a bed of moss, its eyes half-closed but alert.

None of them looked up.

Ahead, the forest thinned. Then, as if the trees had simply decided not to grow any further, the trail ended, and the world opened before them.

A valley stretched wide before them, cradled between distant ranges of shadowed mountains, and the air shimmered faintly with mist.

Not the heavy, clinging fog of the deep forest, but a light, silvery veil that caught the sunlight and scattered it like dust.

And nestled in the center of it all, vast, silent, and impossible, was the city.

Not ruins, not a ghost town overtaken by vines, but a city alive.

Walls of pale stone gleamed beneath the sun. Towers climbed in measured lines toward the sky, crowned with silver weathervanes and gently fluttering banners.

Streets curved in deliberate spirals from the outer gates inward, like ripples frozen in time.

At its heart stood a castle, and Miles froze when he looked at it.

"I... I saw it..." Miles stammered, almost losing his balance.

Sarissa didn’t have to ask what he meant, because she remembered. Not just by what he told her. But, somehow, even as vague as his descriptions were back when he left the [Dark Forest], she could see it as if she had been there with him.

It was exactly as he’d seen it.

Those deep-blue spires, the crescent-shaped bridge spanning the crystalline river, the balcony where a familiar silhouette had once stood, watching. But seeing it in waking reality was different.

The dream hadn’t captured the sheer gravity of it, the way it felt like the land itself bent around the castle’s presence.

Not a fortress, not a seat of power.

A fulcrum.

"I thought it’d be taller." Sarissa exhaled quietly beside him.

"Still time to build an extension." Miles blinked, then smiled.

"You first."

They descended slowly, their steps echoing strangely in the open space between forest and city. No others moved in the fields below. No caravans, no guards, no patrols.

Just wind-stirred grass and the long, slanting shadow of that central tower.

Miles paused halfway down the slope.

"What is it?" Sarissa tilted her head.

"...I can feel it." He murmured. "The castle. Like it’s... Pulling."

"You mean like the forest?"

"No. The forest asked. This..." He gestured at the castle, shaking his head. "This already knows that we’re here."

Dee gave a low trill, then pressed its head briefly against Miles’ leg.

"Do you think there’s people in there?" Sarissa narrowed her eyes at the city.

"Probably. There were people living in there in my vision."

"System?"

"...Maybe."

As they drew closer to the outer walls, the illusion of stillness began to unravel.

There were people living in the city.

Distant figures moved along the high walls, sentries in fitted armor that shimmered not with metal, but something softer, like lacquered bark or woven crystal.

Each bore a long-hafted spear and a curved blade at their hip, but they did not patrol with rigid discipline. Their movements were fluid, measured, like dancers playing the role of watchmen.

Closer to the city gates, the murmur of life grew stronger. Farmers in tunics of faded blue and rust-red walked the terraced fields near the base of the city, their tools slung over their backs.

Children laughed, chasing each other around carts filled with fruits the trio didn’t recognize, twisting shapes of deep green and bright gold.

A procession passed across a bridge that spanned a narrow river. Figures in robes of ash and silver, each holding a lantern lit with flame that didn’t flicker. And the light they carried cast no shadows.

No one looked their way. Not with suspicion, not with welcoming. The city felt aware of them, though... But not surprised.

The gate ahead was open, not an iron maw to ward intruders, but an archway covered in flowering vines, guarded by two sentinels standing at perfect stillness.

As Miles stepped onto the cobbled threshold, both guards moved in unison.

"Halt!" The one on the left announced. Her voice was soft but commanding, as if spoken through wind chimes. She wore a half-mask that revealed her mouth and jaw, but her eyes were hidden behind polished glass. "State your names and purpose."

The second guard stepped forward, taller, with a small crest worked into the clasp at his collar.

A crown crossed by a sword, and behind the hilt of the sword, playing cards.

"You walk from the roots. That is rare. That is seen." His gaze passed over Dee, who stared back without blinking. "You carry silence with you, but not all silences are equal. Speak, and make yourselves known."

In the distance, though, a purplish-blue cat watched the trio as they approached and were halted by the guards.

There was an impossibly wide grin on its face, jagged by rows of razor-sharp teeth.

"Well..." He said softly. "That was something."

He took a brief pause, still grinning, and then turned his gaze away from them.

Not toward the castle, or the mountains beyond, or even the valley below.

He looked through the world.

At you, to be more precise.

The reader.

The one holding the reading device, the page, or whatever you’re using to read this story.

The one watching it unfold.

His eyes glinted with stars older than the sky, and his grin grew even wider, if that was even possible.

"Well?" He whispered, voice curling out from the paper like smoke. "Aren’t you curious to see what they’ve just stirred?"