Genesis (Erityian Tribes Novella, #7)

epilogue : ҁѫҩ•ϕϭҁϭѯҩ

The winter air blew harshly the moment they stepped out of Black Dimension. Rainie shivered despite wearing layers of clothes while Darwin seemed to be unaffected.

Of course, she thought. He's used to this kind of weather.

"I hate real winter," she grumbled as they approached the shrine house standing at the peak of the mountain.

Darwin snickered at her remark. "Your body is not just used to the cold. You should have worn a thicker coat."

Living in a tropical country where the coldest temperature does not fall below 10-15°C made winter so unfamiliar to her. They would always make it snow in the campus during Christmas, but those were just holograms, and the temperature was incomparable to the real thing.

The cold was like a thousand icy needles prickling her skin and bones. Her teeth were chattering, and her eyelashes were frozen. Upon seeing the fire burning on the braziers lined up across the shrine, she desperately ran toward them.

"Hey, careful!" Darwin reminded, knowing how clumsy she was. "You'll slip!"

She ignored his warning and raced through the ankle-deep snow. The nearest brazier was just a few meters away, and she was almost—almost close to the warmth of the fire, but her feet and knees were numb from the cold, and they buckled.

Faceplanting on the snow was a very embarrassing thing for others to witness, but fortunately someone had caught her arms before she could fall.

"I missed your clumsy ass, Senshin," Nel teased as she hauled Rainie back to her feet. She had always thought the girl was a fearsome and intelligent fighter, but she could be such a klutz sometimes, especially outside of battles.

"T-Thank y-you," Rainie said, her teeth still chattering from the cold.

A shadow emerged from the house shrine. She was clad in leather armor and linen cloth, with a gray fur coat draped around her shoulders. Krystal's intense blue eyes looked at them in displeasure. "You three are late."

***

Yllka's shrine was as mystical as they had seen it few years ago. The house was made of ice, but the constant warm breeze made it good enough for shelter. Mysterious plants grew from the garden and flashes of miniature lightning would appear once in a while. What's more bizarre was the weather around it. The right side was shrouded in dark, as if it the land was woven with shadows, while the left, where most of the shrine was, looked like a holy place because it was illuminated with almost golden light.

Rainie sat right in front of the hearth and hovered her hands near it to feel warm. She was envious of how the three were unbothered by the cold since they were living in places with extreme seasons.

The three were gathered at the center table while the wind carried cups of tea toward them. If Rainie did not know those were some sort of attributes from certain Huntres, she'd think there were ghosts in the shrine, though she was not sure how those worked.

"How's the Huntres tribe doing? I heard there are groups of agitators on the rise again," Nel remarked as she sipped from her cup.

Krystal's face slightly twitched. "Still the nosy outsider, aren't you?"

She smirked at the Huntres' ever impassive face despite being annoyed. "Given that my tribe is an intelligence agency, don't you think it'll be stranger if I don't know?"

After ascending to the highest position of their tribe five years ago, Nel was granted access to confidential information about the Erityian race, as well as several countries' classified particulars. She realized how her dad, the previous commander, held so much power that it could topple world governments. And that was the very reason why she was terrifyingly impressed at how Nox Organization almost managed to bring down the Custos tribe.