My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 58: Chapter 60 — The Stone Circle

Harold’s POV:

Breakfast was good enough to make me forget we were about to unearth four-thousand-year-old secrets.

Dorko had made scrambled eggs with something he called "mountain spices" and which I would have described as "spicy dust that melts your tongue." Lia laughed at my expression when I took the first bite. Chimera, from her corner, didn’t even look up from her bowl. She was still recovering from the herald business, but her appetite was intact. Odessa had spread her grimoire over the table, oblivious to the grease stains, and was muttering about location runes while chewing bread.

"Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?" Dorko asked for the third time.

"I’m sure," Samira said. "This is something I have to do. And Harold."

"But the road to the mountains isn’t dangerous, is it?"

"Not as dangerous as Dorko’s cooking," Chimera murmured, and Lia burst out laughing again.

Dorko grumbled something about traditional spices and culinary honor. Domack clapped him on the back and nearly sent him sprawling across the table. Samira used the chaos to stand and adjust the bandages on her hands. I watched her. She wore her hair in a tight braid and a traveling tunic I hadn’t seen before, a dark green that matched her eyes. She looked like a warrior about to enter battle, but the battle was against her own memories.

"Let’s go," she said.

We left with the sun already high over the rooftops of Prusna.

---

The northern road was a ribbon of packed earth winding through hills covered in heather. It was cool. Clouds slid slowly across the sky, casting long shadows over the fields. Now and then we passed a farmer who waved and went on his way. Normal people. Normal lives. A luxury we couldn’t afford.

We walked in silence for the first hour. Samira was ahead, setting the pace with long, sure strides. I followed half a step behind, watching her back, the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers brushed the pommel of the dagger at her belt. She was nervous. She didn’t say so, but I knew her. Four thousand years of experience don’t teach you how to hide things from the person who sleeps beside you.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

"Almira."

"What about Almira?"

"She told me once that truth was like a knife. You could use it to defend yourself or to hurt yourself. It depended on how you held it."

"And how do you hold it?"

She was quiet for a moment. The wind stirred her braid.

"With both hands," she said. "And I still get cut."

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I kept walking beside her, in silence, as the heather turned to rock and the rock to mountain.

---

We stopped beside a stream that came down from the mountains. The water was freezing and tasted of melted snow. Samira sat on a stone and loosened her bandages to check the burns. Her palms were healing well—Odessa had done good work—but the new skin was pink and fragile, like the membrane of an insect’s wing.

"You should have stayed at the inn," I said. "Those hands need rest."

"My hands are fine."

"Sami."

"Hal." She looked at me with those violet eyes that had undone me the first day I summoned her. "I’ve been resting for four thousand years. What I need now is to move."

I sat beside her. The stream sang over the stones. A bird I couldn’t identify traced an arc across the sky and vanished among the pines. The breeze stirred the branches with a lazy whisper, and the sun filtered through the treetops in slanted shafts of light. I thought about my old life. About the office. About the insults I used to hurl on internet forums to feel less empty. About my father, who taught me to be a decent man through the quiet example of someone who never asks for anything in return. About my mother, whom I saw for the last time in a white void, drinking tea with a goddess.

"Do you think we sometimes make things harder than they need to be?" I asked.

"Always. It’s a human specialty."

"And a spiritist specialty."

"And a spiritist specialty," she conceded.

I lay back on the rock. The sun was on my face, making me squint. I closed my eyes and let the warmth seep through my skin. I thought about Lia. About Chimera. About Dorko and Domack and Odessa. About the family I had built without meaning to, without deserving it, almost without noticing.

"Have you ever regretted it?" Samira asked.

"What?"

"Summoning me."

I opened my eyes and propped myself up on my elbows.

"Not once," I said. "Not a single second."

She held my gaze for a moment. Then she nodded, got to her feet, and held out her bandaged hand.

"Then let’s go," she said. "We’re running late."

---

The stone circle appeared around a bend in the path, half-hidden among a grove of dwarf pines.

Twelve basalt monoliths stood in a perfect ring, some tilted by the passage of centuries, others covered in moss and lichen. In the center, a flat slab served as an altar. There were no runes. No markings. Only stone and silence and the wind coming down from the mountains, whistling through the pine needles.

"This is it," Samira said.

Her voice sounded different. Deeper. Older. As if the place had given her back something she had lost.

We entered the circle. The moss muffled our footsteps. Samira approached the altar and rested her bandaged palms on its surface. The wind stopped blowing. The birds stopped singing. Even the stream seemed to fall silent, as if the whole world were holding its breath.

I waited.

Samira said nothing. Her fingers curled against the stone. Her shoulders trembled. The sunlight caught the back of her neck, where a few strands of hair had escaped the braid. I stayed where I was, three steps away from her, not daring to break the silence.

"This is where Almira told me to forgive myself," she said at last. Her voice was a taut thread about to snap. "I was nineteen. I’d caused an accident in the east wing of the tower. Nothing serious: a badly calibrated summoning, a water spirit that went out of control, a few soaked books. But I was convinced it was the end of the world. Almira brought me here, sat me on that stone, and said: ’Samira, you’re going to make far worse mistakes than this one. And when you do, I want you to come back here and remember that you already forgave yourself once. And that you can do it again.’"

She turned toward me. Her eyes were dry, but her voice trembled.

"I’ve come back many times. After the prison. After what happened with my parents. After every battle I lost in the Rift war. But this time is different. Because what I have to tell you isn’t a mistake I made. It’s something that was done to me. Something I’ve been carrying since before you were born, since before the kingdom of Mouka existed, since before humanity learned to write its own history."

"Sami..."

"Let me finish. If you interrupt me, I won’t be able to."

I nodded. I stayed still. The wind began to blow again, stirring the tops of the pines. Samira took a deep breath and went on.

"Hestia didn’t just tell me that five vessels would spill the void. She told me their names. She told me where they were. She told me how to stop them. She told me the last would bear the face of the one I love, and that I would recognize it too late. But she also told me something else. Something I’ve never told anyone. Something not even Almira knew."

She brought her bandaged hand to her chest, right where the necrophage scar crossed her skin.

"Hestia told me I was one of the vessels."

The silence that followed was so thick I could feel it pressing against my ears.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means a part of the prophecy is inside me. It means that if the outer god awakens, I will be one of the doors it uses to enter. And that the only way to close that door..."

Her voice broke.

"No," I said.

"Harold."

"No. I’m not accepting that. We’ll find another way."

"I’ve been looking for another way for four thousand years." A tear ran down her cheek. The first I’d seen from her all day. "There isn’t one. But that’s not what I came to tell you. I came to tell you the other part. The part we can still change."

She clenched her fists on the altar. The bandages creaked.

"The second herald is called Jester. He’s in the capital. And he’ll awaken in less than a year."

She waited for my reaction. I was still processing the fact that my wife was one of the vessels of an apocalyptic prophecy. But I managed to nod.

"All right," I said. "We’ll go to the capital. We’ll trap him like the first one."

"It won’t be that easy. Jester isn’t like Aelric. He wasn’t human before being possessed. He’s something else. Something that’s been feeding for centuries on the corruption of the court, on the intrigues of the nobility, on the faith of the believers. He’s hidden. Embedded. He may not even seem like a herald until it’s too late."

"Then we’ll figure it out. You, me, Chimera, Odessa, Dorko, Domack. All of us together."

Samira looked at me. The tear was still there, caught on her cheek like a drop of dew on a leaf.

"You’re an idiot," she said.

"I know."

"A lucky idiot."

"I know that too."

She wiped her cheek with the back of the bandage. Then she stepped away from the altar and came toward me.

"There’s more," she said. "The other names. The other locations. But that can wait. Right now, the only thing I need is for you to promise me something."

"Anything."

"If the moment comes... if the fifth vessel opens... if I become a door..."

"Sami."

"Promise me you’ll do what has to be done."

I looked at her. Her face was closer than ever, and her violet eyes held a depth that hurt.

"I’m not going to promise you that," I said. "Because it won’t be necessary. We’re going to stop Jester, and then the third herald, and then the fourth. And by the time we reach the fifth, we’ll have found another way. Because I didn’t summon you to lose you. And I don’t intend to start now."

She held my gaze for a long time. Then, very slowly, she rested her forehead against my shoulder. I felt her ragged breathing, the warmth of her body, the slight tremor in her shoulders.

"All right," she murmured. "But if I’m wrong, I’ll hunt you down in the next life."

"You can count on that."

She lifted her head. She was crying, but she was also smiling. A small, fragile smile, the kind only I knew how to recognize.

"Then let’s go," she said. "We have a herald to hunt."