Return of the General's Daughter-Chapter 341: A Glimpse to the Future 2

After tidying up the space and sweeping away the dust left by time and absence, Lara moved quietly into the open-air kitchen, sleeves rolled and hair tied back. She had decided to take charge of dinner. The day’s hunt had been generous—Alaric’s men returned with rabbits, a plump jungle fowl, a dozen fish from fishpond nearby.

Lara set to work with practiced hands, skinning, slicing, seasoning. The scent of crushed herbs and slow-roasting meat soon began to drift through the glade like a soft invitation.

Freya, watching her daughter move with such quiet skill and purpose, felt a tug in her heart. She stepped forward, offering to help—perhaps out of habit, or perhaps to bridge the gap time had placed between them. At first, Lara gently protested, urging her mother to rest and enjoy the mountain’s peace. But Freya insisted.

And so, mother and daughter moved side by side in the simple kitchen, cleaning fish, chopping vegetables, stirring broth. There were no palatial kitchens here, no servant bells or polished silver, only the warmth of firelight and the sound of laughter mixing with the sizzle of meat on the pan. For a few hours, they weren’t a lost daughter and a distant mother—they were simply family.

That evening, the group gathered around a large wooden table beneath the hanging boughs of the ancient tree. As twilight deepened into night, fireflies blinked lazily in the dark, and the stars emerged one by one in the endless sky overhead.

After dinner, Freya insisted on sharing Lara’s room so Alaric could used Reya’s room. But that was an excuse. She just wanted to have more bonding time with her daughter.

Freya lay down that night with a strange and unexpected contentment. The room smelled of mixed herbs. Outside, the wind whispered through the leaves, and in the distance, the waterfall hummed its eternal lullaby. This place—untouched, serene, and cradled in the arms of the mountain—was unlike any place she had ever known. If given a choice, she thought, she would gladly leave the noise and weight of city life behind to live out her days here. There was peace in the wild.

Freya recoiled at first. The thought of wild animals—wolves, no less—sharing a room with her was enough to make her skin crawl. But then the pups whimpered softly, looked up at her with eyes so full of longing that Freya felt her resistance dissolve like mist in the morning sun. With a sigh, she sank back into the bed and murmured, "You may stay."

She drifted off to sleep to the warmth of the hearth’s last embers and the gentle breathing of the wolves beneath her.

The next morning, long before the sun had fully crested the mountain ridges, Lara and Alaric rose in silence and prepared for their journey to Mount Ourea’s peak. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of moss and cold stone. Fog clung low to the ground like a blanket, and the towering cliffs above loomed like ancient sentinels.

Freya emerged just in time to see them off. One glance at the steep incline that lay ahead was enough for her to abandon any thoughts of joining them.

"I won’t slow you down," she said with a smile, then added with a mother’s instinctive worry, "Be careful on your way. Don’t get hurt."

She stood waving as they disappeared up the narrow trail, their silhouettes gradually swallowed by the mountain mist.

Abel and Barett remained behind to keep their aunt company, their watchful eyes never straying far. Only Aramis, Agilus, and Redon—three of Alaric’s most capable warriors—chose to accompany the prince and Lara. All five were hardened men, trained in endurance and wilderness survival. The path ahead was steep and treacherous, but for them, it was a challenge rather than a burden.

In fact, the climb felt almost easy—especially to Lara. Compared to the wild, scrambling ascent she had made months ago with her brothers and cousins, this was a measured, steady climb. With each step higher, the air grew thinner, the wind sharper, and the horizon wider.

They were climbing not only toward the summit, but toward something sacred—something waiting, as ancient and eternal as the mountain itself.

The path narrowed as they ascended, winding like a pale scar across the mountain’s green flank. Beneath their boots, the earth gave way to smooth stone, laced with roots and veins of silvered moss. The air was thin now, crisp and cold, scented with pine and the faint, electric tang of high places. The forest below had faded into a sea of green mist, and above them loomed the jagged crown of Ourea, shrouded in slow-moving clouds.

Lara walked at Alaric’s side, her breath steady, her eyes fixed forward. She moved with the quiet assurance of someone ready to protect her, if her feet slipped. The wind tugged at the ends of her cloak, and her hair, damp with morning mist, clung to her cheeks. Yet her face was calm, almost serene.

Alaric glanced at her occasionally. There was something different in her here—something older than words, something rooted deep in the mountain. She seemed to belong to this place, as if the land itself acknowledged her presence with a kind of quiet reverence.

Behind them, Aramis, Agilus, and Redon followed in a tight formation, their hands never far from their weapons, though no threat had yet emerged. They were trained soldiers, but even they felt the weight of the mountain—the sacred hush of the air, the way sound was swallowed, and how the wind spoke in ancient tones when it passed between the rocks.

"Strange," Aramis murmured under his breath, "how quiet it is. Even the birds are silent."

"They always are, the higher you go," Lara said, not looking back. "The air is thinner, the sounds are fewer. But the silence here... it’s not empty. It’s listening."

They paused at a natural ledge overlooking the valley below. From here, the world seemed unreal—a tapestry of forest and sky, the river glinting like a silver thread in the distance.

Alaric stepped to the edge and took it all in. "It feels like we’ve left the world behind," he said quietly.

Lara nodded. "We have. This mountain doesn’t exist on the same thread of time as the rest of the land. Up here, things remember. The old powers sleep—but they remember."

The final ascent was the steepest. The trail vanished into a narrow crevice between two sheer cliffs, where the wind howled like a living thing and the sky narrowed into a thin sliver of gray above.

They climbed in silence, boots gripping the jagged stone, hands reaching for roots and ledges. When at last they emerged on the other side, they found themselves on a windswept plateau—bare and ancient, the very spine of the mountain.

"According to the legend, she used to come here," Lara whispered. "Galeya. This was where she stood when she surveyed her domain. This is where her blood mingled with the stone when she made her vow to protect her lands."

Alaric stood beside her. His hand reached out to tuck a strand that escaped her hairband. He looked far into the horizon toward the west, to where Calma was.

"Lara," he said softly, turning toward her. "Look at that place, there that hill that stand out over the rest —that’s were I will build our palace."

She opened her eyes, turned toward him and and held his gaze. Then she reached out and clasped his hand.

They stood there for a long time, surrounded by the hush of wind and an ancient gnarled tree and the fading light of day as they surveyed the lands that would be the heart of their empire.

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