Chapter 43: ⁴³: illusions

"This is where I found you," Damian said, pointing toward the narrow river flowing gently before us.

I looked around. The place was breathtakingly serene. The crystal-clear water shimmered beneath the sunlight, winding peacefully through the lush greenery. Birds chirped somewhere high above the towering trees, while the soft murmur of the flowing river blended perfectly with the rustling leaves. It was the kind of place that made one want to stay forever.

Yet something was missing. A frown creased my forehead.

"But... I fell from a cliff," I said, looking at him while ignoring the soothing sound of the river beside us. "There isn’t one anywhere nearby."

"This little river flows from a spring several hundred meters from here," Damian explained, pointing toward a distant opening hidden beyond the dense stretch of trees. "It’s a fairly large spring with a deep basin that collects the water before it flows out in the form of this stream."

He paused to let me follow the direction he was pointing.

"It’s because that spring is so deep that you survived a fall from such a height. You must have landed in the spring first before the current carried you all the way here."

Realisation slowly dawned on me. I nodded, finally understanding how I had survived.

Even if Harry’s dagger hadn’t killed me... the fall certainly should have. But instead of crashing onto solid ground, fate had thrown me into the deep spring, and the current had carried my unconscious body downstream until Damian found me.

"So... should we head toward the spring first?" I asked, confused as to why we were still standing here. "Wouldn’t it make more sense to explain everything from there?"

Damian shook his head before unfolding the map between us.

"The map says we have to leave from the east." He traced a finger over the wrinkled parchment. "The spring is in the opposite direction. A person can fall from that cliff into the spring, but we can’t exactly climb back up the same way." He chuckled lightly. "We’ll have to take a detour."

"I see." That made sense. I leaned in for one last look at the map before we folded it away and continued our journey, following the narrow forest path stretching deeper into the wilderness.

The towering trees gradually swallowed us in their shade. Every step crushed tiny wildflowers, dried leaves, and brittle twigs beneath our shoes, their quiet crunch the only sound accompanying the distant songs of birds.

The deeper we ventured, the quieter the world became.

"Mr Moonvel," I called after walking for a while, "how long do you think it’ll take us to reach my pack through this route?"

Damian pretended to think for a moment as he glanced around, making sure we were following the correct turns through the endless maze of trees.

"According to my estimate..." he said thoughtfully, "...three days. Minimum."

My eyes widened. I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Three days? How? I mean, it’s just a detour through a forest to reach the top of the cliff. How can it possibly take that long?"

Panic immediately crept into my voice. I had expected the journey to take twenty-four hours at most. I wasn’t prepared to spend three entire days wandering through an unfamiliar forest.

"Oh, don’t worry." Damian burst into laughter once again. "I was just kidding."

He grinned shamelessly. "We should reach it by midnight tonight at the latest."

I stared at him for a long moment before letting out a quiet sigh. "You really do prank people a lot, Mr Moonvel."

Without waiting for his response, I turned away and continued walking down the forest path, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing my reaction.

Behind me, I heard his amused laughter echo through the quiet woods before he hurried to catch up.

"I’m sorry, Miss Athena! I won’t prank you again!" he shouted from behind me.

I ignored him and continued walking, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a response.

"Miss Athena, we have to go this way!" he called again.

I stopped in my tracks with an exasperated sigh before reluctantly turning around.

He was standing several feet away, barely holding back his laughter as he pointed toward the path on his right.

He had been watching me walk in the wrong direction the entire time. I shot him an annoyed look before making my way over to him.

"By the way, Miss Athena," he said as we resumed walking, "I think we know each other well enough now to call each other by our first names. What do you say?"

His sudden proposal caught me off guard. I glanced at him in surprise. "It’s okay," I replied after a brief moment of hesitation. "You can just call me Athena."

His face immediately lit up with a bright smile. "Then it’s settled." He grinned. "You can call me Damian too."

I nodded awkwardly. "Okay... Damian."

Saying his name aloud felt strangely unfamiliar. We had only met a short while ago, yet somehow we were already travelling together through an unknown forest. The situation still felt surreal, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to act around him.

For a while, neither of us spoke. We simply continued deeper into the forest.

The farther we walked, the denser the woods became. Towering trees blocked more and more of the sunlight until only thin rays filtered through the thick canopy overhead. Thorny bushes crowded the narrow trail, while uneven rocks and tangled roots made every step increasingly difficult.

"How did your pack even discover this route?" I finally asked, using the sturdy stick we had picked up earlier to push thorny branches out of my way. "I’ve lived in my pack my entire life, and I never knew there was a path leading to it like this. The only routes I know are the well-established roads."

"You don’t know about these paths because they’re deliberately kept hidden," Damian explained as he carefully stepped over a large fallen branch. "Our pack has lived in secrecy for hundreds of years. To survive, we have to maintain connections with other packs for trade and various necessities. But keeping the routes we use hidden is just as important as maintaining those connections."

I nodded thoughtfully. That actually made perfect sense.

"So everything about your pack and even the areas surrounding it is hidden?" I asked. "Is the spring hidden too? Because if Harry had known there was a spring beneath that cliff, I don’t think he would’ve pushed me."

"Yes," Damian answered. "The spring, like our whole pack, is protected by an illusion as well. People from your pack or any other pack would only see things like thick clouds, dense trees, or even an ordinary river. The illusion is designed to make them lose interest before they get close enough to discover what’s really there."

I looked at him with growing curiosity.

"So... your pack has maintained those illusions for hundreds of years? But how is that even possible? How can a werewolf pack create illusions?"

Magic. Illusions were a form of magic, and magical beings were considered incredibly rare in our world. Most people lived their entire lives without ever witnessing genuine magic with their own eyes.

Damian simply shrugged as though there was nothing unusual about it. "It’s pretty normal in our pack. We have a faction that specialises in those kinds of things. It’s something we’ve inherited from our ancestors."

His casual answer only made me more intrigued. "But why does your pack have to be so secretive? Isn’t..."

My voice trailed off. A strange feeling suddenly crept over me. It was subtle at first. Then it became unmistakable. Every instinct in my body screamed that something was behind us.

Not just passing by... Watching. As though a pair of unseen eyes had been fixed on us for quite some time, silently following our every move from somewhere within the dense forest.