Andrea yawned and stretched her arms above her head. The last remnants of red light from the sunset was just beginning to fade as she smacked her lips and sat up in bed. She blinked a few times before frowning and pulling on the blanket, wrapping herself up like a burrito. She hopped off the bed and shivered as her feet came into contact with the cold stone floor. She placed the ends of the puffy blanket underneath her feet and shuffled forward like a slug. Abaddon preferred keeping his residence at the freezing nighttime temperature of the desert. She wasn’t quite sure how. Andrea placed her blanket-covered hand on the edge of the fabric blocking her doorway and slid through dragging the rest of the blanket along the floor. She looked both ways before frowning. A large crater could be seen on the adjacent wall. She shrugged and traveled down the hallway that could easily fit ten people walking abreast before arriving in front of an entrance with a purple

“Lieutenant Raea has returned.” Wooden gates swung open as a crowd of angels stood behind it. They had poured out of the nearby buildings, looking for some kind of entertainment to relieve their boredom.Murmurs broke out through the crowd as Raea rode through the wooden gates with Palan on her left and Owen on her right. Carmella, Gerome, and Cleo rode behind them. On Gerome’s horse, a wrapped up lizardman corpse was riding with the angel, black splotches staining the bandages.“That few?” a soldier asked. “I thought they left with close to fifty people.”“But they went to the lizardmen camp—the marked one,” the soldier next to him said. “And Lieutenant Malak would not have let them come back if they failed.”“Seriously? She looks too young to be a lieutenant, and why is that person wearing black armor?”Raea ignored the whispers of the crowd as her group dismounted. Carmella led the horses to the stables while Cleo yawned and rubbed her eyes. A soldier approached them and saluted Ra

Palan stood next to Raea on a porch, squinting his eyes at the blue pigeon flying away from them. A rolled up piece of paper that was twice the width of the bird was tied to its right talon. It continued to ascend until it was just a speck in the sky. “That’s really convenient,” Palan said. “It knows where to go?”Raea nodded. “Pigeons always know how to fly back home,” she said. “We paint them depending on which area they came from. Once they reach their home, the people that take care of them remove the letter and deliver it to the addressee. It’s not perfect, but it works the majority of the time. It should take a few days for the letter to reach my father. All we can do now is wait.” She turned around and opened the door. “Since Captain Ishim left without giving us further orders, shall I teach you how to read and write now?”Palan sighed. “There’s really nothing else to do?” he asked as he followed Raea inside. Owen was sitting on a couch with his hands clasped in his lap, starin

Palan sat on a wooden chair, hunched over a desk with a quill in his hands. Papers lay scattered over the tabletop, their pages filled to the edges with ink. Raea stood beside Palan, observing his work as he muttered while writing the same letter over and over. Raea asked, “And what sound does this letter make?”“I’ll seriously kill you if you ask me that one more time,” Palan said as the quill snapped in his hand.Raea pouted. “Can’t you just let me have my fun? It’s not every day that I get to be better than you at something,” she said. Palan glared at her, causing her to sigh. “Fine, fine.” She passed him a thin book. “This is a beginner level book that I found for you. It is unbelievably difficult to find reading material in this outpost.”Palan looked at the cover. “The Little Dog That Couldn’t,” he said and frowned. “I’m not sure if you’re genuinely trying to help me or insulting my intelligence.”“Is it too easy?” Raea asked and scratched her head. “I thought it’d be better to

After traveling through the forest for a couple of days, Palan made it to the wall dividing the borderland and third sector. Cleo’s mouth fell open as she stared up at the towering red structure. The wall was made out of the same material as Anidun’s dagger. Its surface was smooth and reflective, leaving no purchase for climbing. “How do you even make something like this?” she asked and tapped the wall. “This makes a full circle?”Raea nodded. “Unless you can fly, you won’t be able to go over,” she said. She squinted her eyes and shielded them with her hand as she looked up. “And even if you could, there are patrols up there too.”“This is pretty impressive,” Palan said and raised an eyebrow. The wall was slanted towards him, the top hanging overhead. “Are all the walls for the sectors like this?”“The ones closer to the capital are taller,” Raea said. “This is the shortest one. I think it’s twenty feet tall?” She cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled, “Anyone up there?” A few mo