Magna walked for a long time and finally found himself in a large open space.
It was a garden built right in the middle of the mansion, surrounded on all four sides by the mansion’s long walls.
He had actually seen this garden before, while walking the corridors inside the mansion, through the windows. But back then, he hadn’t thought this part of the estate could be the most important part of the Winterborne mansion, beyond just its beauty.
Everywhere he looked, the ground was covered like a carpet of colorful flowers. Only a few stone paths cut through it for walking.
Tall, colorful trees stood everywhere, planted in every corner with a careful, mathematical order. Long vines wrapped around their trunks.
The chirping of birds filled the whole place like nature’s own music, mixing with the sweet smell of flowers to give an incredible sense of calm.
It was the kind of place Magna thought could only exist in video games, the kind someone would spend their whole life building with code, sitting in front of a computer.
"It’s beautiful, right?" Celeste asked warmly, taking a deep breath of the sweet, clean air.
Magna only nodded. His eyes were already fixed on something else.
The most eye-catching part of the garden wasn’t the carefully arranged flower beds or the miniature forest feeling.
It was the dome-shaped structure at the heart of it all.
It was a wide space held up by four tall pillars that looked like they were made entirely of deep blue ice. At the top, they held up a dome that was also made of the same material.
And under that wide dome, right where its shadow fell, stood five long, narrow structures, all carved from ice.
As Magna and Celeste walked closer along the stone path, he could finally see them clearly.
’Graves?’ Magna thought, surprised.
Inside the icy graves were figures lying silently, clearly dead. But not every one of the five structures had a body inside.
Of the ones that did, one belonged to a woman who looked quite old.
Her golden hair looked perfectly preserved inside the ice, still shining even through it. Her face looked peaceful, as if she were only sleeping with her eyes closed.
But strangely, her body wasn’t whole. One arm and one leg were missing from where they should have been.
"She is my grandmother. Phoebe Winterborne." Celeste said beside him, noticing the boy was studying the body closely.
"She was a powerful Witch. She died about a century ago, trying to pass her 13th trial."
Magna didn’t know much about trials, but hearing this gave him a small idea of just how important, and just how dangerous, they really were.
The next grave stood right beside it, and inside was the body of a man. Or what was left of him.
There was only a head and a torso inside. The two pieces had been frozen separately but placed together to look like one whole body.
"He is Giles, my grandmother’s Shadow. He died just seconds before she did, during the same trial."
This was the second time Magna had heard the word Shadow, so he asked with curiosity. "What does Shadow mean?"
Celeste smiled warmly. It seemed like the question she had been hoping he would ask.
She placed a hand on his head and gently stroked his hair as she spoke. "A Shadow is a lifelong partner to a Witch. They are our protectors and guardians."
Magna already guessed that much, since he had realized Titus, and the man in black who had nearly choked him to death last time, were both Shadows too.
What he really wanted to know was more detail, like how someone actually became a Shadow, or how they could borrow spells from their Witch.
But he couldn’t think of the right way to ask, so he decided to move on and check the next grave instead.
This time, the body inside was intact. It belonged to a blonde woman who seemed quite old, maybe in her sixties or seventies, but her features looked slightly different from the rest of the Winterbornes.
Celeste’s face turned sorrowful as she explained this one. "She is Titus’s younger sister. She came to the Winterborne family at the same time he did. But sadly, she never managed to become a Witch, and she left this world early."
Magna paused for a moment, looking at Celeste’s face with a suspicious expression.
He wanted to ask just how old Titus and Celeste really were, but he kept the question to himself. He knew that kind of question would be rude, just like it was back on Earth.
Still, Celeste didn’t seem to mind. She understood the look on his face and laughed. "If you’re curious, Titus is 87 years old. The same age as me."
Magna suddenly felt his backup plan of becoming a women’s cosmetics inventor take a serious hit. This world might not even need something like that, since they already had a natural way to stay young and beautiful.
Finally, his eyes landed on the last two graves. There were no bodies inside them at all, only two objects.
Inside one was a white Witch’s hat, though it looked a bit different from Celeste’s.
Unlike Celeste’s hat, which was plain and simply white, this one had a golden line drawn in a circle around it.
Inside the other grave was a helmet, one that looked similar to Titus’s frost helmet.
’’These are the graves of the founders of the Winterborne family, the only ones in our bloodline to ever pass the 13th Trial. They were part of the first expedition into the Fairy Hive. Though they died there, their bodies were never recovered.’’
Magna was quite curious about what the Fairy Hive actually was, how old the founders had been, how long ago they had died, what made the 13th Trial so special, and more. But he couldn’t find the right moment to ask, as heavy footsteps began approaching from behind.
When Magna turned to look at the figure coming closer, he saw Titus walking toward them, wearing his full frost armor along with the helmet on his head.
In his arms was the half-frozen body of the mother goblin.
Magna finally understood why Celeste had brought him here, and the realization left him stunned.
"You wanted a proper grave for her, right?" Celeste said, her eyes following the goblin’s body as it drew closer.
Then she turned her bright blue eyes toward Magna and looked straight into his. "What do you think? Is this place good enough for the mother who raised you?"
It was clear that she wanted to place the sixth frost coffin right beside the rest, just for the goblin.
Magna tried to understand what she was actually hiding behind her warm and smiling face.
She didn’t look like she was joking, and she didn’t seem to be hiding anything either.
She didn’t even look like she found it disrespectful, placing a lowly monster’s body in such an important family graveyard. It seemed like she truly just wanted to give another family member, a mother, a proper grave.
Still, this only made Magna more cautious. Whether on Earth or in another world, he believed there was no such thing as kindness given without a price.
’What do they actually expect from me?’
That question led to another. ’Who do they think I am?’
He finally understood. He had something very valuable, something the Winterbornes wanted to take.
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