Aria

Noorh stepped back, his boots sliding across the stone step's surface. It wasn't until he reached the edge that he realized the young woman he swooped in to save was no longer behind him. He turned around and found her plummeting into the ocean of clouds, her hands outstretched in a last ditch attempt at seeking help.

His breath hitched and his heart raced in panic. He didn't even notice that the giant serpent furiously pounced toward him. Noorh instead sheathed his sword and dived into the clouds, keeping his arms and legs as close to his body as possible so that he could fall faster than the young woman, and catch up to her.

Noorh soon found her staring blankly at him, resignedly falling towards her doom. He stretched out his arms to grab her and pulled her tightly against his chest. He then twisted his body so that they could fall to the ground feet-first, and muttered a spell under his breath until their descent slowed down to a halt in mid-air.

He took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He almost lost her for good. He then examined her cold pale face and realized that she was already unconscious. The shock of falling to her death must have shut her body down.

Noorh crouched slightly so that he could carry her properly in his arms before surveying their surroundings. Based on the horizon he was seeing, they must have fallen close to the middle of the mountain which meant the serpent guardian wouldn't be able to reach them anymore. All that was left was to descend the remaining roughly seventy steps that led to the bottom of the mountain.

He floated to the nearest stone step and decided to take a rest there. He set the young woman against the cliff wall and sat down beside her, fixing his eyes at the horizon where the stretch of black land converged with the starry night sky. A bright white line was emerging between them, telling him that they were about to witness the sunrise.

He started the day by hiking up the treacherous stone steps to reach the sacred shrine by nightfall. The ritual to summon a maiden from another world drained much of his energy. And just when he thought his exhaustion would pay off, his efforts ended in failure.

Noorh glanced at Kiran who remained asleep beside him. She looked pale and sickly under the sparse light of twilight. She definitely looked nothing like Alessa Dia. He smirked, remembering the way she behaved around him. He had to admit it was refreshing to have someone freely berating him.

"I’m sorry," he said, knowing well that she wouldn't hear it. "I'm afraid this is only the beginning of your troubles." He shrugged off his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders to warm her against the cold winds.

***

She wasn't dead. That was Kiran's first realization after she snapped her eyes open and found a clear blue sky staring down at her. She was also curled up on a cloak that protected her from the cold slippery surface of a stone floor. Kiran quickly sat up and gasped when she realized she had been sleeping against the edge of the cliff wall.

"How are you feeling?" a familiar voice asked from beside her.

She turned to the owner of the voice and found a striking young man staring back at her with sharp obsidian eyes. The maroon scarf told her he was Mr. Kidnapper, and his exceptional features made her wonder if he was real. His face looked like it had been sculpted by the most talented artist and his skin glowed flawlessly against the morning light. His rowdy mop of dark hair fluttered in the cold breeze and somehow elegantly framed his chiseled jaw. He looked like a painting and even with his back hunched low, he seemed to tower over her.

"Are you in any pain?" he continued, his eyes fixed at her flushed features.

"Y-you…" Kiran finally choked, her voice cracking. She realized her throat was itchy and parched.

The young man fished out another flask from his cloak and handed it to her. "Drink this," he instructed.

Kiran did as she was told. Unlike the flask she drank from the night before, the flask he handed her seemed to contain water. The taste of the liquid awakened her thirst. She eagerly drank the flask's contents. Kiran released a sigh of relief once she was done, leaving the flask empty. "Oh wow, I was thirsty," she gasped. A thought hit her as she noted the size of the flask. "Oh no…I-is this the only drink you have with you? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to drink all of it!" she said, regretfully looking at the young man.

But he only smirked in reply. "It's alright," he said. "If you're thirsty, just tell me." He then cast his eyes at the wisps of clouds in front of them. He waved his right hand in a circular motion before offering up his palm toward them. The clouds gathered in his palm and formed of a sphere. It twisted and turned until it became a clear liquid. He then motioned the liquid to enter the flask in Kiran's hand, refilling it with ice cold water.

"Wow!" Kiran gasped, amazed at what she witnessed. "That's magic, right? You can use magic!"

"Yes," the young man confirmed. "I heard your world calls it 'magic' and that you don't have anything similar to it."

Kiran looked curiously at him. "You know about my world."

"Of course," the young man said. "I wouldn't have been able to summon someone from your world if I didn't."

Kiran slowly nodded. "So you did summon me here," she began. "And that earthquake we experienced in my world was real. Your summoning ritual caused it, correct?"

"Yes," the young man confirmed. "I heard it would cause a disturbance in your world, but I didn't know it would manifest as an earthquake."

"Can you send me back home?" Kiran asked.

The young man sadly looked out into the clouds blocking their view of the world below. "If there's a way to send you back, it's not through here," he answered. "The portal in this mountain won't be open until another ten years."

"Wait…Are you saying that I have to stay here for ten years before I can return home?!" Kiran anxiously asked, her heart sinking at the realization that she might not be able to return to her family anytime soon.

The young man nodded. "You can spend the next ten years waiting in the meadow until the portal to your world opens again, if you like," he said. "But you've probably already noticed that this place isn't exactly suited for habitation."

Kiran sullenly looked away. That was true. She couldn't live at the edge of the cliff. And with the monster living in the mountain… "You saved me, didn't you?" she asked, recalling the events before she slipped and fell from the stone step. "I don't remember anything after falling off the cliff but if I'm alive and you're here, then you were able to save me somehow."

The young man looked uneasily away.

Kiran bit her lip and looked at his cold profile. "Thank you," she said. "You still kidnapped me, and left me alone though!"

He frowned and glared at her. "I told you to count from one to a hundred," he replied. "If you did what I said, you would have seen me in the meadow instead of between you and the guardian!"

Kiran stared curiously at him. "That monster was a guardian?"

The young man nodded. "This mountain has three guardians," he began. "The first guards the bottom of the mountain in the form of humanoid serpents: half-snake, half-humans who prevent people from seeing the stone steps. Along the middle of the journey to the top of the mountain dwells winged serpents whose nests lay on top of stone steps. The one we encountered is the last guardian: a sacred giant serpent whose body comprises the core of the mountain. It only wakes up once every decade, when the gates to another world at the top of the mountain could be opened."

"The stone pillars," Kiran said, recalling the structures she woke up to when she first met him. "So it's a gate."

"It is," the young man confirmed. "It can only be activated once every ten years. I opened it last night when you came here. I won't be able to open it again even if I try because it only works every ten years."

"You said there's still a way though, and that it's just not through here," Kiran recalled.

The young man nodded. "We are supposed to have three other mountains like this," he explained. "I've only accessed this mountain for the ritual so the other three should still be usable, if it's all still there."

"What do you mean?" Kiran asked.

"It would be easier if you saw it yourself," the young man answered, sighing.

Kiran frowned. He didn't look like he was going to tell her anything else about it. "You said 'ritual,'" she began, hoping to learn as much as she could about her situation. "Kidnapping people from another world is a ritual here?"

The young man flinched, uncomfortable at being called a 'kidnapper' though he had to admit it technically described what he had done. "It's an important rite of passage in my family," he explained. "When we reach a certain age, we are tasked with the mission of summoning a maiden from your world."

"To test your magic skills?" Kiran asked.

The young man shook his head. "To secure an Aria," he answered.

"An aria? A song?" Kiran asked, confused.

The young man glanced at her. "A maiden who can redeem our land and save my people," he corrected.

"A hero?!" Kiran exclaimed. It was sounding more and more like she had been transported into an isekai novel. "And Alessa is supposed to have the power to help you and your people!" she deduced.

The young man bitterly turned away.

Kiran realized that saving Alessa might have put the lives of the young man and his people in danger. "I'm sorry," she said. "I made things more difficult for you and your people by being here instead of Alessa. But I'm still not okay with your kidnapping approach. Did Alessa know that you were coming to ask for her help? From what little I remember from what happened in my world, she looked genuinely scared and confused. And do you really have to summon people that way? Couldn't you just travel to our world and take a more diplomatic approach in asking for help?"

The young man smirked. "First of all, your world barely has enough particles to sustain magic from our world," he began. "If we transported ourselves there, we wouldn't be able to use magic to return home. We would be stuck there forever. If it's the other way around, we can still potentially send you back. Second, the responsibilities of an Aria isn't exactly something that can be explained through a simple conversation. It's too complicated for even me to talk properly about."

Kiran sighed. She supposed that she shouldn't judge them for their culture just because he and his people were from a different world than her. Isekai novels themselves usually didn't have a fair reason for suddenly uprooting people from their loved ones. "So does the Aria have to beat monsters like those guardians?" she asked. "Does she become the most powerful person here and destroy a demon lord?"

The young man stared confused at her. "What's a demon lord?"

"Oh…so you don't have demon lords," Kiran muttered, realizing her mistake. "A demon king? An evil army trying to conquer your land? A monster commanding a horde of monsters attacking your people? The big boss threatening the peace?"

The young man studied her expression for a moment before snorting. "You're weird," he replied.

Kiran frowned. "What does the Aria fight then?" she asked. "How does she become a hero?"

The young man looked away, a glint of bitterness in his eyes. "The Aria doesn't slay any monster. She doesn't even fight anything," he answered. "She just sings."

Kiran smirked. "It's a good thing I'm not the Aria then," she muttered. She wasn't sure if Alessa could carry a tune though, not that she should care about it.

"What did you say?" the young man curiously asked.

"Nothing! I uh…just found what you said interesting," Kiran answered.

The young man looked doubtful at her for a moment before rising to his feet. "Let's head to the bottom of the mountain," he announced. "The sooner we get down from here, the sooner we can head to the other mountains and send you home."

Kiran anxiously nodded. "Um…I'm afraid of heights…so…I can't just jump from one step to another," she admitted. "I might slow us down."

"It's alright," the young man said, looking nonchalantly at her. "The mountain limits the ways that it can be climbed, but I can still use simple spells to hike down the steps faster than walking or running. I'll just carry you. It would also be safer to cross the domain of the winged serpents that way."

"I-if you say so," Kiran shyly replied. "I'm pretty heavy though."

"Nothing a strength spell can't fix," the young man deadpanned.

Kiran couldn't help but feel hurt at the subtle confirmation of her weight problems. She then noticed how the clouds in front of them had begun to thin out, revealing what seemed like a vast expanse of land meeting a vibrant blue sky at the horizon. She gasped as the colors of the land seeped through the fog, revealing patches of blue, purple, brown and gray.

Nothing was green.

The young man noticed Kiran's slackened jaw and wide eyes staring at the scenery behind him. "Oh right," he said. "I haven't properly introduced you to my world. Welcome to Lahnthea. You can call me Noorh."