At the End of the Ashen Forest, the Sage Learns of the Boy's Past Life
The continent's frontier, where the forest elves once flourished and are now said to have perished. The deep Ashen Woods spread everywhere, where miasma and beasts keep people away. Magic remains only as ancient relics and curses, never systematized. Villages are isolated, and the closed societies fiercely expel heretics. The village where the boy was born has a law to quarantine, not kill, the cursed children.
Sol, a boy with memories of a past life, has lived in lonely isolation as the cursed
At the End of the Ashen Forest, the Sage Learns of the Boy's Past Life - Dawn in the Ashen Forest
A stone comes flying.
It was a precise throw, aimed at the gray mark on his right shoulder.
Soru woke. The pale morning light filtering through the lattice window carried the smell of damp earth. Even in dreams, the stones came flying. For sixteen years, nearly every night.
When he sat up, the gray bruise spreading from his right shoulder to his collarbone seemed to smoke white in the morning light. The mark of the cursed child—the ash-mark. Soru traced it with his finger. No matter how many times he traced it, it was still there. It would never disappear. It had been there since the moment he was born.
*(I am impurity.)*
At the edge of Rusta Village, three hundred paces from the boundary stone. The isolation hut where he had spent sixteen years was a wooden box, locked from the outside. The window was a single hole the size of a fist. Light came in, and rain, and sometimes the spit of villagers.
Soru hugged his knees atop the straw spread over the floor. His short hair, gray so dark it was nearly black, fell carelessly over his eyes. His dull silver irises took on a faint bluish tint depending on the light. A small, thin body, clothes of frayed hemp. The sixteen-year-old boy seemed to belong to this place, as if he had been here since birth.
He gripped the black stone hanging from a leather cord around his neck—a stone the size of a thumb.
*(This is the only thing that's mine.)*
The black stone charm. Even the village prayer-master did not know its origin. It was a stone he had possessed since early childhood, one that grew faintly warm when danger approached—nothing more. Soru squeezed it tightly, as if to confirm its warmth. The stone was cold. Now, it was still.
That was the only thing that barely tethered him to the feeling that he was still alive.
Beyond the door, he heard footsteps.
Irregular, fervent footsteps. An adult's—a man's. Soru closed his eyes. He's coming. Today was a prayer day. Twice a month, the prayer-master Marg would visit the hut and force prayers upon him. The Faith of Ash-Purification. Prayers to cleanse the lingering taint of the forest-folk, a defiled race.
The door opened.
"Open your mouth, defiled one."
Marg was a thin man in his mid-forties, clad in a cloak bordered with the flame of ash-purification. In one hand he held a small urn of purifying ash; in the other, an ash censer. White smoke rising from the censer filled the cramped hut with a bitter smell.
Soru did not resist. The option of resisting had never existed within him from the start.
"O Lord of Ash. Cleanse this defilement. O remnant of the forest-folk, child of ash. Return this body to ash."
Marg's toneless prayer echoed off the walls. Soru bowed his head and repeated the words aloud. Words he had repeated for sixteen years. Words that denied his own existence. Reciting them was the only act permitted to him in this village.
*(I am impurity. A child of ash. A being that should return to ash.)*
The prayer ended. Marg sprinkled a pinch of ash over Soru's head as a final gesture, then left without a word.
What remained were white grains of ash, bitter air, and Soru alone.
He reached out and brushed the ash away, gently. As he did, he thought:
*(I have memories of a past life.)*
Since the moment he was born as a cursed child, another life had existed inside him. In a place that was nowhere—not in this world. Memories of someone, cornering something. A cobblestone city, a black warhorse, the smell of fire. The details were fragmentary, but it was unmistakably a time when "he" had lived.
Soru had never spoken of those memories to anyone. Even if there had been someone to tell, he could never have said it. It's the delusion of a cursed child. That's what they would say, and that would be the end of it. Or perhaps—perhaps what he himself feared most was what the person he had been in that past life had done.
Today, in the evening, there would be a stoning in the village square.
The body of a traveling merchant, attacked by a gray wolf at the pass northeast of the village, had been found yesterday. According to the teachings of the Ash-Purification Faith, all calamity stemmed from the taint of the forest-folk. And that taint was concentrated in the cursed child. Therefore, they threw stones. They threw stones at the impurity, to purify it. For the villagers, it was simply the natural order of things.
Soru was made to stand at the edge of the square. The evening wind stirred the hem of his threadbare cloak. Around him stood the villagers. Some faces he recognized, some he did not. All of them, uniformly, avoided looking at him—and yet, unmistakably, they watched him.
"Begin."
Fedo. Fedo the village chief gave the order in a voice devoid of emotion. A thin man in his mid-fifties. A hooked nose, an old scar over his right eye. The man who most zealously upheld the order of Rusta Village—especially the law of the cursed child's isolation. Beside him stood the prayer-master, Marg.
The first stone struck the boy in the stomach.
His breath escaped him. The second stone grazed his shoulder. The third clipped his forehead. The pain, strangely, numbed. After sixteen years of being stoned, even pain became familiar.
*(But today is different.)*
Soru felt it, head bowed. Something was different. Today's stones felt heavier than any before. No—it wasn't that the stones themselves were heavy. His own heart was heavy. His body felt heavy, as if being dragged into the ground.
Perhaps it was because the words of the prayer from earlier had pierced deeper than usual. *Child of ash. Return this body to ash.*
*(I see.)*
As the stones struck him, Soru understood, belatedly.
*(I might die soon.)*
The Full Moon Festival. At this autumn's Full Moon Festival, he would be the sacrifice. Poor harvests, spreading plague, a dead merchant. That was more than enough reason. He would be burned alive. In the flames of ash-purification.
He remembered what Marg had said, offhandedly, after yesterday's prayer:
"At the autumn full moon, we shall kindle the fire of purification. Your ashes will be scattered over the fields. At last, you too will be of use."
At the time, Soru had felt nothing in particular. No fear, no anger, no sorrow. For sixteen years, he had been kept alive, but he had not been living. If death was simply an ending, then it seemed, if anything, natural.
A stone struck the ash-mark on his right shoulder.
In that instant, a pain like electricity shot through him, and Soru's vision burst white for a moment.
*(Ah, so it really is ending.)*
He staggered. His knees buckled, and his hands hit the ground. The stoning paused for a moment. Someone shouted, "Get up." More stones were thrown.
When he raised his head, what met his eyes was the boundary stone standing at the north of the village.
A granite pillar, two meters tall. The village boundary. Beyond it stretched the Ashen Forest.
Dead trees layered their gray silhouettes in the twilight. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. A sea of gray extending endlessly. What lay beyond that forest? No one in this village knew. Even the traveling merchants never set foot inside.
Soru stared at the stillness of that forest.
*(If I'm going to die—)*
To be burned to death was to die as something other than himself. Stoned, as impurity, as a sacrifice. An ending decided by someone else, as if his life had never existed.
*(At least, by my own will—)*
It was the first strong emotion to well up from the depths of his chest. He did not want to be burned like this. He wanted to end it by his own will. He wanted to walk on his own feet. He wanted to choose, and end it himself.
The stoning ended, and as the villagers dispersed with satisfaction, Soru gazed once more at the northern forest, then returned to the isolation hut. Dragging his feet. Hiding the blood on his shoulder beneath his cloak.
That night, the full moon illuminated the village.
Soru noticed that he could hear his own breathing—strangely quiet, strangely clear. His ears were sharpened to their absolute limit. Every sound of the night seeped into his eardrums. The chirping of insects. The wind rustling dead grass. The distant howl of a dog.
And then—footsteps approaching the isolation hut. Heavy footsteps in leather shoes. Multiple sets of footsteps.
*(They've come already.)*
Preparations for the Full Moon Festival. To ensure the sacrifice did not flee, they would post guards under the pretense of "blessing" until the day of the festival. Or perhaps they intended to move him somewhere else tonight.
The footsteps were already just outside the hut.
At that moment, beneath Soru's chest, the black stone charm grew hot.
Not a searing heat. But a strong, unmistakable heat—one he had never felt before. The stone pulsed in his hand like a heartbeat.
*(Danger.)*
Soru stood. His knees trembled with fear. But no—was it all fear?
Outside the door, a voice. Fedo's voice.
"Open up, cursed child."
Soru considered how to break the door. No—he didn't think he had the strength to kick it down. But the next moment, he was running. He threw his entire weight against the door, shoulder-first. Once, twice, three times. On the third, the old wooden door broke free with a crack.
"What are you doing?! Hey, stop him!"
Soru did not look back. He did not hesitate. For the first time in his life, by his own will—he moved his own legs.
He ran through the darkness of night, toward the north of the village. Footsteps pursued him. He could hear shouts. The village bell was struck violently, ringing out with a metallic clang. *Gong. Gong.* The sound of the alarm bell that stirred the blood. The law of the boundary stone: when the cursed child attempted to cross the boundary, the bell was rung. Pursuers would be dispatched.
Running, breathless, Soru screamed inside his heart.
*(I'm running away. I'm running away.)*
Running away to die. Running away to end it by his own will.
He crossed the village boundary stone. Then he plunged down a narrow animal trail leading to the northern mountain path, and fled aimlessly into the dark. The pursuers followed for a while, but after some time, their footsteps faded.
Still, Soru ran. The forest at night. Every time a tree root snagged his feet, he nearly fell—but still, he kept running. His lungs burned as if they would burst. The wound on his shoulder throbbed violently.
How long had he run? Before he knew it, the village lights had vanished far behind him. Around him now, the Ashen Forest closed in, tangled and dense. The stench of miasma. The sweet, rotting stink of dead leaves drifted through the night air.
*(This is the southern edge of the Ashen Forest.)*
He stopped and caught his breath. Between the trees that blocked the moonlight, gray trunks stretched on endlessly. The deeper the forest went, the thicker the darkness became.
It was then that he realized, for the first time:
*(Where am I trying to go?)*
He had fled to die. And yet, he had run desperately, for dear life. It was a contradiction. An ending chosen by himself. That meant dying quietly somewhere in this forest. But the self that had been running had, unmistakably, been trying to live.
*(I don't understand.)*
Unable to sort through the confusion, Soru pressed on along the mountain path.
The undergrowth ahead of him swayed, unnaturally.
He stopped.
Standing before him was a two-headed gray wolf. One head glared at him; the other let out a low growl. A high-wolf, pale gray, standing nearly ninety centimeters at the shoulder. Its fangs, steeped in miasma, were corrosive—once bitten, ordinary treatment would never close the wound.
Soru stepped back, but his back immediately hit a tree.
The sound of his heart now echoed through his entire body. His breath grew shallow, his fingertips cold. His legs nearly gave out; he desperately braced himself against the tree.
*(So this is the ending I chose.)*
To be devoured by a monster. Even if he had chosen it by his ow
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