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 - Blood Script
The ashes in the burned ruins were still faintly warm.
Soru stepped over the wreckage of a collapsed beam and stood before the charred wall boards. The hut that had confined him for sixteen years. Its corpse now rose in thin wisps of smoke in the dim light before dawn.
(I've come back here after all.)
Something seeped slowly through his chest. Not sorrow. Not anger. Something duller, heavier. Like tracing the shape of what was lost with his fingertips.
He gripped the black stone charm.
The stone was cold. Its temperature told him the danger had passed. But the stirring deep in his chest would not fade.
(Today, something ends.)
(And something begins.)
He had that premonition.
The eastern edge of the sky had begun to pale. The stars were dissolving, one by one. The end of night. A sign of dawn he had watched almost every day for sixteen years.
And yet, today it looked different somehow.
(Today is the day before the full moon.)
(Tomorrow night, I'll be burned.)
Fedo's words echoed in his mind. The flame of purification ash. In accordance with the law, cleansing the impurity. That low, flat voice.
(No.)
(I am no longer a sacrifice.)
Soru picked up a scrap of cloth from the ashes.
The ash-gray cloth Efi had given him. He found it lying in the burned ruins, brushed it off gently, and tucked it against his chest. The cloth left just the faintest warmth on his fingertips.
(Efi.)
(Did you know everything?)
There was no answer.
But within his chest, the light of that sunrise remained, unmistakable. That moment on the Sage's mountain when everything had shone gold. Efi had been beside him.
(The reason you disappeared.)
(What you left behind for me.)
Soru bit his lip.
(I still don't understand anything.)
"...So you've come."
A voice.
Soru turned.
Beyond the burned ruins, in the half-darkness, Yorgen stood. An old man leaning on a staff. Deeply etched wrinkles. But his eyes were sharp, fixed on Soru.
"...Yorgen."
Soru forced the word out.
Yorgen approached him slowly. The tip of his staff pressed into the ash. The crunch, crunch of each step echoed unnaturally loud in the quiet morning air.
"Dawn is breaking. There's no time. Come."
With only that, Yorgen turned and began to walk.
Soru hesitated for a moment.
But his feet followed Yorgen naturally.
(What does this old man know?)
(Where is he taking me?)
He didn't know the answer. But for now, he had no choice but to follow the old man's lead.
The two of them walked west along the northern edge of the village.
A narrow path between the fields. Grass wet with morning dew soaked Soru's ankles. The sky grew brighter by the moment. The outlines of the village houses emerged from the darkness.
(The old record house at the edge of the village.)
Words Yorgen had spoken before.
(What's in there?)
(What's waiting?)
Eventually, Yorgen stopped at the western edge of the village, just before the thicket.
There stood a small stone building.
An old structure, half-buried in the ground. The roof was moss-covered, vines crawling up the walls. The door hung half-open on rusted hinges. As if something had come out of it and never returned.
"Here it is."
Yorgen said.
"The village record house. No one comes near this place anymore."
Yorgen pushed the half-open door with his staff.
A creak of rusted metal split the silence.
Cold air flowed out from within. The smell of dust, mold, and old paper. The smell of something slowly rotting over a very long time.
Soru swallowed hard.
(So this is it.)
(The place where the village's memories sleep.)
Yorgen went inside.
Soru followed.
Underfoot were stone steps. One by one, descending underground. Moss grew here and there on the walls. The air was cool and clung to his skin.
(Underground.)
(A stone basement.)
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, there was a small stone chamber.
The ceiling was low, and countless shelves lined the walls. Old scrolls, bundles of parchment, wooden tablets — crammed onto the shelves wherever there was space.
(So this is the record house.)
(The village's history.)
Soru caught his breath.
A completely different world from the hut where he'd been confined for sixteen years. Everything about the village was packed in here.
(But I can't read any of it.)
Soru once again felt the weight of his own helplessness.
Letters. He couldn't read them. No one had taught him in sixteen years. Days spent in the isolation hut, just waiting to die. There had never been a single chance to learn to read or write.
(Frustrating.)
(But being frustrated won't change anything.)
Soru pushed the emotion down. Frustration wasn't what he needed now. What he needed was facts. The truth sleeping in this record house.
"Don't concern yourself with not being able to read."
Yorgen said, as if he'd seen right through Soru.
"I'll read them for you. One by one."
Yorgen pulled an old ledger from a shelf.
A thick, leather-bound ledger. The pages were yellowed, eaten by insects in places.
"This is the record of sacrifices."
Yorgen opened the ledger.
"The final records of the cursed children, spanning many generations. Who was burned, when, and how. Everything is written here."
Yorgen's voice echoed through the quiet stone chamber.
"The first record is from about three hundred and fifty years ago. From when this village relocated to its current site after the Ashburn Expedition."
Yorgen turned the page.
"'Spring full moon, cursed child Iris, age twelve. Offered to the flame of purification ash as atonement to the Forest People. May her soul calm the wrath of the forest.'"
Soru held his breath.
Twelve years old. Younger than him.
(Iris.)
(What kind of face did that child have?)
(With what voice did she cry?)
Yorgen continued reading, dispassionately.
"'Autumn full moon, cursed child Dan, age nine. As atonement to the Forest People...'"
"'Spring full moon, cursed child Seri, age fifteen...'"
"'Autumn full moon, cursed child Ord, age seven...'"
Names. Ages. And atonement to the Forest People.
The older the record, the more carefully those words were repeated. The details of the ritual. How the fire was lit. The words of prayer. Everything was recorded in meticulous detail.
(Atonement to the Forest People.)
(This village feared what it had done to the Forest People.)
(So they offered sacrifices.)
Soru felt the depths of his chest grow cold.
Yorgen kept reading.
As the pages progressed, the nature of the records changed.
"'Spring full moon, cursed child, purified.'"
"'Autumn full moon, cursed child, purified.'"
"'Spring full moon, cursed child, purified.'"
The names had vanished.
The ages had vanished.
The words "atonement to the Forest People" had vanished.
What remained were only two words: cursed child, and purified.
(What is this?)
(What disappeared?)
Soru stared intently at Yorgen's hands.
"You noticed."
Yorgen looked up from the ledger.
"The newer the record, the more the words have disappeared. The meaning of the ritual, its purpose, everything. What remains is only the fact that a cursed child was purified."
Yorgen closed the ledger.
"Next, I'll show you the original of the law."
Yorgen retrieved another scroll from the back of a shelf.
An old parchment scroll. Tightly bound with cord.
"This is the original of this village's law. Written by the first village chief. Here, the original form of the sacrifice law is recorded."
Yorgen spread the scroll on the floor.
Soru caught his breath.
Fine characters were densely written across it.
(This is the law.)
(The law that would have me burned.)
Yorgen traced a section of the scroll with his finger.
"Here. The sacrifice law is recorded here. Look closely."
Soru peered at the scroll.
He couldn't read the characters. But something was different.
(The ink color is different.)
(In places, the color is faint.)
(And the shapes of the characters are slightly different too.)
"You noticed."
Yorgen said quietly.
"This law has been rewritten many times. The newer the clause, the more the original characters were scraped away and different words written over them."
Yorgen traced a section of the scroll gently with his finger.
"Here. Characters were written here in blood. Characters the first village chief wrote with his own blood. But they were scraped away by those who came after."
Soru strained his eyes.
The marks of scraping. The surface of the parchment was slightly indented. Almost no trace of the blood remained.
(Characters written in blood.)
(And they were erased.)
"And in their place, these words were added."
Yorgen pointed to another part of the scroll.
"'Impurity.'"
Soru repeated the word in his mind.
(Impurity.)
(The cursed child is impurity.)
(So they are burned.)
"In the original law, the word 'impurity' appears nowhere."
Yorgen said.
"The original law stated: offer a sacrifice as atonement to the Forest People. But at some point, the villagers forgot their sin against the Forest People. And with their own hands, they erased the blood-written characters and carved the word 'impurity' in their place."
Yorgen looked Soru straight in the eyes.
"The reason you are called impurity is not because of your blood. The villagers, to hide their own sin, draped impurity upon you."
Soru was speechless.
Inside his head, something began to turn slowly.
(The villagers hid their own sin.)
(The sin of destroying the Forest People.)
(They draped that sin onto the cursed child.)
(Onto me.)
The depths of his chest grew cold.
(For sixteen years, why was I confined in that hut?)
(Why am I about to be made a sacrifice?)
(To hide the villagers' sin?)
Soru felt his knees trembling.
"...There's more."
Yorgen placed the scroll on the floor.
Then he walked to the deepest part of the stone chamber.
There was a single shelf there. Clearly different from the others.
Chains were wrapped around it.
Rusted iron chains. Wrapped layer upon layer, secured with a lock.
(Sealed.)
(What's sealed away?)
Yorgen drew a key from his robe.
A small iron key. He inserted it into the lock on the chains.
Click.
The lock opened.
The chains fell to the floor.
The clatter echoed through the stone chamber.
Yorgen opened the shelf door.
Inside were several old books and a single large parchment scroll.
"This is the oldest record of this village. From before the village relocated to this land."
Yorgen took out the parchment.
"This is the roster of the expeditionary force."
Soru held his breath.
(The expeditionary force.)
(The Ashburn Expedition.)
(The army that destroyed the Forest People.)
Yorgen spread the parchment on the floor.
"Names are recorded here. The names of the soldiers of the Seven Lords' Alliance who once destroyed the Forest People."
Yorgen traced a section with his finger.
"And the first villagers of this village were among those listed on this roster."
Soru's eyes widened.
(The first villagers were...)
(Soldiers of the expeditionary force.)
(Those who destroyed the Forest People.)
Yorgen continued quietly.
"The Seven Lords' Alliance fell apart after the war. The soldiers, weary from battle, scattered in all directions. Some of them drifted to this land and built a village."
Yorgen looked at Soru.
"Everyone in this village is a descendant of those who destroyed the Forest People. Not just you. Every villager carries the same weight of blood."
Soru felt his breath stop.
(Every villager.)
(Carries the same weight of blood.)
(The same as me.)
Inside his head, something crumbled with a sound.
(I hated the villagers.)
(The villagers who oppressed me as a cursed child.)
(But the villagers are the same?)
(Carrying the weight of the blood that destroyed the Forest People?)
(Then how am I any different?)
"Your past life was a survivor of the expeditionary force."
Yorgen said.
"You learned that at the Sage's hermitage, didn't you."
Soru couldn't even nod.
"You were a member of the army that destroyed the Forest Peo
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.