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 - The One Who Bears the Burden
From downwind, the baying of hounds echoed.
The mountain path had just passed a bend — a narrow single track squeezed between cliff and ravine. Gray dead trees leaned in from both sides, leaving only a thin strip of sky visible. Against Soru's chest, the black stone charm burned hot enough to sear.
"Run."
Efi's command was low. There was no time to look back. He caught only the flutter of her black robe at the edge of his vision.
An instant later, a sharp sound tore down from the cliff above. A killing stone loosed from a sling grazed Soru's right shoulder. Gray powder scattered, and a numbing cold seeped from his right arm up into his neck.
"......"
His vision wavered. His legs nearly tangled. No strength in his knees. The sensation in his fingertips was being painted over in gray. That powder — the pursuers' weapon, spreading paralysis through the skin.
Efi stepped back several paces. From inside her robe she produced two, then three thin strips of bark. She crouched and began carving a pattern into the ground with quick movements. She placed the catalyst for a root-binding formation in the middle of the path.
"Don't move from there, cursed child!"
A coarse voice dropped from the cliff top. The sling howled again. Killing stones sliced through the air. One shattered at Efi's feet, gray powder staining the earth. Another grazed Soru's left arm. Everything below the elbow went dull, as if submerged in water.
"I said run. If your legs stop, we both end here."
Still crouched, Efi put the bark strips in her mouth and chewed them to pulp. She cut the fingertips of her left hand with a drawn knife. Blood dripped, falling to the soil. Mixing blood and bark pulp together, she began rapidly carving into the dirt of the path.
Soru forced his legs to move. He drove his knees forward when they refused to bend. One step, then another. As if pushed onward by Efi's presence at his back, he advanced down the path.
The hounds' voices were closer than before.
Beyond the ravine, the path narrowed sharply. One side was a sheer cliff; the other dropped into a dark valley floor. The width barely allowed a single person through. Efi moved ahead of Soru and stopped in that narrow place.
"Good. Here, we can limit their numbers."
She knelt on the ground and began carving a formation across the full width of the path with her bleeding left hand. She scattered the crushed bark powder and traced over it with blood. Blood continued to flow from her fingertips, staining the earth red-black.
Shielding his numbing right arm, Soru watched Efi's back. Above the collar of her black robe, her pale nape was visible. Sweat glistened. On the cold night mountain path, he could even see the faint steam rising from her body.
(What is she setting up?)
He wanted to ask. But speaking would give away their position. In fact, the pursuers' footsteps were already just beyond the bend.
"Found you!"
Killing stones flew in rapid succession from the sling. Efi did not turn around; her bloody fingers kept moving. Gray powder dirtied her hair and clung white to her black robe. One stone struck her left arm.
Her fingers stopped for an instant.
"......"
Efi bit her lip and stifled the sound that nearly escaped. Her left arm was discoloring to gray. The skin turned ashen, and her fingertips began to tremble finely.
But she did not stop her hands. Clenching her teeth, she drew the final line with blood-seeping fingers.
"Path-sealing formation."
A voice like a whisper.
The earth groaned.
Dead roots thrust up from underground, and shattered rock pushed forth. A wall of gray earth rose across the full width of the path. Roots crawled over its surface, tangling and reinforcing it. Its height easily matched two people.
"What the hell is that......"
The two hounds at the front of the pursuit bared their fangs and barked. From beyond the wall came the agitated voices of the men. Sling stones struck the wall and bounced off.
But Efi could not stand. Still on her knees on the path, she braced her left hand against the ground and pressed her right hand to her mouth. Her shoulders shook. Each cough brought blood spilling from the corner of her lips. Her unfocused eyes wandered the void, as if her vision were flickering.
"......gh, kahyu"
A clot of blood fell onto the earth. Black. Blood from deep within. The paralysis in her left arm had spread to her shoulder, and the backlash of the spell was burning through her body. Disruption of her tree-vein essence. The price of a large-scale formation paid in life force.
"Efi — hey, Efi."
Soru rushed to her side and caught her body as it swayed and nearly collapsed. He had lost more than half the feeling in his right arm. Even so, he caught her slender frame with both arms.
At that moment, moonlight broke through the clouds.
Efi's left eye gleamed gold.
He had thought it was his imagination. He had thought it was the firelight. But no. In the pale blue moonlight, her left eye alone clearly shone with an amber color.
Soru forgot to breathe.
(That color.)
The nightmare he had seen since he was twelve. The burning city of giant trees. The silver-haired people fleeing in panic. The color of the eyes that had dwelled in every face in that dream. The forest folk. The silver people, said to have been annihilated.
Soru froze, still touching Efi's body. Staring at her left eye.
Efi noticed his gaze.
For an instant, her expression twisted. The face of someone whose hidden box had suddenly been pried open. She pressed her lips together and tried to look away — and could not.
"......You saw."
Her voice was wet with blood.
"It wasn't a whim that I saved you."
Soru felt her body trembling faintly in his arms.
"From the moment I saved you...... I intended to bring you to the sage. That, at least, was true from the start."
That, at least.
Efi forced out those final words, then fell silent, her lips quivering. Why she had chosen this path, knowing she might vanish — she said nothing of that. She would not speak of it. She could not possibly speak of it.
Her body heat seemed to be draining away rapidly in Soru's arms. The bleeding would not stop. Everything beyond her left wrist had already hardened into the color of ash.
"......The truth is, I knew."
She lowered her voice further.
"How you lived in that village. I was watching. I'd been watching for a long time. But...... I pretended not to know."
Something cold and something hot stirred simultaneously deep in Soru's chest.
(Watching...... all this time.)
Sixteen years in an isolation hut, living without being needed by anyone. The villagers had seen him only as impurity. They forced prayers on him, threw stones, tried to burn him.
But this person —
This person had been watching all along.
Unconsciously, Soru wrapped one arm around Efi's back and drew her against his shoulder.
"I'll carry you."
Efi stirred faintly.
"Impossible. Your arm is already......"
"It moves. My fingers still —"
Soru opened and closed his right hand. The numbness had reached his elbow, but his fingers still bent. He still had feeling in his left arm. His legs still moved. That was all. That alone was all he had to rely on now.
The night mountain path lay gray beneath the moonlight. Beyond the wall, the pursuers had begun swinging axes. The sound of rock being smashed, the angry shouts of men. There was likely not even a moment to spare.
For the first time in his life, Soru carried someone on his back.
Thin. Light.
But the warmth of life came through clearly against his skin. Efi's arms wrapped around his neck, the strength already draining from her left arm. Her ragged breathing fell against his ear from over his shoulder.
He began to walk.
Since abandoning the village, he had fled only for himself. To choose his own way of dying. But now it was different. There was a person on his back.
(I'm afraid.)
The fear was there. Not the fear of stones thrown at him, not the fear of burning. The fear that this weight might suddenly vanish. That the breathing at his back might stop in the very next moment.
One step.
Over the rocky ground.
One step.
Kicking through dead brush.
A stone cut the sole of his foot. The taste of blood spread through his mouth. He had bitten his lip too hard. Still he ran. East along the night mountain path, toward the Torg Mountains.
"At the next rock field...... turn right. Cross two streams...... then north."
Efi's voice was barely a breath. Fragments of faint directions fell against Soru's ear. She spoke only when necessary, giving the route in short bursts. She uttered nothing else. She was likely using all her strength just to keep breathing.
Through his back, Efi's breathing faltered once, then twice.
"Hey. Don't sleep."
No answer.
"Answer me, witch."
"......Don't call me witch."
"Don't say cruel things at a time like this."
Soru felt the corner of his mouth twist slightly. No — it wasn't a smile. A face about to cry can sometimes resemble a smile. That was all.
The black stone at his chest continued to pulse with heat like waves. At times it seared sharply. The pursuers were steadily closing in. The wall had begun to break. The stone told him of their movements.
Soru looked up at the sky. The eastern sky was beginning to pale. The ridgeline of the Torg Mountains rose against the blue-white light. The sage's hermitage should still be days away.
(Can we last like this?)
The numbness in his left arm had reached his shoulder. The feeling in his fingertips was gone. Supporting Efi's body was becoming painful.
But —
(If I stop, I'll never move again.)
Soru's legs did not stop. He would not permit himself to stop. His own death did not matter.
No.
(I'm afraid to die.)
For the first time, he felt fear.
When he had nearly been made a sacrifice in the village, he had only felt a vague sense that it was "fate." But now —
Through his back came the sound of Efi's heartbeat. Faint, irregular, sometimes leaping violently. That sound was turning the fear inside him into something with a reason.
He ran.
Alone, he would have collapsed long ago.
Alone, he would never have wanted so fiercely to keep his own life going.
But on his back was a witch who had bled for his sake.
The pursuers' howls echoed in the distance. The black stone seared.
Soru kept running toward the dawn.
Meanwhile, beyond the earthen wall.
The leader of the pursuit party was bellowing with a face that looked ready to smash his men's heads against the wall.
"Get to it, get to it! Break it down with axes and heated stones! It's the northeast mountain path. They're heading for the sage's mountain. Close the distance before dawn!"
The men swung their axes. The root-entangled wall was hard. They pressed heated stones against it, scorched the roots, smashed them, and slowly pried the path open.
The wall began to crumble roughly two hours later.
The leader was first through the gap they finally made.
Beyond the earthen wall, the party stopped.
"Hey...... doesn't this area look different from before?"
"Leftover from the formation, maybe. The ground's strangely brittle."
At that moment, the cliff above them groaned ominously. Small rocks tumbled down, one, then two. The hounds flattened their ears and whined low in their throats.
"Run! It's collapsing!"
The men ran. Behind them, part of the cliff gave way, and earth and sand slanted across the path, blocking it.
Then another landslide occurred ahead of them. The pursuers' formation broke, and the lead hounds lost the scent of blood. Even so, the leader confirmed the traces of paralysis powder left on the ground and the footprints of two people, and was certain they had entered the northeast mountain path.
"Don't rest. Press on. That filth's only talent is running."
Soru felt it clearly as he ran.
The black stone had been ringing all along.
(It's not over yet. The pursuers will cross the fallen rocks.)
The cold dawn air burned his lungs. He could no long
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.