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 Morning of Return
The wind slipped through around the boundary stone.
At the northern edge of Rusta Village, a two-meter slab of gray granite caught the morning light and floated up pale against the sky. Beyond it lay the village where he had spent sixteen years.
Soru stopped short of the stone.
He had no idea how far he'd walked since coming down the mountain. His knees were heavy. The soles of his feet, rubbed raw inside his boots, throbbed with a dull, wet ache. The hem of his robe had crusted solid with mud and ash, and his short, near-black hair clung to his forehead, matted with sweat and dust. The black stone charm hanging from the leather cord at his neck had, at some point, lost its warmth.
(There's no danger.)
That was what the stone was telling him.
But there was no way there wasn't danger. He was going back to that village. That alone was enough to set something in motion.
Soru stared at the view beyond the boundary stone.
Fields stretched out before him. Heads of ashen wheat rippled in the morning breeze. The roofs of the houses sank into the low morning mist. Two, maybe three threads of smoke rose thin into the sky.
It was a familiar sight.
For sixteen years, he had looked out on this view almost every day through the fist-sized window of the isolation hut. But now it looked different.
(I know it.)
(I don't know a thing about this village.)
The words of the Sage Serundiru sat heavy at the bottom of his chest. The origins of Rusta Village's laws. The history of the sacrifices. The possibility that it had never been about atonement to the forest people at all—but about hiding the stain of the villagers' own blood.
That voice he had heard on the mountain.
"...Guess I'll go."
Soru muttered it to no one.
His voice dissolved into the morning air and vanished.
He took a step.
The dew on the grass soaked through to his ankles. Cold.
And the moment he crossed the boundary stone—
A bell rang. Kan.
It wasn't the usual sound, the sharp one that split the sky. It was a sound with a tremor in it, as though the watchman had hesitated for a moment before striking.
Kan.
Again.
The bell tore through the morning quiet of the village.
Soru stopped for just an instant.
If he wanted to run, he still could.
But he didn't run.
(I decided to come back.)
(I decided it myself.)
He put his foot forward.
He walked the dirt path toward the center of the village.
He passed alongside the fields. Water murmured through the irrigation channel. Morning light shattered on the surface and glittered.
(It's beautiful.)
That was what he thought.
It was nothing like the sunrise he'd seen on the mountain. But this, too, was light.
By the time he reached the village entrance, people had begun to gather.
The first to notice him was a woman who had come to draw water from the well. She nearly dropped the bucket in her hands and caught it again with both arms.
She opened her mouth to say something.
But no sound came out.
She just stared at Soru, eyes wide.
(Ah. Right.)
(That's what I am in this village.)
Soru looked back to the road ahead.
The crowd grew. From doorways, from the depths of alleys, from beyond the fields.
No one threw a stone.
No one hurled insults.
That made it heavier.
He was used to the usual hostility. Stones thrown, spit hurled, called filth. To Soru, that was like air.
But this was different.
The villagers had lost their words.
One dropped the hoe in his hands. One shoved his child back inside the house. One simply stood frozen, staring at Soru.
What floated in their eyes wasn't anger.
It was fear.
(The cursed child who ran away has come back.)
(We don't know what's going to happen.)
(He might bring something with him.)
That kind of fear.
Soru could feel it on his skin.
He had lived in this village for sixteen years. He'd had no choice but to become sensitive to the presence of others.
(I'm not just a cursed child anymore.)
(I ran, and I came back. That alone has changed something.)
Soru stopped just short of the square.
The center of the village. A small plaza paved with the same gray stone as the boundary marker. The prayer hall on the east side, the village chief's house on the north, Yuri's general store on the south.
A few women had clustered near the communal well.
One of them met Soru's eyes.
She gasped sharply and grabbed the arm of the woman beside her.
"...That child. He's come back."
Her voice was shaking.
Soru heard it.
(Come back.)
(That's right. I've come back.)
He didn't stop walking.
He crossed the square.
The villagers parted for him.
As if fleeing. As if afraid to touch something unclean.
Soru kept walking toward the northern edge of the village, toward the isolation hut.
The villagers simply watched his back.
No one said anything.
Only silence covered the morning village.
—Second floor of the village chief's house.
Fedo stood at the window.
He had smoothed back his white hair, streaked with mouse-gray, and his sharp gray eyes were narrowed. The old scar running vertically through his right eye floated white in the morning light. On his left hand, an expensive ring of killing stone gave off a dull gleam.
His thin frame was wrapped in a black coat, and his lips were pressed tight together, as always.
From the window, he could see the square.
Soru was walking.
Fedo watched him, motionless.
His expression didn't change.
But his left hand, the one with the ring, gripped the window frame.
His bony fingers went white with the force.
"...So he's come back."
His voice was low, flat.
No anger showed on the surface.
But somewhere deep in that voice, something was simmering.
Fedo watched until Soru disappeared toward the isolation hut.
Then he slowly stepped away from the window.
The room was dim.
A bundle of old documents sat on the desk. Ritual implements of the Pure Ash faith hung on the walls.
Fedo lowered himself into a chair.
He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.
(That boy came back on his own.)
(The cursed child who ran—walked back into this village on his own two feet.)
(What happened on the Sage's mountain?)
The pursuers had burned the Sage's hermitage. After that, Soru's whereabouts had gone unknown.
Fedo had assumed the boy was dead, or at least that he would never return.
(He came back.)
(And openly, at that.)
Fedo's face twisted slightly.
This was a challenge to his authority.
An act that disrupted the order of the village.
A cursed child who had fled, returning without punishment, strolling back in as if nothing had happened. If that were allowed, the village's laws would become hollow.
"I won't permit it."
His voice was swallowed by the darkness of the room.
—The prayer hall.
Inside the small stone chapel, the air was cool.
The prayer-keeper Marg was burning pure ash incense before the altar.
White smoke rose in a thin thread.
The scent of incense filled the hall.
Marg was a gaunt old man. He wore white robes, and a cloth inscribed with the sacred seal of the Pure Ash faith was wrapped around his head. His deeply sunken eyes were fixed on the flame of the altar.
A village woman came running in.
"Lord Marg... the, the cursed child—"
She was out of breath.
Marg didn't turn around.
The incense smoke swayed gently.
"I know."
His voice was dry.
"He's come back. On his own. That child, on his own two feet."
"I said I know."
Marg turned around slowly.
His sunken eyes fixed on the woman.
"An abomination. The filth will fill this village again. We must burn incense and pray. You pray as well."
"Y-yes."
She knelt, trembling.
Marg turned back to the altar.
The incense smoke rose higher than before.
"The cursed child has returned. He brings calamity with him. Fires will start. Plagues will spread. All of it, because of that filth."
His prayers echoed through the hall.
But somehow, his voice rang hollow.
—The isolation hut.
At the northern edge of the village. A single-story wooden structure with an outside lock, about three hundred meters from the boundary stone.
Soru stood before it.
A few village men waited behind him.
The men Fedo had ordered to bring Soru here.
They hadn't been able to push his back or grab his arm.
They had simply followed at a distance.
"Get in."
The man's voice was stiff.
Soru didn't look back.
The hut's door was open.
The smell of damp wood drifted out.
Mold, old straw, and his own scent.
A smell soaked into him over sixteen years.
Soru went inside.
The door closed behind him.
The sound of the outside lock clicking shut.
Click.
The inside of the hut was dim.
There was one window—a fist-sized hole.
Morning light seeped through it in a thin line.
The beam drew a white streak across the dirt floor.
Soru sat on the cold floor.
He hugged his knees and leaned his back against the wall.
His body was heavy.
(I came back.)
(I came back on my own.)
He told himself that.
But deep in his chest, something stirred restlessly.
The fear hadn't disappeared.
What would happen in this village now?
What would become of him?
Nothing was decided.
Soru gripped the leather cord at his neck.
The black stone charm settled into his palm.
The stone was cold.
(Efi.)
The name echoed quietly in his chest.
She was gone.
On the Sage's mountain, she had chosen the path of erasing her own existence.
So that he could live as a human being in this village.
(That's what she said.)
(If I disappear, you can live.)
Soru clenched the stone.
His grip tightened.
(Idiot.)
(She's an idiot.)
His eyes grew hot.
But no tears came.
Maybe his tears had run dry too.
Soru lifted his face.
Morning light poured through the fist-sized window.
Fine dust drifted slowly through the beam.
(That sunrise.)
He remembered.
The sunrise he'd watched with Efi on the mountain.
The sky had burned red, like fire.
The clouds had been edged in gold.
The whole world had been wrapped in light.
(It was beautiful.)
(Unbearably beautiful.)
Soru turned the scene over in his chest.
The fear didn't go away.
But beyond it, something burned at the bottom of his heart.
(I am not a sacrifice.)
(Don't you decide how I live.)
(I am me.)
Soru exhaled quietly.
"...I am not a sacrifice."
His voice was hoarse.
But the words echoed clearly in the darkness of the hut.
He wasn't saying it to anyone.
He was saying it to himself.
—Night.
First floor of the village chief's house, the assembly room.
Lamplight illuminated the low ceiling.
Fedo and several elders had gathered in the room.
All of them from the village's old families.
Their faces were deeply lined, their hands hardened from field work.
"The cursed child has returned."
Fedo opened with a low voice.
The elders exchanged glances.
"We saw it too. He walked in on his own, bold as you please."
"Could it be some kind of omen? A cursed child who ran away coming back on his own—I've never heard of such a thing."
"Exactly. He came back to spread his filth."
Fedo's voice filled the room.
"Think about it. Why would that boy come back from wherever he fled? What happened on the Sage's mountain? That mountain is steeped in the filth of the forest people. He gained something there, and he's come back to bring calamity down on this village."
"Then, as we feared, fire and plague..."
"They will come. As long as that filth is here, they will."
Fedo slowly clenched the hand resting on the table.
"Which means we must consider re-enacting the law."
The air in the room shifted.
Tension ran across the elders' faces.
"...The law of sacrifice, you mean."
"Yes. The full-moon festival sacrifice. A sacred rite to purify the filth of poor harvests and plagues. Now that the cursed child who fled has returned on his own, the time has come to carry it out."
"But, Chief. That child is still young. And besides, the witch Efi—"
"The witch is gone. That woman died on the Sage's mountain. The fact that the cursed child came back alone is proof."
Fedo's eyes glinted s
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