The raven whisked its arms and flew up to the night sky teeming with twinkling stars. Its dark, tiny eyes stared deep into his eyes and sucked his soul dry as it seamlessly transformed into a bird and floated mid-air.
“Whatever you see or hear, you must follow us and not stray away…”
With these bizarre words that chilled him to the bone, the raven flew beyond the several acres of cornfields in either direction and went over the hill.
As he watched the raven disappear behind the hilltop, a disturbing thought took over his mind and he frantically looked behind him.
The book! What happened to the book!? He brought it with him this entire time and now it was no longer tucked under his shirt! Where in the whole Fayr did he lose it?
Before he could answer these harrowing questions bugging his mind, another raven landed right in front of him and cawed at him to move it.
When he failed to adhere to its pleas, it seized his trousers and dragged him towards the hill with its tiny body with such strength that he had to remind himself that this wasn’t a mere bird.
Arriving at the hilltop at last, the tiny raven let go and joined the other raven in the starry welkin. They stared him down and cawed tirelessly, warning him to follow them blindly and heed their pleas.
Below appeared a grainy trail or route of some kind that meandered in the opposite direction of the Western borders and led to a fork further down the trail from what he could see from the hilltop.
He looked up. One of the ravens cawed to get his attention before setting off to the dense woods to the left of the fork. The other raven lingered behind and watched over him until he made up his mind to follow the other raven into the darkness-shrouded woods.
But the raven was no longer in plain sight. It was nowhere to be found! Panicked, he turned around to return to the fork when the other raven landed in front of him and stopped him from taking another step.
“What do you want from me? I know you can speak!”
But the raven did not utter a single word. It bore its tiny eyes into his and demanded him to venture deeper into the woods.
Hain turned around. Drawing a deep breath, he stared straight into the suffocating darkness ahead and ran through every nook and cranny hiding in the shadows.
The grainy trail was barely visible beneath the evergreen moss that lit up the darkness and beckoned him to follow it to the very end of the route.
Where did this trail lead to, even? Wasn’t he supposed to go through Forsburth to reach Aderbaal? Both this faded trail and the mysteriously glowing moss gnawed at his consciousness.
For all he knew, this trail could very well lead to the land of the ogres or worse – the fiery pit seven layers below the soil – namely, Faersead. It was no secret that the gate of hell was in plain sight somewhere in a mystical forest no entity but the ruler of the undead himself knew…
The deeper he ventured into the woods the darker it became all around him. The uprooted and gnarly trees arched down one by one and blocked the moonlight. Even the fresh air turned sour the farther he stepped into the darkened woods full of shadows.
Amidst all this, perhaps in a state of confusion, he tried to locate the source of the increasingly pungent stench coming through with each passing second.
Then he saw it.
Something hung from a tree in the distance, but it was so dark that he couldn’t discern what it was or what it could be until he drew closer and saw the limbs subtly swaying to the whistling wind.
Human corpses. All around him in what looked like a human-made glade in the middle of the woods. Petrified beyond what words could capture, he backed away only to lose his balance. What… what in the whole Fayr was going on?
The foul smell reeked off of the cadavers, which swayed like the blades of grass moving to the cadence of the howling wind. Chunks of flesh hung down from the corpses and threatened to hit the damp ground infested with maggots and flies.
The eyes of the unfortunate souls were wide open and so vivid that he couldn’t help but shudder in place and feel the chills all over his body. The tight rope around their bruised necks reminded him of the woman he saw on the wall back in the dining hall, who kept screaming her head off.
Reaching for one of the corpses without being aware of it, in shock and beyond himself, he nudged the tender flesh that gave away at his touch and hit the ground, only to crack into thousands of fissures like an ice-covered river during winter.
He pulled his hand away and backed up. Blood dripped from his finger and painted the grass crimson. He squinted. The corpse before him differed from the others, he noticed belatedly. Unlike the others, which had clearly been hung while still alive and kicking, this corpse was pierced to death before being hanged.
A wooden nail speared through its throat and right through the middle of the trunk so that the corpse’s head dropped down.
Moreover, and perhaps strangest of all, was the fact that the corpse still bled and the crimson liquid dripped like a ticking clock. This caused the roots of the tree to slinger about and suck the blood dry before they even reached the blades of grass.
But the strangest part had yet to happen.
As soon as he noticed this, the corpse came alive and flew its delirious eyes open. It cried its heart out and tried to break free from the nail in its throat. Before he knew it, he stumbled down on his feet and watched the corpse-like figure twist and turn in no vain.
Then it stopped. Just like that and without warning, it fell into silence and let its head drop once again as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened. Yet this bizarre occurrence did not scare him. On the contrary, a sudden curiosity took over his mind.
Reaching out to the corpse, he hardly took a few steps before something cut through the prevailing silence and made him baulk.
The raven which had disappeared out of sight returned to the other side of the meandering trail and cawed so loud that Hain couldn’t help but take another glimpse at the corpse and all the others surrounding him in the glade. Now that he studied them closer, they seemed rather young…
But the raven did not allow him to ruminate much further than this. It whisked its tiny wings and set off into the darkness ahead, silently asking him to follow it.
As it faded away from sight, Hain looked at the shrieking corpse again and saw what looked like a single tear drop down and mix with the fresh blood on the ground.
Although reluctant and full of questions that needed answers, he turned his back to the mysterious glade and followed the raven out of the woods until they reached a snow-covered field with almost no trees or bushes around.
Amidst the hills of powdery snow, two towers caught his attention in the distance. He scratched his brows and cocked his head, looking around himself to figure out where the ravens brought him.
As if it knew what went through his mind, the raven cawed and guided him towards the lofty towers, where the capital of Aderbaal, Isaldor, was put under a spell and slept soundly through several fortnights.
The wrecked gates swayed to the cackling wind and creaked in a never-ending loop. Like a ghost town, it lay abandoned and left to its own devices.
Corpses scattered about on the ground as far as the eye could see, and the frozen ground and peeling walls were covered in trails of blood in a wicked spree of murder.
The unfortunate humans were stabbed to death, cut into pieces and mutilated so that some missed their limbs and others their ripped-off heads.
It was a gruesome sight. Thousands of questions whirled in his dire mind yet he couldn’t make sense of them. As he was trying to figure out what this place was, something Enis told him back when he was wet behind the ears hit him, and he looked at the two towers once again.
Isaldor! This place, it was…! But how could something like this happen in the capital of Aderbaal? If he knew anything of this place, it was the fact that many wise men and women protected the capital. So, how could something so- so horrific happen here of all places?
As he looked around the mayhem, one thing was sure though. It seemed like something attacked the capital a few weeks ago, most likely in the dead of night from the state of the mutilated bodies and remnants of the stagnant night marketplace.
Apart from the never-ending cries of women and children, however, nothing could be heard in the wake of the heinous attack. Everyone and everything lay dead and frozen, savagely torn to pieces and gobbled up like there was no tomorrow.
Ambling through the ghost town, Hain couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of brutes were capable of such bestiality. At the same time, he knew the answer. But why would the Kingdom of Sál attack the allies of the deities, and with this level of brutality at that? Didn’t they fear the consequences of their misdeeds and the wrath of Sawoldor?
The grand castle stood on its own on the outskirts and was so massive that it spanned several acres in the distance. But even the enormous bailey teemed with dead bodies, blood, and chains of broken armour slid apart.
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The lofty gates creaked open as soon as he pushed it. Much like everything else in the capital, it was broken into pieces by the brutal attack. Strangely enough, it looked as if it was ripped apart from the inside rather than from the outside.
At first glance, it didn’t seem like anyone was inside or that the castle itself had been attacked. There was no sign of intrusion, trails of blood or dead bodies lying around unlike in the rest of the capital.
Across the arched entrance was a spiralling staircase, which led to the second and third floors as far as he could tell. Next to the staircase appeared what looked like a bookshelf covered in dust and cobwebs, but it hadn’t been attacked or turned into a pile of wood.
The table beside the bookshelf was full of empty glasses and jars yet only one of the jars was broken. The other things on the table, much like the staircase and the rest of the castle, were undisturbed by the heinous events outside the wrecked gates.
A huge kitchen occupied the left corner. The kitchen door lay on the tiled floor, broken into three huge pieces and slid off by what seemed like some kind of beast with sharp claws, then dumped onto the floor in haste. Bloody handprints were all over the walls as well as the broken kitchen door.
Whatever happened in the kitchen was unclear, but one thing was certain: someone had bled to death here. This amount of blood could only pool under someone heavily injured and bleeding. Other than that, everything else in the kitchen was clean and spotless.
Hain wrinkled his nose. Not because of the lack of unwashed dishes in the kitchen, but by the sight before him as he opened a cupboard under the sink.
Squeezed under numerous plates laid on top of one another in a hurry, he found a bloody note. It was hardly visible and he’d surely have missed it hadn’t the crimson liquid stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the white plates.
Reaching for the note, a loud thud cut through the silence and stopped him dead, reminding him that he might not be alone after all. He left the cupboard gaping wide and peeked out of the kitchen, hiding as much as he could, while running through the hall.
A stone rolled down the stairs then and towards the kitchen; it only stopped when it hit the broken door. Without knowing what to expect, he stared up at the second-floor landing and held his breath. But there was no one there.
“Hello…?”
No one replied. Still, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he wasn’t alone in this huge castle, which seemed to be the only place that hadn’t been under attack.
With these thoughts taunting his mind, he made up his mind to go up the stairs and locate where the strange stone came from.
Each step he took made the stairs creak in a harrowing tune that sent chills down his spine. Whoever or whatever had thrown that stone at him couldn’t have missed it.
An ajar door caught his attention as soon as he arrived at the top of the winding staircase. It was the only door that was unlocked, and perhaps this was why it caught his attention almost immediately.
As if it knew his hesitation and racing heart that was about to rip out of his chest, the ajar door rocked subtly and beckoned him to draw closer.
He glanced over his shoulders as he approached it with staggering legs. As soon as he grabbed the cold door handle, a shiver ran down his spine and made him freeze.
What waited for him beyond that door? A survivor or… or cut-throat beast hankering for his tender flesh!? Which one was it? There was no way to tell, so he drew a deep breath and pushed the door open.
His heart skipped several beats and he backed away so suddenly that he almost lost his footing and fell on his buttocks from the shock.
Blood-soaked bedsheets were the first thing he noticed in the desolate chamber. But that wasn’t what surprised him so. A pungent smell reached his nostrils and hit him like a bolt out of nowhere, leaving a nasty aftertaste.
When he regained his composure, his flickering eyes wandered from the bloody bedsheets to the wooden cabinet across the bed. Surprisingly, even this room, apart from the blood on the bedsheet, was left untouched by the horrors outside the castle. But it wasn’t as spotless as the rest of the castle; someone had been in here and cleaned up.
A gilt-framed mirror reflected two pairs of legs sticking out of the bloody quilt. He dropped his head and felt a pang of ache in his heart for some unknown reason.
To sleep and never wake up, he reasoned, he wished to never find out what that felt like. To surrender to death in such a vulnerable position, unable to fight back…
He snapped back to reality as one of the arched windows flew open. Swaying subtly to the wintry windblasts, the velvety curtains billowed in a trance-like dance.
The view of Isaldor was beyond what words could capture, no longer vivid and eerily silent like the undead in their forgotten tombs. The trails of blood were more visible from above. There was no doubt in his mind that such a bloodbath could’ve only happened when people least expected it – that is, during the darkest hour of the night.
Who or what kinds of brutes could’ve done such a thing? Clearly, the ogres had been here and feasted on the remains, but the capital as well as the castle itself were too spotless for those brutes to have wreaked havoc here.
As he was about to leave the chamber, a rattling noise caught his attention and made him stop. The strange sin came from the cabinet. Before he knew it, a boy leapt out of the cabinet and tackled him.
Struggling to fight off the stranger, Hain looked around himself to find something he could grab. It was during this time that the boy got off him and hid under the bed. Or so he thought.
Rising to his feet, the strange boy jumped up with a sword from under the four-poster bed and aimed it at him. Taken aback to see the bloody sword, Hain stepped away and lifted his arms to show the stranger he was unarmed and not a threat.
“Keep your hands up! Higher! C’mon! Up, I said!”
“Listen, I’m not—”
“Raise your hands!”
“All right, I’m doing it, okay? Can you please aim the sword somewhere else now?”
Although the boy hesitated for a few seconds, he finally moved the tip of the sword from his face to his abdomen.
He was a head taller than the boy, whose dark and curly locks draped down his shoulders. His eyelashes were long and his eyes somewhat effeminate, although his gait was that of a royal knight or warrior.
He briefly looked away as a thought crossed his mind. Now that he thought about it, knights from Isaldor used to pass through the Forgotten Forest now and then.
He’d recognise one of them in a heartbeat. Their pose differed from the untrained villagers, who were not used to combat and were easily scared. But something wasn’t quite right with this guy.
No matter how he twisted and turned the matter in his head, the stranger before him could be nothing but a girl like Elise. His cheekbones were high, but his jawline was not as well defined by any means. Also, his lips were red and plump.
He gulped hard and all thoughts disappeared from his mind as the boy suddenly pointed the sword at his face again. This time, there was no doubt in his mind that the stranger before him was a girl.
“I said raise your hands, didn’t I? Just why do you keep—”
“Who… are you? What happened here?”
She wouldn’t say at first. Instead, she looked away for a few seconds, as if to cool herself down and think straight. He could tell that the stranger fought hard to keep the tears in. He followed her misty eyes to the bloody bedsheets and that was when the sword fell through her grasp and she broke down.
He hardly took a step towards her when she shoved him to the side and ran out the door. He could only imagine what went through her weakened mind. She looked like she had gone without food for several moons.
She stood in front of the massive gates and watched over the ruins and decay scattered all about. Even now, the shrill and hopeless cries of the humans reverberated throughout Isaldor and made both of their hearts ache with agony.
They observed the bloodbath in silence for a long while, neither saying a word to the other. When the stranger finally broke the silence, he pulled out a note and handed it over to him. It was that note he saw squeezed between the plates back in the kitchen.
“Read it…”
Hain knitted his brows as he unfolded the note and read the first sentence written in dried blood. Before him appeared a jumbled mess of words that made little sense. This message was directed at someone other than him, so why did this person show him it?
“What’s… what’s this about? I don’t think I—”
“To answer your question: we were attacked by the halflings. I don’t know why and I can’t wrap my head around it, either… All I know is what I witnessed.”
“The halflings?” Hain repeated, clearly confused. There was no record whatsoever of halflings attacking the humans ever in the historical scrips he read. It wasn’t only unheard of – it was unexpected.
But the girl did not elaborate further on this matter. She glanced at the note he clutched onto and changed the subject. It would be a lie if her following words did not take him by surprise.
“To avenge my people who lost their lives so untimely and so savagely, I must thus find someone.”
“Someone?”
She nodded. “Someone who hasn’t returned to Isaldor for many… many years.”
As she said this, a sudden thought took over his mind. ‘My people’…? He read through the note again and frowned without being aware of it, the words slipping through his chapped lips.
“You are…”
“No, I’m not the heir mentioned in that note, although I’m the only surviving heir of the King and the Queen of this kingdom.”
“I don’t think I—”
“There’s another heir other than me, you see…”
“Another heir?”
“It’s actually a rumour, or so I thought until I found this note. I remember asking my father about it after overhearing some knights, but he denied it at the time.”
“But how are you gonna find someone you don’t even know exists?”
“The note says he gave up the throne to pursue a life outside of Isaldor, but that he ended up living a miserable life and joining a cult of manipulators dwelling in the mountains after the Alfen Wars.”
“How do you know this is true?”
“That note,” she said, brushing away a trickling tear from her cheek, “was written by my sister before she… passed away.”
Yet even if all this was true, there was one thing he couldn’t figure out.
“But why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be alive.” She paused for a second, clearly fighting the urge to break down a second time and cry her heart out. “And because you’re the only one here with me right now – the only one who can seek vengeance in my stead…”
He read the note again.
“Cult of manipulators, huh? I don’t recall ever hearing of this cult before.”
“From what I could gather from the history chronicles in our library, no one has seen them since the Alfen Wars ended. Apparently, the Council of Deities condemned them all to death and put a price on their heads. Those who survived the massacre now dwell in the mountains and far away from the public eye.”
Hain couldn’t help but blink.
“The deities did what? But- but why would they do such a—”
“I heard the manipulators had a finger in the dethronement of Selmân. But more than that, even I don’t know. All records of the time before the dethronement and during it have been wiped. But if you ask me, I think the Council themselves got rid of every record to hide what really went down and why.”
“Wait a second, did you just say… Selmân?”
“Yeah? You… don’t know the former ruler of the Seven Kingdoms?”
“I…”
He barely opened his mouth when a cawing startled him out of his mind. With his heart in his mouth, he followed the familiar cawing to a naked tree behind a clump of bushes in the walled bailey.
There, seemingly merged with the darkness surrounding this desolate place full of death and decay, watched the ravens and made their presence known. Their dark gazes followed his every movement, deliberately hushing him into silence and keeping him in the dark.
He turned to face the heir of Isaldor, the only survivor of whatever horrible things happened here.
“I… I think I need to go now.”
The heir seized his arm as he rose to his feet.
“What do you mean? Where do you—”
The two ravens flew up to the darkening sky and hovered above them, cawing in sombre tunes and threatening the heir of Isaldor to release her grip, before heading for the towering mountains in the distance – towards Gam’atron, the land of great peril and vicious secrets buried seven feet underground in Faersead.
As Hain sprinted towards the mountains in the distance without looking back, Reila stepped back and observed the perplexing spectacle before her. Ravens! A cold shiver ran down her spine and she lost her footing.
With their piercing eyes, the raven people threw daggers at her and hushed her.
But why were these things back here!? And why was that boy following them so blindly—she gasped. Gam’atron! They were taking the boy to Gam’atron! But- but why? What for!?
Yet she couldn’t move an inch and warn the stranger. Her whole body shuddered with fear and she was rooted in place.
Two eyes flashed through her mind and shattered her soul into pieces. How could she ever forget how the forgotten deity slid her parents’ throats right in front of her? How could she ever shut off her mother’s cries for mercy?
And for what reason!? Just because her father refused to join hands with Johen against Sawoldor!
She snapped back to reality as the memories dispersed and the dark tower emerged through the fading patches of fog.
The forgotten deity’s words rang through her ear at the same time, reminding her that she survived for a reason and not out of mercy.