This is the story of a boy who appeared suddenly in the forests neighboring a small remote village. It all happened eleven years ago…

“A flower, Lee-Lee?”

A young Sera Rorsk, only six years of age, bent down to eye level with her sister who was hunched over, panting.

The five year old Lyra Rorsk took a moment to regain herself, but when she finally did she nodded adamantly. Despite her age, she tended to speak very little at that time, and motioned wildly with her hands in an attempt to convey her thoughts.

“Use your words, Lee-Lee. I know you can,” said Sera, patting her sister on the head.

“Bd… umb… aff…” Lyra sputtered. She momentarily put on a flustered expression. “…Fire—!”

“Fire…?” Sera pondered, tilting her head. “Flower… Fire…? A flower is on fire?”

Though Sera hadn’t expected it to be the case, Lyra nodded in affirmation. She took ahold of Sera’s hand and began to tug at her.

“You’re going to take me to see it? Is that it, Lee-Lee?” Sera asked.

Lyra nodded rapidly several times.

The two of them began off, Lyra pulling her older sister along past the village gate and out into the forest beyond.

Some time later, the two arrived at a small clearing in the woodland. The area, little bigger than a small cottage, had a great round boulder buried partly in the ground almost perfectly at its center. And growing from a crag at the very top, young Sera was surprised to see a large orange feather-like flower.

“How pretty—! A Celosia plant!” she awed. “…I suppose it does look a little like fire… Is that what you meant, Lee-Lee?”

Lyra shook her head and pulled her sister closer to the boulder.

As Sera and Lyra climbed up the rock to examine the flower more closely, Sera noticed a faint reddish orange hue emanating from it, flickering as if it truly was lit aflame.

“Is it… magic…?” Sera pondered. “Maybe there is a ley line under this rock…”

Noticing her sister examining it so casually, Lyra gathered up her courage and plucked the flower from the stone without another thought.

“Ahh—! Lee-Lee…!” Sera exclaimed, pulling on Lyra’s cheeks. “You shouldn’t do things like that!”

“E-Eewe… S-Sowwy—“ Lyra mumbled through her sister’s pinching.

Sera let go with a sigh.

“Now look what you’ve done… All the magic is going to be g—“ she began, but stopped herself upon realizing the aura in the flower continued to flicker despite no longer being connected to the ground.

Lyra held it gingerly in her hands and watched it in awe. The flower was warm to the touch, and brought with it a pleasant fragrance.

“Lee-Lee… Let’s go show it to Mum!” Sera proclaimed. “It has to be a special kind of magic!”

“O-Oh… Mhm,” Lyra nodded.

Sera slowly began to slide off the rock.

But without warning… an immense shaking caused her to be flung off and tossed down into the grass below. Lyra, still atop the rock, panicked and grabbed ahold of a crack to keep herself from falling off.

“L-Lee-Lee—!” Sera exclaimed. “H-Hold on, I’ll get you down—!”

But the continued shaking kept her from being able to stand properly. Meanwhile, as Lyra’s panic continued to rise, she noticed that the crag in the rock started to crumble away, creating a thin rift that slowly grew larger and larger. She could see a reddish light emanating from within.

But despite the fear that gripped her… it was as if something compelled Lyra to crawl up towards the crack. And as she got closer, that same feeling prompted her to glance down into it. What she saw within froze her in place.

What sounded like innumerable distant screams seemed to emanate from the rift. A searing heat wafted from it as far below a river of lava flowed like water across a desolate plane. Jagged rock faces of scalded black stone protruded from the ashen ground. And what looked like petrified humans peppered the landscape, frozen in the horror of their twisted fate.

Lyra sat unable to move from her place. Her mind ran with an inescapable feeling that a living human was never meant to witness what she had.

“Lee-Lee—! Come down! Please come down!” Sera exclaimed from below.

All of a sudden, a violent burst caused the stone underneath Lyra to explode into fragments, tossing her backwards. She crumpled to the forest floor and covered her face to shield herself from the debris. Before she could recover fully, Sera crawled up to her and wrapped herself protectively around her sister.

The hole where the large stone used to be suddenly spewed flames that rose high above them. A shrieking noise gradually began to stand out among all the others, as if it were drawing closer and closer from down below.

“L-Lee-Lee—We have to run! Run—!” Sera burst, attempting to hoist Lyra up alongside herself.

But Lyra remained in place, her shoulders loose, her eyes transfixed on the billowing pillar of fire. Sera attempted to rouse her, but she would hardly react at all. She sat otherworldly still with her eyes vacantly staring outward.

“Lee-Lee—! Lyra—!” Sera cried, desperately shaking her sister’s shoulder.

But then… with what sounded like the ground being uprooted, a burning skeletal hand suddenly broke through, trailing a green flame brighter than all the rest. It clutched the soil and dragged itself up, and then too did a skull emerge from the inferno, mouth agape and seemingly the source of the ear-piercing shriek. With horrifyingly rigid yet jarring movements, it began to claw its way out of the pit, dragging the rest of its charred skeletal body behind it. Sera screamed and frightfully attempted to kick herself away from it. But her fear peaked as she realized Lyra had yet to move from her place.

“L… L…” Sera sputtered, but the words couldn’t leave her mouth. Nor could she retreat any further, as she found herself paralyzed by her own horror. The skeletal figure continued to drag itself towards them, the shrieking growing more and more distorted the closer it came.

But then, as it finally neared where Lyra sat… It fell limp. The inferno shot up high into the sky, only to be syphoned back into the rift and abruptly collapse in on itself, sending a plume of dust into the air. The shrieking noise slowly faded until all that remained was a charred pile of human remains.

Sera and Lyra sat in silence as the sounds of the forest gradually began to fill in. They didn’t utter a word, still unable to comprehend what had happened.

Then, with what sounded like sand trickling through an hourglass, they noticed uniform clouds of ash flowing towards them in neat lines that snaked between the nearby trees. The ash quietly and gracefully began to envelop the bones until they could no longer see it underneath. It remained that way for several minutes, the ash swirling around the remains like an obscuring veil. But then, the cloud began to thin. And through it they could finally see what was underneath.

A young boy lay unclothed and unmoving in the grass. The ash filled in and closed up missing pieces of his body until he was once again whole. And only as the last of it became a part of him did he begin to stir, if only slightly. But still he remained unconscious.

Finally, Sera was able to come to her senses. Though her legs trembled, she got to her feet and rushed over to Lyra, grabbing her arm and attempting to pull her up. But despite her effort, Lyra didn’t move. Sera watched in dismay as the blankness drowned out the light in her sister’s eye.

Tears began to run down Sera’s cheek. She got under her sister’s arms and tried with all her might to lift her, but she failed.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

And so she made the decision to take off running towards the village, her vision blurring from the tears in her eyes.

  “M…Mummy—! D-Daddy—!” she cried as she went. “S…Somebody… H-Help—! P-Please, somebody! Help—!”

And all the while, Lyra’s head spun from images she could not comprehend, as all that she saw was fire.

  As I sit across from Lyra now, the way she plainly tells me all this gives me no indication as to whether she’s telling the truth.

  “So… What the hell am I…?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t look like she knows, either.

  “And… How about proof? Got any proof of this?” I ask.

  I don’t really expect her to have anything. So I guess I’m a bit surprised when she slowly takes a glass vial from a bag that I just noticed she has beside her. Inside the vial… is a flower that emanates a soft flickering light. It’s this orange flower, kinda cone-shaped, and has little tiny blossoms that make up the structure.

  “…Well… I’ll be damned,” I mutter.

  She tenderly sets it in front of her.

  “This is my one treasured possession,” she says. “It has never wilted, and has never lost its magic. It is my only connection to that place. And it has been my only connection to… to…”

  I tilt my head. As she sees me watching her, she shakes her head and snatches the vessel off the ground, timidly stuffing it under her shirt.

  “So… What I’m getting is that this first ‘hellfire’ is… whatever the hell that place is. Yeah?” I say. “What about the second?”

  “…It doesn’t matter…” she murmurs, pulling her thighs up tight against her chest.

  “Huh—? But… Really…?” I say.

  “I couldn’t explain it if I wanted,” she says. She refuses to meet my gaze. “Because this hellfire… is deep within myself.”

  There’s a certain loneliness in her voice as she says this. I rest my arm over my knee and watch her for a second more.

  “Hey Lyra…” I say. “If you could do anything in the world, what would you do? And I’m barring anything from what we’ve been talking about, so nothing about this ‘hellfire’ stuff. What would you do?”

  She finally looks up at me.

  “I… Don’t know how to respond,” she says. “What… do you mean?”

  I fold my arms and close my eyes. This could be a bad choice on my part, but I guess I do feel kinda bad for what happened to her. Who knows, it might’ve even been my fault. And… I can’t go trampling on someone else’s resolve. It’d make me a hypocrite for getting angry at her about it.

  “Well…” I mutter. I begin to anxiously bounce my leg. “What I’m suggesting is… maybe that… err… I could offer that you… came with me… or something…”

  Her eyes widen in surprise.

  “Y-You are offering—“

  “But—!” I exclaim, pointing a finger at her. “If you do come with, then it’s only on one condition. You see… I’ve got a very specific goal to achieve. It’s what’s driving me to get to Mares in the first place. So my condition is… That by the time we get there, you’ve got a goal of your own! None of this vague ‘hellfire’ stuff— I mean something that you can work for, something you feel the urge to accomplish with all your heart!”

  “A goal of my own…?”

  “Damn right! That’s my condition, so take it or leave it!”

  She seems a little lost.

  “Why would I need something like that?”

  “Hey, I’d be more than happy to bring you back to the village,” I say.

  Lyra lowers her head and furrows her brow.

  “…How… How long do I have to find one?” she asks.

  “Eh…? Uh… A couple of days…?” I mutter. “I dunno. I’m not sure how long it takes to get there.”

  “A couple of days…” she whispers.

  She takes out a rolled up paper from her bag and unfurls it, where she silently begins to scan it. I can’t quite see what it is, so I lean up over it.

  “You’ve got a map?” I ask.

  “Do you not…?” she asks back. “…Well, I know the answer to that. You didn’t seem to have one when I checked your bag.”

  “Of course I didn’t, I— Wait, you looked through my bag…?”

  “We should first make for Dresnia’s capital city,” she says, ignoring me. She flips the map over so I can see better.

  “So… that’s a yes?”

  “In that I agree to your condition? Or that I looked through your bag?”

  “Uh… both, I guess?”

  “…In any case, I do accept your condition.”

  I let out a sigh.

  “It’s gotta be something you’re dead serious about, y’know,” I say. “Do you have any ideas at all?”

  She grows silent. Doesn’t seem like she does. I’m hit with another sense of ‘this’s probably a bad idea.’ But I made the deal, so I can’t back out now.

  “Alright, whatever… Let’s just get packed up,” I mutter, taking a stand. “Hopefully we can make it to the border before tonight.”

  There’s a moment where she doesn’t react at all. But then she looks up at me and nods slowly. She gradually begins to her feet. But before she even gets halfway up, she falls over and lands on her side. She just lays there for a few seconds without doing a thing.

  “Um…” I mutter.

  “My legs fell asleep,” she says plainly, with her face buried in the ground.

  A few hours of travel have passed, and the sun has risen to its highest point… thus marking the hottest day of summer so far, probably. Not that I can tell. I’m just basing it on how miserable Lyra appears to be.

  She hasn’t said a word since we started off. She’s a few paces behind me, sometimes a few more. And there’s really no shade… at all. I mean, it’s a prairie for a mile on either side, and even longer in the direction we’re traveling. On top of all that, progress is really slow with how dense the prairie grass is.

  “Hey, um…” I mutter, half-turning to look back at her. “Mind if I see that map real quick? Don’t worry, I won’t eat it or anything.”

  “The fact that you made it a point to say so in the first place makes me question the validity of your words,” she replies. But after a moment, she pulls the rolled up map and reluctantly hands it up to me.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Just wanted to see if it’s got any landmarks or something so we can see how far we got, y’know?”

  She nods drearily as her eyes drift off elsewhere.

  I carefully unfurl the map and squint to see it in all its detail. Or… lack thereof. In fact, it looks oddly similar to the one I used to look at as a kid.

  “Hey… did you take this from Gramps’s room?” I ask.

  “…Yes,” she mutters.

  I shiver at the thought. The guy was normally nice as can be, but if you ever tried to take something of his, he’d personally show you the deepest pits of hell. He’s the one guy I steered clear of when looking for stuff to… borrow…

  “Well… the old guy can’t get us out here, at the very least,” I sigh. “Actually, that brings me to something… Y’know these squiggly lines between the village and the capital? Have any idea what they are?”

  She catches up to me and leans over to get a better look at it. Her eyes don’t change, but it seems pretty clear she doesn’t know either.

  “…Worms, I would suppose,” she says as if passing it off as fact.

  “Worms?” I mutter.

  “B… Big worms…”

  “Well… I guess we’ll see when we get there,” I say. “Rather… we’re going east anyways, so we’ll probably miss them altogether.”

  “We’re going north,” she says.

  “What? No, Gale is to the east, so we’re going right of the sun,” I say. “Wait… the sun rises in the north, right?”

  She looks at me for a second without saying a word. For some reason, I feel I should be ashamed of something right now.

  “Even if that were true, which it is not, we are going to the left of the sun, not the right,” she says. “Regardless, we are traveling north and have been all along.”

  I furrow my brow and stick out my index finger and thumb on both hands to make a forwards and backwards ‘L’. I frown and look to my left. I stop walking altogether.

  “If that’s the case, then… where the hell are we…?” I mutter.