‘This is all too crazy. How can I be alive and what happened to my body? This is incredible!’ Faust thought as he nimbly ran through the forest.

He jumped over trunks and his every movement looked flowing and graceful. It was different from before. He didn’t consciously move that way; it just came naturally to him.

He advanced through the dark woods with incredible speed. He was unarmored and much more agile after all. When he jumped over a small stream or stone he was not worried about landing and hurting himself, but he felt light and always managed to find the right footing.

His mind was ecstatic.

‘This is wonderful! I feel so light!’ he laughed as he sprinted through the forest in the direction of the road. His endurance was incredible. His lungs didn’t start to burn, and his muscles didn’t ache at all.

After a short run, he stopped.

‘This seems familiar!’ he thought and smiled.

He had found the cave entrance. Then he remembered there may still be orcs around this place.

‘Shit. I better be careful. I'm fast now and can probably escape, but if I am encircled, I am done for.

The thought of death did not frighten him. In fact, he was able to cooly analyze his situation. He had faced certain death before. He didn’t like to be in such a situation, but he would still be able to think and act rationally.

He chose to walk around the cliffs he found the cave in. He couldn’t risk encountering that large group of Stray Orcs again. He moved in a large circle around it. When he was already about to leave the area, he saw a creature lying on the ground.

“WHA-“ he wanted to cry out but stopped himself. It was a Stray Orc.

He would initially run away immediately, but it didn’t move at all.

It was dead.

Faust approached the monster carefully before confirming its demise. Only then did he relax a bit, though he remained vigilant for movement around him.

He knelt next to the orc and turned it onto its back. It seemed to have been in the process of running when it died.

‘It must’ve fallen to the ground; it's not even injured. What the hell kills without leaving marks?’ he thought after inspecting the body.

‘It didn’t fall onto its head; it wasn’t killed with a weapon either. Did it have a heart attack?’ he shook his head.

That option was unlikely. Or maybe it wasn’t. He couldn’t be sure. He then took a look at the orc's face.

‘Calm, not anguished.’ He concluded as he saw its relaxed expression.

‘The glowing eyes have dulled.’ Faust thought as he looked into the gray orbs sitting in its eye sockets.

‘Glowing eyes… glowing eyes… GLOWING EYES!’ he thought, and his eyes widened at the revelation.

‘The orc's eyes… and the color underwater have the same color! It’s the same blue!’ Faust’s heartbeat accelerated.

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‘Are the two connected? If I really found myself at the bottom of the lake when I woke up… then the water must have disappeared… but what happened to the source of light?’ he pondered.

‘Maybe there are more like this one… if all of them are dead, then I have a suspicion, but I don’t know if I like it.’ He jumped up and looked around for other corpses.

He didn’t need to search for long before encountering three more orc corpses in a similar state to the first one. Empty, gray eyes and no injuries.

‘They surely didn’t have a collective heart attack.’ Faust gulped. When he looked around further, he found a dozen more corpses. By now he was certain.

‘There's a connection between what happened to me in the cave and their deaths. It is like someone knocked all of them out at once.’ He thought and a slight uneasiness rose within him.

‘Just what happened to me? And how does it all go together?’ he thought as he started running towards civilization again. On the way, he found a dozen more corpses.

‘It's all so magical. I don’t understand. What happened to me should be impossible.’ He thought as he thought of his healed body. As if being suddenly healed wasn’t incredible enough he had also gained better eyesight at night and all his movements felt different. His body moved differently.

‘Fluid. Light. Fast. Now that I think of it… the Stray Orcs see better in darkness and they are incredibly agile… great, now there’s another connection between myself and the monsters.’ He thought and sighed.

‘There’re so many puzzle pieces but I lack the understanding to put them together. There must be some kind of magic… witchcraft. Otherwise, there is no way to explain my changes and the cave losing all that water and light source… I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t the one telling that story.’

He shook his head.

‘I will need time to digest all of this. I need to get back first. How am I ever going to explain this?’ he worried and jumped over another fallen tree, making his way through the dark forest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leona had left around midnight. It was still before sunrise when she was still walking down the plastered road to the point where they had entered the forest. There were a few more kilometers for her to cross and she was tired.

She had only brought little equipment. Only her knife, padded armor, and water.

She was having doubts.

‘I should not have come here… I should just accept he’s dead. I’m stupid for having hope…’ she thought but kept walking. That single sliver of hope kept her going.

It kept her brave, determined, and going forward. It was all she needed. A small chance.

Her feet hurt. They hadn’t had time to heal from the hunt.

She carried her tired body forward. After another kilometer, she slowly started to think that coming here might’ve been a bad idea.

‘I should turn around… the sun is about to rise.’ she thought and sat down on a large rock next to the road to rest, taking a big sip of cold water from her waterskin.

She felt the weight of her cloth armor that had soaked itself in her sweat and shook her head. It wouldn’t be long before daybreak.

The next few minutes passed, and Leona grew more and more anxious.

‘Should I turn around? Lucon must worry. He will probably send his scouts to fetch me…’ she sighed and buried her face in her hands. She was slowly starting to give up. But again and again, that single sliver of hope held her back from storming back to the camp.

Just the thought of turning around scared her. It would mean accepting Faust’s death once and for all.

She sat on the stone and didn’t know what to do. Eventually, a decision started to form in her head.

After a few more minutes she shook her head and all remaining happiness had left her face.

‘I need to go back. It's unreasonable to endanger those coming after me unnecessarily…’ She stood up and turned around to leave, back to Caurium.

Her head hung low, and her entire body revolted as she turned around to leave as the sun started to rise directly above the road. Her chest tightened but she forced herself to walk back.

‘It's unreasonable to continue! He must be dead!’ A voice in her head said and she knew it was reason. But then there was the other side, the one she liked much more.

‘He might still be alive. You can’t stop now. You love him.’ She struggled with herself, and it forced her to her knees. She couldn’t make up her mind.

If she turned around, then she accepted Faust was dead. But she just couldn’t. Her heart hurt too much when she just thought of it. She was even ashamed of herself when she thought that for a moment, she had considered it.

She just knelt there on the plastered street, looking at the sun rising. A deep orange light was blinding her as she looked up. The first sunrays were warm as they hit her pale skin.

She was about to abandon all hope when she saw a dark shadow appear on the road.