The bodies of his grandfather and the stranger were left in the cabin.

Camui, standing still on the dirt road, observes the house fifteen steps ahead. He shivers, whether from the cold or from the recent experience, we don't know. Ivy wraps one of the boy's hands between her burned fingers without looking, transmitting her firm pulse and warm touch. Camui observes the woman with wet and reddened eyes.

"I'm alone again"

Would he return to the woods? To wandering and begging in the streets of villages, and alleys of hamlets and kingdoms? Would hunger and the feeling of his stomach crashing against his back return? No, his grandfather taught him to hunt, he would no longer go hungry if he was cunning and swift.

What he would return to are the nights of fear and cold, huddled in hiding places so that no thief or slaver would abduct him. Only now he wouldn't have his big sister. Though he was no longer a little boy crying himself to sleep like the time she left without warning, it still hurt like a dagger to be left with no one.

Rod found him collapsed on the bank of a river, and instead of leaving him to his fate he took him in his arms, cared for him, healed him, and before he knew it, Camui became the grandson he always wanted to have.

Stolen story; please report.

"What happened to your family, grandpa?"

Only once Camui asked him two years ago, while they were fishing in a lake in the plains. His grandfather's rod shook from the trembling in his hands.

"I was weak, Camui. I was weak and a cruel man took everything from me"

His grandfather's gaze remained on the lake, a serene-looking wrinkled face, but his eyes were hazy as if lost in a thick storm. Now Camui had his own cruel man, Humber, only this one didn't last long, but in that short stretch he took away his home and family.

Ivy squeezes his hand. She smiles at him from under her hat, watching him with undecipherable eyes.

"You are not alone, Camui. You are with me"

The woman's hand, still burned, offers him a solid place to hold on to in that turbulent moment. The boy nods with tearful eyes. Ivy turns her expression toward the hut. With the staff pointed, the annihilator hits the ground, and the wooden woman opens her mouth again, this time to release a flame so wide and hot that Camui has to turn he face away and close his eyes.

The fire consumes the cabin. It crackles the entire structure, which from one moment to the next transforms into a pile of flames and raises a tower of smoke to the heavens. It eliminates the remains of that tragedy, erased from the world a mistake.

With his old home still twitching, with the body of his grandfather and the master of disguise turning to ashes, Camui casts a glance and ventures to ask with a runny nose.

"Miss Ivy, can you teach me to be strong like you?"

Ivy doesn't answer, just nods. The witch of Arboreal waits until the fire is extinguished and only ashes remain, to retreat with Camui. Not to the village, but to new trials and horizons.

The end.