The Forest of Four Footsteps
Conscious bullet noise.
Footsteps running in the forest one, two, three, four.
Four footsteps.
A soldier from the Arian army turned.
"One man… who is that?" he whispered.
It was a kid carrying another kid.
The way the boy moved, he looked around twelve or thirteen years old.
The one he was carrying was a girl, wearing a uniform
a Naryan uniform, though it looked too long for her.
Another soldier spoke.
"Do you think they know the plan of our commanders?
How is one of their soldiers so close to the second border, this deep inside the kingdom?"
"Find the kid, now!" another soldier shouted.
The forest was wide, close to the river
the same place where Zero and Aria had once fallen before.
"This kid is a boy," one of the Arian soldiers said.
"But the way he runs, carrying that girl…
He's like a monster. He knows what he's doing.
How can a boy fight like that so cold, so fast
like he has no care or sympathy left inside him?
It's impossible. This is the forest of our border,
the forest of the Arians, close to our home.
How can a kid move through this darkness and still see clearly?"
The fog covered everything.
They couldn't even see the sunlight
talk less of the moonlight.
The soldiers of Arian shouted in rage,
their footsteps echoing, the sound of wood breaking under their boots
as they ran and stumbled through the trees.
But then
they began to fall.
One by one.
Dropped by a single boy who moved like a shadow,
like a wild animal born in the forest.
"Hey, Zero," Aria shouted, her voice trembling as he ran.
"You can drop me now! You have no reason to carry me anymore!
I only came after you because of the message you left for me
that message you wrote before you disappeared leaving me and my lifeless body .
I'm not saying I'm not grateful…
but do you really think you can take this many soldiers on your own?
We're not even close to our commander or our team
not even the soldiers of Naryan could fight this long!"
Zero didn't reply.
He ran faster, eyes empty, silent as stone.
His face had no expression.
In his mind, he tried to remember the face of a little girl
a face he had once seen, but couldn't picture clearly.
He didn't even know her name,
but somehow, he wanted to save the one he was carrying now.
Then, without warning, the ground beneath them gave way.
Both of them fell into an old tunnel, hidden under the forest.
The Arian soldiers chasing them stopped.
They couldn't see the two anymore.
"They're gone," one said.
"Either dead, or lost inside that hole."
Another spoke, half proud, half afraid.
"That place is full of traps and wild animals.
If they went down there, they'll never come out alive."
And so, the soldiers turned back
their boots fading into silence.
Beneath the ground, in the tunnel's darkness,
two strange figures lay still
Zero and Aria.
"Now you finally drop me," Aria said with a shaky voice.
"I've been shouting for you to put me down, but you didn't even care.
Now we've fallen inside this tunnel, and you finally let me go.
This place is dark… please, don't leave me. Hold me."
Zero stood quiet, his voice cold.
"You're not a kid," he said.
"How old are you, clinging to me like that?
You're even older than me.
Why are you so shy?
If you're that scared, why did you carry a gun?"
He didn't mean to offend her,
but the way his words came out sharp, distant
cut like a blade.
Aria fell silent.
She didn't know what to say.
They both walked on.
Zero held her hand tightly in the dark tunnel,
guiding her through the twisting paths that stretched like a maze.
For a long while, they walked
until the tunnel split into two,
then three, then four different directions.
"Left or right?" Aria asked softly.
Zero didn't answer.
He didn't even care which way he went.
He just pulled her hand tighter
and led her forward, into the right path.
The Tunnel of Wormlight
The long tunnel dragged on,
as Zero pulled Aria straight toward the right path.
They saw a kind of earthworm glowing faintly in the dark.
Close to them, drops of water fell from the stones and rocks
lining the tight corners of the tunnel.
"We could rest here," Zero said out loud.
Aria, still angry at him for the way he had carried her
like a danzo in distress while they were running for their lives
didn't reply.
She only sat down as the glowworms gathered together,
their lights shining softly in one place.
That kind of worm was rare and strange,
even down in the tunnels,
but their light brought a fragile peace.
They were near water now, still deep underground.
Zero advised her to drink while they had the chance.
Since escaping the waterfall,
they hadn't even had time to taste water.
He spoke calmly, his voice echoing against the stone.
Aria looked up.
"So whose fault was that?
You left my body behind, trying to prove yourself.
Sometimes you're quiet you don't even speak,
your face has no expression,
you're so silent that even the sound of noise is afraid of you.
But you act foolish, like a child.
Do you think if you go alone to the Arians' gate
you can take down those soldiers by yourself?"
Zero didn't care what she said,
whether she was right or wrong.
All he wanted was to remember that face
that memory, that person.
When he had been running for his life,
he knew something inside him was missing:
his memory, his feelings,
the parts of himself he was no longer aware of.
They both rested for a while,
drank a little water,
then walked away from the glowing worms, straight ahead.
They passed many things guns, knives, swords,
weapons once used in the wars long before.
and even the bodies of people
who had tried to flee the kingdom when the fighting began.
When the war started,
many from different kingdoms had tried to return home.
These tunnels were the routes they used,
but few ever made it out alive.
Aria, shy and scared as ever yet trying to speak bravely,
saw the corpses and vomited again and again.
Zero only laughed and smiled.
He had felt this before
the strange familiarity of death.
Aria thought it was weird.
He almost never smiled, never laughed, never spoke.
His silence was a blade to others cold and cutting
but seeing him laugh and smile at the same time
felt like something that should be written in a history book.
They walked on silently through the tight, straight tunnels
dark and quiet, filled with the clinging noise of bats and dripping water.
The farther they went, the more distant everything behind them became.
Soon, they saw light
a faint glow shining from the end of the tunnel,
like a promise of air and sky.
Aria's voice broke the silence, filled with sudden joy.
"Zero… look! There's light ahead!"
[Zone one]
The Divided Kingdom
When they reached the light and climbed upward,
the sight before them was unlike anything they had imagined.
Ruins stretched across the horizon.
Buildings half-buried under dust.
Walls towering high, sealing off what once had been streets filled with life.
It was a city or what remained of one.
This was Arian's Zone One.
The Kingdom of Arian was unlike any other realm during the War of Borders.
When the first attacks began, and the flames of conflict spread through the frontier,
the Arian High Council made a swift and ruthless decision.
The kingdom would be divided permanently
into two strategic zones.
Zone One, positioned along the western frontier,
was to serve as the outer shield a buffer between the capital and the enemy nations.
It held the older districts, government facilities, and training barracks.
When war began, its population was evacuated and relocated.
Every citizen, merchant, and craftsman was moved inland,
into the fortified heart of the kingdom: Zone Two.
Zone Two became the sanctuary
the administrative and military core of the Arian state.
All active regiments, commanders, and surviving civilians were gathered there.
It was said that even the royal bloodline itself had withdrawn behind those inner walls.
To outsiders, Arian might have seemed one vast, united kingdom.
But in truth, it was divided
not only by walls of stone,
but by policy, by fear,
and by the discipline that ruled its people.
This was the Arian way:
sacrifice the outer to preserve the inner.
Abandon the weak flank to strengthen the command.
When Zero and Aria climbed out from the tunnel and beheld the silent ruins of Zone One,
they could hardly believe what they saw.
The place was empty
a ghost city under the protection of high watchtowers and steel walls.
Instinctively, they ran toward the nearest building,
slipping into a half-collapsed house to avoid being seen by patrols.
The sound of their boots echoed in the hollow street.
Yet their fear was misplaced.
There was no one left to see them.
Zone One was quiet
too quiet.
No citizens, no children, no traders.
Even the guards stationed there were few
mere shadows left behind to watch over an abandoned district.
The soldiers, the officers,
the entire defense force of Arian's kingdom
had already been reassigned to Zone Two,
leaving this outer ring to crumble.
The gate from which Zero and Aria had fled
was not the gate of Zone One at all
it was the first barrier to Zone Two,
the true heart of the Arian command.
And beyond that gate,
the real war awaited.