— I don't have enough strength to defeat them here, — continued Leyont with directness worse than any lie. — There are too many. Call the princess.
I ran for her through corridors now seeming endless. Each step echoed with the thought: "Last time I see these walls..." The princess followed silently, but I felt—she's ready for any turn of fate.
Returning, I saw father with two small, dimly glowing stones.
— Teleportation stones, — he explained. — I have only two, the last. Need to grasp the stone—you'll end up two hundred fifty kilometers from here, in Kriver's borderlands. As soon as you arrive, run. So they don't track you magically. You understand, Loyn?
— Yes, — I answered, took the stone and extended to the princess.
Our fingers touched the cold surface, and the world around began to blur like a watercolor drawing under rain. The last I saw— the face of father whom I just found and already lost.
Teleportation is unpleasant. It's like turning you inside out, then assembling back, but not necessarily correctly. When it all stopped, we stood on a hill amid an unfamiliar forest.
— Faster! — I shouted, voice trembling. — Run, princess! From here, before they catch us!
We ran. Ran from the past to unknown future, through forest indifferent to our tragedies. Branches lashed faces, roots tried to trip, but we ran, because stopping meant dying.
Behind stayed childhood, home, father. Ahead—uncertainty, danger, adult life. And I understood with clarity that comes only in extreme moments: childhood ended not when I turned sixteen, but right now at twelve, when I run through unfamiliar forest, responsible for the princess's life and my own.
What irony of fate—all life you wait for adventures, and when they come, you realize most of all you want to return to boring routine. But the train left, bridges burned, and remains only to run forward, hoping that somewhere ahead waits not only danger, but hope.
Standing on the threshold of an unknown world, I thought how life forces choices between impossibilities. In such moments, a person seeks not only salvation of body, but truth hidden between lines of fate.
Perhaps right here, in this run through foreign forest, begins the real story—not chronology of events, but poetic memory of how childhood ends and something new is born, still nameless, but already pounding in the chest with uneven, adult heart.