----Page 12----
I'm Seville, son of a local miner working in Khel mines… honestly, this is my first day, finally, I said at last.
My father sees me as ready for this tough job.
As we all marched this day towards Khel mines, I felt something really odd.
The forest seemed unusually calm. Normally, wild monsters would appear in this part of the woods…
And my father's companions weren't ordinary people who just knew how to swing a pickaxe. As far as I knew, they had all been adventurers in their prime.
So a bunch of monsters was quite a piece of cake for them.
----
After an hour's walk from the City of Maren, we finally reached the main entrance of the Khel Mines.
Today, we were instructed to dig a little deeper and focus on gathering Mana ores. If we got lucky, however, finding Rune stones would be a jackpot.
My father had also warned me, more than once, not to stray too far from the areas we were allowed. It was too dangerous otherwise.
After a few hours of smashing through massive walls of rock, I finally found the first ore I had ever mined myself.
"Whoah, not bad, Seville," Uncle Morlow said. Using his light magic, his wisp shone on the ore I had picked.
Another voice echoed nearby.
"Hmm, let me see that ore, Seville." Noran picks the ore from my hand and gives it a closer inspection.
Based on the purity of its color, it's probably just a regular Mana stone. However, there's something unusual. It's emitting a type of energy I've never seen from any ore before.
"Huh, so you mean it's rare!" My heartbeat is racing. This is so exciting.
But then, as soon as everything sinks in, my father halts everyone from making noises.
"Quiet…" he whispers.
Everyone's face begins to look serious. Uncle Morlow grabs his pickaxe, ready any minute for what's to come. Meanwhile, Noran instructs me in a lower voice to hide behind the clamp of huge rocks.
Then a flying dagger runs toward one of my father's companions. Luckily, the man was an adventurer in his younger days, so catching a flying dagger wasn't a tough task.
Then, clap clap, five no more than ten men wearing dark purple hoods arrive, walking casually toward us.
"Who are you lot?" my father asks, pickaxe in hand.
"Oy oy, calm down, old man. We're not here to seek trouble… I know, I know, you're just doing your jobs," he says as he walks normally, then leans forward and whispers words into my father's ear.
"Damn you!!" My father, without hesitation, attacks him with his pickaxe. But the man in the hood dodges easily.
"We don't have a choice but to fight," my father says.
"Yeah, like in the old times," one of the miners with a bandana says.
"Well… at least we make sure Seville gets away. It doesn't matter what happens next," Uncle Morlow mutters.
Ah… making way for Seville to escape is our priority.
"No!!" I shout. I won't leave them. My hands are trembling, my voice shaking.
"Fool!! Can't you see? Everyone is risking their lives just to make you live!" my father shouts.
"No more buts, Seville. We'll buy you some time. Just head out and run straight to the city and ask for help," he says.
"Oy oy, what a touching scene I'm witnessing," the hooded man claps while saying this.
"Who said anyone will leave the mine alive?"
Then, when we think our fate is terrible, another figure emerges from the shadows, cloaked in the same purple hood. A beastial kin arrives gray wolf-like fur, massive body, intense aura.
"This is not what we came for…" one hooded man mutters.
"Tsch. Just mind your own business, slave dog."
The beastial kin lowers his hood entirely.
"I'm Kael... And I am not a slave. No more"
He looks at the hooded man with sharp and fierce eyes.
"What did you say… you son of " the hooded man is about to stab Kael, but his dagger snaps in two after touching Kael's body.
"I… impossible…" he stammers.
Then Kael opens his huge mouth, sharp teeth bared…
"No… no… please…"
The beastial kin eats his head. Blood splatters all over the cave walls.
One of Kael's men approaches.
"What are your orders now, Master?" the man asks.
"Kill one last of them," Kael says briefly.
"I've got other business to deal with. He's here… I can smell him finally…"
The hooded man nods and withdraws.
I… I couldn't look away. The man's head… gone. Blood everywhere. My stomach twists, bile rising.
---
"Hah… hah… hah…"
Each breath tears through my chest like a hot blade. I run with one arm clamped tight over my bleeding shoulder.
The forest turns into streaks of black and green. Roots and broken branches grab at my ankles. Mud soaks my shoes. The taste of iron is heavy on my tongue.
Behind me, boots crash over undergrowth. Voices, low and cruel, thread through the trees. The light of torches bob like distant stars.
I risk a glance. Hooded figures cut between trunks, daggers catching faint sunlight. My heart beats so hard my vision blurs.
A root rises out of the earth and catches my foot. I fall forward with a thud, air knocked from my lungs. Dirt fills my hands. Pain stabs through my shoulder in hot white flashes. For a second, I lie there and only listen to my ragged breathing.
"Damn it," I whisper, pounding the ground.
"What do I do?" Tears streak grime on my cheeks.
"They all stayed for me… my father… the others… and I just ran…"
Branches snap closer. Six hooded men close in. One steps forward, dagger raised.
"End of the line, kid," he says softly, cruelly.
I freeze. The dagger trembles in his hand.
Then an arrow splits the air with a sharp
TWHACK!
The dagger clatters to the ground. The attacker clutches an arrow stuck clean through his palm and howls, a high-pitched, animal sound that echoes through the trees.
Someone's here.
I think, a desperate surge of hope flooding through me.
But who?
"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"
A voice calls from the shadow, and for the first time since entering the mines.
I think, I might actually survived this.
----
"Master Kinon!"
Arin called out to me.
I waited, catching my breath and scanning the area. Arin stepped out from behind a broad oak, hood half down, grin fixed like a knife under the sunlight.
I moved like a shadow behind him, jaw tight, hand resting on the hilt of my sword.
Rynveil came last, stretching and cracking his knuckles like he was winding up a storm.
"Six".
Rynveil said lazily.
"Not bad for a midday snack."
"Keep that grin for after" Arin said flatly.
The hooded men roared and lunged. The forest exploded into motion. I swung my blade, metal meeting cloth with the cold kiss of steel.
The Codex on my wrist hummed, a faint blue glow pouring into the cut I made.
Rynveil's hammer slammed with finality, smashing one man into a tree.
Arin danced across the roots, releasing arrows with deadly precision, each one finding a seam and ending a threat.
After a handful of breaths, silence fell. Six bodies lay still on the leaf litter, the blood on their fingers soaking into the soil.
Arin crouched by a fallen man, peeling back a cuff to reveal a crown bound in chains.
"Master", he said his tone shift to serious one.
They are Tyrant's Hand.
My jaw tightened. The rumor had teeth now, confirmed by the mark on the man's wrist.
Arin pulled out a small vial that glowed absurdly green.
"Drink this. It hurts less than dying", he said.
Then, I noticed the boy nearby, shaking, eyes wide, shoulders trembling.
All of his pursuers was gone, but his fears was clearly present. What horrifying things he did saw to make him so terrify like this?
I didn't need to speak for him to feel the fear radiating from him.
"You did what you had to." I said softly.
"You survived. And that's what matters."
By the way, I'm Kinon, this is Arin and Rynveil"
"Glad we make it in time.. "
Arin said, his voice calm with sense of relief.
"Yeah right Twig, It you happen to missed that shot hed be dead by now."
"Oy, watch your mouth Old man!!"
"I... I'm Seville. I... I thought I was done for." His voice trembled, but a flicker of hope ignited in his eyes.
"There...There was someone else. Taller. Grey fur. Strong like a boulder. He did not shout orders. They just followed him. He looked at us like we were nothing".
Seville said, his eyes filled with terror.
A cold weight settled in my chest. The description fit one person I had hoped I would never see corrupted.
A ghost I had tried to bury was alive again, reshaped into something I could barely recognize.
A gray shape haunted my memory, pressing cold and unyielding behind my ribs, as if my chest itself remembered him before I could.
Every detail I had tried to forget, the weight, the presence, the quiet authority, returned all at once, heavier than before.
Kael. What have you become?.