"Hey...
Hey!...
Hey, Wake up!"
The moment Astor heard a man's voice, he turned to his side and began coughing up the chilling, salty seawater in his lungs. And after being able to breathe normally, he stood up as fast as he could.
"Whe... Where am I?!" He said as he curled his hands into fists, pointing them towards the silver-haired man, right in front of him,
"What?? You really are a funny guy! Weren't you the one screaming to be saved because you didn't know how to swim?" The silver-haired man said before he began laughing.
"W-what?! No! I was in a cave... I was in a large throne room?... I... where was I?" Whatever Astor had seen when he was unconscious completely slipped away from his mind, leaving him clueless.
"No... I'm sorry. You're right. I don't know how to swim." Astor slowly brought his fists down as he looked up at the silver-haired man, noticing the cloak the man was wearing and instantly remembering the cloaked figure who was sitting right beside him on the ship.
Is he the cloaked man?! Why is he so pretty! Astor might have mistaken him for a girl if he hadn't heard his voice before seeing him.
"I'm Astor. Thank you for saving me... May I know what your name is?" Astor asked as he patted away the sand that had stuck to his wet tunic.
And for some reason, when he looked up at the silver-haired man again, the man looked as tho he was shocked by hearing Astor's request.
But after a second, he responded to Astor anyway.
"My name is Dawn."
Dawn... well, I guess I owe you one. After hearing the man's name, Astor turned around to look at the sea.
By now, the ship that had dropped them here was nothing more than a mere dot along the edge of the horizon. It was returning to the continent of Mytherra.
While he was stuck here trying to do the same thing.
Anyway... this is Borealis? How strange...
Originally, he had thought that Borealis would be a hellish landscape, filled to the brim with deadly monsters. But now that he was actually here, it looked more like a frozen wasteland. A silent and empty wasteland.
Well, looks like they sent me on the wrong boat... maybe this one was meant for people going on vacations! Haha... Sigh. Astor turned around to carefully inspect every direction of this "deadly" continent.
The pale sand of the beach slowly merged into flaring snow that extended for a few miles before fading into the morning mist.
It was quite, a lot quieter than the factories and narrow alleys of the city of the Sink, but that was also what made it so eerie. All he heard was the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.
There were no sounds of morning birds chirping, no sounds of trees waving, and no sound of the wind blowing — it was just the eerie silence.
Looking back north, he noticed that at the very edge of the mist, he could see a faint line of tall evergreen trees... It was a beautiful scenery. He would never get a chance to see something like this back home.
That's right! Nobody has seen this place... well, at least nobody still alive. Maybe being sentenced to death by banishment isn't that bad after all.
By now, many more people had made landfall on the shore, and a group of them was starting to form to the east, right below the rising sun.
What are they doing? He slowly turned around and started to walk towards them. But just as he took a step, he heard a strange call coming from behind, an uncannily beautiful voice...
'Astor....'
Only a faint whisper at first. He ignored it, thinking he was hearing things. But after he took another step, he heard it again.
'Astor....'
He spun around, looking for the person who called his name.
'Astor....'
Again! What is that sound? But no matter where he looked, he couldn't find the source of the voice... So he decided to turn around slowly and inspect every direction carefully.
The Ocean, then the crowd, and right as he looked directly to the North, towards the distant forest, he heard the whisper again.
'Astor....'
After a second of staring in that direction, a faint golden thread appeared — connecting to his chest. Fully captivated by the beauty of the golden thread, he continued to stare north until the voice resonated in his mind once again.
'Follow your soul...'
The same words the voice in the alley had told him... But his reverie was shattered in the next moment by someone placing their hand on his shoulder.
"It will be a shame if they plan something without us — we should go," said Dawn, pointing towards the group of people.
"Yeah..." But when Astor turned back to look at the golden thread, he saw nothing. It had vanished just as it had appeared. All that remained once again was the eerie silence of the beach...
Maybe the reason I was sent here wasn't simply to return to Mytherra... Astor wondered as he walked towards the group of people.
***
A tall, muscular man rose from the crashing waves of the sea, setting foot onto the cold beach sand. The man carried a large wooden crate on his shoulders all by himself. After he walked inland enough, he threw the crate onto the sand, creating a loud slam!
The people who were near enough to hear the sound started to gather around the man.
"Brothers! We have been given a chance to redeem ourselves!" The man shouted in Noman as he bent down and jammed his fingers into the small crease near the lid of the crate. And after a second, the lid went flying as the contents of the crate were revealed.
The people surrounding the young man gasped as they saw what lay inside the crate. It was weapons.
And not just weapons. Packed tightly along the edges of the crate were thick, fur-lined clothes, sealed rations, and even water.
Astor, who was now standing near the outer edge of the crowd beside Dawn, saw it too.
Looks like everyone here speaks Noman. That must mean that the ship I was just thrown off belonged to the Velmir Kingdom — specifically speaking, it belonged to the Ember Sanctum, the governing body of the Velmir Kingdom, one of the three Holy Churches, also referred to as the Church of the Eternal Flame.
Now, why would the Sanctum give weapons to heinous criminals who were banished to Borealis as a death sentence?? Is this their way of showing mercy? Astor laughed at that idea. But after analysing the situation for a bit more, he came to another conclusion.
But why only 12 weapons? That's nowhere near enough. Did they purposely give us fewer weapons than we would need? There is only one longsword, and the rest of the weapons don't even look like something you'd use to kill wild beasts...
They are trying to divide us!
***
The tall man removed a single longsword from the crate and pointed it in the sky, "You see this, brothers! The Ember Sanctum has given us another chance! A chance to redeem our sins! A chance to return to Mytherra! This is not a death sentence!" He screamed.
Chatter spread through the crowd as the man's loud words broke the silence of Borealis.
"Yeah! That's right! We will kill off the beasts!"
"I'd like to see them try!"
"Damn Sanctum, trying to show us pity!"
"They'll regret this! We'll make sure of that!"
"H-He's right! If we have weapons, we won't have to worry about beasts! We can easily return to Mytherra!" A man said as he slowly took steps towards the wooden crate.
He then bent down and took out a machete before turning around and saying,
"Yes! We can—"
However, before the man could speak another word, his head slid from his neck and dropped onto the ground.
A moment later, his knees buckled, and his body collapsed, staining the pale sand in a deep red, as blood continued spewing from the man's headless body.