The Forgotten Field

Talia stared at him with eyes full of anticipation.

“Well? What do you think?”

“...It’s decent enough to drink.”

A faint trace of disappointment crossed her face at his indifferent reply.

“That’s all?”

Varkas frowned. He had no idea what this woman was hoping to hear. Was he supposed to lavish praise on the wine? Her behavior, oddly emphatic and devoid of context, stirred a quiet suspicion within him, yet he had no desire to hurt the feelings of a woman who had evidently gone to such lengths for his sake.

He opened his mouth, intending to say something more.

At that moment, a searing sensation flared in his throat.

Varkas instinctively gripped the edge of the table. The liquid sliding down his esophagus became a blade, scraping viciously through his insides.

“...What did you put in the wine?”

“I didn’t put anything in it.”

She denied it in a trembling voice.

Still staring at her with bewildered eyes, Varkas slowly rose to his feet. If he didn’t lie down immediately, he felt certain he would collapse in an utterly undignified heap.

He staggered to the bedside and dropped heavily onto the mattress. As blood gradually returned to his head, the wavering haze clouding his vision settled little by little.

But the weakness only grew worse.

Had she somehow given him liquor so absurdly strong that it mimicked poison?

His fingers were stiffening as though they had been paralyzed. He struggled to clench and unclench them while Talia approached the bed and studied his face intently.

“How do you feel?”

Unable to grasp the purpose behind her question, he narrowed his eyes.

What exactly did this woman want to know?

Even so, he felt he had to answer.

He parted his lips to describe what he was experiencing.

Then something scorching surged up from the inferno raging inside his stomach.

Varkas instinctively twisted to one side.

A thick, metallic-tasting liquid welled up his throat and spilled violently across the sheets.

It took several long seconds before he realized the blood soaking the bed had come from his own body.

As darkness swallowed his vision, he gasped harshly for air.

From somewhere far away, he heard someone desperately calling his name.

He wanted to answer.

But his tongue, frozen cold and lifeless, refused to move.

His collapsing body was sinking somewhere.

A river of blood.

The same river he had seen thousands of times in dreams.

Within that viscous current of death, he finally released the thing he had been clinging to with all his strength.

Then—

Perfect silence descended.

A world of pure nothingness, where nothing could be felt.

* * *

The boy is dreaming.

In his dream, he sits with a girl whose thick golden-blond hair gleams like ripened wheat resting upon his lap as he presses his lips against her rosy mouth.

The playful kisses, like birds rubbing their beaks together, gradually deepen into something rich and intoxicating.

Although he knows she is still far too young for such things, the boy pays it no mind.

Before long, his entire body burns like a furnace.

Even while consumed by that painful heat, an overwhelming happiness blossoms deep within his chest.

The girl who has driven him into this fever chatters on endlessly.

Looking down at her innocent face, utterly oblivious to the yearning consuming him, the boy feels a pain that is both exquisitely sweet and agonizingly sharp.

In the end, he loses what little self-control remains and kisses her with even greater passion.

As though answering him, the girl’s fingers slip deep into his hair.

Desperately suppressing the urge to slide his hand beneath her clothes, he forces himself to pull away.

The girl looks up at him, cheeks flushed, wearing a shy smile.

At that very instant, the ecstasy possessing the boy vanishes like smoke.

He opens his eyes, hollow and desolate.

Almost immediately, overwhelming self-loathing engulfs him.

He cannot understand why he keeps dreaming such dreams.

In reality, the girl is nothing more than an impurity disrupting his life.

The image of himself holding her in his arms, smiling with genuine happiness, feels alien and grotesque.

Soon, he dismisses the illusion woven by his own mind as nothing more than an unavoidable deviation brought on by his growing body.

Perhaps it is only natural for the body to react to the nearest member of the opposite sex.

Having arrived at that rational conclusion, the boy rises from his bed.

Beyond the window, dawn burns with a razor-sharp brilliance.

Sunlight rolls in like waves, shattering the lingering fragments of the dream clinging to his vision and washing them away.

His world returns to equilibrium.

A perfectly ordered world, purified beyond flaw.

That was the life he was meant to live.

The boy repeats to himself:

This unwelcome confusion will soon come to an end.

He will continue walking the unchanging path laid out for him since birth, while the girl will remain nothing more than an unfortunate connection from the past.

Having scrubbed away even the last residue of unnecessary emotion, the boy leaves his sanctuary.

Yet in the next moment—

His world is swallowed by blood and darkness.

The young man is trampling something in a filthy alley reeking of decay.

His gaze slowly lowers from the crescent moon glimmering faintly between the clouds.

The face of a man, drained of every drop of blood and [N O V E L I G H T] turned ashen gray, fills his vision.

The man’s teeth have all been ripped out, exposing blood-soaked gums, while his burst blood vessels leave his rolled-back eyes grotesquely swollen.

His mouth hangs unnaturally wide open.

Where his tongue should be, there is only a dark mass of coagulated blood.

He soon remembers.

What he is crushing beneath his foot is that man’s tongue.

The young man shifts his gaze toward the man’s severed wrist.

The cleanly severed hand lies half-buried among a heap of fish discarded by fishermen.

His eyes move to the fingers protruding from the rotting carcasses.

He quietly asks himself,

What am I doing here?

The priest’s eyes, hard as forged steel, watching him through the crack in a doorway, come back to him.

Then his father’s gaze flashes through his mind—the look of someone staring at something deeply repulsive.

Had they already foreseen this scene within me?

After staring at the corpse’s face, twisted into an expression fit for the depths of hell, the young man finally leaves the secluded alley.

At that moment, moonlight breaks through the clouds and lays bare his blood-soaked body.

No one looking at him now would ever imagine he was an Imperial knight.

Perhaps...

Perhaps he no longer even resembled a human being.

Lost in thought, he slowly walks through the darkness.

The wind from the river blows without end through the suffocating silence.

Yet the stench of blood surrounding him refuses to fade.

A question suddenly grips him.

This isn’t the first time I’ve killed someone.

Nor will it be the last.

Then why...

Why do I feel this way?

Beyond the rushing waters of the Silviska River, a girl’s desperate scream echoes through the air.

The sudden realization that it was that voice which drove him to this place sends a chill racing down his spine.

Danger.

That single word pierces his mind like the tip of a spear.

Only then does he realize he is standing before a boundary he must never cross.

What will become of me...

if I step beyond this line?

The dream that has haunted him for months flashes before his eyes.

The dream that sets his body ablaze and fills him with desires he never wished to possess.

But that vision is soon stained by the image of Bernadette wasting away into skin and bone, and by the face of the Emperor, who holds the entire world in his hands yet has willingly become a slave to a single woman.

Then another image surfaces.

A girl lying beneath the man who would soon become a rotting corpse, screaming in despair.

Within those eyes, shredded by tears, terror, and hopelessness...

He instinctively knows that his own destruction awaits him.

But it isn’t too late.

If he has taken the wrong path...

He need only turn back.

Just as he always has, he mercilessly cuts away every impurity threatening to disturb the solid world he has built.

And with that...

The young man’s world sinks once more into a deathlike tranquility.

Within those deep, dark waters...

He cannot surface for a very long time.

* * *

He regained consciousness around the time the blazing crimson glow of sunset had completely filled the room.

Forcing open eyelids that felt as stiff as untanned leather, Varkas slowly looked around the scarlet-drenched chamber with unfocused eyes.

For quite some time, he could not even recognize where he was.

Only after several minutes did the frozen gears of his mind begin turning again with painful reluctance.

’...How long was I unconscious?’