Chapter 19: The Lost Child

After what felt like an eternity, Arthur’s body twitched.

He didn’t wake up all at once; it was a slow, painful drag back to consciousness. His body felt heavy, like he was buried under a pile of wet sand.

He peeled his eyes open. The world was a blurry mess; the violet sky was still there, swirling with nausea-inducing geometric shapes, but the rain had stopped. The forest was dead silent. No wind. No growls. Just a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away.

Am I dead?

Arthur pushed himself up. His arms trembled violently, threatening to give out. He managed to roll onto his back, gasping for air.

Flashbacks of the intense fight he had just survived a few hours ago washed over him—and with them the realization that he actually managed to break the seal on his core.

“I did it,” he whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his throat. “I actually did it.”

He sat there for a long time, just breathing as he watched the floating trees drift aimlessly in the distorted gravity. He checked his body for any fractures or deep wounds, but luckily, aside from the scrapes and bruises, there was nothing fatal.

He grabbed his cane, which lay a few feet away. The tip was charred black, looking like it had been dipped in lava.

Arthur used it to hoist himself up. He swayed, dizzy, but managed to stay upright.

“Now… where is the wolf?”

He turned to look at the clearing behind him.

His eyes widened.

There was no wolf. There was no mud.

In a cone-shaped blast zone stretching twenty feet from where Arthur had collapsed, the forest floor had been scorched clean. The wet mud was baked into cracked ceramic, while a massive tree trunk had been snapped cleanly in half.

“There is no way I did that?” Arthur muttered in disbelief, staring at his own hands. Sparks of blue mana danced faintly between his fingers before flickering out.

He walked toward the impact site, expecting to find the body of the wolf or something. But instead he found shattered pieces of space.

Thousands of shimmering, violet shards littered the center of the crater. They faded in and out of existence, dissolving into mist before reforming, just like everything in this strange dimension.

He stepped closer, crunching the mist under his boots.

And then he saw it.

In the center of the shards, curled into a tight ball, was a person.

Arthur gripped his cane, holding it like a club, and edged closer.

It was a girl. She looked older than him—maybe fifteen or sixteen. Her clothes were a mess of tattered silk, looking like a noble’s outfit that had been dragged through a war zone.

But it wasn’t her clothes that made Arthur drop his guard slightly. It was her hair; the color was unmistakable.

Silver.

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Not grey, not white. Silver. The same metallic shade that Arthur saw in the mirror every morning. The signature of the Ashborn blood.

“No way,” Arthur whispered.

He dropped to his knees beside her.

She was burning up. He could feel the heat radiating off her skin from a foot away. It wasn’t fever; it was raw mana. She felt like an overheating radiator.

“Hey,” Arthur said softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t react. Her breathing remained as shallow as before.

Arthur looked around. The violet sky was darkening, and the shadows in the twisted forest were stretching, looking more and more like claws.

Hmm, I can’t leave her here, he thought. Whoever she is, she might be an Ashborn too, which means saving her will benefit me, one way or another. He looked at the girl, then at the rock where he had hidden earlier. It was about fifty yards away.

“This is going to suck,” Arthur groaned.

He took off his heavy coat and laid it on the ground, then he carefully rolled the unconscious girl onto it. After that he grabbed the sleeves and started pulling.