Chapter 1
I met Rite.
It was whiter than any day I could remember. As if blanketing the entire world in white wasn’t enough, the sky continued dumping down fierce snow. The village fortune-teller had warned me that something felt off about the day, but I’d headed home anyway.
I trudged through snow piled up to my knees. I could feel the thin leather of my boots stiffening with cold. Even with my fur hat pulled low and my coat wrapped tight, the biting wind sliced through me like a blade.
My cabin sat in a forest that wasn’t particularly deep, but the snow had slowed me to a crawl. I should have been home by now.
I was taking longer strides, hurrying with growing impatience, when I saw it. Through the driving snow, a basket came into view beneath a tree.
What is that?
White breath escaped between my lips as they moved silently. A basket in the winter forest looked completely out of place—like a black dot on an endless white canvas. Not much snow had gathered on it yet, which meant it hadn’t been there long.
Someone had come and gone from this forest. This forest where no one lived but me, teeming with monsters.
A distant fear shot up my spine straight to the crown of my head. I looked around—there were no traces of anyone. Even if there had been, the white snow would have swallowed them instantly.
I approached cautiously, alert. The basket was sturdy, its weave uniform and precise, as if machine-made. Nothing crafted by an engineer’s hand came cheap. No one around here would simply discard something like this.
Wealthy people didn’t live in the frontier village that bordered the forest. Most were folks who could barely take care of themselves. And there were no engineers in this village to begin with. Except for me.
I hadn’t made this. It was something from far away.
Should I just ignore it and walk on?
But what am I thinking—leaving it this close to my home?
Someone entered the forest? Why?
Disconnected questions stretched out endlessly in my mind. It was obvious that even if I left it now, I’d come running back tomorrow to check anyway. Looking now would be the smartest choice.
Once I’d made the decision, my hesitation vanished. I carefully cleared away the accumulated snow, revealing a thin white cloth. Whatever was wrapped inside was smaller than my forearm, or roughly the same size. As I gently lifted the covering, something beneath the cloth squirmed. My body went rigid.
“Who… is this…”
Whose child is this? My voiced question was swallowed by the snowstorm. It was a baby. A newborn who couldn’t even open its eyes yet. Despite its skin being frozen a bright, angry red, it wasn’t dead—it was moving its lips and body. In the grotesquely white winter forest, the baby’s black hair fluttered in the wind.
The cloth slipping through my fingers was so impossibly soft that I couldn’t process it immediately. Everything wrapping the child was high quality. This wasn’t a baby abandoned by ordinary people.
Coming to this forest deliberately in this weather to leave it behind—the intention was crystal clear. It had been abandoned. Not abandoned with some foolish hope that someone might raise it, but abandoned to die.
In this era, there were probably more abandoned babies than discarded scrap metal. I hadn’t counted myself, but thinking about the world I’d grown up in, it seemed plausible enough.
It would be right to just ignore it and leave. The baby wasn’t related to me, and I preferred not to get tangled up in other people’s affairs.
But if I turned back now, the baby would be left in the forest to die.
I’d never thought much about the cries of forest animals being eaten by predators, but strangely, knowing this was a human baby bothered me. Was I feeling some kind of kinship with my own species?
Just as I was bending down to examine the baby’s condition more closely, my finger brushed against its cheek. A light touch, but even through my rough leather gloves, I could feel how impossibly soft it was. As if that gesture had been some kind of signal, the baby began to whimper.
“Uh, what?”
The light whimpering quickly grew louder, soon transforming into a heartbreaking wail. As if it had only just realized it had been abandoned.
The baby’s crying cut through the sound of the driving snow. Just as the cold froze my fingertips, the sound seemed to freeze my ears, my entire body.
Without thinking, I reached to cover the baby’s mouth but jerked my hand back. The baby was so small it looked like it would suffocate if I covered its mouth. What should I do? I felt sweat forming on my back despite the cold.
Making loud noises in the forest was dangerous. This could draw every creature nearby. I hastily picked up the basket, then set it down again. With it wobbling like this, I couldn’t run properly.
I tore off my thick overcoat and wrapped it around the baby that was already bundled in white cloth. Then I clutched it against my chest and ran.
Though the snowstorm made it nearly impossible to see ahead, I knew where to go. The path home was one I could find even with my eyes closed.
***
As I shoved the creaking wooden door firmly closed with my back, all noise faded. Even the howling snowstorm gentled to something like a lullaby. The baby had stopped crying at some point.
I could hardly believe there was a living thing in my arms. After exhaling a breath that felt more like a sigh, I moved away from the door. Being exposed to this brutal winter, its condition couldn’t be good. It might not last long—or maybe it had already died during the short journey to my house.
What if it’s dead?
Though I’d brought it with me, I suddenly lacked the courage to check, afraid of what I’d find. Thanks to being wrapped tightly in my overcoat, not even a fingernail of the baby was visible.
If it died, should I bury it back where I found it? Or should I report it to the Knights? I couldn’t report it myself, so I’d have to go down to the village and ask someone. But wouldn’t it look suspicious if I suddenly showed up with a dead baby?
My mouth felt parched. I’d brought the baby home, but I wasn’t confident my decision had been the right one.
It was hard to say which was more disturbing—imagining a baby dying alone in the forest, or confirming a dead baby here in my home.
If I hadn’t brought the baby back, it wouldn’t have survived the day. Whether it froze to death or somehow miraculously endured, it would have eventually been eaten by whatever monster came searching for food. So even if the baby was dead, I shouldn’t feel guilty.
I kept trying to convince myself of that when I felt a small movement inside my coat. That subtle shift froze both my thoughts and my body. The faint movement stopped quickly, but one thing became certain: the baby was still alive.
I hurried to the bed and carefully laid it down. While untying the sleeves of my coat that I’d knotted tightly, I suddenly realized how cold the air in the house had grown. I went to the large stove, loaded it with firewood, and struck a match.
It would take time for the small flame to consume all the wood, but I had no choice. My portable flamethrower had broken recently.
“Should have fixed it earlier.”
Clicking my tongue softly, I carried the baby, still wrapped in my coat, to the sofa near the stove.
As I unwrapped the coat and started unwinding the white cloth, I felt something hard under my hand.
“…What is this?”
Something solid pressed against my palm near the baby’s head. Even when I carefully probed it with my fingertips, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Tilting my head in confusion, I unwrapped more of the cloth, and suddenly I understood why the baby had been abandoned.
The baby wasn’t ordinary. It was strange. Not only were there two black horns jutting out from its jet-black hair, but one arm had tough black skin growing from the wrist all the way up the forearm.
That skin was like scales—reptilian. When the baby inhaled and its chest swelled, the skin rose with it, and when it exhaled and its chest fell, the skin sank back down in rhythm. Strangely, only the right arm was like this. The left arm was completely normal.
I wondered if this was truly a human baby, or if I’d somehow mistaken a monster’s offspring for one, but I’d never heard of a monster that looked like this. More than that, aside from the horns and the scaled arm, everything else was identical to a human baby.
Is this why it was abandoned?
“…So that’s why you were abandoned.”
Just like me.
