The sun set early in Northernmost. The sunset created as the sun sank behind the Beriela Mountain Range only held power for a few minutes. The surroundings darkened in an instant. The fortunate thing was that Northernmost wasn’t a large city. The path leading to the square was very simple. Anya moved his urgent steps toward the inn while brushing his hand along the wall. White breath poured out the entire time he walked.
“Ex…excuse me.”
Just then, a painful voice that sounded squeezed out reached him. Anya’s ears twitched like a herbivore detecting sound. The surroundings without a single torch stuck in a holder were pitch black. Only the sound of ominous wind could be heard while the surroundings were quiet.
‘Did I hear wrong….’
Just as he was about to firmly secure the robe’s hood with his hand and start walking again, the same tone flowed in on the wind once more. It was filled with fear.
“Pl-please help me. Please….”
He hadn’t heard wrong. Anya searched the surroundings looking for that desperate voice.
“Wh-where are you?”
The tip of his lips trembled because the temperature had dropped rapidly. Oh, thank God. A voice full of joy trembled finely and led Anya. Following the strange voice, Anya finally arrived at a certain point in the wall. There was a very small hole there. It was a hole just big enough for a thin, small person, about a child, to pass through. Had the workers forgotten and not finished properly?
I’m cold, I’m going crazy from the cold, please help me. Huk, huk.
The voice flowed out from inside that very hole. The pitifully crying voice—its gender couldn’t be determined. Anya lay down and looked between the dark, damp gap. Something wriggled in the darkness.
“Help me! Please help me! Mage-nim, please help me!”
A white figure suddenly burst through the darkness.
“Huk…!”
His innocent eyes resembling hazelnuts widened as if they would pop out in an instant. Goosebumps rose along his spine. A person was trapped in the gap of the wall. Through the hole, a man stuck his face out with difficulty and shouted. His gaunt face fallen into despair even looked like a madman engulfed in insanity, perhaps from the relief of thinking he’d finally survived.
“Save me. Please save me, please. Save me.”
The hole was too small—a size that an adult male absolutely couldn’t squeeze through.
“H-how did… y-you end up in s-such a place….”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. When I opened my eyes, I was like this. I’m cold. I’m so cold I feel like my hands will be cut off.”
The man sobbed. He reached his trembling hand out of the hole. The man’s hand had turned blue… like a dead person’s. Perhaps even if he returned home, he might lose his hands forever. Anya crawled on the snow ground and approached the hole.
“The gap is t-too small for you to get out. I, I’ll go c-call people.”
The wall necessarily had to have watchtowers to later station guards and patrol units. So they built a double wall and created a path on top. Perhaps this man had fallen down while participating in construction work above and gotten trapped. But the hole was too small for the man to squeeze through.
“No, you can’t! No! No!”
The man began to scream like mad. At the voice that sounded like several tones mixed together, Anya stopped crawling to the opposite side and turned around with eyes wide open.
“Don’t leave me alone. Please, mage-nim. This place is too lonely and frightening.”
Was this the same person who had just screamed? This time the man began to cry pitifully, making sounds. He seemed to have lost his mind from the shock.
“I, I have a hammer.”
The man bent down and then hurriedly dragged something over. He stuck the end of the hammer out of the hole and said urgently.
“Just a moment… please come here for a moment, mage-nim.”
Somehow, white breath poured out with each exhale. In an instant, the temperature around them rapidly dropped and cold rushed in enough to make the body tremble. It was an extremely desolate and strange atmosphere. Anya hesitated, standing one step away, unable to readily approach the man, crushed by the atmosphere. The man shouted in a tearful voice.
“I tried to break through and get out. I just needed to break it but I couldn’t because of the magic device. The magic device is protecting the wall so I couldn’t get out! Damn magic device! This cursed thing!”
Anya’s body flinched at the man’s voice full of anger. Then the man began to cry out again.
“N-no. I absolutely didn’t curse at you, mage-nim. Huuk, huk. I was just so scared. Do you know the feeling of sensation disappearing? Mage-nim?”
The hand that had escaped through the wall’s gap had eerily protruding blue veins.
As if it wasn’t alive… The moment Anya thought such a thing about a poor victim who had lost his way was terrible in itself, he hurriedly looked around.
‘This man is a citizen you must care for. He’s a person from Northernmost like Joel and Ronan. Get a grip, Anya Evernight!’
While Anya paced back and forth trying to think of a solution, the man said quietly.
“A child is waiting at home, huuk. If I die… my child without a father… keup.”
Those words were like magic.
In an instant, Anya’s footsteps came to a stop. Anya thought of Raelli and Ronan. Then the faces of the other widows and children also came to mind one after another. Those who had just sat around the old dining table together and shared stew. Those who lived diligently, grateful for even small things—those he must care for.
“Mage-nim. This place is too lonely and frightening.”
The man whispered endlessly to Anya.
“Could you hold my hand? I won’t wish for much. I just… want to receive someone’s comfort even on my last journey.”
The man now muttered in a daze like someone robbed even of hope. The bloodless arm sticking out through the wall’s gap drooped downward.
“My children… they’ll grow up well even without me….”
Then the man quietly began to sing a song in an incomprehensible language. It was an extremely gloomy and tragic melody.
‘Joel, Ronan… such tragedies must not happen anymore.’
Anya hesitantly clasped the man’s hand. At that moment, the song’s melody stopped. In the moment when quiet stillness dominated the entire world, the man’s pale lips curved upward in the darkness.
“Ah!”
The man’s sharp nails dug into Anya’s palm that he was clasping. Anya was startled and tried to remove the man’s hand, but.
“Just a moment, just a moment… please hold on.”
The man didn’t let go of Anya’s hand. It was tremendous strength. When he pulled and dragged Anya’s wrist, the young body was helplessly dragged close to the wall’s gap. The path made by Anya’s feet being dragged across the snowfield was wretchedly drawn.
Soon, blue eyes filling pupils that protruded from the darkness flashed toward Anya.
[Human. The desire humans want most.]
[I will make it come true. You and I pursue the same desire.]
For an instant, it felt like the illusion that cold energy was flowing in through his blood vessels. Anya wanted to scream but couldn’t even make a sound as if someone was gripping his throat. A flock of crows poured over the wall and flew toward Northernmost. And simultaneously, the rim of Anya’s brown pupils glowed faintly blue and then disappeared in an instant.
“Mage-nim! Mage-nim! Are you alright?”
Anya came to his senses at the voice calling him. The boy leaned against the wall and exhaled rough breaths. A man was still trapped in the gap of the wall.
“I, I’m alright.”
Why am I sitting here? Anya immediately got up from the ground and shook off the snow stuck to his bottom. Dizziness arose enough to make his head spin, but it was only for a very brief moment.
“H-how did… you end up tr-trapped?”
While Anya spoke to reassure the man, on the other hand he racked his brain for how to overcome this difficulty.
“As I was doing construction work, I ended up inside the gap, and at a bad timing, damn it….”
The man ground his teeth and made agonized sounds.
“The magic device activated….”
The dead things beyond the wall feared magic. That’s why Tildyen, the empire’s most important strategic point, needed a capable mage above all else. They couldn’t forever depend on ancient magic devices that were thousands of years old and extend their precarious lives treading on thin ice. Everyone had welcomed the new wall and magic device, but somehow the man didn’t seem to. Perhaps it was because he ended up in a life-threatening crisis.
“Mage-nim… since mage-nim can use magic power, couldn’t you dismantle the magic device? If you dismantle it, I can break the wall with my hammer and get out. I’ll only break a little bit. Just enough for my body to barely squeeze through….”
The man’s words grew faster. Later on, even his pronunciation became subtly tangled, allowing one to feel just how desperate he was. Looking around, indeed small magic orbs that seemed to have been installed by Riario were embedded throughout the complex magic circles in various spots of the castle wall.
