# Chapter 50
Before opening his eyes, it felt like he had been sinking in cool yet comforting water for a long time, but once he saw the light, everything felt completely different.
A musty stone chamber, unpleasantly echoing voices of many people whispering, and their equally contemptuous gazes.
Among them, the only one who treated him kindly was Kalvern with his red hair that resembled the flickering of a torch.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Rising from the black pool in the stone chamber, Levi, who had been crouching and hesitating, had no choice but to trust Kalvern, who approached him without hesitation. He was the only one who casually grabbed the black hand that Levi was desperately trying to hide behind his back.
“I want you to protect me. I want to live.”
There was a strange power in Kalvern’s words. Looking back now, rather than a strange power, they seemed to create small ripples somewhere in the deep, pitch-black sleeping memories.
“Is it wrong to be alive?”
“I, sob, I want to live too… hic, why can’t I…”
“Who wants to die… sob… I don’t want to die…”
It felt like reading words written with a black quill on black paper. Following the endlessly blurry voice, when he reached out his hand, he found himself carefully tracing Kalvern’s face with his black hand.
“Levi.”
“Levi.”
The faint voice of a boy overlapped with Kalvern’s voice.
What followed was his own words from some day he couldn’t remember.
“If staying by your side is the way for you to live, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Though it was merely a remnant of a lost memory, it felt like an unbreakable promise with a young boy he couldn’t remember.
Despite Levi’s black fingertips touching his face, Kalvern was still breathing, and his voice remained clear. On his gently smiling face, someone else’s afterimage lingered.
And so, with the thought of “wanting to keep Kalvern alive,” he volunteered to stay by his side. He grabbed Kalvern’s outstretched hand and assassinated those who were said to threaten Kalvern’s life, using them as sustenance.
“Kalvern merely used you cruelly.”
If not for Raziel, he would never have known that Kalvern’s words about “wanting to live” were just brainwashing to manipulate him freely.
While being nothing more than a puppet, he had completely forgotten.
Even though he had forgotten everything else, he remembered this Black Forest clearly.
Levi, who had been gazing wistfully at the tent, suddenly turned as if remembering something. His footsteps, naturally flowing as if he remembered everything, quickened. Raziel and two soldiers silently followed behind him.
Where Levi stopped, there was a small pond. The pond was so bizarrely black, like the black thorn trees, that its depth seemed unfathomable, like a distant abyss.
While it might be frightening and terrifying to some, for Levi, it was a place that made his heart race just by looking at it, enough to change his breathing. A strange sensation approached him, as if his real heart was gently dissolved in that water, watching him.
Raziel stood beside Levi, who was standing in front of the pond, seemingly peering into its depths. Raziel’s gaze looking down at the pond was not much different from Levi’s wistful eyes.
“You probably don’t remember.”
Raziel, kneeling down, removed his long gloves that reached just below his right elbow. A black hand, not much different from Levi’s right hand, gently stirred the black water of the pond.
“How I’ve waited for days, for years, looking down at this place, for you to regenerate.”
Only then did Levi’s eyes turn toward Raziel. The one who called himself Levi’s only brother was casually touching the black water, which was nothing less than poison to humans.
“You waited for me?”
“Yes.”
The black eyes looking back at Levi rippled gently like the ripples spreading from his fingertips.
Just as Raziel, having put his gloves back on, rose and reached out his hand to Levi—
A sharp sound cutting through the wind was heard from somewhere.
“Argh!”
One of the soldiers standing behind screamed after being hit by an arrow. Soon after, the other soldier fell, struck by an arrow before he could prepare himself.
The poisoned arrows that penetrated the areas unprotected by armor quickly made them spit blood, and the two soldiers stopped breathing after coughing with faces that turned bright red as if blood had spread all over. Seeing this, Levi tried to shield Raziel with his body as he had always done for Kalvern, but instead, Raziel pulled him into his arms, completely protecting him.
Another sound of cutting wind put Levi on high alert. Right after, a suppressed groan escaped from Raziel’s mouth.
“Ugh…”
Levi, cradled in Raziel’s arms and practically buried in his robe, quickly raised his head to examine his face. With the mask, he could only see Raziel’s eyes, so he couldn’t tell anything except the twitching around his eyes.
Another arrow.
It precisely pierced through Raziel’s right arm—his black hand—right in front of Levi.
“…!”
One shot to Raziel’s right shoulder, another to his black hand.
A scene flashed in Levi’s mind. That moment right after his rampage when countless soldiers swarmed in, shooting arrows. That day when innumerable voices called him a monster and cornered him…
“Levi!”
As if waking him from the nightmare-like memory of that day, a man’s voice called out from far away.
Yes, that blonde man was definitely in the nightmare too.
❖ ❖ ❖
Ion was able to enter the Black Forest solely thanks to Hest’s help.
After meeting with Ion, who had urgently sought him out, Hest immediately understood his situation and the need for a secret passage. The place they discreetly moved to was a small village slightly away from the border.
Ion was incredibly frustrated as they were actually increasing the distance from the Black Forest when they should have been crossing the border immediately. Still, he anxiously followed Hest, thinking he must have a plan, until they arrived in front of a small stable in the cramped village.
“You’re not suggesting we ride horses, are you?”
Being a small village, the stable only had three horses left, and they didn’t look to be in particularly good condition.
Hearing Ion’s frustrated voice, Hest told him to stop complaining and follow, leading deeper into the stable, where beneath the straw-covered floor was a deep cellar.
It was suspicious enough that there was a cellar in a stable rather than in a house, but Hest went ahead and entered first. Ion was initially puzzled about the identity of this cellar, but at some point, he was surprised to realize it had become a stone tunnel.
“I started building it a while ago. I had some suspicious feelings just before the Caron Empire claimed the Black Forest as its territory.”
Hest said that he began preparing this tunnel more than ten years ago. Since he had started building it just before the Black Forest became Caron Empire territory and security became tight, fortunately, it had not been discovered by anyone.
Ion, who had been amazed that Hest had thought of creating such a deep tunnel, especially one this long, as a secret passage, tensed up when he started seeing what looked like black tree roots among the stones and soil. As black thorn trees and their roots became more visible than the stones and soil, Hest’s torch revealed that the path ahead was blocked.
When they removed the old wooden boards covering the tunnel, the black landscape that Ion hadn’t seen for a long time greeted him. Before he could even be soaked in the damp scent exhaled by the Black Forest, Hest grabbed Ion and urged him:
“You have to go alone from here on. I’ll hide around here, watch the tunnel surroundings and the situation, and send a signal if it seems dangerous. I know you’ll manage well, but don’t do anything risky.”
“Thank you, Hest.”
Ion quickly replied, putting on a pure white mask he had prepared and immediately set off. Hest’s eyes, watching him leave, were deeply sunken with anxiety and tension.
Running like that, Ion arrived at a tent house. The tunnel’s location wasn’t far from the tent house to begin with, and since the thorn tree path remained unchanged from the past until now, he could easily find his way there.
Upon reaching the tent, Ion’s eyes scanned the surroundings, which were like a bundle of memories.
‘There are signs that someone has been maintaining this place.’
The items he had last seen remained in their positions. There was no sign of dust having settled, and some things were even cleaner than when he had seen them. While he was looking questioningly at the traces of someone deliberately and consistently maintaining the place, he soon discovered new footprints.
‘These… were made recently. No, not just recently, but just moments ago…!’
Ion’s golden eyes widened. Without time to think further, he dashed toward the pond. That path was one he could never forget even if he wanted to, so Ion’s steps were unwavering.
The moment the pond came into view.
He saw two people in black clothes and two soldiers in silver armor. Ion could immediately recognize one of the two black-clothed people with black hair because one of them wasn’t wearing a mask.
Just as he was about to call out the name with overwhelming emotion at finally meeting him, a sharp sound cutting through the wind suddenly came from behind him. He thought someone was targeting him as an intruder, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
The arrows that passed by Ion precisely struck the two soldiers who were standing like sentries near the pond. While the two soldiers collapsed to the ground, spitting blood and convulsing, the sound of arrows flying was heard again.
Levi was the target of the arrows, but fortunately or unfortunately, the black-haired man standing beside him shielded him with his body.
While Ion was grateful that someone had protected Levi, this black-haired man was the very person who had taken Levi away right in front of his eyes. With no sympathy for him, Ion needed to immediately separate him from Levi and escape from whoever was shooting these bizarre arrows.
“Levi!”
Ion approached within reach, called Levi’s name, and grabbed his shoulder.
“Come here, it’s dangerous…!”
But before he could finish his words, his breath was abruptly cut off.
Ion swallowed his incomplete breath as he looked at the black hand tightly gripping his neck and Levi’s face.
On Levi’s face, as he strangled Ion’s neck, there were clear emotions of anger and hatred.
