I know nothing. But I can know.
This sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. He didn’t know the reason or meaning, but that’s just how it was. Miros couldn’t believe everything he was feeling. The sensation sharp and distinct like a scream was so clear that he couldn’t believe it.
The strange pressure that had been seeping up from his toes soon squeezed his entire body. His shoulders stiffened, his fingertips froze. He was just standing there, but even that was difficult. His whole body creaked and screamed. He tried desperately to move somehow, but his legs wouldn’t listen. His heart beat faster and harder.
An unknown weight crushed his entire body. No, everything about him.
What fucking disaster is this? He couldn’t even spit out a simple curse. Then suddenly, all the hair on his body stood on end. Miros raised his head without realizing it.
Ah, no. Miros only now realized he was already standing beneath ‘it’.
He didn’t know how long this had been here. The moment he perceived it was already too late. It was quietly looking down at him.
At first, it was so massive that he mistook it for something entangled in some old tree. But it wasn’t a simple tree. Countless vines formed one massive shape. Those vines shone blackly and were frozen cold, but to Miros’s eyes they seemed to writhe alive. Between each vine gap, flesh as pale and hard as marble was revealed. It was sacred yet ominously vivid.
Creak creak—his neck barely lifted. It wasn’t a conscious movement. His muscles were forcibly pulled without him knowing. No matter how much he stretched and raised his neck, it was so high he couldn’t see the end. The head visible faintly had no eyes. Instead, branches bleached white protruded like horns. Those horns were intertwined and extended upward in a very delicate manner, but their ends were sharp and pointed like needles.
The illusion that its branches and vines vibrated as if breathing even though no wind blew. No, was this just a simple hallucination?
It didn’t move. Not even once. But everything in this space seemed to be crushed. Air, earth, light, shadow—even sound was being caught and ground up.
Utterly bizarre. Miros couldn’t put a name to what he was facing now. He felt a sense of alienation that made him feel he shouldn’t call it a tree or a monster. Then suddenly a certain fact flashed through his mind.
This is just ‘itself’.
An absurd delusion. I must have gone mad. Not knowing what this was or what perception to liken it to in the first place. He was just looking. That was the only fact.
At that moment, some texture wavered.
A heavy, low sound rang out in the silence. It felt like a perfectly natural right for that thing. That everything is justified. Its sound was like the breath of a very old, subsiding deep cave. Emitting a single word with blurred resonance and emotion.
“Goodness, why… why are you here?”
The texture of the roots that had been vibrating slowly from its body creaked subtly.
Miros didn’t know what this was. No, actually he knew. He just hadn’t recalled it himself.
This was a headless outline, proof of those who had taken root. Levia Rishian. A very ancient thing. The progenitor of oak trees, one of the world’s origins.
Levia recognized this human standing before him at a glance.
He couldn’t not know. How the appearance had changed wasn’t an important matter. Miros was a child who received a Star, and that radiance was still clear.
Miros was the prettiest child. The very best above all else.
Miros as an adult had become a very fierce form. A large, hardened body, tough and rough skin was mottled. Thick joints protruded, and in his sharp eyes no love reflected.
Of course, that didn’t mean Miros wasn’t pretty. To Levia’s eyes, any appearance was lovely and the best. He was still the prettiest child.
Then suddenly a question arose. Why on earth was Miros here? He’d sent him back with his own hands to live well in the human world, for the future. He didn’t know how he’d entered here in the first place. It wasn’t a path one could simply walk up to.
The Miros before his eyes now was just looking at Levia, paralyzed with fear.
How can this be? Our child even has a pretty expression like he’s about to cry. It was an absurdly carefree and eerie thought.
Levia’s branches trembled very faintly. That trembling wasn’t simply from being flustered. Perhaps it was from pity and affection, and inexplicable sadness.
I still only see you as lovely.
“Miros.”
Still, it can’t be helped. I have to send him back. Though I don’t know what happened. The moment Levia moved to gesture, Miros’s knees buckled right there.
Levia’s single word seeped in cruelly. His green eyes trembled faintly, then spread from the center into gold. At first it was a faint fragment, but in an instant it covered the entire iris. That gold wasn’t the luster of cold metal, but living gold. An unquenchable, breathing radiance.
The moment his eye color changed, something burst inside Miros’s head too.
Impossible images poured out. Countless forms without faces. Nameless landscapes. Broken marble stairs and brown curls scattered in the wind. The warmth of someone who had touched his fingertips, scratching sounds, the smell brushing the night sky.
What is this?
It seemed like scenery he was seeing for the first time in his life, but simultaneously it was so familiar his breath caught. There was no order of time, and he couldn’t even tell whose memories they were. But those images rushed in without stopping. Before one scene passed, another scene overlapped, and sensations and emotions poured out indiscriminately in a tangle.
His skin went beyond numb to burning, and his vision blurred stained with gold. Within it, Miros shattered helplessly.
Unidentifiable voices muttered simultaneously, and his fingertips struggled that they had to firmly grasp something. But there was nothing to grasp. His head was now filled with shapeless lumps of memory.
He could no longer understand anything.
“…Leri.”
The voice leaked out without him knowing. Without knowing the meaning or reason, just a name that boiled up from deep in his throat. I didn’t want to call it, but I couldn’t help it.
No. I wanted to call it. I missed you so much. I didn’t want to forget.
Then everything collapsed.
The debris of memories that had burst out from within his eyes spread with gold rushed in all at once again. The weight of emotions, loss and longing whose names he couldn’t even know pressed down on his lungs. Every single bone trembled, and his breath twisted.
A short breath burst out, and soon Miros’s body collapsed as it was. He simply could no longer endure. Without even feeling the sensation of the ground approaching, he fell quietly.
In that moment, the world became quiet again.
As his body settled quietly on the floor, Levia stopped like a broken machine with a jolt. What? Is he dead? No, no. He can’t be dead now. Our Miros received my power even if very faintly. Huh? Why would he die from this?
Only then did Levia realize.
Ah… I scared him.
He only now noticed why he’d collapsed like this.
“Ah, what should I do…?”
Levia was flustered unlike his usual self. His branches trembled slightly, then even his roots flinched and shook anxiously.
“I was so flustered I forgot I should have changed to human form.”
He was even a child who’d lost his memories. Even setting aside the overwhelming presence, he obviously would have looked like a monster. Rather, it was heavenly fortune that he only collapsed without dying. Levia stamped his feet not knowing what to do. The ground rumbled shallowly to match, but he had no time to worry about that.
“You fool. What if Miros had really died?”
The sound of grumbling at himself seeped into the space. As if embarrassment and sadness rushed in all at once, the branch tips trembled faintly. But what now? He couldn’t just leave Miros collapsed on the floor.
I have to send him back. Perhaps now was the perfect opportunity. He knew it in his head, but couldn’t readily execute it. The Miros he’d seen after a long time had become a very robust adult. So he surely had his own nest. Perhaps he already had his own Hatchlings.
Sending him back to the human world wasn’t difficult, but he couldn’t know where to send him. Even if he asked the other children, he wasn’t confident they could find him properly. Perhaps he’d drop him in the wrong place and Miros’s Hatchlings might be separated from him forever.
“But still, I can’t leave him like this.”
After pondering for a while, Levia instantly transformed into human form. Then with quick steps he approached and gently lifted Miros’s body.
“I just… can’t leave him like this. That’s why.”
I could have just let him wake up here, pretended not to see. If left as is, he’d wake up eventually. Then he’d find his own nest on his own.
But Levia absolutely couldn’t do that. He even thought he shouldn’t. None other than Miros. The prettiest child. How could he just abandon this pitiful child? Even if it was near his own nest.
What if this pretty child catches a cold suffering from night dew on the cold floor?
Nonsense. It only looked that way to Levia’s eyes. Miros had a remarkably robust physique, massive beyond just sturdy. He was a human who’d swing an axe while spilling his guts and shoot arrows with his feet while on a horse.
He’s already far surpassed the level of ordinary. To pity such a human and call him weak was greatly mistaken. Levia didn’t know such facts at all, though. Even if he knew, he’d think, He’s human in the end, so just because he’s a slightly stronger individual, does that make him strong?
Anyway, it was all an excuse. Especially funny in that he himself didn’t realize it.
Levia gently held the collapsed Miros and slowly began moving toward his own nest. Each step was very delicate and affectionate, as if weighing everything.
