I will tell a story.
Sit down. This tale is not meant to be heard while standing.
Do you know about the void in the north of the Levlain Empire?
It used to be a village. Exactly when, no one knows.
A small village with fifty-one houses.
Its number never decreased, and it never increased.
A young girl, extremely beautiful, lived there.
Her beauty did not cause envy, but made people lose themselves.
Until one night, the girl was Rapped—seven days and seven nights, without end.
I will not say by whom. You all surely already know.
A few months later, her belly grew.
That was when everyone began to hate her.
The women hated her because their husbands had raped her,
then went home and swore they had done nothing.
The men hated her because she reminded them of their own sins.
The girl cried every day, until her tears ran out and turned to blood.
Nine months passed.
Ten.
Eleven.
When it was time to give birth, the girl held it in.
She wished for the child to die with her in her womb, until fifteen months had passed.
When the baby was born, he did not cry.
His face was handsome, like his mother's.
The girl only looked at her child once, then turned away.
From that moment on, she never saw the child again.
When the child turned one, the villagers came in droves.
They said the village leader had dreamed of being cursed by the baby.
Funny, isn't it? A baby who couldn't speak, yet its tongue had still been cut out.
At the age of two, a villager was leading a donkey past his house.
When the donkey brayed, they pointed at the child and said,
"My donkey brayed because that child called it."
Hadn't the tongue already been cut? How could the child call out?
The child's ears were stabbed until ruined.
At the age of three, people said they were afraid of his gaze.
They said their hearts always pounded every time the child looked at them.
So the child's eyes were gouged out, so the villagers could sleep peacefully.
At four, his legs were cut off.
The reason? In the afternoon, the child's shadow was longer than his body.
At five, his hands were cut off. Because they said anyone who shook his hand would have nightmares.
Yet no one had ever touched the child.
Let alone touch him—they did not even dare to come near.
Then, the child was thrown into the horse pen and left to rot.
There, he could only eat dry grass
and drink the stagnant horse urine.
Do you know how long he survived?
More than five hundred days.
His body completely dried up.
He could not even lift his head anymore.
Until one night, when no wind was blowing,
a disembodied voice was heard:
"My child, I will give you a gift."
At that moment, the child's eyes were no longer blind.
His ears no longer deaf.
His mouth no longer mute.
His hands and legs grew back.
The child immediately ran to his mother.
"Mother," he said.
"Mother, I'm sorry if I wasn't a good child.
I'm sorry if I—"
His words stopped when he opened the door to his house.
Something fell from above.
When he looked up, maggots fell one by one,
like drizzle in the rain.
His mother hung from the house beam.
Ropes wrapped around her neck.
Her body was swollen.
Her skin peeling.
Then what happened next?
No one knows.
The legend only says that the child then killed all the villagers.
Tears of blood ran from his eyes, dripping to the ground.
His grief was too heavy for the earth to bear,
and so that place turned into void—as we see it now.
The flames of the oil lamps danced, lighting the bar that was growing quiet. The other tables were already empty. A few mercenaries sat around one table, listening to the story.
"That's nonsense," muttered one of them. He raised his mug of beer and drained half of it in a single gulp.
"If you think it's nonsense," said the storyteller, pointing at his face, "then why has no one ever returned after entering that place?"
"Let's make a bet. You just have to cross the Fog Forest. If you can come back, then it's nothing but a nonsense legend."
The Fog Forest bordered Rina, a small town in the north of the Levlain Empire, and a place called the Void. What the Void was like, no one knew. For hundreds of years, everyone who went there never returned.
One of the mercenaries let out a short laugh. His chair was shoved roughly until it creaked.
"What kind of bet is that?" he said. "I'm not afraid of a bet like that."
He slammed his glass onto the table. The beer in the glass spilled. The sound of chairs being dragged came from another corner.
The bar that had been quiet moments ago was now lively.
Behind a bar table not far from the commotion, a teenage boy was wiping glasses. His movements froze when a beer glass suddenly slammed against the side of his head.
The boy staggered, his hands grabbing the edge of the table. The glass in his hand fell and shattered on the floor.
As he looked up, a tall shadow blocked the light of the oil lamp. The body of a muscular man filled his view.
"Mute," the man said.
His jaw tensed as he downed another beer. Liquid dripped from the corner of his mouth.
"Did you hear something interesting?"
The boy shook his head. He bent slightly, then turned. He opened the back door of the bar quickly. A brief crash sounded before the door closed.
The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A thin smile lifted at the corners of his lips as he watched the boy walk away.
Clang.
A pouch was thrown onto the table in front of the man. As several gold coins spilled out and rolled across the table, the man grinned.
"What do you want?" As he looked up, an old woman was standing before him.
The old woman did not answer immediately. Her gaze lingered on the coins, then rose to the man's face.
"Take me to the Fog Forest."
Arkhan let out a short laugh. He swept the coins into his hand.
"No one ever comes back from there," he said.
***
A place between earth and heaven.
A tree covers the entire space. Its trunk is enormous. Its bark is rough, cracked, and wet like rotten flesh. Black liquid seeps from its cracks and drips onto the ground.
Its roots are embedded in the ground, spreading in all directions, making the place feel like part of the tree's own body.
Its branches are also large and grow irregularly. Twisted and intertwined, they form a dense web that almost covers the entire space around them.
Eyes grow all over the tree. Not just one or two. They are countless. The eyes are embedded directly into the wood. They vary in size. Some are as small as seeds, some are as big as a fist. The largest are the size of a human head.
The eyelids did not blink in unison. They opened. They closed. They opened again. Some moved slowly, following an unclear direction. Others remained still, staring without focus.
Among the eyes hang black fruits with jagged edges. Their number is even greater than that of the eyes. Some eyes are squeezed between the fruits and branches, blinking, trapped in dark flesh.
Srak. Srak.
The sound of pages turning came softly. A boy, no more than eight years old, sat with his legs folded under the tree. An open book lay in his hands. Human Social Life was written on its cover.
Page by page, he turned them slowly. His red pupils moved calmly, following the lines of text.
"Mother," the boy said suddenly. His hands did not stop flipping the pages.
"What is the human world like?" A warm touch lightly tapped his head. The boy lifted his gaze.
A middle-aged woman was crouching in front of him. Her white hair fell down her back, the same color as the boy's hair. A warm smile adorned the beauty of her face.
The space around the woman, called mother, was bright. White light filled everything, with no dark corners, as if the space around her had no edges.
"Soon, my child," the woman said.
The branches then creaked all at once.