"Following the coastline south" sounds easy in theory, but in practice it was anything but.
After leaving the temporary camp, they traveled only half a day before the continuous white-sand beaches vanished. In their place appeared wide, sticky tidal mudflats, and beyond those rose sheer cliffs.
Climbing the ridges behind the cliffs, the shoreline turned into a jagged maze of dark-green reefs. To stay near the water, Ethan and Kevin were forced to push inland through dense forest, constantly detouring and backtracking. After a week of grueling travel, on the afternoon of the sixth day, Ethan finally spotted a cluster of a dozen or so dilapidated wooden huts along the distant shore—a clear sign of human presence.
Seeing man-made structures again after nearly two months brought Ethan an overwhelming sense of warmth. The constant tension in his chest eased for the first time in weeks. He laughed excitedly and called to Kevin, "Haha! Finally—people! Kevin, do you think they'll welcome us warmly?"
Kevin, equally thrilled, answered with conviction, "Of course they will! It's an honor for a small village like this to host a noble knight such as yourself. Besides, once guests have shared salt and bread under the sacred laws of hospitality, neither side may harm the other. We brought our own food and won't take anything from them—so they have no reason to turn you away."
Hearing Kevin speak so earnestly about the guest right, Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Are the people here really that honorable and straightforward?"
Kevin looked puzzled. "Isn't it the same in your homeland?"
For a moment Ethan felt the urge to tell the boy about the Feast at Hongmen, hidden daggers, and axemen waiting outside the tent—but he quickly suppressed the impulse. There was no need to stain the young man's innocent worldview. He stayed silent and continued walking toward the village.
As they drew closer, Ethan suddenly halted. His voice dropped low and grim.
"Kevin… I don't think anyone here is going to welcome us today."
"Huh?"
Kevin's gaze followed Ethan's line of sight and landed on a tattered corpse sprawled at the village entrance. Beneath the body lay a wide, long-dried pool of blood.
Ethan crouched, gently turned the corpse over. It was an elderly man, perhaps sixty, with long gray hair. His emaciated frame and callused hands spoke of a lifetime of hard labor just to keep his family fed. The deep furrows in his brow, the open mouth, and the wide, staring eyes told of terrible suffering in his final moments.
Ethan carefully lifted the blood-soaked shirt. The cause of death was obvious—a single clean thrust straight through the chest. Though Ethan's limited knowledge couldn't identify the exact weapon, the precision and brutality of the strike were unmistakable.
He stood, passed his shield and short sword to Kevin, then drew his two-handed longsword.
"Kevin—stay behind me. Keep your distance."
Kevin accepted the weapons. His palms were already damp with sweat.
His voice trembled slightly, but his resolve held firm.
"Yes, sir."
An unburied elderly corpse on the road outside the village, no signs of life, and utter silence from within—every sign pointed to disaster.
Ethan advanced along the main path into the settlement. What he found made his stomach turn.
Dozens of bodies lay scattered along the roadside—men, women, children, the elderly.
Some had crushed skulls. Others had bled from the mouth. Several had been cleaved in half at the waist, entrails spilling onto the dirt. Kevin doubled over and vomited at the sight.
Ethan didn't vomit. Instead a slow, smoldering fury rose in his chest until his face burned red. He had no outlet for it.
He recognized the scene from history books and novels: a village massacre.
His expression turned ashen. He continued through the settlement. Every door stood wide open; every home had been ransacked.
In the largest house—a structure that had probably belonged to the village headman—a young woman, completely naked, had been tied to a support pillar. Her legs were spread and nailed to a low bench. Her body was smeared with filth.
Ethan clenched his teeth and approached. Her eyes had been gouged out. Dried blood covered her face. She had clearly been dead for days.
At her feet lay a toddler—no more than two years old—face-up on the floor, eyes closed, blood seeping from every orifice.
Ethan couldn't bring himself to examine the child's wounds further. In silence he drew his dagger, cut the ropes that held the woman, lifted her gently onto the nearby bed, placed the small boy beside her, and drew an old, threadbare blanket over both bodies.
When he finished, he stepped back two paces, drove his dagger point-first into the dirt floor, and gripped the hilt so tightly the veins stood out on his forearms.
He stared at the two shrouded forms. One question burned in his mind:
What possible crime could a girl barely twenty and a child who could hardly speak have committed to deserve *this*?
Who could do such a thing to them?
At that moment Kevin—trailing a few steps behind—spoke in a hoarse voice.
"Sir… I checked the bodies outside. They're all ordinary fishermen. No warriors, no guards. They… they must have run into pirates."
Ethan nodded, forcing the rage back down.
"How common are pirates along this coast?"
Kevin thought for a moment.
"I don't know the exact numbers… but back home on the Fingers we sometimes saw raiders from the North. My father said they're wildlings—barbarians from beyond the Wall."
Ethan gave a short, bitter nod.
*Barbaric enough to do this?*
He pointed toward the wheelbarrow.
"Bring it here."
"Okay."
Because of the risk of combat, Kevin had left the cart hidden in tall grass just outside the village.
At Ethan's order he jogged back to retrieve it and pushed it inside.
By then Ethan had already carried the woman's body—still wrapped in the blanket—out of the house.
"Kevin—drag all the bodies over here."
He unloaded their supplies from the cart onto the ground to free up space, then carefully placed the woman on the frame and wheeled her to a grassy clearing just beyond the village boundary. He returned immediately for the next body.
Working together in grim silence, the two of them moved all thirty-two corpses they could find to the chosen spot.
Ethan removed his armor, cut a thick branch to serve as a new handle for his miner's pickaxe, and began digging a deep, wide pit in the clearing.
Kevin watched Ethan's silent, methodical work with confusion.
*Sir Ethan has no connection to these people. He never even met them. Why go to so much trouble to bury them?*
If it had been his father or uncle, they would likely have looted whatever remained in the abandoned village and left before the bodies began to stink.
So he asked aloud,
"Sir… these people are strangers to you. Why spend your strength burying them? It gains you nothing and only wastes energy."
Ethan didn't turn or pause his digging.
"No particular reason. I wanted to do it. I was able to do it. So I did. That's all."
Kevin didn't fully understand, but as someone under Sir Ethan's protection (in his own mind), he stepped forward without further question. He picked up an abandoned hoe from the village and joined the digging.
For some reason, every time Ethan struck the earth it seemed to give way far more easily than it should. Kevin couldn't keep pace at all.
Several hours later the pit was deeper than a man's height. Ethan made a rough mental measurement and called out,
"Stop for now. Come help move them."
The thirty-two bodies were all thin, ordinary folk. Ethan and Kevin lowered them in one by one, arranging them neatly side by side. The pile rose only slightly above the pit's rim.
Finally Ethan shoveled the excavated soil back in, covering the bodies and forming a large, low mound.
He wiped sweat from his brow and asked,
"Kevin… do you think wild dogs will dig them up?"
Kevin shook his head uncertainly.
"…I don't know. If you're worried, we should pile more stones or branches on top."
Ethan sighed.
"Never mind. That's enough. No one's watching. No matter how deep we dig or how high we stack, something will eventually get to them. Do what you can, and leave the rest to fate."
After channeling his rage into hours of brutal physical labor, Ethan's emotions finally settled somewhat.
He looked at the fresh grave mound and murmured,
"Feels like something's missing…"
He folded his arms, tilted his head in thought, then turned to Kevin.
"What gods do the people of the Seven Kingdoms worship?"
Guessing Ethan's intention, Kevin answered,
"We worship the Seven… but I don't know the proper rites for the dead. That's work for the Silent Sisters or septons. Besides—the Northmen don't follow the Seven. They pray to the Old Gods."
Ethan let out a frustrated breath.
"Sigh… you're useless. Fine—I'll do it myself."
He drew his dagger, shaved three thin splints from a nearby plank, lit them with flint and steel, and planted the burning sticks upright in front of the mound.
The thin wood burned slowly, sending thin threads of smoke into the evening air.
In a low, solemn voice Ethan recited the *Taishang Jiuku Jing*—the Scripture for Relief from Suffering—a passage he had once read in fantasy novels, meant to guide departed souls:
"At that time, the Heavenly Venerable of Salvation from Suffering, pervading the ten directions, constantly using his divine power to save all sentient beings…"
In the glow of the setting sun the tall earthen mound cast a long shadow across the grass.
Kevin couldn't understand the unfamiliar language or the meaning of the scripture, but from Ethan's grave expression he guessed it was a prayer or eulogy offered in Ethan's homeland to comfort the dead.
So he bowed his own head and silently prayed to the Stranger—one of the Seven who represented death—asking that these thirty-two unfortunate souls might find peace.
When the final words of the scripture faded into the twilight, Ethan stood motionless for a long time.
What was the point of any of this?
They were strangers.
They couldn't hear him.
They couldn't see him.
Yet after performing these rites, the suffocating sense of powerlessness in his chest had eased—truly eased.
Perhaps that was enough.
"Kevin… let's get ready to leave."
Kevin, worried that Ethan was exhausted, protested gently,
"So soon, sir? We could rest in the village for a night."
"No. Too dangerous. We don't know whether the ones who did this will come back. Besides—now that we've found one settlement, the next one can't be far. Let's reach a living village before dark."
Ethan pointed to the narrow dirt track that wound from the center of the ruined hamlet deeper into the forest.
"This path should lead inland to other villages or a larger road. We'll follow it."
Kevin considered, then nodded.
He wasn't sure he could spend the night surrounded by so many unburied dead anyway.
Without even bothering to light a campfire, the two men ate cold emergency rations with water, then left the dead village behind and set off along the forest trail.
From dusk until full night they traveled in near silence, guided only by slivers of moonlight filtering through the canopy.
No torches. No conversation.
Both gripped their weapons tightly, senses razor-sharp, scanning every shadow and listening for any sound out of place—ready to fight at a moment's notice.
Neither knew whether the raiders who had slaughtered an entire village without mercy were lurking in some nearby ravine, drinking stolen ale and waiting for fresh prey to walk into their ambush.
The night forest was quieter than by day, yet the usual background—crickets, distant owls, wind through leaves—remained.
Against that steady white noise, the rhythmic crunch of human footsteps stood out sharply.
Suddenly Ethan froze.
He had caught the sound of rapid, uneven running coming from the underbrush ahead and to the left.
His eyes narrowed. He motioned sharply for Kevin to step off the path and whispered,
"Hide."
Then he scanned quickly, selected a thick-trunked tree, and pressed himself behind it.
The stumbling footsteps drew nearer, accompanied now by several excited male voices.
Ethan had no intention of blundering out to confront an unknown group. He stayed hidden, muscles coiled, waiting for the right instant.
Just as the lead runner passed the tree, Ethan—acting on pure instinct—thrust the scabbard of his "Sea Serpent Strike" longsword forward and hooked it around the runner's ankle.
The figure pitched forward with a sharp cry and crashed face-first to the ground.
Only then did Ethan realize the person he had tripped was not a man at all—but a young woman, barely clothed, wild with terror.
In her panic she scrambled to push herself up, hands pressing into the dirt.
Then she froze.
What had tripped her wasn't a root or stone—it was a smooth wooden scabbard.
Her gaze followed the scabbard upward…
…and met the towering figure of a man clad head to toe in gleaming golden plate armor, looking down at her from the shadows.