Sweat dripped down Ciaran’s back as he eyed the yuin with cautious, wary eyes. He didn’t dare to attack it as recklessly as he had a few seconds ago.

  [Kid, remember that although your mana is moving along the mana path you created when forming your core, you can still manipulate it to move even faster, and to reach specific parts of your body. If you need strength in your legs or arms, move a larger portion of your mana towards that part of your body. Don’t lose your mind because of fear and pain.]

  Ciaran took a deep breath while thinking about Envil’s words. He wasn’t yet familiar with the ways swordsmen moved their mana through their body and didn’t know if he’d be able to follow Envil’s advice while fighting this yuin at the same time. However, he would have to try.

  He maneuvered the mana moving through his body to flow more through his legs than other parts of his body. It would weaken his senses and his arms, but it would allow Ciaran to dodge and run faster. From the way the yuin hit him earlier, Ciaran knew that it wasn’t a simple yuin — it had learned how to use the mana flowing in its body in much the same way Ciaran had. If there was a difference, it was that animals like the yuin didn’t need to form a mana core to strengthen their body with their innate mana. Otherwise, even with its size, throwing Ciaran so fast and with such force wouldn’t have been possible.

  Ciaran had to end this fight, fast. He couldn’t afford to drag it out. The yuin wanted revenge for its dead pup, but didn’t see Ciaran as an equal opponent. Rather, it saw him as easy prey, so simple to kill that it could toy with him for a little first. If he let it do as it pleased, what followed for him was a slow, painful death.

  As Ciaran and the yuin stood opposite each other in a standoff, one tense and the other casual, he observed it for any potential weaknesses. It didn’t have any armor or hard shell on its body, so he could pierce it through the eyes, the mouth, or the belly for more a more lethal wound. Ciaran let out a breath. He blinked, and the yuin was lunging towards him. He dodged to the side, his arm grazed by a sharp claw. As he turned toward it, he aimed his sword toward its eye and stabbed it, but missed when the yuin jumped back, the tip of the blade cutting away a few strands of its fur and nothing more.

  Ciaran took a glance past the yuin and saw the tree behind it. It was a bit wider than the surrounding trees, and as Ciaran looked at it, an idea formed in his mind.

  He looked back at the yuin that was crouching and, going against every word of advice he’d heard about not showing his back toward a predator, turned and ran between the trees. The yuin roared at him and took off after him, its teeth nipping at his back as he used all of his strength to outrun it. His intention wasn’t to go far — he circled around the trees, twisting around one tree before weaving through a few more, keeping in sight the first tree he saw. As the tree he had been keeping in his sights began to grow a little thin from the distance, he found a straight path through the forest and ran down it, sending a little more mana through his legs and speeding up.

  His feet pounded against the forest floor and the cold night air bit at his exposed skin and wounds. His messy breathing was drowned out by the roars of the yuin, and as approached the tree, he used his momentum to jump off the ground and onto the rough bark, running up as far as he could before pushing off and flipping back.

  In the air, his thumb found the small groove in the hilt of the sword and pressed down, lighting the blade with fire. The yuin, just catching up, hadn’t had time to lift its head when the sword pierced through the top of it. Blood spurted out as it tried to shake him off, lifting its head to bite him, but its actions slowed down as its brain was pierced with another push. Its roars quieted and it stumbled before falling to the ground, its eyes looking back toward the direction of its pup before they dimmed, and the beast stilled.

  Ciaran, having hopping off the yuin’s head when it collapsed, was still in a tense stance, having learned his lesson the first time. His rough breathing sounded through the quiet night. He walked toward its head, careful of making too much noise, before leaning over its head and looking into its eyes.

  [It’s dead, Ciaran. There shouldn’t be any more — yuins aren’t pack animals. Female yuin choose a weak male to breed with, and then abandon it when they get pregnant before raising the child on their own. No need to worry about a father hanging around. Even if there was, it wouldn’t be as big as the one you just killed. On that note, good job killing it. I was worried for a second there but you hung in there.]

  Ciaran’s tense muscles unwound as he listened to Envil. His sword dropped and he poked the dead beast with it. “Not so scary now, huh?”

  He had never killed anything before. Beneath the thick fur was sure to be a lot of meat. Ciaran, hungry and exhausted, began to wonder how it would taste after he cooked it. He lifted his thumb off the groove, snuffing out the flames, before grabbing its hind legs and dragging it back to the stream where he left his bag. He hadn’t gone too far from the path he marked during the fight, so he found his way back after a few minutes of walking. The plans he had before this had all disappeared. The pain from when he was thrown and slammed into a tree hadn’t gone away — it had worsened now that the fight was over. Instead of hurrying back to the city gates to kill more ghouls, he dropped the yuin a few steps away from his bag, turning towards the forest and spending a few minutes gathering dry sticks and branches.

  After dumping them into pile, he dug through his bag and found his firestarter, turning it on and setting the branches ablaze. Then, he took his sword and began to saw off one of the yuin’s legs. He didn’t know what he was doing. He’d never learned how to skin an animal or take it apart properly. As much as he wanted to drop down and rest, he hadn’t eaten properly in days and was too excited at the thought of having meat for the first time in days to care about anything else.

  After he sawed off the leg, ignoring Envil’s cries of protest and not listening to whatever he was saying, he roughly tried to slice off the the skin and fur. Holding the leg by the paw, which he hadn’t chopped off, he roasted the thigh meat above the small fire, his mouth watering despite the sorry sight of what he was holding.

  Many minutes of impatiently rotating the leg above the fire later, the meat had browned. Yuin bit into the meat and tore off a piece before grimacing. It was so dry that his already parched mouth began to feel like it was filled with sand. Ciaran wanted to spit it out, but for the sake of not wasting the food he staked his life on, he forced himself to chew and swallow, washing it down with the water from his water canister. He kept drinking water until it was empty, then closed it and set it aside to wait until it was full again.

  Ciaran looked down at the leg he was holding and frowned, but took another bite. It was smaller this time and easier to chew, but didn’t taste any better. As he took one small bite after another, he found that parts of the meat closer to the bone hadn’t cooked properly, so he would hold it up to the fire to cook it before continuing to eat, taking a few more sips of water after the canister was filled up again. His stomach began to feel truly full, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in days.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Despite both the yuin earlier trying to kill him, he was still grateful to them. Thanks to them showing up, he can eat a decent meal. A thought popped into his head and Ciaran paused before he took another bite, saying, “Envil… you don’t think there are any more beasts like the yuin around here, do you?”

  [Oh, now you decide to finally talk to me? Did you not hear me earlier when I was pleading with you not to use my sword like that? Since you’re listening now, then I’ll tell you not to cut through bone with the only thing tethering me to this world next time because it’ll ruin the blade! My sword is made from good material so it can withstand it this time, but if you keep doing it, you won’t have the chance to kill anything anymore because you’d have ruined the only weapon you have. And to answer your question, no there won’t be. Yuin are territorial animals, and the mother was raising its young. It won’t tolerate any other predatory animals living near it, so you’re safe right now. Can’t say that this will be the case after a few days, though. Those animals will find out soon that the yuin is dead, after all.]

  Envil’s disgruntled voice resounded in his mind as he finished eating, throwing the leg to the side before drinking some water. As he placated Envil and promised to be more careful with the sword next time, the throbbing from the wound on his side reminded him of its existence, followed by a wave of exhaustion that washed over him. He became light-headed as a headache formed, and Ciaran lay down on the soil next to the rocky shore by the stream. The sounds of insects in the night accompanied him to sleep as darkness enclosed him.

  ~|(+)|~

  Some time later, Ciaran was awoken by the pain from his wounds and a voice talking by his ear. He frowned, wanting it to be quiet so he could go to sleep again, but it wouldn’t stop talking. As his mind woke up, he heard birds chirping from high in the trees and smelled the misty air and wet soil. He blinked his eyes a few times, squinting against the dim light beneath the tree canopy. In front of his eyes was the stream, rushing over smooth rocks and pebbles beneath a light fog.

  Before long, the voice heard before sounded again. It wasn’t in his mind, so it wasn’t Envil — yet it sounded familiar. He winced as he placed his elbow against the ground and lifted himself into a sitting position, crawling over to the water and dunking his face inside. He let the stream rush over his skin for a few seconds before lifting his head and wiping his face. As he brushed his hair back, exposing his forehead, he heard the voice of a young girl. “It looks like you’re finally awake. Hey, your shirt is sticking to your cuts — maybe get that checked out. Don’t let it become infected.”

  Ciaran, not fully awake yet, looked down at his arm and saw the cut the yuin had left yesterday. The blood that had spilled from it was already dry, and the wound had clotted, but the frayed edges of the cut fabric stuck to the crusted blood. Ciaran grimaced, using his other hand to pull the strands away from the wound. After a few attempts, he sighed and gave up, deciding to take his shirt off. It’d be easier if fabric wasn’t surrounding the rest of his arm. As he took it off, he heard a gasp, followed by someone saying, “Gosh, give a girl a warning next time! My eyes are covered, I can’t see anything! Don’t worry!”

  Ciaran, having taken his shirt off, finally registered the voice that didn’t belong to him and Envil. He turned his head to the side, mindful of any large movements that would stimulate his ribs, which were probably broken, and saw a familiar figure. She was floating in the air with her back turned to him, her hands held up to her face. She was the ghost he’d seen yesterday morning.

  “Who are you?” After a few seconds, he said, “I’m not naked. You don’t need to do that.”

  “Oh, that’s good. When you found my ring in the lake before, you were completely naked, so I wasn’t sure if you were going to wash yourself or something.”

  Ciaran’s face heat up in embarrassment as he asked, “The ring? It’s yours?”

  The girl turned around, putting her hands down and floating next to him, speaking as if she would vanish if she couldn’t get her words out as soon as possible.

  “My brother gave it to me as a birthday gift one year. But then I was chosen as a sacrifice and my body was dumped into the lake with all the others. As you can see, I’m a ghost. I’m bound to this ring and can’t move more than a few meters away from it, so I’ve just been stuck at the bottom of that lake for a while. But then you came! I was really surprised. Not long after I died, everything at the bottom of the lake went boom! And just crumbled into nothing. I never saw or heard anyone else ever again. Well, except for those black ghosts that fly around at night… what were they called again? G… go….”

  “Ghouls.”

  “Right! Ghouls. We learned about them when I was a kid but it wasn’t, like, an important lesson or anything. Also, what did you to my ring before? You were, like, writing something on it? But not really?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Ah, whatever. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You do whatever you want to that ring. It’s not like it’s of any use to anyone just lying around like it was before. Just, take care of it for me, okay? It’s the last gift my brother gave me before I died, you know?”

  “I’ll take care of it—”

  “Wow, it’s so nice talking to someone that can see me! Although you can only see me for a few minutes, and only at dawn. I wonder why that is? It’s so weird. Have you talked to other ghosts? What are they like? It’s only been me so far. I don’t know why the other sacrifices hadn’t become ghosts, too. Or maybe they have, but they moved on? Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re all dead anyway. Oh, except for you, of course. You’re so alive! Your heart is still pumping! It must be nice to bleed like that.”

  Ciaran couldn’t get a word in with how fast she was talking. He sat back and watched as she spoke, flying around in the air with her hand on her chin or tapping her forehead or legs crossed, sometimes swimming, and sometimes laying back as if she were on a sofa. All of a sudden she flew over, her face looming very close to his own as she said, “Do you know anything about my brother? He’s a genius mage, so I’m sure he’s famous enough to be in history books by now. His name is #$%6&1$2%.”

  Ciaran blinked, not hearing the last part of her sentence. “What was his name?”

  She repeated what she had said, but Ciaran couldn’t make anything out. He blinked, confused, but before he could ask her again, she vanished without a word. His confusion grew, wondering why he could see and talk to a ghost, why it was only for a few minutes, and why her brother’s name sounded like garbled nonsense. Ciaran opened his mouth, about to say something, but then closed it, hesitant to say what was on his mind. Before he said anything, though, Envil said it for him.

  [I couldn’t understand her when she told us her brother’s name. Could you?]

  Ciaran thought about what she had said, wondering if maybe his name was just hard to pronounce, but instinctually knew that wasn’t the case. “No, not at all. It sounded like…”

  [Like nonsense? Like a bunch of words said at the same time, but none of those words actually exist in any spoken language?]

  “Yes… why is that?”

  [Because her brother had once existed, yet, he had never existed. The memories people had of him are all gone, his name has been erased, and his soul may even have been destroyed. The two of us, we exist in the plane of the living, unlike this girl, that exists in the plane of the dead. The two never intersect, so she is able to remember her brother because she died before him. But we, bound to this plane, are not able to learn the name of someone that ‘never existed.’]

  Chills crawled up Ciaran’s spine for a second time. “You’re not saying… that you think her brother is that mage, right? The one that… caused that catastrophe?”

  [What else could it be? This wouldn’t happen if she had just forgotten his name, or if his name came from an ancient language no one can pronounce anymore. At least in that case, we would be able to hear the syllables of his name and make out some of the sounds you need to make to say it aloud. Instead, although she was able to say it easily, we can’t hear it at all. No, it’s not that we can’t hear it — we aren’t allowed to. Because that was the price of the spell he cast.]