‘Aren’t you a cute boy. Could it be that you’re lost?’
I flinched at the unfamiliar voice that rang in my head, nearly falling off the branch I was perched on. Scanning quickly to the left and right, I tried to locate the source of the sound.
I wanted to move, but my body was frozen with a tangible fear. A deep sense of dread crept up like a rising tide, slowly but surely, as I surveyed the area.
Even with augmented vision and hearing, I couldn’t find her. Yet I knew she was there—her high, grating voice still scratched the insides of my ears.
‘Are you, perhaps, looking for little ol’ me?’ Her shrill voice screeched inside my head like a coarse blade being dragged against ice. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. My mind knew she was intentionally intimidating me, but my body couldn’t help but fall victim to her tactic.
Her voice seemed to come from all around me and, at the same time, within me. My limbs stiffened and my heart beat hard enough to break out of my ribcage.
Struggling to maintain control, I bit down on my lower lip. As the pain and metallic taste of blood washed over my tongue, freeing me from the hold of her killing intent, I immediately activated Realmheart.
The dull browns and whites of the end-of-winter scenery washed into shades of gray, the only speckles of color radiating from the mana around me.
Unable to see any sources of mana fluctuation, I began to doubt what I’d heard—no, I wanted to doubt what I’d heard. But then a flicker of light whizzed past the corner of my eye like a green shadow. It was almost impossible to follow the shadow’s movement, but if I kept my eyes unfocused I could catch glimpses of it.
The green shadow stopped. It looked like she was inside the trunk of a tree about thirty feet away.
‘Sharp eyes, little boy. Sharp eyes.’ She moved once more, inhabiting one tree after another, using branches as if they were tunnels and leaving behind traces of sickly green mana. My eyes darted, trying to follow her movement. Her cackling laughter echoed in the thick forest.
“Your eyes look like they’re spinning, dear,” she teased, her shrill voice just as earsplitting out loud as it was in my head.
“Am I here?” she asked, sounding farther away this time.
“How about here?” Her grating voice sounded to my left.
She let out a childish giggle. “Maybe I’m here!” Her voice seemed to grow more distant. Was she trying to avoid me?
“I could be over there…” she taunted once more, her voice coming from several yards away to my right.
“Or I could be right here!” Suddenly, an arm shot out from inside the tree I was perched on.
I had no time to react as her hand gripped my neck, spreading a searing pain across my throat. I was lifted into the air, held by my neck, as the source of the shrill voice came out of the tree.
I gripped her bone-pale arm, splotched with discolored marks, and tried to break free from her hold. She was wearing a sparkling black dress that accentuated her tall and sickly-thin frame. I could practically see her ribs through the thin piece of fabric, which would’ve looked elegant had it been worn by any other woman.
I struggled to lift my gaze high enough to see her face, but what stared back at me was a ceramic mask masterfully drawn with a doll-like face. Long, scraggly black hair was pulled into two ponytails behind her head, each with a bow tied at the end.
“My, what a handsome young boy you are,” she whispered from behind her mask, the drawn eyes looking straight at me.
Like a bolt of electricity, a shiver shot down my spine at her words, making me struggle harder. My neck felt like it was being branded, the burning pain almost unbearable. Fighting to hold on to the last of my consciousness, I willed mana into my palms.
With Realmheart still active, I could physically see the specks of blue mana gathering around my hands, turning into a shimmering white as I formed a spell. Tightening my grip around her wrist, I released my spell: Absolute Zero.
She immediately let go of my neck and pulled her arm away from my grasp. Upon release, I fell from the tree, crashing through a hollow log on the ground.
“The little puppy has a bit of a bite,” she reprimanded me from atop the tree.
I hurriedly got back up onto my feet, ignoring the burning pain still radiating through my neck, but the woman was already in front of me, looking down at me through the small eyeholes of her mask. Her right arm was discolored and swollen from where I had briefly touched her with the spell.
She shook her head. “No matter. I’ll just have to be a bit more strict in your training.”
I involuntarily took a step back. She had no intention of killing me; she just wanted me as some sort of pet.
Maybe if I-
“What’s your name, my dear?” she whispered, looking away as she buried her right arm inside the tree behind her.
“My mother told me not to talk to strangers, especially ones as… strange as yourself,” I answered, wincing from the pain as I gingerly touched the wound on my neck. Usually, thanks to assimilating with Sylvia’s will, I’d have already felt my body healing, but the injury she had inflicted was different.
“Not to worry. We’ll get acquainted soon enough,” she replied, pulling her arm back out of the tree, the marks from my spell seemingly vanished. But the tree she’d put her arm into now had a gaping hole in it, as if someone had branded it with acid.
She took long strides, her scar-marked legs sinking into the ground as if she were wading through water. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much time—I have tasks to finish. Any chance that you’d willingly be this beautiful lady’s slave?”
"Absolutely!"
“They always do.” The bony woman sighed dramatically as she shook her head. “That’s all right; breaking the will of a disobedient sla- Wait what?”
