The Path of Ruin

But... despite all this, there was one place where the sun was not so successful in illuminating. It was in the largest forest in the lands of Arcanoa, where the trees were very dense. And... in this very spot, leaning back against a tree, was a young man who had been resting for about half an hour.

He was Kael, the only survivor of the tragedy at the palace. His clothes had seen their share of rain, but were still full of dirt and blood. His hair was plastered to his face in places, but he didn\'t seem to mind. In his left hand was the dagger he had snatched from the king\'s chamber.

And his eyes... they were focused on a single point. So focused, in fact, that it was only after a few minutes that he realized that the rain had stopped. He finally tore his eyes away and stretched, then stood up.

It had been thirty hours since he had escaped from the palace, and his condition was... not good.

\'I slept well, but I\'m hungry... too hungry.\'

It had been more than a day and a half since he had last eaten. He was worried that if he kept this up any longer, he would start to hear his own stomach growling.

Finding food was not really a big problem. After all, Kael was a botanist at his core... a highly skilled, knowledgeable botanist. He knew which plants were edible.

So starvation shouldn\'t have been a problem in the first place.

But... that was exactly the problem. There was not a single herb in the whole forest, let alone edible ones! There were trees, bushes, and grass everywhere, but... that was it.

\'The few I saw were useless ones...\'

He had to go deeper, at least that\'s what he thought. There was no other logical explanation. But... it was dangerous deep in the forest.

\'There is also the curse...\'

The crown on his chest was silent, not showing any reaction. He wasn\'t complaining, of course... He would have preferred it to continue like this if possible. But he couldn\'t help worrying about that too.

He paused for a moment, waiting silently for a few seconds without moving. His eyes focused on the grass on the ground.

\'They are not directly edible... but they are useful in the short term.\'

He could survive for a while by eating leaves and grass. He wished he had better options, but... he had to be content with this.

He sighed, bent down, and grabbed some grass from the ground. After tossing the earthy parts aside, he swallowed and popped it into his mouth.

It tasted bad. But he\'d had to eat worse. So he kept going, filling his belly with grass.

\'I\'d better keep moving forward...\'

*******

A few hours after he had eaten, Kael noticed that the forest was changing as he continued to move forward.

The trees and vegetation were changing, becoming more... wild? He wasn\'t sure if that was the word, but he didn\'t know what else to call it. The colors were slightly darker and they were taller than normal. And... the smells were becoming more intense.

He didn\'t really like it. Change didn\'t always bring good things, it was much better to keep things as they were.

However, just as he was thinking about the reasons for this change... he paused.

\'This... huh?\'

There was something strange, a feeling of strangeness he had never felt before.

He narrowed his eyes, looked around. He tried to catch something with his senses, which were much sharper than before, but... there was nothing.

\'What\'s going on?\'

He frowned and looked here and there for a while. After a while, though, he paused again.

\'Ah, no... It\'s not my surroundings that is the problem.\'

The problem was him.

He raised his hands, looked at his palms. He slowly moved his right hand to his chest, right over his heart. He could feel the pulse. But more importantly...

\'Is it the curse?\'

He lowered his hands as his expression turned slightly ugly.

\'This... is definitely not a good sign.\'

*******

Kael walked for another two hours. The strange feeling he could feel was still in his body, getting worse as time passed. If his prediction was correct from what he was experiencing, it would increase in intensity every hour or so.

But when it would lead to his death? He didn\'t know.

So, like that, another couple of hours passed.

Kael began to feel a pain in his chest. It was as if something was squeezing his heart, but only causing him pain rather than killing him.

It was a feeling he strongly disliked. But it was also important.

\'I need to find something... something alive...\'

An animal, an insect... anything would do. But the grass was tall and every insect he approached ran away from him. Moreover, he was sure that insects would be insufficient to satisfy the curse... Yet, it was a small hope he wanted to hold on to...

Another two hours passed. It was slowly getting dark, an hour or so before sunset.

Kael was... not in a good mood.

His heart seemed to be beating with difficulty. Whereas it normally beat without any effort on his part, now it felt like it was being forced to beat by him. And it wasn\'t just his heart. His movements slowed, his limbs weakened.

And yet, after all these hours, he had yet to see a single living thing.

\'Why... Why is there nothing?\'

He was in a forest, a huge forest! Yes, a forest with a connection to the palace, maybe, and Kael hadn\'t actually gone very deep, even though he kept moving... and he was always on the outer edges of the forest, changing direction where the trees were getting too dense.

But it was still ridiculous! All his life he had heard how dangerous it was out there, how people talked as if there were creatures everywhere!

Now, though, Kael couldn\'t see any of them!

\'Damn it...\'

And... another hour passed just like that.

It was getting dark, the moon was slowly taking its place in the sky. The whole mood of the forest had changed.

Kael would normally be up in a tree right now, resting. But he had no such option right now.

He was dying. And no, not figuratively... literally dying.

There was excruciating pain in his chest. His heart was begging to stop. And his whole body seemed to be slowly collapsing.

He had at most two, no... maybe one hour left if he was lucky. He could feel the bloodthirsty chains around his heart.

That\'s why he hadn\'t stopped, he wasn\'t resting yet. He kept moving, hoping to meet a living creature.

So much so... that he no longer cared to go deeper into the forest. For the last half hour, he had been leaving the outer part of the forest aside and going deeper into it.

The change had been relatively rapid. The trees had grown quite dense, their colors... darker. There was an ominous breeze in the air.

But... Kael still couldn\'t find what he was looking for. For half an hour, he walked and walked... and yet...

\'Am I... going to die?\'

That was the thought that finally crossed his mind. Until now, he had kept it away, tried not to think about it. But now... he just could no longer stop it.

He put his right hand on his heart, just as he had done hours before. It had slowed down so much that he didn\'t need his hand to feel it anymore. However, there was one more thing.

He could feel the crown on his chest warming, the heat spreading throughout his body.

Death was cold, that\'s what they always said, and he had actually experienced it himself. But... why was it hot now?

Kael couldn\'t help smiling. He didn\'t know why, but this contradiction... it amused him.

\'A warm death, huh...\'

Still, he clenched his fist.

\'No...\'

So, he kept walking.

With each step he took, he could feel death approaching him. The chains around his heart grew tighter, the crown grew hotter.

\'I don\'t have even half an hour...\'

But then... his ears caught a crackling sound in this so far silent and desolate forest.

Kael suddenly paused. His occasionally darkened eyes slowly turned to his right, where he had heard the crackling.

That\'s how he realized that the bushes were moving.

\'Ah...\'

And the moment he saw what appeared, the wheels in his head suddenly clicked into place.

That\'s why the forest was so quiet.

That\'s why he had never encountered any creatures or animals.

Because... he was in the territory of the general hunters in a simple forest. In this kind of forest, especially if one didn\'t go too deep, and if there were no powerful creatures or other species superior to them, there was always one species that roamed like predators.

Wolves.

When Kael saw the three wolves in front of him, he thought nothing for a while.

Under normal circumstances, he would have wondered how long these bastards had been after him and cursed his luck.

But... now was different.

He gripped the dagger in his left hand tightly. He felt tired from the curse, weak... But he smiled.

"Finally... Finally, something alive..."

That was all he could think as he stared at the three wolves, their mouths drooling, their eyes fixed on him.

"Hahah... Finally!"

The hunger of the curse had not only weakened him. Now that he was so far on the edge of his limits, it was also playing with his mind a little. With all his determination and desire on top of that... his world, which had slowly started to darken, seemed to light up again.

"I will live!"

*(A/N: There will be an another chapter in a few hours.)*