Chapter 18

Why should I care? I must not dwell on him, must not entertain his image, and must maintain as much distance as humanly possible.

Isaac shook his head, physically driving the thought of Kaiyan from his mind, and hunched over his tray. His intensity must have been palpable, for Horden cast a lingering, confused look before asking, “Were you that starved?” and unceremoniously dropping his own croquette onto Isaac’s tray.

Just as Isaac inhaled his meal and effectively banished that ominous specter from his psyche, the captain and deputy captain of the royal guard strode into the tent. They scanned the gathered guards, their gaze resting on the team leaders. “Derek, any developments?” and “Simon, how was your sector?” They asked the questions with utter calm, clearly assuming the morning had been a mundane affair.

“Hmm. The southern forest rescue team seems remarkably underutilized. We could have redistributed some assets.”

“Is there anywhere currently so desperate for manpower that it demands such a move?”

“That is a valid point.”

“This tournament is proving quite leisurely. Very agreeable indeed.”

Listening to the officers trade their content reports, Isaac—stationed in the southern sector—pricked his ears, waiting to see if his afternoon would remain similarly unburdened. It seemed he would retain his quiet post after all.

Having polished off his tray, Isaac stood and patted his taut stomach with satisfaction. A sliver of time remained before the break concluded.

“Hey, Isaac. You look far too pleased. Was the meal adequate?”

“Indeed, Captain. The fare is edible, the weather is pleasant, and the workload is nonexistent. I could not ask for a more auspicious day.”

After exchanging pleasantries, Isaac turned toward the tent exit, mentally calculating the potential for a brief, blissful nap. Just then, a set of frantic, thudding footsteps barreled into the tent. The guard who burst through the canvas, coated in dust and radiating panic, belonged to the western forest detail.

As Isaac realized, Come to think of it, I haven’t laid eyes on the western contingent all morning, the guard shrieked in an abyssal, trembling tone:

“The prince has vanished in the forest! We require emergency rations, medical supplies, and immediate search reinforcements!”

“The prince is gone? Which prince?!” The captain’s demeanor shifted instantly as he roared the inquiry. A suffocating pressure seized the room.

“Lord Kaiyan.”

The suffocating tension abruptly vanished.

A bizarre, hollow silence permeated the tent for a long moment.

“…Very well. Even if it is him… if he has gone missing, we shall dispatch a search party. You, secure the necessary supplies immediately,” the captain commanded, his voice dragging with such lethargy that one might assume they were discussing a mild breeze.

The western forest was famously rugged and dense. Normally, a missing person would spark an immediate, city-wide mobilization, especially if the victim bore royal blood. Yet, the response shifted entirely based on the identity of the missing party.

“No, you don’t understand, it is genuinely bizarre. He disappeared as if erased by the tide, in an instant. Without leaving so much as a footprint…” the guard stammered, looking as though he had witnessed a phantom, but his desperate protest dissolved into the air.

“Lord Kaiyan has always moved like a ghost. When he hunts, is he the type to leave a trail?”

“But, but… it was as if the forest shadows swallowed him whole in a heartbeat…”

“Understood. We will send ample support. Let’s see. The southern forest personnel are currently unburdened, are they not?”

The captain swept his gaze across the room.

At that precise instant, a primal warning flared at the base of Isaac’s neck. He hunched his shoulders, attempting to inch toward the exit, but he moved a second too late.

“Olsen, Lauder, Chico, Selvero, Etbas, and… yes, Isaac as well. That should suffice. You men will reinforce the western search detail this afternoon.”

“I don’t want to!”

Isaac, halfway across the threshold of freedom, felt as though an invisible hand had yanked him back by the scruff of his neck. The retort was purely reflexive, so sharp and slurred that it echoed against the canvas.

Only when he met the captain’s wide, unblinking glare did Isaac realize the magnitude of his insolence, but—

“What was that? What do you mean, you do not want to? Get moving!”

He received a stinging flick to the forehead and was saddled with the assignment regardless.

The western forest was unnervingly dense.

The trees had woven their crowns so tightly together that even at the height of midday, the forest floor remained cloaked in a pervasive, murky gloom. A predator could have been crouching in the brush merely a few paces ahead, and it would have been nearly impossible to discern its silhouette against the tangled undergrowth.

Isaac picked his way through the terrain with a deliberate, cautious tread, as if he were feeling for the very shape of the woods. He drew in the thick, pine-heavy air, the scent wrapping around him while an uncanny, unnatural silence settled so heavily over the woods that the crisp, rhythmic crunch of his colleagues’ footsteps sounded startlingly loud against the quiet.

It felt like standing beneath a slender, ghostly moon. It lacked the complete absence of light found in a new moon, yet the atmosphere brushed with a strange, shivering intimacy against senses that were fundamentally not human. All of nature harbored magic in varying degrees, but the woods possessed a deeper, ancient power—especially here, where the canopy grew thick enough to choke out the sky.

It was a cool, calm, and eerily pleasant magic.

Isaac trailed behind his companions, inhaling the forest air as though he were savoring a sweet delicacy. Ordinary humans seemed to enjoy the freshness of the woods, certainly, but they likely could not taste the magic within it as he did. In moments such as these, he was struck by the renewed realization that witches were far more sensitive to the pulse of the world than the mundane folk around them.

「Excellent. Truly, this is a magnificent forest.」

「Mm, mm. So gloomy and wondrous, isn’t it?」

“…”

How I wish I had never gained the ability to hear these wretched creatures, Isaac thought, wishing for nothing more than a moment of blissful ignorance.

Isaac did his best to feign ignorance of the three cats trotting along a few steps to his side, though he continued to glare at them from the periphery of his vision. Whether he watched them or not, the felines were preoccupied, chattering incessantly among themselves.

「Forests like this were hardly rare until only recently, but now they are a struggle to uncover.」

「Humans fell them with such mindless cruelty. They chop down ten trees for every one they bother to replant. Is it any wonder the forests are running dry?」

「Tsk, tsk. Even the local spirits are abandoning their homes, bit by bit, because they can no longer survive the blight of humanity… The world truly is growing vicious.」

「Isn’t that the truth? Even if humans had not hunted witches like vermin, everyone would have fled this dying land eventually.」

「Humans are garbage.」

「Yes, humans are absolute filth.」

Isaac had no desire to involve himself in their commentary, and as the conversation spiraled into familiar vitriol, he found himself utterly devoid of a retort. He simply trudged forward in stony silence until Chico, who had been leading the group by a few paces, pivoted to address the cats.

“They really do have an affinity for people, don’t they? They’ve been trailing us the entire time. Such cute little things. Here, here, little ones.”

Completely unaware of the vile discourse the cats had been holding, Chico beamed warmly, reaching into his pocket to produce a strip of jerky, which he tossed toward them. The cats, who had been frothing with vitriol and hurling insults at humanity only seconds prior, snatched the jerky from the air with practiced grace, acting as though nothing had transpired before affectionately rubbing their heads against Chico’s ankle.

Those wretched, hypocritical beasts, Isaac seethed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion before he finally snapped his head away.

“Regardless, this place is genuinely eerie every single time I find myself here…”

“That’s precisely why the hunters aiming to bag a massive trophy during the tournament make their way toward this sector. It wouldn’t be surprising if something truly monstrous emerged from the shadows here.”

Chico muttered his observation while scanning the thickets with squinted eyes, and Lauder offered his cynical agreement.

Isaac’s hand drifted toward his sword hilt, his fingers tense, unconsciously fiddling with the leather-wrapped grip. Still, he took some small comfort in the size of their party. It wasn’t just the guards assigned to the search; several attendants from the royal palace were also present, lugging supplies of food and wine to provide the prince upon his recovery, emergency medical kits for the worst-case scenario—though few expected to actually use them—and fresh garments in case the royal stature required a change.

“So this was roughly where you lost him?” Olsen glanced back at the guard who had accompanied the prince that morning. “Tell me again: how did you manage to lose him?”

“I am not entirely sure, sir. His Highness seemed to notice something off-trail, bolted on horseback, and we scrambled to keep pace, but he simply vanished into thin air.”

The uncertainty in the guard’s voice, still raw with the shock of the event, was the common sentiment shared by every attendant and guard present.

There had only been a handful of them, yet they all tilted their heads in confusion, clearly as baffled as the day it happened.

“His Highness is incredibly fast, even for someone of his stature. However, if there isn’t a single track to follow, perhaps he pushed much further than we anticipated. Or, perhaps he never passed this way at all.”

Olsen clicked his tongue in frustration. As he noted, they had yet to see a single sign that felt significant. Of course, no one present was truly trembling with anxiety over the prince’s safety.

“Regardless, we are tasked with finding him. If we intend to haul back the bounty of beasts His Highness has surely slaughtered, we are going to need more than a few sets of hands.”

“Ugh. So we are relegated to manual labor, then.”

The guards grumbled at the thought of their immediate future, imagining the grueling slog of dragging strings of heavy animal carcasses through the underbrush. Isaac sighed in sympathy, silently praying that whatever he was forced to carry back would be limited to, at most, a single deer.

He cast his gaze aside, his eyes wandering absently. The cats seemed to appreciate the jerky well enough; they were chewing with deliberate focus, their enormous, glowing eyes narrowed in contentment. Every so often, their ears would flick, as if they had caught the vibration of something in the distance.

He hated to admit it, but they were a little…

Yes. Just an agonizingly tiny bit cute.

Damn it all.

Why did it feel like he had suffered a crushing defeat? Isaac was wrinkling the bridge of his nose in private, simmering resentment when a faint, discordant vibration brushed against his ears.

The sound—if one could even label such a chilling, ethereal sensation a sound—was hauntingly thin, blurred, and distant. It passed in a fraction of a second, leaving his skin crawling.

“Is something wrong?”

Chico turned, peering at Isaac with sudden curiosity, noticing that the younger man had halted dead in his tracks, his eyes fixed on the forest beyond.

Only then did Isaac blink, shaking off the fog to look at him. “No. I thought… I heard something over there.”