The memories of ghosts after their death are strange things, they can even remember moments that they were not able to in their lives. They can see faces and hear names that they have forgotten almost all their lives. Death releases the barriers of memory from them, joy, happiness, love, affection, desire, anger, hatred, pain all run freely in their minds.
So it is possible that Koál Laik, the ghost considered to be the founder of the Koál tribe, saw the world through the eyes of his infant self in his memories. He saw the two strange faces above him and he understood the words that left their lips.
"I'm sorry." The man's voice was heard.
"Forget it, we were both stupid. It's not your fault." The female voice also spoke.
"Even like this, will you..." The end of the question was not said, the woman just picked up the baby and put it on her shoulder. The baby saw only the lines of the yurt in front of him.
"You know I have to." The statement came, and the baby felt a hand on his head.
The fragile world that surrounded the boy became stronger and more terrifying every day. The child was growing slowly. The two figures, the woman and the man, were soon associated with names. Mother and father, and he was Laik, the only such small boy in the strange world.
They were constantly on the road, always going somewhere, sometimes his mother, sometimes his father disappeared for a long time. In such cases, little Laik stayed with the other parent and enjoyed his carefree life. But the carefree life soon changed. When little Laik turned five, when he already knew all the members of the camp, even the scary leader, a new figure came to the team.
A white-haired man, a stranger from the East, who offered to help. Little Laik didn't understand why his parents and the camp residents were so nice to the man, but he didn't really care about him either. Until one day he was entrusted to him while his parents disappeared again. The child never knew where his parents went at such times, only that they always returned dirty and tired.
"Do you want to see what they do?" The question surprised the boy. The white haired man just smiled at him.
"Yes." The child nodded before the man took his hand and the world blurred around him. When he could see properly again, he was standing high up on a rock.
"What interests you, little hegin is down there!" The white-haired man pointed to the ground. Laik looked down and saw the first battle of his life under the rock wall. In the whirlwind of people, he saw how his mother who almost danced on the ground, spreading the enemies to the ground. In the distance, he saw Uncle Csito, the leader of the camp, and his father stood beside him with a cold look.
"Back!" The general's voice was loud and when one half of the crowd started to move away from the other, little Laik couldn't take his eyes off his father's figure. His happy father, who was always capricious, was now standing next to the general with his eyes closed, some dust leaking onto the ground from his clenched fists. He turned to the general and said something to him. Laik swallowed hard when that grin appeared on his father's lips, the man's eyes widened, the usually strange pair of pink eyes almost shone in the filtered sunlight. The enemy's men were all scratching their heads. Then...
"Wake up!" It was all just a whisper, but Laik still heard his father's voice and the cold shook him. The surface of the earth was covered with faintly glowing blue smoke and more figures appeared from it, figures that attacked the enemy, figures that could not be harmed.
"Your father is the strongest demonic cultivator I have ever seen. It's a waste." The voice of the white-haired man completely startled Laik, who immediately turned towards him. The man sat on the edge of the rock and watched the battle below his feet with a single-mindedness. "You wanted to see it." He looked up at the child and then grabbed his wrist. "We better go back, your mother will kill me if she doesn't find you in the yurts." He announced and the next thing little Laik noticed was that they were back in their yurt.
"How dis you move us so fast?" The question fell out of the child's mouth, and the man laughed.
"More than a hundred years of meditation and a lot of concentration, and a thing like this." He pulled out a piece of paper with incomprehensible scribbles on it.
"What is that?" The boy curiously reached for the paper.
"A talisman. If you are interested, I can teach you how to do one." The man offered it, and the boy immediately enthusiastically agreed. Everything is new to a child, a child can still be enthusiastic about anything, even if he doesn't know the price of his enthusiasm...
"Just try again baby boy, it will work." Laik, who was ten years old at the time, was encouraged by his mother to imitate her movements. The boy naturally did what was asked of him, even if he didn't understand why he had to do it. The movements were flawless, he knew that, but when he looked at his mother, he saw that even though her face was smiling, she was deeply disappointed.
It wasn't the first time someone had looked at him like that. Two years earlier, his father had looked at him the same way. Before... Before he saw less and less of him. Then he needed to summon a ghost. He succeeded, the ghost stood before him, but his father's smile was not sincere. Now he saw this smile on his mother too. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how good he was, he was never good enough for his parents.
"He doesn't have the talent for mine either." He only heard his mother's words softly that night, when his parents thought he was sleeping. "You sure your bird didn't make a mistake?"
"Riki is never wrong!" His father sighed desperately. "He can't identify his power."
"But then what will happen to him?" His mother asked the question instead of little Laik.
"Whatever happens, I won't leave him without a weapon. He may not have an iota of talent, but even an unsalvageable case can form an alliance with a rotten ghost." He announced. The words, however, cut deep into the soul of little Laik. His parents thought he had no talent. His own parents didn't trust him. "I'm sorry..." His father's whispered words were like a slap. Laik felt that maybe he should never have been born.
However, after that, his family recovered, they were always there for him. They always talked to him. His father even practiced with him, and his mother taught him all kinds of swordsmanship techniques. When he wasn't learning from them, the white-haired man from the east or Uncle Csito taught him something. His life was good for a while. For a while, he forgot all his worries, all his troubles, even between wars and travels.
"Mom? Dad?" Laik entered the shaman's circle that protected their yurt. It was too quiet. Suspiciously too quiet. The young man, who was almost eighteen at the time, knew that if there was so much silence, there was something wrong. He made his steps quieter and started towards the door of the yurt as carefully as he could, but he got no further than a cart.
He saw something in the clearing in front of the yurt. He immediately crouched down next to the cart and cautiously peeked out from behind it, but he had to put his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. In the middle of the clearing, a woman was lying in a large pool of blood. Two men were standing next to her. The woman was his mother.
"Did you kill her?" Laik heared his father's voice, which sounded strangely relieved.
"I had no other choice." The cold answer came from General Csito. Laik expected his father to be angry, to summon the ghosts and, no matter how stupid an idea, to attack the leader. However, this did not happen. Instead, his father stepped in front of the general, grabbed the front of his clothes and pulled him closer for a kiss.
"Thank you, Tapló leader." Laik heard, but he could no longer see anything from his tears, he stood up still covering his mouth and ran away from this cursed place without looking back. That's when the idea came to him and that's when he decided. He's going to kill his father, he's going to kill him, even if he himself dies.
"You don't want to be completely destroyed, do you, my son?" The flood of memories was disturbed by his father's voice. Laik blinked widely. He was back in Holdvár, dead again. His father held his shoulder and seemed to want to protect him from General Csito, as if he was afraid of him.
"I didn't even thought about that, dad." He glanced at the person behind him, who just smiled.
"I knew you weren't a hopeless case." Etele patted his son's shoulder. "Hey, kids, if it is Rimejülin here, let's take advantage of the situation. Who wants to summon a couple of ghosts to cause some trouble?" Etele stepped past Laik towards the team.
"You've changed dad and yet you're the same as always." The ghost's lips twitched into a faint smile as he grasped the red stone hanging around his neck.
"Don't bother with grandpa, he just has a big mouth, but he must love you very much." The boy standing next to Laik suddenly spoke up.
"You think?" The question came.
"He treats me the same way and in theory he loves me." The boy started poking at his earring with one hand and holding his elbow with the other.
"Where is that from?" Laik asked suddenly, pointing to the jewelry and grabbing his own necklace.
"I don't remember, I probably got it from someone, I was quite popular in the village when I was little, they always gave me something. In the end, they all converge." Rahul shrugged his shoulders, then walked over to the boy in green, leaving the ghost alone.
"But what..." Laik started the quiet question, but did not finish it. "Why can't my family be normal?" He sighed.
"Because you are Koáls, those two don't fit together. You've grown Laik, it's good to see that you've recovered and become a tribe leader, I'm proud of you and so is Svihák, even if he doesn't have the courage to say it." Laik's thoughts were disturbed by Csito's rebirth, the ghost only smiled faintly as he looked over his father and the group of the living.
"Thank you, General." He said before settling down by the fire.