It was silent.
I knew Bordertown was isolated, but this was different. Normally, I would be fighting off monsters, goblins, wolves, maybe even some bigger ones like orcs but today... nothing.
Not a single beast in sight, even though I'd distanced myself so far from the village.
Does the presence of that monster reach this far?
I knew monsters. Gigantic ones, creepy ones, fast ones. But demons? No. They were supposed to be sealed away. How did this one escape?
And if it got out… what's stopping the rest of them?
If they all escape…
We would die. Every single human. No, everything. Everything would be wiped out.
The weight of that realization made me tremble, cold sweat running down my face. But it wasn't just me who feared that monster.
*Thud*
Only after I hit the ground did my thoughts start to slow. My horse, terrified beyond reason, sprinted away, following its instincts to escape the unimaginable threat. It threw me off in the process. My horse. My only way of transportation. And now it was running away in fear.
But I understood. Hell, how could I not?
My whole body screamed at me to run. But unlike my horse, I felt… this. This cursed, unshakable feeling, like chains binding me to my village. To my duty.
I didn't want to leave. I hated it. Leaving my village behind, knowing there was a monstrous disaster just beyond those thin walls.
It was nauseating. Strange.
A monster so powerful that even my instincts screamed to flee, yet there had been not a single attack. No sign of it at all. Something wasn't right, and it won't leave my mind, pulling my thoughts in circles. I couldn't figure out what it was, but it was there, a missing piece in this puzzle.
Something was very off.
But still... I had to keep moving. I couldn't afford to trust just my gut feeling. Just because it hadn't attacked yet didn't mean it wouldn't. Maybe it was resting. Maybe it was waiting. So I had to keep going.
I stood up and started walking toward the palace. As the sun began to rise, I could just make out the silhouette of the palace, still far off in the distance. The horizon was bathed in a bloody orange glow. It was beautiful, breathtaking, but it made me feel something far darker.
The fear of losing it. The fear of never seeing it again.
Am I exaggerating? Maybe.
But once you've stared death in the face, once you've seen how utterly final it is, there's nothing more terrifying than the thought of a being that could take that from you.
The Glory of an Honorable Death?
There's no such thing.
Death brings nothing but despair. There's no honor in dying. Anyone who thinks there is has never been close to it. Those people live in a world of delusion. But maybe that's for the best—there's bliss in ignorance, after all.
For now, I pushed those dark thoughts away and ran back to my horse, climbing onto its back once again.
The palace was finally coming into sight.