The One Who Forgot The Beginning Chapter 4

[ … words ]

The squad commander hesitated, but still stepped forward, blocking the path of the king and his retinue. Genuine bewilderment was visible in the eyes of the seasoned soldier.

“Your Majesty, forgive my audacity,” he began hoarsely, dropping to one knee. “But why are you returning north? You’ve just come from there… We spent a month scouring the forest while the army waited in the wasteland! Allow our squad to escort you. The lands beyond the road are unsafe now.”

The King of Elderia stopped. He gave the commander a long, heavy look, in which paranoia and cold calculation mingled. Who could be trusted in a world where the dead Supreme Commander lay in a cave, and the living one stood at his right hand?

“Hear my command, soldier,” the monarch’s voice did not waver. “Deploy the garrison. Surround the forest. No one enters or leaves without my personal order. We go alone.”

The squad commander swallowed hard, but dared not object.

A group of eight — the king, the commander, five guardsmen, and a shackled prisoner — passed the checkpoint and entered the Northern Road. The fog here was thicker, settling on their armor as icy dew.

As they advanced further north, the mood in the group shifted. Fear of the invisible boundary between worlds gave way to heavy anxiety for the fate of the entire army. The main question was no longer “Who is this woman?”. Now everyone thought only one thing: “What has happened to this world in the last month?”

The Commander drew level with Kael. In his gray eyes, there was no longer the arrogant contempt with which he had looked at the spy in the palace dungeon. The discovery of his own corpse had become the point of no return.

“If this is your world,” the commander said softly, without looking at the prisoner, “tell me what awaits us ahead.”

Kael smirked, though a sticky fear knotted tightly in his chest.

“The Vanguard camp. Ten thousand of the kingdom’s finest blades,” the knight replied. “We were preparing to crush the northern tribes. But I don’t know what happened after my… death.”

The Commander nodded briefly. He took a key from his belt pouch and, without turning to the guardsmen, unlocked the shackles on Kael’s wrists. The heavy links clattered into the muddy road.

“Your knowledge is our only advantage,” the scarred man stated dryly, handing Kael one of the two greatswords taken from the dead man in the cave. “You are no longer a prisoner. You are our guide. But if you make a single wrong move, I will kill you myself.”

Kael silently accepted the weapon. The sword’s balance felt familiar in his hands, though the Archdemon’s body was thinner and more graceful than his own. He was a valuable source of information, and both sides understood this.

By evening, the fog had dispersed, revealing the northern wastelands. And what they saw made even the king grip his sword hilt so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

The Vanguard camp was dead.

Tens of thousands of tents were ripped to shreds. The ground was churned up with deep trenches, as if a siege of unprecedented scale had taken place here. But the most horrifying thing was the absence of bodies. Everywhere lay fragments of flattened armor, breastplates torn in half, punctured helmets, and pools of dried, blackened blood. Armor had been ripped open as if it were cheap tin cans. No weapon of the northern savages could have wrought such destruction.

“In the name of Light…” whispered one of the guardsmen, stepping back. “Where is everyone? Where is the army?”

From the depths of the ruined camp, from behind a pile of broken wagons, a quiet, pitiful sound emerged.

“Help…”

The voice was human. Hoarse and broken.

“Commander… I’m here…”

“A survivor!” gasped a young guardsman. Forgetting discipline, he rushed forward.

“STOP!” Kael roared, his instincts screaming like a siren. But it was too late.

A shadow darted from behind the wagons. It was so fast that the human eye caught only a blurred black streak.

With a sickening crunch, the guardsman’s head separated from his shoulders. The headless body took two more steps from inertia and collapsed into the mud.

The creature stopped on a pile of debris, allowing itself to be seen. It was not an animal or a demon from known legends. Its long, lean body was covered in an absolutely black, smooth chitinous carapace that absorbed light. An elongated, eyeless skull ended in a gruesome maw from which saliva dripped. Long limbs with blades instead of claws twitched nervously.

It made a sound. It was that same, flawlessly copied human voice:

“Stop the hysteria…” the creature uttered in the precise voice of the King of Elderia, which it had heard in the forest a couple of hours ago.

The creature was learning. Evolving. Absorbing.

“To arms!” roared the Commander, drawing his sword. A Golden Aura flared around him with blinding fire.

But in this world, there was no mana. The Commander’s Aura was merely an echo of his true power, a spark in a vacuum.

The monster lunged to attack. Four guardsmen died in a matter of seconds — their armor was no obstacle for the cosmic predator, which tore through steel and flesh with equal ease. The black death moved along unpredictable trajectories, bouncing off the ground and the remnants of siege engines.

The King of Elderia met the fight as befitted a monarch. He managed to parry the first blow, but a flexible tail with a razor-sharp barb at its end pierced his chest. The ruler gasped for air, dropped his sword, and hung limply from the monster’s tail.

“NO!” cried the Commander.

He lunged at the creature, unleashing a hail of blows upon it. Golden energy clashed with black chitin. Showers of sparks flew. The Commander of the Vanguard was a genius of the sword, the greatest warrior of his generation, but now he was fighting something that defied the laws of nature.

The creature dodged a deadly lunge, slipped under the knight’s arm, and clamped its jaws around his neck. The crunch of breaking vertebrae deafened the silence of the wasteland. The Strongest Knight fell dead beside his king.

Kael was left alone.

The monster slowly turned to him. Kael gripped the hilt of the greatsword. There was no fear in his chest — only icy fury and an animal instinct for survival, fueled by the Archdemon’s blood.

The creature leaped.

Kael rolled aside, blocking the tail’s strike with the flat of his blade. The blow was so powerful that the bones of his forearm cracked audibly. The monster instantly closed the distance, swinging a clawed paw.

Kael tried to parry, but the creature’s speed was incredible. Black claws sliced through his guard as if it were paper.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A flash of agony clouded his mind. Kael’s left arm flew off, severed just below the shoulder.

Before the knight could scream, a second blow struck his face. Three deep, jagged wounds tore through the flesh from his forehead to his cheek, permanently blinding his left eye.

Bleeding profusely and half-blind, Kael collapsed onto his back, tumbling into a deep trench dug for siege weapons. He breathed heavily, clutching the broken sword in his remaining hand. Life was rapidly draining from the Archdemon’s body.

He waited for the finishing blow. Waited for the black jaws to tear out his throat.

But the blow did not come.

Through the bloody haze and ringing in his ears, Kael heard footsteps. The creature approached the edge of the trench. It looked down at the bleeding man, as if assessing whether he was worth its time.

Then the monster raised its eyeless face and looked south. Towards where the group had come from. Towards the Whispering Shadows Forest.

The creature sniffed the air and made a sound that chilled Kael’s soul. It was the absolutely precise, emotionless voice of the living Commander of the Vanguard:

“Until we understand what happened here… trust no one.”

The black shadow turned and sped south with incredible velocity. Towards the barrier. Towards the open passage into a world full of mana and fresh meat.

Leaving the bleeding Kael at the bottom of the trench, the monster went in search of new prey.

The pain did not come immediately. First, there was only a deafening cold that paralyzed his body, and the damp smell of his own blood soaking into the trench mud.

Kael lay on his back, gazing with his one remaining eye at the leaden, gloomy sky. The left side of his face had turned into a pulsating mess. Where his shoulder had been, a gaping, jagged wound pulsed, expelling the last remnants of life.

The Archdemon’s body, endowed with colossal endurance, desperately clung to the fading sparks of consciousness, but even its limits were not infinite.

“Is this… the end?” the thought pounded in his fading mind, slowly and heavily, like a millstone.

He remembered his past life. Decades of endless wars. Triumphs, sprinkled with the blood of enemies. He was called the Strongest Knight. His blade shaped the destinies of nations. And now? He had died only to awaken in a foreign body, see his own decaying corpse, and be torn apart by an nameless creature in a roadside ditch.

A feeling of absolute, crushing helplessness constricted his throat more tightly than any chains. This was not a duel. It was a slaughter. The creature hadn’t even seen him as a threat — it had simply brushed him aside like an annoying insect, leaving him to die in the mud.

The fingers of his right hand twitched, scraping his nails against the ground.

“I can’t… I can’t die like this… Again…”

Everything blurred before his eyes. The outlines of the black sky dissolved into a thick, heavy darkness. Kael squeezed his eye shut and fell into a cold abyss.

The black shadow sped south along the road, blurring in space. In the primitive yet terrifyingly efficient mind of the cosmic predator, only one need pulsed: to consume.

Ordinary human flesh provided too little energy. The creature was still far from maturity. Instincts demanded it gather enough quality biomass to initiate metamorphosis and enter another hibernation. It needed a catalyst.

The cordon stood at the edge of the Whispering Shadows Forest. A dozen guardsmen, left by the king, peered intently into the fog.

The creature did not slow down. It crashed into the line of soldiers like a cannonball. The crunch of crumpling steel merged with the wet sounds of tearing flesh. Its claws dismembered people faster than they could scream.

The predator bent over the squad commander, torn in half. Its mandibles parted, and the creature emitted the commander’s own death rattle, perfectly copying his intonation:

“Allow… us to escort you…”

Grabbing a piece of flesh with its jaws, the creature slipped into the cave. The path to another world was open.

As soon as its black paws touched the soil of Elderia, the creature froze. The air here crackled, permeated with an unknown energy. Mana. To the cosmic predator, it smelled like the purest, most concentrated nectar.

The first thing in its path was a border village. The slaughter was silent and utterly merciless. The creature burst into homes, devouring people alive and absorbing meager scraps of mana. But it was not enough.

Driven by instinct, the alien moved further, deep into the famous Spiderwood — an anomalous zone teeming with magical beasts.

But they were already waiting for it there.

Rumors of the destroyed checkpoint reached the capital faster than the predator could sate itself. The elite of Elderia met it in the thicket. A dozen High Swordsmen and three Archmages of the Tower.

These were no ordinary soldiers. Ahead, leaning on a dragon-bone staff, stood Archmage Ignis — an old man whose infernal flame had burned a Bone Dragon alive forty years ago. To his right, clutching twin blades, stood Lord Swordsman Garen, known as the North Wind. Each of those present was a living legend.

“It’s here,” Garen said hoarsely, as the black shadow froze on the branch of an ancient oak.

From the creature’s maw burst the cry of a little girl from the ravaged village, which immediately morphed into the authoritative roar of the King of Elderia:

“Stop the hysteria!”

“Incinerate the filth,” Ignis commanded.

Space tore open. Ignis did not waste time on minor spells — he unleashed the “Wrath of the Sun” upon the forest. A blinding column of roaring white fire struck directly at the predator. Trees within a hundred-meter radius instantly turned to ash. The ground melted, turning into glass.

But the monster leaped out of the raging inferno. Its chitin smoked and was covered in deep cracks, but its speed remained incredible.

“To arms!” roared Garen, and a dozen blades flared with a dense, blinding Aura.

The dance of death began. The predator lunged at Garen, aiming its claws at his throat. But the lord swordsman was no guardsman from the king’s retinue. He vanished into the air with a somersault, and his blade, with a deafening clang, struck the creature’s back. The Aura pierced the chitin!

Green blood spurted from the wound. Acid burned through Garen’s pauldron, making the warrior clench his teeth in pain, but he did not retreat, delivering a second blow.

The creature hissed. It understood that this prey could kill it.

“Illusion magic is capable of many things…” the creature rasped in the monarch’s voice, dodging a hail of blows from the other swordsmen.

It used the trees, ricocheting off them like black lightning. Its tail with a razor barb shot towards the chest of one of the swordsmen, but an Archmage in the rear erected an “Absolute Shield.” The barb scraped against the barrier with a vile screech, showering sparks on those nearby.

“Hold the line! Drive it into the spells!” Garen shouted, while healers in the rear were already preparing healing incantations.

The Archmages unleashed distortion magic upon the forest. The ground beneath the creature’s paws turned into quicksand, and gravity pressed it to the earth like a vise. The creature howled. Under the weight of the spell, one of the swordsmen managed to get closer and sever the creature’s front left paw.

Acidic blood spurted into the warrior’s face, melting flesh and helmet. The swordsman collapsed, choking and thrashing in agony.

Losing a limb, the predator fell into a primal rage. It lunged forward, ignoring gravity. Its speed became unreal. Claws ripped open Garen’s abdomen, spilling his entrails, and a tail pierced Ignis’s shoulder, pinning the great Archmage to a tree.

But the elite of Elderia did not surrender. Bleeding profusely, holding his own entrails with his left hand, Garen with his right drove his glowing sword directly into the creature’s maw, breaking its mandibles. Ignis, coughing blood, detonated his staff, unleashing a shockwave of pure mana.

The explosion threw the mutilated, smoking body of the monster dozens of meters away. The creature had lost a paw, half its carapace, and was severely burned. The instinct for self-preservation overcame hunger. The creature let out a piercing shriek, like metal scraping glass, and dissolved into the thick bushes, leaving behind a smoking trail of acid.

The severely wounded, bleeding masters remained in the clearing. They had survived, but the price was too high.

“Do not pursue…” Ignis rasped, sliding down the tree trunk. “Cordon off the forest… Send word to the capital…”

The predator retreated deeper and deeper, into the darkest, most inaccessible crevice in the heart of Spiderwood. It had sustained enormous damage, but the absorbed magic of the village and spiders was already circulating in its blood.

The time had come. It needed to heal. It needed to evolve.

Crawling into a cave, the creature began to secrete a thick, glistening resin from its maw. It hardened in the air, transforming into an impenetrable carapace. It wove a cocoon around itself.

Before sinking into slumber, the monster released hundreds of incredibly fine, almost invisible threads from glands on its abdomen. It stretched them throughout the crevice, stringing them between tree trunks and rocks. Each monomolecular thread could cut steel without resistance, and the poison coating them killed in seconds. Anyone who tried to approach the cocoon would be cut to pieces.

Sealed inside, the creature closed its eyes. The biomass within began to melt, rebuilding the damaged skeleton and accumulating new strength. When this cocoon opened, this world would truly tremble.

Somewhere far from these places, amidst the silence and the scent of bitter herbs, Kael’s consciousness slowly returned.

First, his hearing returned. The quiet, rhythmic dripping of water and the crackling of logs in a small hearth. Then came touch. He was lying not in cold mud, but on something soft. His hand — the one that remained — rested on a coarse woolen blanket.

Kael tried to take a deep breath, but his ribs immediately responded with a sharp, piercing pain.

He struggled to open his right eye. His left would not open — half his face was covered by a tight bandage, smelling of healing ointments. A similarly tight bandage covered the stump of his left shoulder.

Kael’s vision focused. Instead of the leaden sky of the northern wastelands, he saw above him a vaulted stone ceiling, illuminated by the uneven light of torches. The air hung with the smell of dried mushrooms, iron, and stale dust.

He was alive. But where?

From the side, out of the gloom, came the sound of shuffling footsteps, and a quiet, hoarse voice said:

“Awake? Demoness. I was starting to think I’d have to dig another grave.”