The One Who Forgot The Beginning Chapter 7

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Days passed, merging into a single, continuous cycle of pain, sweat, and dry forest heat.

For Altamira, time had lost its usual count. There were no more changing of the guards, no evening reconnaissance reports, or bugles sounding the assembly. Her new battlefield was a small stone room, and her only enemy was her own maimed body, stubbornly refusing to obey the will of the former commander.

Each morning began the same way. Altamira slid off the bed, took the oak staff with her dry, calloused fingers of her right hand, and tried to maintain balance.

At first, it was a pathetic three seconds. Then five. On the third day, she managed to stand for a full ten seconds, trembling continuously, until her right knee gave way again, throwing her onto the cold stone.

But with each fall, her movements became slightly more conscious. The cold mind of a warrior, accustomed to analyzing enemy tactics, now analyzed the physics of her own new body. She learned to compensate for the absence of her left arm by shifting her body weight slightly to the right and bending her knees slightly. She grew accustomed to seeing the world with one eye, rebuilding her perception of distances and volume in her mind.

Eldrin watched this torturous struggle in silence. He no longer tried to dissuade her. Every evening, the elf would come, sit on the edge of the bed, and silently heal the fresh abrasions, torn muscles, and bleeding stitches on her stump. His emerald magic brought temporary peace, but in the eyes of the ancient being, a deep, hidden anxiety became increasingly apparent.

The hum coming from underground grew louder with each passing day.

It was no longer just a distant metallic rustle. The vibration penetrated through the stone walls of the house, resonating as a frequent, fine tremor in the water of the copper bowl. The World Tree outside seemed to be awakening, and its turquoise light, pulsing through the gaps in the shutters, grew faster and more aggressive.

On the fifth day, Eldrin entered the room not with bandages, but with a small tray holding a deep clay bowl of thick herbal decoction and a piece of tough, dried meat.

Behind him, as usual, the horned boy silently glided in. The child habitually sat on the floor in the corner, knees drawn up, and stared at Altamira with his unnervingly serious yellow eyes.

“Eat,” Eldrin said curtly, placing the tray on the small table. “Your body needs strength. There are two days left until the Gates open.”

Altamira slowly rose from the floor, leaning on the staff. This time, she didn’t fall. Standing straight, she held her balance for almost half a minute without visible strain.

“You still haven’t told me what will happen when the Gates open,” she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the single gauntlet of her right sleeve. Her voice was still hoarse, but her former commander’s intonations were beginning to emerge. “What are you preparing for, Eldrin?”

The elf froze, looking at her. Deep shadows lay across his youthful, perfect face.

“The Gates are not just a passage,” he replied softly, sitting on a stool by the hearth. “They are a rupture in the fabric of space. When the World Tree completes its cycle, the barriers thin out. At that moment, those attracted by the dense mana of this place rush here from other layers of reality. Parasites. Predators. And… seekers of power.”

“The Creature,” Altamira whispered, and her single red eye narrowed. “The black chitinous monster from the northern wastes. Was it coming here?”

“The wave attracts many,” Eldrin tilted his head slightly. “But the most dangerous are not monsters. Creatures capable of thought will come here. Reapers, who hunt for cores. If they find a demon with a cracked core, or an elf who has exhausted his strength healing it… they will not miss their prey.”

Altamira shifted her gaze to the horned boy. The child flinched slightly under her gaze but did not look away.

“He’s in danger too,” she stated.

“We are all in danger,” Eldrin corrected her. “But I have barriers around the house. If they withstand the first wave, we will have a chance. Your task is not to be a burden when the breach begins.”

On the sixth day, Altamira took her first real step without relying on the staff.

The staff stood propped against the wall. She stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. Her left shoulder was pierced by the familiar phantom fire, but she forced herself to ignore the pain.

A step with her right foot. Shifting her weight.

The world swayed slightly, but she held steady.

A step with her left foot. Her center of gravity shifted, her right shoulder reflexively twitched upwards, compensating for the absence of her left arm.

She walked across the entire room—exactly eight steps—and pressed her palm against the opposite stone wall.

Behind her, a quiet, barely audible movement sounded. Altamira turned around. The horned boy stood in the doorway. For the first time in all these days, a semblance of emotion appeared on his dark crimson face—his yellow eyes widened slightly, and his small fingers clenched into fists.

Altamira looked at him and tilted her head slightly.

“What’s your name, kid?” she asked.

The boy hesitated, as if checking whether this stern, red-eyed demoness was indeed addressing him.

“Vaelin,” he replied softly. His voice was clear but very quiet, as if he was unaccustomed to speaking.

“Vaelin,” Altamira repeated, tasting the name. “Do you want to learn to survive, Vaelin?”

The boy slowly nodded.

“Then remember: never show your enemy that you are hurt or scared. Even if your arm has been torn off or your eye gouged out. As long as you breathe, you fight.”

Vaelin stared at her, as if absorbing every word, and then gave another firm nod.

The night before the seventh day brought changes.

The hum beneath the earth escalated into a continuous, deafening roar that rattled dishes on shelves and cracked plaster in the corners. The air in the room became thick, heavy, and electrified, as if before a grand thunderstorm. Small scarlet sparks began to flicker from Altamira’s skin—the remnants of her suppressed, damaged demonic mana reacting to the external fluctuations.

She didn’t sleep. Sitting on the bed, Altamira methodically massaged the muscles of her right leg, preparing her body for battle.

The door burst open without a knock. Eldrin stood on the threshold. His silver hair was disheveled, and in his hands, he held neither ointments nor food.

In the elf’s hands was a short, slightly curved sword in a simple leather scabbard and a thick leather armor, clearly fitted for a female figure.

“The Gates are opening,” Eldrin said sternly, throwing the armor and sword onto the bed. “The air outside is already poisoned by the mana storm. Put this on. The sword is light, forged from elven steel. You will have to fight with one hand.”

Altamira took the sword. Her right hand habitually gripped the hilt. For the first time in a long while, a familiar, cold fire ignited in her chest. The weight of the weapon was unusually light compared to her former two-handed knight’s sword, but it was a weapon. An instrument of killing. An instrument of survival.

This story originates from NovelPhoenix. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Where’s Vaelin?” she asked, pulling on the leather cuirass with one hand.

“In the cellar, under protective runes,” Eldrin replied, drawing a long, elegant blade covered in glowing runes from his belt. “If the barrier outside falls, your only task is to go down to him and hold the cellar door. Do you understand me, Altamira?”

“I understand,” she replied, tightening the armor straps with her teeth and right hand.

They stepped out onto the threshold of the house.

The night sky above the World Tree had changed beyond recognition. The enormous trunk no longer merely pulsed—gigantic cracks ran along its bark from bottom to top, from which columns of turquoise and blood-red light erupted. The tree’s crown in the heavens blazed, and the clouds around it swirled into a gigantic, martial vortex.

And from this vortex, through the rent fabric of space, black, burning shadows began to fall to the earth.

The first strike hit directly the protective dome above Eldrin’s house. The stone firmament shuddered with a deafening crunch.

“It has begun,” the elf said softly, raising his blade.

Altamira stood slightly behind him, gripping the hilt of the short sword tightly with her right hand. Her legs trembled with tension, her single red eye burned with cold fury, and in her ears, the distant, familiar march of military valor sounded once more.

She didn’t know who exactly would emerge from that darkness. But she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to die today.

“To the cellar! Quickly!” Eldrin roared, his voice cutting through the deafening crackle of the collapsing protective barrier.

The usual gentleness and unhurried tone had vanished from his voice. It was the command of a warrior aware of mortal danger. The elf spun around, and his blade flared with blinding emerald light, taking the first blow from a shadow that had crashed from the sky.

Altamira didn’t need to be told twice. The commander’s cold pragmatism worked faster than emotions: with torn mana channels, one arm, and a maimed body, entering open combat was tantamount to suicide.

She turned and, limping heavily, rushed inside the crumbling house.

At the very moment the trapdoor behind her shuddered from the first terrible impact, the spatial fabric around them suddenly tightened. Altamira felt it with every cell of her damaged body. An invisible yet suffocating wave passed through the house, cutting off the territory around the World Tree from the rest of the continent.

This was not a magical spell from the attackers. It was the unnatural nature of the Gates manifesting itself. Just as deep dungeons seal themselves in their own spatial pockets, the surrounding forest within a radius of several kilometers instantly collapsed, transforming into an isolated zone, severed from reality. Altamira’s gaze briefly caught the window: the familiar landscape beyond the glass blurred, turning into a dense, impenetrable silver mist that trapped the space.

Altamira burst into the kitchen, where the frightened yellow eyes of the horned boy looked up at her from the darkness of the open trapdoor in the floor.

“Vaelin, back!” she exhaled hoarsely, practically sliding down the steep wooden ladder.

The child scrambled deeper into the basement. Altamira grabbed the heavy oak trapdoor cover with her single right hand and slammed it shut with a thud, instantly sliding the massive iron bolt.

Impenetrable darkness settled in the cellar, broken only by the barely visible, dim turquoise glow of the runes Eldrin had carved into the support beams.

Above them, all hell broke loose.

The house shuddered as if giant invisible titans were tearing it apart. The ceiling boards groaned, and stone chips and dry earth rained down from above. A deafening hum, the whistle of air being cut, and heavy, vibrating impacts echoed through the floor. Eldrin was fighting at the limit of his strength—Altamira felt the waves of his colossal emerald energy detonating the air outside.

She sank to one knee, breathing heavily and pressing Vaelin close to her. The boy’s left hand gripped the edge of her leather cuirass in a death grip. The child trembled but held his breath and made no sound.

“Quiet…” Altamira whispered almost inaudibly, placing her right palm, clutching the short sword, on his shoulder.

Suddenly, the roar outside ceased. A frightening, ringing silence fell. Only the crackling of burning wood and the quiet hum of the isolated space disturbed the peace.

And then, footsteps sounded above their heads.

Heavy. Clear. Methodical.

These were not the senseless leaps of wild monsters, nor the graceful, silent movements of elves. This was the tread of well-trained, disciplined soldiers, accustomed to working in a group.

Altamira froze, ceasing even to breathe. The pressure seeping through the cracks in the floor was overwhelming. The auras of those who had entered the ruined house pressed on her consciousness with such force that her cracked core responded with agonizing, pulsating pain. They were incredibly, lethally strong. The commander within her instantly assessed the situation: any one of those standing upstairs could destroy her in a fraction of a second, without even drawing a weapon.

Voices drifted down from above.

Altamira pressed her good ear against a stone support in the cellar, trying to make out at least a word. But the sounds penetrating through the boards were utterly alien. There was nothing in them of the languages of human kingdoms she had spoken in her past life, and nothing of the dialects of demons or elves.

It was fast, clipped, strangely rhythmic speech, saturated with harsh consonants and unfamiliar intonations. To Altamira, these voices sounded like an incomprehensible, clicking and barking set of sounds.

“Pak, scan complete? What about the elf’s core?” a sharp, authoritative voice came directly from the central room.

“Core is clean, Commander! Pure S-rank! Guilds will tear each other’s throats out for it at the Seoul auction. We’ll get at least two billion won!” another, younger voice replied.

“Excellent. Collect the mana crystals and let’s wrap this up. This Gate breach turned out to be damn profitable. That bastard from the Association didn’t lie when he leaked us the coordinates of this dungeon.”

“Commander, what about the territory? The dungeon isolated itself, the spatial rift is already unstable. If we don’t get out through the Gates right now, the portal will collapse, and we’ll be stuck here until the next reset!”

“Screw the local world and their rift problems. We got an S-rank core and full bags of resources. Let’s move to the Gates before they close. Back to our world!”

Altamira listened to these incomprehensible, rhythmic sounds: *”Pak… S-rank… Seoul… won… dungeon…”* The words didn’t form meanings. She didn’t know who these beings were. Were they humans? Intelligent monsters? Demons from even more distant Wastes? Their tone was cold, pragmatic, and devoid of any desire for destruction for destruction’s sake. They came for loot. Like marauders or professional bounty hunters.

Suddenly, heavy army boots walked directly over the cellar trapdoor.

Altamira felt a pinch of dry earth fall onto her face from the ceiling. The hilt of the short sword in her right hand was gripped until her knuckles whitened. She covered Vaelin’s mouth with her wide palm, listening intently.

Someone stopped directly above the trapdoor.

“Kim, there seems to be a cellar or locked basement here. Should we break in? Maybe there’s more loot?”

“Don’t waste time, Min-Su! The portal timer is ticking! The scanner shows no strong mana signatures below—just a couple of very weak sources, most likely small survivors or slaves. Nothing valuable. We only need high-rank cores. Let’s move to the Gates!”

The footsteps above the trapdoor shifted. A strange, short pulse of alien energy passed through the cracks, but Eldrin’s runes on the inner bolt softly flared, absorbing the foreign scan and concealing the presence of the survivors.

The voices above began to recede, moving out of the ruined house and into the street.

Altamira sat in complete darkness for a long time.

Outside, a deafening, collapsing hum passed—the sound space makes when someone passes through an open rift into another reality. The attackers did not clear the isolated zone completely. Having taken what they came for, they simply returned through the Gates to their own world, leaving this corner of the forest cut off and trapped in a spatial pocket.

Gradually, silence settled outside. A dead, heavy silence of plundered ruins.

“Altamira…?” Vaelin whispered almost inaudibly, touching her sleeve.

“Stay here,” she replied quietly.

Her body was stiff, her severed shoulder ached with infernal pain from overexertion, and her cracked core inside pulsed weakly and unevenly. But the cold rationality of a commander demanded action.

Altamira stood up, climbed the ladder, and carefully slid back the iron bolt with her right hand. With effort, she pulled the trapdoor cover towards her, opening it a couple of centimeters, peering through the gap with her single red eye.

No one was in the house.

She climbed out, holding the short sword ready, and gestured for Vaelin to stay below.

The sight that met her gaze was dismal. The roof of Eldrin’s house was completely gone. The stone walls were blown outwards, as if a bomb had exploded from within. Debris of furniture, broken alchemical vessels, and dried herbs lay everywhere.

Altamira stepped through the breach in the wall into the fresh air.

The forest around the house had changed. The entire area was flooded with a thick, silver mist, standing as an impenetrable wall a hundred meters from the dwelling. The space was isolated, transformed into a closed dungeon.

At the very roots of the World Tree, where majestic Gate arches had recently stood, only a smoking, scorched pit remained. The surface of the earth was covered with deep scorch marks from unknown, concentrated weapons.

Eldrin was nowhere to be found. Nor was his body. Only dark elven blood had congealed on the stones by the entrance, and charred remnants of his silver hair lay scattered.

Altamira lowered her sword, wiping cold sweat from her forehead.

She didn’t know who these uninvited guests were, speaking a savage, unknown language. She didn’t understand their terms, their goals, or the terrifying, disciplined power with which they operated. But she saw the main thing: they came, took the elf’s power as loot, and simply left through their Gates, not even bothering to finish off those who had hidden in the cellar.

They considered this world merely a hunting ground.

Altamira slowly clenched her bloodied right fist. An army lost, a cripple with a cracked core, trapped in a female body in an isolated, cut-off piece of forest…

She turned and walked back to the breach in the wall, where the horned boy looked at her fearfully from the darkness of the cellar.

“Come out, Vaelin,” Altamira said, and her single ruby eye flared in the twilight with a stern, inhuman fire. “The elf is gone. Now we survive on our own.”