Chapter 11: Memories
In the early morning, as the warm sun rose and the first rays of light slipped between the treetops, a faint smile appeared on Lumit's face as he entered the tent that had been pitched separately at the front, after asking his companions to wait at the entrance.
Lumit was not surprised to find Christie standing alone inside, leaning her back against a tent pole. Her features looked calm, yet there was urgency in her eyes. She had sent him a clear request to meet her privately about a matter that could not be delayed.
Lumit approached her, and a voice within him urged him to bow in greeting to her as a noblewoman, and in deference to his former status as a knight of the Russell family. But he understood that the matter was urgent, and that Christie had not summoned him to hear polite formalities. Besides, in the end, he had left the Russell family before Christie was even born.
He settled for a slight nod and said in a calm tone, "What requires such an urgent meeting so early in the morning? Are you thinking of withdrawing, Lady Russell?"
Christie gave him a courteous look and said, "Commander... we are not in Rainsta, and you know very well that I am not from the Russell family."
Christie knew that he was deliberately calling her by her family name to annoy her, especially after they had been exiled from Rainsta following numerous disputes, but she was not in the mood to play along with his teasing.
She continued in a more serious tone, "Commander, did you know about the commanders' assignment?"
Lumit shook his head and then said firmly, while looking into her injured eye, "You are no longer in Rainsta, but your medal still bears the Russell name, Lady. As for your question, I only learned of the assignment a short while ago. I ordered Louis to place you near Lumin so that you would stay away from the commanders. He had already withdrawn from the club and then returned on this expedition after those rumors and whispers. You are injured and new, and he has just come back, so this choice was the best one for both of you."
He sighed, walked over to the table, picked up a cup, and poured wine into it until it was full, then continued in a lighter tone, "Some of the commanders objected to his return, saying he had no loyalty to the club, but the final word was mine. I did not expect Litht to be bold enough to bring up Lumin at the commanders' meeting and place him at the front. For a long time, I was used to letting the commanders decide their own positions. The Russell family must fight under any circumstances, and that is the draw you were dealt."
Then he changed his tone and added, "Lady Russell, if you want to withdraw or return to the center, tell me. I am old enough now, and I have learned the meaning of loyalty from the Russell family."
Christie could not completely hide her anger. She knew that Lumit did not mean to insult her the way others did when they called her injured. He was merely enjoying the act of provoking her, and that only made his childish behavior more irritating to her.
She lowered her gaze to the ground for a moment, took a deep breath, and raised her head again, having regained her composure. In a firm tone she said, "I came out just now to inspect the area around us, and I wanted to see how far I could shoot my arrow without the forest interfering with its path, if Lumin fails to convince you to change our positions."
"Lumin?" Lumit interrupted, repeating the name, surprise spreading across his face. He fell silent for a moment, then said, "You met him and talked about me? Ah... of course he would look for you after learning that he would be placed with you at the front."
Christie ignored what he said and did not correct his assumption. Instead, she took from the pocket of her dress a tail-like strip blended in black and orange, and held it out to him while saying quietly, "When I decided to return to the tent and wait for the time of discovery, I smelled a sharp scent of blood behind some bushes. I went toward the smell and found Lumin lying on the ground... He had a large wound in his right side, and beside him was the corpse of a huge tiger, no less than twelve feet long."
Lumit could not utter a word. He took the tail and opened his eyes wide, shifting his gaze between it and Christie's face. He had left their last meeting in his shop with the impression that Lumin had not yet become capable, because of his weak aura. That was what shocked him about the amount of power he possessed, and he found himself imagining him as if he had already reached a soldier's station.
When Christie saw that he was still silent, she continued, "I carried him with difficulty and brought him to Louis's tent because it was not far from the site of the incident. I told him what I had found and asked whether he could take care of the body, since he was the closest to it, and because he could bring his men to carry it instead of me. One of his men took Lumin to the club healer, while Louis followed me to the tiger's corpse. Then I left, and asked to meet you here."
Lumit looked at Christie's face for a moment, then said, "So... you came to tell me that you can no longer move to the front because he is injured?"
Christie nodded and answered, heading toward the tent opening to leave, "Yes. Didn't you yourself say that my team would be beside his team? He is injured and cannot go to the front, and my team must remain in the rear to make sure he is protected and treated. He risked his life to kill that tiger, and he succeeded. Let the gods grant him survival, and that he does not die from his wounds."
Lumit watched her leave the tent and thought to himself, You used the situation to move back... Didn't you want to prove yourself?
Lumit remained in the tent, drinking wine until the cup was empty. Then he stepped out through the opening and said to one of his attendants, "Kersten, go bring Litht and Land here. Tell them I need their help with an urgent matter."
...
Lumin opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by endless darkness, as though the world had been extinguished all at once. There was no ground beneath his feet, and no sky above to lift his gaze to—only a dense blackness pressing on his consciousness from every direction. He felt a slight tremor in his chest, then noticed that the card in his inner pocket had begun to quiver, as though pulsing with a faint call.
He tried to take it out, but his body betrayed him and his hand would not move as he wished, as if direction itself had lost all meaning in that darkness.
Then he felt a connection forming in his mind, and he could not understand what was happening. He did not try to think too much, because the pain of thinking overwhelmed everything. Still, words began echoing in his mind.
"Close."
"Your."
"Eyes."
Lumin closed his eyes at once, without thinking about why those words had appeared or what connection they had to his mind.
His body jolted, once violently and once faintly, as though something were reshaping him from within. And with his eyes shut, the pain vanished completely, the weight of thought disappeared, but his instincts screamed at him not to do anything. So he remained still, surrendering, until the silence was pierced by a familiar calm voice—the voice of the Castle Man, Mr. Richard Alexander—saying, "You may open your eyes."
Lumin opened his eyes and found himself lying on his red bed in his room. Unlike last time, he felt neither pain nor a headache, so he remained lying there for a few seconds before getting up.
He reached into his inner pocket to take out the Castle Man's card. He wanted to speak with Mr. Richard Alexander and ask whether it was possible to go outside sometimes. The idea of being trapped in this house every time he slept was suffocating him, especially since he had been allowed to open the door before the disturbance began... But when he touched his pocket, he found nothing. The card was not there.
Lumin frowned and murmured to himself, Did he place another item for me instead? Like the tethered cane?
He left his room and began searching the house for the Castle Man's card. He noticed the clock in the hallway and saw that it pointed to ten... so he began his search in the guest room on the first floor.
He went through every corner of the ground floor, spending nearly two hours on the search, but to no avail. He could not find the card anywhere he looked, and only Rahil's room remained.
He entered the room without knocking and began searching it, checking every possible place something could be hidden—from under the bed to the highest shelf he could reach. Before leaving, his eyes fell upon Rahil's diary, which he had taken out of the drawer during his search.
He moved toward the table with steady steps and lifted the diary in both hands. He stared at it with deep eyes, as though debating whether he should read it or not. He had once believed that her transformation was tied to a demonic cult, but after learning about the Pathwalkers and the gatherings that took place across the world, he could no longer stop himself from suspecting that his sister had been a Pathwalker, and that her transformation into that form had been caused by one of those gatherings.
He remembered what had happened six months earlier, shortly after bringing her into the house after her transformation. That day, he had gone into her room wanting to read her diary, only to find the notebook torn page by page and scattered across the floor. He had not understood the reason back then, but now he began to suspect that Rahil had not been tearing her pages apart for nothing. She had been trying to protect him and keep him away from the truths of the Pathwalkers, from that world that devoured and warped anyone who came too close.
He noticed that none of the things he had taken out of the drawers during his search had been put back in place, so he picked up the scattered papers on the table and began arranging them according to the numbers written at the bottom corner of each sheet. After he finished, he realized they were special papers Rahil had bought to study for the entrance exam to Batis University.
Lumin knew his sister well, but he did not understand why she had been studying to become a university student in the capital. What he remembered of her from years ago was that she had never liked studying at all. She used to quarrel constantly with their father because she kept skipping classes at Red Moon School. Lumin had thought then that she had realized studying would not bring her a future.
He still remembered the day she shouted at their father, her vision blinded by anger: "I will gain nothing from this! I do not want to leave the city. I will live here for the rest of my life. I am not interested in making money. I will marry a man and wait for him to return from hunting with our children, with longing."
Then she left the house immediately afterward, and Lumin and the people of the northern district searched for her for two whole days until they found her hiding behind the grass near the horse stables.
What surprised him most was that after their father died, Rahil went to Red Moon School of her own accord, despite the fact that no one was stopping her from going out anymore, as their father once had. And even after graduating, she did not stop studying. She continued until she was pursuing admission as a student in the capital, Trakis. There were many nights when her studies exhausted her so much that she fell asleep over her wooden desk. Back then, Lumin could not stop himself from asking her why she was so determined to become a student in the capital after having once opposed their father so strongly.
She answered him, her eyes gleaming with a strange passion: "Look at the world around us."
Then she continued, gesturing into the empty space beyond the wooden walls, as though she could see the whole world there: "Do you not wonder why there is so much difference between us? Why cultures differ? Why there is a nobility system in the kingdom, while Rainsta is built on families? Why are some people born nobles, while the rest of us live the bitterness of labor just to make money? And what about the Lancelot Empire?"
A brief silence followed before she went on in a low voice, "And why did some barbarians choose to live high in the mountains, in the bitter cold, far from fields and water? Did they flee from something... or are they guarding something we do not know? And why did others flee to the northern plains, where only the open horizon and the wind protect them? Were they running from something?"
Then she said, "Do you not want to know why Robstark built the wall in the south and forbade people from crossing it? And why the Millennium Knights were founded? Why did they not intervene during the Age of Fire and Blood to profit from it, as the other empires did?"
She turned her head toward Lumin and wore a wide smile on her face, then closed her eyes and continued in a sorrowful tone, "I want knowledge about all of this." And then she collapsed from intoxication.
Lumin put the papers back into the drawer once more, even though he knew he was not in his real home and was perhaps wandering within his own dream. Still, he could not stop himself from restoring what he had taken out of the mess. He did not understand why, but he did it anyway.
Then he took his sister's diary and opened it to read the first pages.