I found myself back in my old village.
It was not the same as I remembered it - something had gone horribly wrong in my absence.
Houses were slouched over, begging to be buried, and traces of battle marred the surrounding.
As I took a step forward, the countless birds pecking on some unidentifiable food quickly took off, letting the smell of rot permeate the air.
I kept walking further in, finally reaching my childhood home.
It remained mostly intact.
I placed my hand on the doorknob, a strong sense of familiarity filling my heart, and pushed the door open.
Something blocked my way, but I simply stepped over the obstacle, focusing only on what my rapidly deteriorating mind could handle.
There's my bed.But why is it kept so cleanly?
It's been over five years since I ran away.
Yet there was no dust on the floor, and the windows were cleanly wiped, save for a few crimson splotches.
For some reason, the dark red stains sent a shiver down my spine, and so I shifted my attention:
Even my collections of trinkets remained intact, as if waiting for my return.
Are you telling me they looked after my stuff while I was gone..?
"Yeah, right. Let's not kid ourselves. No way in hell they waited for my return; not after what I did."
However, despite my outright dismissal of the idea, a doubt settled in.
What if? What if, despite it all, they never planned on exiling me? What if they waited for me to come back, all this time?
The thought was haunting.
If it were just my delusions that fueled me to abandon my past life…
Then everything I'd gone through in the last five years, clawing my way out of death's grasp time and time again, all on my own - was for nought.
And that was not something I had the mental capacity to accept.
After reminiscing on the past for a few more minutes, I eventually left the house behind and headed for the well that's never failed to remind me of my sin, even in dreams.
It was shattered to pieces.
I looked in-
"Aa-ahhh.!!"
And instantly recoiled, crying out in a crackling, distraught voice.
My feet caught on something, causing me to stumble over to the ground.
I weakly pushed myself up, noticing that my hands had dug into some kind of soft, moist substance.
I directed my gaze at the substance.
"Urgh, what is-!!"
Finally, the imagery that my brain refused to comprehend crashed on me all at once.
My whole being shook, hands going numb. I could barely breathe, as if a noose were tied around my neck.
*Blergh!*
Unable to hold it in any longer, I emptied the contents of my stomach.
Inside the well, dozens of bodies were piled up.
Beneath me, too.
And inside my home.
Everywhere - across the entire village - dead Threadrippers, my fellow brethren, littered the ground.
"How? Why? What happened?!"
I couldn't understand.
It's only been five years since I ran away, and yet, within that short time, something irrevocable happened to the ones I lovingly called my family.
My childhood friends, my parents, the wise elders, and the brave hunting squad; all had been brutally murdered.
Just like I left them, they went and got themselves killed, abandoning me in return.
Could you not have survived, for your own sake?! This makes no fucking sense! If anything, it should've been me to die first - not the other way around.
At the very least, you should have lived to despise me…
It was all too much to take in.
Way too much.
I felt my grip on sanity slip. Something within my mind - the last piece, desperately clinging on to the fruitless hopes of ever making up for my mistakes - shattered.
A crazed laughter echoed throughout the deceased village, bearing the voice of the one I hated more than any other in this wretched world.
The voice was, of course, mine.
*Rumble*
Suddenly, the sky violently shook.
The timing felt utterly ridiculous.
"Ah, is that what we're doing now? Am I not even allowed to wallow in despair now?!"
I screamed at the sky, but it didn't care for my sorrows.
*Rumble*
The world trembled once more, this time accompanied by a surge of terrible pain.
It was then that I realized - something was amiss.
Wait, wait. What is going on right now? And why does everything hurt so bad?
I was not referring to mental anguish, either; no, my body hurt in the most literal sense, as if severely wounded.
*Rumble*
After the third rumble, my irritation boiled over the edge.
"Ahh, shut the hell up already!!"
In a fit of rage, I sprung up to curse at the incessant noise, only to be met with an incomprehensible sight.
"Huh?"
***
As the three adventurers discussed what they should do with the immobilized Threadripper, he suddenly crumbled in on himself and gracelessly fell over.
They exchanged glances, worried that he might be playing another trick on them.
Rennie walked up to his collapsed figure, forming a peculiar gesture with her fingers.
Then, with a nod, she stood back up and turned to her party.
The shock of the recent events left her so overwhelmed that she seemed to forget all about her usual fear of social interactions as she spoke to her party, no longer through a telepathic link.
"He passed out. Blood loss, I think. Probably won't come to it for at least a couple of days."
At Rennie's words, her two companions let out a sigh of relief in sync.
Kanna's knees nearly buckled as the adrenaline rush subsided, and she looked at her friends with a slight smile.
"We lived to die another day, huh? Almost can't believe it."
Bill couldn't agree more.
"To think that there was another survivor of the Threadripper race after the execution... Tell ya what, we're gonna have one hell of a story to share once we make it back."
After catching their breaths and holding a very modest victory celebration, passing a waterskin around with a few cheers along the way, they patched up the worst of their injuries and prepared to head out; the adventurers wanted nothing more than to return from the blasted Red Zone forest.
Bill's thigh was severely damaged, in just enough shape to support his own weight, and as for Kanna - her arm hung limply on the side, shoulder muscles torn by the Threadripper's ruthless slash.
And so, despite having the smallest stature among the three, it fell on Rennie to drag Ori's body back to their cart.
But, being too short to carry him over the shoulder, she ended up dragging him by the hand like a sack of garbage.
The party had doubts about their decision, of course. Kanna, as usual, was the first to voice that concern:
"Are we sure this is the right move? You know, taking him back with us?"
Bill snorted in response.
"'Are we sure'? Not in the slightest. I'm still considering dumping his in some ditch, to be honest. But, I do think he has the potential to be an invaluable source of knowledge on this forest, as much as I hate the bastard."
"Well, you're not wrong…"
That was right - they'd decided to take him back to their town despite the risks of such a move.
The could rest assured that he wouldn't wake up any time soon; Rennie had a very good eye for things like that.
After what felt like an eternity, they finally reached their cart.
Fortunately, washing the carcasses as a precautionary measure seemed to have worked, as it was left untouched by the resident demons.
By now, Bill was in better shape, with some of his essence restored after losing a huge chuck to Ori.
However hauling a cart full of heavy carapaces - and a person on top of that - was too daunting a task for him, so they ended up discarding more than half of their hard earned loot.
Bill nearly shed a tear in regret, but it had to be done.
Finally, once all was said and done, they set out towards their town.
Ori was snugly tied with enchanted rope and dumped into the cart, to prevent him from causing a scene the moment he woke up.
***
I opened my eyes.
And looked around.
"Huh?"
It was only then that I understood what caused the constant rumbled.
I was being hauled in a cart through the mountainous woods. Not the smoothest of rides, as you can imagine.
Not all was bad, though. The cart had stopped moving by the time I woke up, so I could at least catch a break from the turbulence.
Eventually, memories of the events leading to my current predicament came flooding back, which left me even more confused than before:
I'm alive… Does that mean they chose not to kill me, in the end? Wait, that actually makes sense - they'd probably wanna torture every last bit of information out of me before disposing of my corpse.
I couldn't even complain about this outcome, as it was entirely my fault.
Had I just run away the moment I was spotted, this whole fiasco would've been avoided.
Then, what I saw just now must've been a dream.
I recalled the scene of my run-down village, vomit welling up in my throat involuntarily.
My heart stung, the tips of my fingers tingled, and my breathing grew heavy, as if a boulder weighed on my chest.
Heart failure, all of a sudden? No, let's think rationally.
Digging through my memories, I realized it wasn't the first time I'd experienced something like this - thought that part of my life was clouded in fog, oddly difficult to recall.
For almost an entire year after my visit to the massacred village, any sight of blood would send me into the same, suffocating state.
In other words, I was having panic attacks again.
It's been five years, damn it… I guess meeting people again really screwed with my head.
I calmed my sporadically beating heart, taking slow, deliberate breaths for a few minutes.
Not wanting to think of the past any longer, I put those thoughts aside and assessed my state.
Still injured; nothing life-threatening, thought. I'll be good as new after a few weeks and a hearty meal.
Finally, I gave my surroundings a proper look.
The first thing that stood out was the lack of sunlight. It was nighttime.
I managed to turn to the side to get a better view.
It was quite the Herculean task, by the way - had to wriggle about like a worm, what with the ropes restraining my movement.
Eventually, I saw two ragged tents.
Kanna was seated outside, obviously on night watch, though she seemed to have fallen asleep somewhere along the way.
That explains why nobody reacted to my shout earlier. Alrighty, let's see what I can do here.
The first course of action was the most obvious:
I channeled a significant portion of my pitifully low essence reserves into the ropes, in an attempt to break free.
They didn't budge.
Enchanted ropes? Just how rich are these adventurers?
I then pondered for a while longer, coming a simple conclusion:
Mhm. I'm fucked.
I had a few more ideas in mind, but none of them were feasible when I couldn't even move.
For that reason, I resorted to plan B:
'Operation: Do Nothing At All'.
The, uhh, name is still up in the air.
Anyways, I might as well enjoy the mandated rest. Sure, it's not exactly comfortable, but like… I've slept in a goblins' hideout before, and nothing comes even close to being as unpleasant.
Reassuring myself with those thoughts, I laid my head on a spiky 'pillow', a Hellfire Beetle's shell judging by its shape, and shut my eyes.
It didn't take long to drift off into sleep, my exhausted body in desperate need of rest.
At the time, I couldn't have known that a human of Prince status would show up to interrogate me just four days later.