As the beasts continually inched forward to surround them, their father talks to them for what might be the last time.
"Listen to me, and hear it well for this might be the last time. I am a father and I know my duties, and it is to my family. I will die here and you will live, so I want you to run and never look back. Never turn your heads around even if you hear my screams. I love you. Take care of yourselves. Now when I say go, you go."
He grabbed Ren's shoulder and told him, "You understand me, boy? Now take your mother and sister as soon as I say it."
Their mother was already in tears. She knew this might've been their fate the moment they left the Wynstead, so she could only sob her tears, unable to think what to do next. Brina too was already teary eyed. It slowly broke down that manly bravado of hers which her father found unwomanly at her age.
But now he smiled when he saw his daughter turn into a mess for one last time. Ren, while he was also sobbing, grabbed his mother and sister by the arms, almost dragging them away.
But his mother pushed them away. She was going to stay here with her husband so that they could buy some time for their two children to be able to run away.
"Go, Ren and Brina. Take care of yourselves always, your mother loves you."
This broke the two's hearts.
But Ren grabbed his sister who was resisting him.
"Brina! Live!" their father shouted aloud and charged at the beasts, buying time and using himself as bait, desperately firing arrows along the way. Their mother too did her best to buy them some time.
Brina and Ren ran away without looking back, their eyes filled with tears, as they kept running. Then all they could hear from their backs were the agonizing cries of their mother as she was being mauled and eaten by the Lywolves to death.
They had so much thought swirling around their minds that they gave no heed to a particular direction in which they ran towards. They just ran and ran until they no longer could.
The screams that echoed throughout their backs had become silent, a reminder that the agony had passed. The painful cries and the crushing of bones and ripping of the flesh could no longer be heard. It meant that they had reached a significant distance away from that place. And it was evident from their rugged breaths they must have run quite a distance for it to be so.
As Brina tried to look up, she saw the town of Helwind Valley. It was 5 kilometers away from Wynstead. And there she saw a road that stretched from their direction towards the town.
They continued to move forward towards the light of the town. And for what may have seemed to be an eternity of walking.
They could hear a galloping force of riders from a distance that were getting closer to them by the second.
They were the soldiers of Helwind who were requested to aid the soldiers back in the hamlet of Wynstead. The lead rider passed them by and halted his men.
"Woaahhh!" he said to his six-legged steed as he tried to stop its momentum a moment later he got close to them and asked. "You there, where do you come from?"
The two of them were pretty tired at this point as they tried to raise their heads and look up to face the man who called to them. The Captain saw them and they had a very unsightly appearance, from all their crying and from all the bushes they have run into, to all the mud they have tripped and fallen in along the way.
"We... we came from Wynstead, sir..."
It was Brina who was able to form a coherent reply despite the traumatic experience she and her brother had just gone through..
"Hmmm, I understand get inside the town and have yourselves sorted. I'm sure you have been through a lot already."
The captain of the guards had already sensed what they'd been through and didn't want to press any questions any further. It's not like Brina and Ren are even listening at this point anyways.
"Men! Let us rush and kill those beasts! Let us avenge our brethren!" the captain shouted so that the two of them may hear that they will go out there and kill the beasts. Although whether they heard it or not it did not really matter anymore.
They entered, almost dragging themselves on the ground, walking aimlessly. With the gate guards looking at them and could only sigh in pity.
They have the faces of people whose conscience is wracked with the guilt of leaving their parents behind and have managed to survive by themselves.
They reached a quiet corner of the town and once their backs had touched something that was hard to lean on they slid down against the outside of the building's walls.
They felt all of their exhaustion and emotion fill their bodies, their adrenaline had already worn off a long time ago and they were running on pure instinct alone.
The residents of the town who saw them in that state were no longer shocked to find them there, as they weren't the first to arrive with such depressing looks. There were many more of their neighbors who had managed to arrive here ahead of them with similar or worse experiences.
And they have the same hollowed eyes as them. Mostly from the shock of what had transpired a few hours ago and from the exhaustion they felt afterwards, as they weren't able to properly process all of it.
Brina sat there against the cold stone wall, staring blankly at an empty void. Her hands were still shaking, not from the cold but from everything that had just happened. She could still hear it in her mind, her mother's screams, her father's final shout for her to live. It kept repeating over and over, like some kind of nightmare that wouldn't end even though she was awake.
Ren sat beside her, his face blank. He wasn't crying anymore. There were no more tears left. He just stared ahead at the dirt street, at the people walking by who tried not to look at them. Some of them probably came from Wynstead too. Some of them probably lost people just like they did.
"I should have stayed," Brina finally said, her voice barely a whisper. "I should have fought with them."
Ren didn't respond at first. He just kept staring ahead. Then after a long moment he spoke, his voice hoarse and tired.
"And what would that have done? You'd be dead too. We'd all be dead. At least this way, at least..." he trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
At least what? At least they're alive? That doesn't feel like much of a victory right now. It feels more like a curse. They get to live while their parents are torn apart in the forest. They get to sit here safe in town while their mother and father are being feasted upon by those beasts.
"I hate this," Brina said. "I hate that we ran. I hate that we left them. I hate that we're here and they're not."
"I know," Ren said quietly. "I know."
They sat there in silence for a while longer. The sun was starting to rise now, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. It was beautiful in a way, but Brina couldn't appreciate it. How could the world look so normal when everything had just fallen apart?
Around them, more survivors trickled into town. Some were families, some were alone. All of them had that same look in their eyes, that same hollow emptiness that came from losing everything in one night.
A woman walked past them carrying a small child who was crying. The woman wasn't crying though. She just looked tired, like she'd used up all her emotions already and had nothing left.
An old man sat nearby, his head in his hands. He was mumbling something to himself, over and over, but Brina couldn't make out what he was saying.
A group of young men stood near the gate, talking in low voices. They looked angry more than sad. They kept looking back toward where Wynstead was, like they wanted to go back and fight.
"We need to figure out what to do," Ren said after a long silence. "We can't just sit here forever."
Brina didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think about anything. She just wanted to close her eyes and wake up back home with her parents alive and everything was back to normal again.
But that wasn't going to happen. This was real. This was their life now.
"What is there to do?" she asked. "We have nothing. No home, no family, no money. What are we supposed to do?"
Ren was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "We survive. That's what they wanted for us to do. That's why they died. So we could live."
Brina wanted to argue with that. She wanted to say that survival wasn't worth it if it meant living with this guilt. But she knew he was right. Their parents had sacrificed themselves so that they could live. To give up now would make their deaths meaningless.
"I don't know how," she admitted.
"Neither do I," Ren said. "But we'll figure it out. We have to. I don't want them disappointed in us."
They sat there against the wall as the sun rose higher in the sky. Just two survivors among the few that had managed to survive the ordeal, trying to figure out how to keep living when everything they knew was dead and gone.