The Forgotten Field - Chapter 193

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 193
Talia gazed at him with eyes brimming with anticipation, her stare piercing through him.
“What do you think?”
“…It’s passable, I suppose.”
At his indifferent response, a thin veil of disappointment swept across her face.
“That’s all?”
Barcas’s eyes creased at the corners. He couldn’t fathom what this woman wanted from him. Should he have lavished more praise on the wine? Her inexplicable fussiness kindled a peculiar suspicion within him, yet he had no desire to wound the feelings of someone who had taken such care to prepare everything for him.
He parted his lips to say something more. In that instant, a searing sensation erupted in his throat. Barcas’s hand instinctively clenched the table. The liquid that descended through his esophagus felt like a blade scraping through his entrails.
“…What did you put in the wine?”
“Nothing at all.”
She denied it in a trembling voice. Barcas, regarding her with bewildered eyes, slowly pushed himself upright. He feared he would collapse ungracefully if he didn’t lie down immediately.
With unsteady steps, he approached the bed and collapsed onto the sheets. As blood returned to his head, his wavering vision gradually steadied. Yet the sense of helplessness only intensified.
Had she given him some absurdly potent liquor? His fingers, stiffening as though paralyzed, flexed and curled with difficulty. Talia approached the bedside and studied his face intently.
“How do you feel?”
He narrowed his eyes, unable to discern the intent behind her question. What was this woman trying to learn? Yet it seemed he must answer regardless.
He opened his mouth to describe the sensations coursing through him. At that moment, something scalding surged up from his roiling stomach. Barcas instinctively twisted his body to the side. A metallic liquid rushed up his throat and spilled onto the sheets. It took several seconds before he realized the crimson substance was his own blood.
His vision blackened as he gasped roughly for breath. From somewhere distant, he heard someone calling his name. He wanted to respond to that voice, but his tongue, frozen rigid, would not obey.
His disintegrating body was sinking into some abyss. A river of blood—one he had witnessed a thousand times in dreams. Within that viscous tide of death, he released whatever he had been desperately clinging to.
Then, perfect silence arrived.
A realm of pure nothingness where nothing could be felt.
* * *
Kael is dreaming.
In the dream, he places a girl with rich honey-blonde hair upon his lap and presses his lips to her rosy mouth.
The kiss, playful as birds preening their beaks, gradually deepens into something profound and intense. Though he knows she has not yet grown enough for such intimacy, he does not care.
Before long, his body ignites like a burning coal. Even as he is consumed by agonizing heat, a fierce joy swells in a corner of his chest.
The girl who has driven him to fever burns ceaselessly with chatter. Gazing down at her innocent face, oblivious to his longing, Kael feels a sweetly piercing ache.
At last, surrendering to desire, he kisses her with mounting fervor. As though in answer, her fingers thread deep into his hair.
He struggles to suppress the urge to slip his hand beneath her clothes, and with effort, he lifts his head. The girl smiles shyly, her face flushed.
In that moment, the fervent rapture that had seized Kael dissipates like smoke.
Opening his eyes with a desolate and hollow heart, he is immediately gripped by intense self-loathing.
Kael does not understand why he repeats this dream.
The girl in reality is merely an impurity that disturbs his life. The sight of himself holding her and smiling with joy feels utterly foreign to him.
Kael dismisses the phantom his mind has woven as an inevitable transgression brought on by his body’s maturation.
Perhaps it is only natural that his body responds to the opposite sex who stands closest to him.
Having reached this rational conclusion, Kael rises from his bed.
From the window, the dawn breaks with keen, crystalline light.
The flood of sunlight, rolling in like waves, shatters and washes away the lingering fragments of the dream that had clung to his retinas.
Soon his world returns to its stable state.
A perfectly refined, orderly world. That was the life he must lead.
Kael rises.
This unwelcome chaos would not persist for long. He would continue his immutable existence within the predetermined framework of his birth, and Aria would remain nothing more than a fleeting calamity from the past.
The boy, having meticulously purged himself of all unnecessary emotional residue, soon departed from his sanctuary.
Yet in the next moment, his world was consumed by blood and darkness.
The young man stood trampling something in a filthy back alley reeking of stench.
His eyes, which had been gazing up at the crescent moon casting faint light through the clouds, slowly descended.
The face of a man drained of all blood, now ashen gray, filled his vision. The man’s mouth gaped unnaturally wide, exposing bloodied gums stripped of every tooth, his eyes rolled back with burst capillaries. Instead of a tongue, only dark crimson clots pooled within that grotesquely open maw.
He soon recalled that what he was trampling was that man’s tongue. The young man shifted his gaze to the man’s severed wrist.
The man’s cleanly severed hand lay buried beneath a pile of discarded fish that fishermen had cast away. His eyes moved to those fingers protruding from the decaying fish carcasses, and he posed a question to himself.
What am I doing here?
The High Priest’s steel-like eyes observing him through a crack in the door surfaced in his mind. His Father’s gaze, which had regarded him with such revulsion, also flickered across his consciousness.
Had they glimpsed this very scene within him beforehand?
After staring at the corpse’s face—as if witnessing hell itself—for some time, the young man soon departed from the shadowed alley.
Just then, moonlight breaking through the clouds fell upon his blood-soaked body with brutal clarity.
Surely, in this moment, he bore no resemblance whatsoever to a Knight of the Empire. Perhaps he did not even resemble a human being anymore.
Lost in such thoughts, the young man walked slowly through the darkness. A relentless river wind howled through the oppressive silence. Yet the stench of blood that enveloped him would not dissipate.
The young man was suddenly seized by doubt.
This was not his first time killing a person. It likely would not be his last. Yet why did he feel this way?
Beyond the rippling waters of the Silviska River, Aria’s scream echoed.
The sudden realization that her voice had driven him to this place sent a chill down his spine.
Danger.
That single word pierced his mind like an awl.
Only then did he recognize that he stood before a boundary he must not cross.
What becomes of me if I step beyond this line?
A scene from the recurring dream of the past several months suddenly surfaced.
A dream that set him ablaze and made him crave what he did not desire.
Yet that vision soon became stained with the withered visage of Bernadette and the face of the Emperor, who held the world in his grasp yet chose to be enslaved by a single woman. The image of Aria, trapped beneath the corpse of the man who would soon rot, wailing in agony, also emerged.
Within those eyes, lacerated by tears, fear, and despair, he sensed his own destruction awaiting him.
But it was not yet too late.
If he had taken the wrong path, could he not simply turn back?
As he always had, he ruthlessly excised every impurity that disturbed his solid world.
With that, the young man’s world sank once more into a deathlike tranquility.
In those deep, dark waters, he remained submerged for a long time.
* * *
He regained consciousness when intense crimson twilight filled the chamber.
Barcas barely lifted his parched eyelids and slowly surveyed the room bathed in red, his unfocused gaze taking in the surroundings.
For a time, he could not even properly comprehend where he was. Only after several minutes did his stalled thoughts creak back into motion.
How long had I been unconscious?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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