REFDL 137

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁣ ⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠‘Kael!’

I tried to call out his name, but it was impossible. I no longer had vocal cords. I had no physical form. All that remained was my consciousness and my will to wake up from a dream that felt both very long and very short.

[Of course not. Anuahan… must have been born human. We made a promise. But if I’d known our reunion would be delayed like this, I should have set a specific time to meet.]

That’s how it was.

I didn’t know we’d part ways.

The voice trailed off into the distance. It drew a long tail toward the far side of the sky. Like a shooting star.

Anuahan. Anuahan. Anuahan.

Where are you? I miss you……

The heart-wrenching echo sent ripples through my chest. I clutched at my nonexistent heart. Unable to bear it, I called out to my love.

“Kael……!”

“Yuram!”

And the answer came back.

Minamao’s voice vanished from my mind.

***

My eyes flew open. All I could see was the clear, scorching sky of the rocky desert. And the pale, ashen face of Kaelus.

He pulled me into his arms. His expression contorted as if he were about to cry.

“You weren’t… you weren’t opening your eyes. You were barely breathing… I thought you… I thought you…”

Even in my dazed state, I hurriedly stroked his back.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I was just having a dream. I’m perfectly fine.”

…Probably.

I wasn’t entirely sure, but if it meant calming my lover’s panic right now, I could make as many empty promises as I wanted.

His breathing slowly calmed down.

After wrapping his arms around me and feeling my body to make sure I was safe, Kaelus met my gaze. His dark gray eyes, made even darker by the moisture, stared at me. As if he intended to strip away everything I was hiding to see the truth.

He spent a while checking on my condition.

I waited until he had calmed down.

I slowly looked around. As my senses returned, I could vividly sense the presence of strangers.

That’s right.

We weren’t the only ones in the wasteland where our group had gathered.

Strangers from another tribe were watching us from nearby. They were the ones who had ambushed Vinaho.

…Vinaho.

As the dream faded, the events that had just occurred came back to me vividly.

There was no trace of Vinaho, who had been moving around without a head, or any of his tribesmen.

A young man who appeared to be the leader of the group that had fought Vinaho’s approached us. Nitan and Irina tensed up, but perhaps because they didn’t know what had happened while I was unconscious, they didn’t reach for their swords.

The man knelt on one knee before me and bowed his head.

“Honored guests. I apologize for my rudeness yesterday. Please understand that it was an unavoidable situation.”

“……”

The man hesitated slightly, but once he began speaking, he did not hesitate further.

The full story he relayed was somewhat shocking.

First of all, Vinaho was not of this world. To be precise, he was a specter who, thousands of years ago, had committed an unforgivable sin and been cursed by the gods to wander the wasteland.

“W-well then… are you saying he was a kind of ghost?”

Nitan’s face turned pale. Odan, on the other hand, was intrigued. So much so that if Irina hadn’t grabbed his sleeve, he would have rushed to interrogate the chieftain.

The chieftain nodded.

Vinaho and his tribe had originally been nobles of Minamao.

“To be precise, they were nobles from before the place we now call ‘Minamao’ was even called ‘Minamao.’”

From this point on, the general outline of the story became clear. After all, something similar had already happened in Firmus.

Human greed knows no era.

However, since this incident was much older… it seemed they had chosen a far more barbaric method.

The nobles, coveting the power of Anuahan, killed the dragon and consumed his flesh and blood. They shattered Read on his vessel and consumed every last fragment.

It was an era when the breath of gods still lingered, however faintly. The enraged gods cast a curse upon them.

“It was the Curse of Void. To become beings as insignificant as dust, wandering this wasteland for eternity. That was the punishment the specters received.”

They could neither see nor enjoy anything that existed in the rocky desert.

Likewise, those living ordinary lives in the desert could not perceive them with the naked eye. Occasionally, a shaman who had inherited divine power could barely see them, and other tribespeople would sometimes catch a glimpse of the specters’ shadows in the twilight just before sunset on the longest night of the year.

“And… for a short while after a star falls, their forms become visible.”

“……!!”

“But the people of the desert, whether fortress-dwellers or wanderers, all know who they are. That is why the specters have chosen you as their guides.”

“Guides…”

“Even if we can see them, they still cannot see us. All they can hear are faint whispers, not our actual voices. At least, that’s how it is until direct contact. They… probably knew you had arrived here through the wind.”

And from that moment on, they must have devised a plan to use us as guides.

‘……!!’

The trap wasn’t aimed at the dragons, it was aimed at “us.” It was a deliberately calculated approach from the very beginning.

The image of the tribespeople rushing into the oasis flashed through my mind.

Their faces were filled with a strange longing, joy, and… madness.

If that was their first bath in thousands of years, I could understand it. No. In fact, I almost wanted to pay my respects to their patience.

The spectres’ purpose was clear.

The star.

They believed that with it, they could lift their curse.

The chieftain let out his first sigh.

“There was a woman named Minamao.”

I know. I’ve already met her. I have a rough idea of what era she lived in and how she existed.

“After losing her love, Minamao wandered the desert in tears until she died.”

And she prayed to the gods. She begged to be reunited with Anuahan, in any form. She begged to love him again.

They granted her wish.

In their own way.

Minamao became a comet. Unable to remain long on the earth from which the gods’ power had departed, she returned here once every few decades at the shortest, or once every few centuries at the longest, trailing a long tail as she flew across the night sky.

And she sought out Anuahan’s reincarnation.

If she couldn’t find him, she would fade away and become a star once more.

“……So, she’ll keep doing this until she meets the reincarnation of that dragon, Anuahan, again.”

“Yes. She will repeat this eternal journey.”

Irina muttered in shock.

“It’s not…”

It’s not a blessing…

“It’s not for us to judge that, but for Minamao.”

The chieftain spoke in a firm tone. His voice conveyed compassion and affection for Minamao.

To them, Minamao was not someone who had died thousands of years ago. She was still the pitiful daughter of the desert, a friend, and one of them.

The pragmatic Nitan cautiously asked again.

“Then, what about the wishes? Was it a lie?”

“Ah, I see. It’s about gathering justification.”

Odan answered.

“Justification?”

“It’s the act of giving plausibility to her stay here, I suppose. Ah. If you think of it as an offering to a god… a price. A price, you see. Or is it? An exchange? Should I view it as a form of exchange?”

I wish he wouldn’t just keep it to himself but explain it kindly in human terms.

But asking that of Odan would probably be asking too much…

“……”

Odan, thoroughly excited, continued. He said that if his hypothesis was correct, it would explain why only foolish and trivial wishes had been granted up until now.

So, the conclusion he reached was:

“It’s because she wasn’t omnipotent enough to grant grand and noble wishes [unauthorized copy]in the first place.”

…How should I put this?

A shift in perspective? A problem that seems trivial once you know the answer?

Whatever it was, it felt anticlimactic.

Odan gave a wry smile as he looked at us, slumped in defeat.

“But it was fun, right?”

“…….”

That much, I couldn’t deny.

It was a process that could be called an “adventure.”

…Though thinking about Vinaho charging at us with his head severed still sent chill down my spine.

“What exactly happened to them? Are we sure they can’t harm us anymore?”

Kaelus hugged me tightly as he spoke, his voice almost a growl. The killing intent made the air vibrate. Even Nitan and Irina flinched.

The chieftain didn’t bat an eye. He simply glanced back and forth between me and Kaelus before stating.

“Yes. Since Minamao has returned. Now that the star has vanished, they have become specters once more.”

Only then did the killing intent fade. The arms holding me remained firm. I patted them soothingly. Kaelus buried his face in the crook of my neck, seeking comfort.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been horrified if he did this in full view of everyone…

I asked the still expressionless chieftain.

“Would the curse have been lifted if they had reached the star and touched Minamao?”

“That is impossible to know.”

Wait a moment. Then why…

“It’s simply that I couldn’t bear to see those who defiled Anuahan in ways too vile to speak of reach Minamao, so I charged at them.”

“……”

It was an answer I had no choice but to accept.