Youngest 252

Episode 252

“I’m telling you, you can do it, right? Huh? Then, just think—won’t you be able to find your parents who abandoned you and get your revenge? Isn’t that so?”

“…”

“Damn, look at him clamming up again. Never listens, does he?”

The man dusted off his hands.

“Anyway… raising brats costs a lot. Hey! Don’t feed this one.”

“Again? Tsk, tsk. Serves him right for acting out.”

The men standing nearby snickered and walked away.

Khalid silently picked up a few things from the ground that had spilled from his pocket.

“…”

Three acorns rolling around on his dirty palm.

‘Why did I pick these up…?’

He couldn’t even eat such things.

A rueful smile spread across his face.

He thought himself a little foolish for it and ended up sneaking to the well, filling his stomach with water among the washerwomen.

The living quarters for the lowborn were always cold.

Adults in similar straits barely managed to care for themselves, let alone a boy like him. He was used to it.

Kal pried up a creaking plank from the wooden floor and pulled out a thin scrap of cloth he’d hidden.

It was the only blanket he owned. If he didn’t hide it, someone would surely steal it.

Some people soaked stale bread in water to eat or boiled up leftover crumbs for a meager meal.

Kal turned away and lay down.

A throbbing pain twisted deep inside his belly, but he put it down to hunger and simply endured it.

“Ugh. It’s cramped in here, seriously.”

Those forced to work like slaves by the mercenary corps were usually people dragged in by debts or sold in place of a family member who couldn’t pay.

Life truly did seem like a cliff that fell away endlessly.

‘Ah.’

On second thought, those were the very words his mother used to say to him.

The next day, she had abandoned him and run away.

Perhaps she was just racing toward another misfortune.

With that in mind, there was little to resent.

Kal closed his eyes.

“…”

The makeshift lodging, built from crude timbers and tent fabric, was always beset by a chilly wind.

Khalid wondered when the plunge would cease—when his body, striking the hard ground, would finally shatter into pieces.

Whether his eyes were open or closed, it was nothing but darkness.

It felt as if he were trapped in the deepest cave.

‘Soon.’

He wished it would all end soon.

There wasn’t a day he hadn’t thought of death.

That morning, he woke with a fever.

“…”

He coughed and, seeing flecks of blood, gave a little laugh.

At last, the bottom is in sight.

His stomach churned, as if some tremendous force was eating away at his intestines.

As always, the men ordered him to fetch firewood. He heard that the servant who usually worked with him had died last night from the fever sweeping the village.

Khalid picked up an axe and went up the mountain alone.

The wind was unusually fierce that day.

‘Was… there always a path like this?’

He glimpsed a dense forest in the distance.

It seemed unfamiliar—what was it?

Suddenly, an unknown presence brushed his cheek. At the same instant, his stomach rolled violently.

“Cough, cough.”

Khalid wiped blood from his mouth with a sleeve and stumbled on, as if bewitched.

The world felt strangely unreal.

Ssshhh—ssshhh—

The sound of leaves shivering in the wind seemed otherworldly. Kal staggered on, barely steady.

“Haah, haah.”

Thud.

He collapsed after only a short distance.

At that moment—

“Who’s there?”

A presence swept over him. Not so much a person as a foreign, utterly other force.

A voice thundered like the sky cracking, and a chill raced over his skin.

Despite the dead of winter, a blast of hot air surged from the direction of the voice.

“A human child… So, at last, even the power that maintained my barrier has dwindled.”

“Who… what are… you…?”

Khalid felt pure terror. He managed to turn his head from where he lay fallen.

Below the cliff, a prison like a deep, cavernous pit revealed itself—so deep, he wondered how he’d never noticed it before.

Slim gray eyes emerged from the darkness.

“I sense magic from you… So that’s how you could break through my weakened barrier so easily…”

The voice rumbled like a beast.

‘They say my father was a mage…’

Did even he have some faint trace of magic left in him?

But power you can’t wield is meaningless.

“A vast amount, at that. But your body can’t control it at all. Soon, the power will eat you alive.”

Ah, so that’s how it is.

“But this magic… It’s like mine.”

The eyes flickered. A rasping breath echoed from the prison, as if gauging something.

“Yes, I remember… The first human I ever shared magic with. You’re his descendant.”

“I… I don’t know anything about that…”

Khalid tried to brace himself and rise, but failed.

Why won’t my body listen?

He lay on the ground, gasping for breath.

“Do you want to live?”

It sounded as if he’d met a god.

Maybe this was all just a dream?

Even so, the thought was almost funny. For the first time, Kal let out a low, bitter laugh.

“There’s never been a day I haven’t thought about dying…”

A life without a single ray of good fortune.

“I’m fine with it ending.”

Though he’d only survived a handful of years, Khalid felt utterly exhausted. He’d had enough. If all that remained for him was to fall, better to finish it quickly.

The eyes held silent for a moment.

“I see. And yet…”

Then, a delicate breeze caressed his cheek.

“Why are you crying?”

“…”

The tone held not a trace of warmth.

But the words made Kal realize the thing flowing down his face was hot, wet tears.

And, in truth…

He had always wanted to cry like this.

What had he been hoping for as he made it this far?

What was it he wanted?

“Are you… a god?”

The boy’s cracked voice barely carried.

“Some call me that.”

“Then tell me just one thing.”

“What is it?”

“If I keep living… if I just keep going…”

For once, Khalid fell silent. After a moment—

His rigid, stick-wooden face crumpled wretchedly.

“Will something good happen to me, too?”

To live forever with death at your side—

Wouldn’t that mean living in greater fear of death than anyone else?

Maybe the boy had always been waiting.

Waiting for a hand to reach to him in the darkness. For the day when, gripping that hand, he might soar into the light.

If he lived without being corrupted by those mercenaries—dignified, ashamed of nothing—

Maybe, someday, someone merciful would find him, trapped here as he was.

Someday.

That someday.

“I know nothing of human life. I’ve dwelled here a thousand years, and yet still I do not understand.”

The god answered him.

“But Wistal… said that a human life is always beautiful.”

The boy reached out his hand, wavering, toward the prison.

“My god has never spoken a lie. So… perhaps your life, too, will be beautiful someday.”

Just as Khalid’s last breath was leaving him—

From the depths of the cave, those eyes—

That beast, who had once taken the form of a dragon—the god of might and war—

Breathed its magic into the dying boy’s body.

The Dragon Lord was slowly fading away.

The barrier that had kept humans out of this cave had broken—that was proof enough.

Could he even last another hundred years? Who could say. There could be many reasons for the loss of his power.

Perhaps it was because humans no longer believed in the gods as they had in ancient times. Or maybe some greater power had decreed it natural that gods no longer exist in the mortal realm—their own inviolable law.

‘The goddess has still not returned.’

The dragon who bound himself within the cave resolved at last.

‘I will make the boy my vessel.’

He bore the dragon’s magic, after all—in essence, his descendant.

“You shall become my new incarnation.”

Their magic mingled.

A storm intolerable in its force erupted.

Darkness swallowed the world in an instant, thunder and lightning crashing endlessly from a cloudless sky.

The shackle binding the dragon’s leg rattled. Though he had chained himself there, there was only one who could release him.

“You said you were waiting for something good, didn’t you? I, too, wait for someone. So let’s wait here together.”

The one who will set you free from this cave, that is the one I have been waiting for.

In truth, we are waiting for the same thing.

The dragon’s power seeped into Khalid’s shadow.

And, after a time,

The storm faded within the cave.

The dragon who had been chained there was gone. Only the boy remained.