His earliest memory always began in the same place.

A vast plain dyed in gold. Wind swept across it in great gusts.

As he pushed through the rippling grass, an unnaturally deep blue sky poured down over his head.

Consumed by an intense thrill, Varkas wandered between the boundary where gold and blue met.

At some point, he no longer knew where he was headed. He simply ran through the wind without a thought.

He was free.

He could go anywhere and do anything.

The beautiful world before his eyes whispered so.

His heart pounded as though it might burst.

The heat of blood flowing through his veins and the chill of the dry air filling his lungs.

Every sensation told him that he was alive.

He tasted the joy of life.

But brilliance never lasted.

Thick gray walls closed in around him from every direction.

In a narrow space too cramped to lie down in, too cramped even to sit, imprisoned in a room no different from a coffin, he clawed at the walls until his nails split and collapsed.

That futile resistance did not last long.

Through the narrow slit in the wall, the eyes of a fanatic watched him from time to time. Until all the 'evil' dwelling within him had been annihilated, the priest would never release him.

Amid immeasurable despair, he began killing off his senses one by one.

Pain was the first thing he tore away.

Next came taste and smell.

At some point, he no longer felt hunger, and even the desire to sleep vanished.

He could no longer be called a living creature.

Only after everything inside him had evaporated and nothing remained but an empty shell did the door of the tomb open.

With hollow eyes, he looked up at the person standing against the light. Instead of cold eyes gleaming with strange heat and a face as frigid as forged steel, he saw a slender face gone pale with shock.

A woman with dark hair and pale eyes stretched out her arms toward him. Thin fingers touched his cracked cheek. Yet he felt nothing but the faintest pressure.

That hand, which might have been salvation, led him out of the grave.

The icy sunlight poured into his pupils.

An unnaturally pale landscape filled his vision.

Before long, he realized that everything he saw had an ash-gray hue.

A faded world without color or scent.

It felt as though the entire world might crumble into ashes at any moment.

No.

Perhaps it was he himself who had become ash. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

He slowly lifted his eyelids.

For a moment, he could not recognize where he was.

Only after several seconds did the shadowed ceiling of a tent come into view.

He slowly raised his arm.

Not the bony hand of a child, but the hand of a grown man, veins and tendons standing out beneath the skin.

As though confirming something, he ran his fingers over it when a sound like the cry of a beast reached his ears.

Varkas rose mechanically.

Almost at the same time, a soldier burst into the tent.

"Sir Siorcan! Direwolves have appeared!"

He immediately swung his legs off the bed.

Grabbing the halberd resting beside his head, he strode outside while attendants waiting nearby rushed forward and fastened a light breastplate over his body.

Shaking off their bothersome hands, he swiftly surveyed the chaotic camp.

Pale dawn light faintly illuminated the rows of orderly tents and the soldiers frantically running between them.

Before long, he found it.

A pitch-black beast nearly eight crevets long, roughly two hundred and forty centimeters from nose to tail.

The monster seemed to notice him as well.

Lowering its body, the giant wolf launched itself forward with a savage roar.

Varkas stepped forward with his left foot and gripped the halberd diagonally.

The heavy axe blade attached to the spearhead tilted toward the ground.

The instant the black shadow filled his vision, he twisted the shaft tightly and swung in a wide diagonal arc.

The crescent-shaped blade pierced the wolf's tough hide, cleaving through dense flesh and thick bones in a single stroke.

Sticky blood erupted like a fountain from the severed neck.

Roughly wiping the liquid splashed across his cheek with his sleeve, he turned his head and surveyed his surroundings.

Between the rows of conifers standing like a wall, ash-colored beasts were already scattering with astonishing speed.

Realizing they were retreating, Varkas lowered his gaze toward the massive corpse sprawled on the ground.

'...So this one was the alpha.'

Once wolves lost their leader, they quickly lost their structure and fell apart.

Planting the tip of his halberd into the earth, he headed toward the collapsed tents to assess the damage.

Among broken poles and heaps of sand-colored canvas, another black, fur-covered beast lay dead.

He bent down to examine the wolf with its heart pierced when a light, somewhat frivolous voice came from behind him.

"Quite the lively welcome on your very first day back home."

Turning his head, he saw a man wearing nothing but a loose coat draped over his bare upper body.

A warrior of the Barakan tribe.

Driving the axe-spear in his hand into the ground, the man gestured toward the forest with his chin.

"Shall I send the men after them?"

"We can't divide our forces right now. Secure the camp and strengthen the watch first."

"There's barely any damage worth mentioning. They only carried off one packhorse."

Massaging the back of his neck with one hand, the man replied absentmindedly.

"One greenhorn who just completed his coming-of-age ceremony got injured, but thankfully no one died."

Varkas straightened.

The sun had already risen fully, illuminating every corner of the ruined camp.

After calmly looking around to estimate the damage more accurately, he turned his eyes back to the man.

"Clean up the camp. We move before more beasts are drawn by the smell of blood."

"As you command."

The man turned away with leisurely steps, and Varkas headed toward the center of the camp.

Excited horses being calmed by soldiers and servants clearing away broken tents passed before his eyes.

Walking past them, he stopped before a waterskin placed beside the large command tent.

On the clear rainwater collected the previous day, a ghostly pale reflection appeared.

He stared at it for a moment before scooping up water and washing the blood from his face.

The lukewarm touch of the water provided a faint stimulation against his skin.

After roughly wiping it away, he brought his hand to his nose and inhaled.

The metallic scent of blood had faded, replaced by the faint smell of water.

He could not tell which scent was preferable.

Smell had been the first sense to return.

Yet even now, he could not connect the stimuli reaching his brain with emotion.

He could distinguish different scents and their intensity, but they never became something pleasant or unpleasant. He merely differentiated, through learning, between what gave others a favorable impression and what did not.

And according to everything he had learned, the smell of blood especially made people uncomfortable.

He stripped off the stained armor and tossed it carelessly onto the ground before checking his shirt.

Fortunately, no bloodstains were visible.

But perhaps some other unpleasant smell, one he himself could not recognize, had seeped into it.

He turned toward his tent to change clothes.

Then he noticed a quarter-dwarf woman anxiously pacing before a tent in the center of the camp.

Without hesitation, Varkas walked straight toward her.

"What is it?"

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded rough and foreign.

The woman also jumped in surprise and looked at him with frightened eyes.

"M-Milord, the young lady has been missing since earlier..."

At that instant, a sharp ringing echoed inside his ears.