I don't think I'm a good person.
A good person wouldn't hesitate to save an entire village.
A good person wouldn't kneel before their ancestors' altar and beg an innocent child to… die for them.
But I am Isha. And I am the last one holding onto the light in this land, a flickering ember against an eternal night. The prophecy says if I don't kill that child, the light will vanish. Forever. And with it, all remaining hope.
My father – the high priest of the Fire Temple, a man with eyes etched deep with worry – handed me a short knife made of meteorite. Its blade was cold and sharp, glowing with a dull, metallic sheen in the gloomy air.
"You are our last hope," he said, his voice hoarse and heavy. "The shadow demons will swallow the village whole if the child isn't destroyed."
I didn't ask why I was chosen. Perhaps because I was the last one who still had enough faith in this light. I just bowed deeply, my dark brown hair obscuring a face filled with torment. Then I hid the knife in my thick robe, feeling its cold weight like a burden of fate.
Every night, I lay in bed, unable to sleep. In my mind was an indistinct face—a child with no name, undefined. I had never seen her, never heard her voice with my own ears. But in my dreams, I saw myself killing her. The shining blade sliced through the dark air, plunging deep into a frail chest. Yet no blood flowed. Instead, what gushed out was… light. A pure, clear light, spreading everywhere, but carrying an unnameable, piercing pain. Each time, I jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat, the image of that blood-light haunting my mind.
The villagers said the child lived in the northern forest, a place no one dared to enter. Even the bravest hunters stopped at its invisible boundary. They called it "The Emotionless Layer"—a cursed land where time seemed not to flow, emotions were erased, and those who entered… never returned, or returned in a form no longer their own. They whispered about the child with a mixture of fear and revulsion:
"She's not human."
"She's a mistake of this world."
"No Sentence—means no soul. She doesn't exist."
I didn't know whether to believe those rumors. They unsettled my heart. I only knew one thing for certain, a cold truth: if I didn't do it, everyone I loved, this entire village, would die.
Three days after receiving the knife, the omens began to appear, clearer and more terrifying. A thick white mist, like snow, covered everything in a shroud of death. The village chickens all dropped dead simultaneously, without a sound, without a sign of illness. The only suspension bridge to the south mysteriously broke, though there was no wind, and the materials were supposedly very sturdy.
I found my father, my fear unconcealed in my voice. "Has that child… ever killed anyone?" I asked, hoping to find some reason to believe in her malice.
He was silent for a long moment, his gaze distant, looking into nothingness. Then he answered in a deep, soulless voice, like a whisper from another realm:
> "No need to kill. She only needs to exist."
>
That evening, I left the village. The faint lantern in my hand wasn't enough to dispel the thick mist. My hand clutched the meteorite knife, feeling its coldness seep into my bones. My eyes stared straight ahead into the forbidden forest, where the darkness seemed even denser than the night itself.
I didn't cry. My tears had long since dried. But I heard the water in my soul boiling, a roaring river trying to break the dam of reason and duty.
I stepped into the forest before dawn, the leaden-grey light still reigning above. The light here was utterly different from the village's light—it was cold, indifferent, leaving no shadows, not even the smallest. No insects buzzed, no birds sang to herald the new day. No wind whistled through the leaves, only a suffocating stillness.
Only something… like the slow, heavy breathing of the earth itself, the breath of an ancient creature buried deep.
I walked for a while, following the twisted, gigantic roots of ancient trees that looked like stone serpents, then I saw the child. No… I saw "it"—as the villagers often said.
She stood amidst the dry roots, her ash-colored hair obscuring half her face, blending into the hazy mist. Her feet were bare, shoeless, and she seemed oblivious to the bone-chilling cold of the forest floor. She didn't turn around. Her posture was strangely still, like a part of the forest itself. But I knew she saw me. An invisible, cold connection suddenly formed between us.
For some reason… I felt myself shrink. A strange and overwhelming sensation. I was supposed to be "the light-bearer," burdened with the responsibility of saving this world. Yet standing before that nameless, unsentenced child, I felt like a trembling shadow, a tiny spark about to die out in the endless darkness.
She spoke first. Her voice was fragile, like wind through a cold cavern, yet startlingly clear in the forest's silence:
> "Name?"
>
I stammered, feeling my throat dry, my voice caught: "I… Isha. I'm… from a nearby village…"
The child tilted her head. Her eyes didn't blink, as if she had just heard something from another world. Then she repeated:
"...Sister?"
I froze. But said nothing.
She was silent for a moment, the air seeming to halt. Her deep black eyes remained fixed forward, devoid of emotion. Then she whispered softly, almost without breathing, as if it were a secret whispered to herself:
> "Pretty name. I don't have one."
>
I clutched the knife in my hand, my nails digging deep into my palm. But I couldn't lift it. Because in that moment… I saw tears. Not mine. But… tears welling in the soulless eyes of a child not born to cry. A single, clear tear, reflecting the grey light of the forest, yet carrying the weight of a thousand years of solitude and oblivion.
> I came here to kill her.
> But my heart did not want to.
> And the light within me… began to fade, blending into the eternal mist of this land.