The world was at peace when Mannat came out of the hut.

He gawked at the tree line surrounding the clearing. He was alone again, but also oddly satisfied him. He closed his eyes and yes, the anxiousness was no longer there. His heart calmly thrummed a rhythmic beat in his chest.

“I’m getting too used to this place,” Mannat mumbled. He clenched his fists and then went straight to practice his ‘mana strike’.

This time around, he only managed to get two green bell peppers, while the other two tries failed. He recovered enough mana by eating the bell peppers to have another shot, which he tried at the eggplant out of some inane curiosity. The thing rewarded him with a burst of plant matter directly on his face. Silently he gathered the muck with a hand and tiredly flicked it to the ground.

The continuous defeat was mentally more tiring than physical labor. Each failure tugged on his ego and pulled it toward the ground. The time for him to spread his wings and take to the sky was still a long way ahead. Good thing he accepted the notion without a fight. Setbacks are far more important than progress because they teach humility and the significance of luck.

It only took him half an hour to practice the skill, and that was because he had to cook a meal to recover his mana. Otherwise, five minutes would have been enough.

He then spent some time harvesting roots from the other garden, feed a few carrots to Bhadur and the raven, and then went to study.

He didn’t care about what to read. There were enough books in the cabinets for him to read for a decade. He chose a book at random and got stunned when he read its title. Somehow, by luck or chance, he had picked a book about the world tree. Many books mentioned it, but he had found none that told him if the tree was real. Most of his knowledge came from comparing it to the tree growing in the Witch’s garden. Finally, he had something official.

The book was barely a finger thick. A leaf green cover tightly bound it. There was an impression of a giant tree growing out of a round seed on the front. He had seen that exact same sketch on the untitled ‘record of history’. The book's contents had remained oblivious to him since it was written in a completely different language, but the sketches themselves had left him with a deep and dreadful impression.

Mannat took a seat on the table and opened the book in front of him.

The book was not a book in a general sense, but scriptures of a religion whose God was the rumored World tree.

The book introduced it as the Tree of mana, of prosperity and intelligence, and called it the god of life. The book didn’t say where this religion originated but believed the god of life was the pillar that shouldered the sky, that its branches were the clouds, its leaves were the stars that twinkled at night and its trunk was the mountains that jutted from the ground.

The followers believed in a figurative tree unlike Mannat, who thought the tree was real and its span covered a whole continent.

The book preached that God (the tree of mana) descended upon the world in a time when demons ran rampant. It called the day of their arrival, the day of emergence.

The religion believed the priestesses of the god fought the demons. The demons were strong and their king mighty; they could be killed but not destroyed. The priestesses persisted and resisted their savagery with the might granted to them by their God.

In the end, the priestesses purified the lands with life and vanquished the demons. They captured the demons since they couldn’t be destroyed, and imprisoned them inside the inhabitants of the world, who had happily agreed to share the burden. The king of the demons was mightier. The priestesses tried to imprison it inside the god’s body, but it hacked its way out and escaped into the world. The priestesses caught its limbs and torso, but the demon's organs still managed to escape. Its brain escaped to the west, and its liver escaped to the east. Its heart flew to the north, while its kidneys disappeared in the south.

That was how the demons disappeared from the face of the world. They were gone, but not dead. They were waiting for hatred to fill the world. That was when they would appear again and take everything that they considered rightfully theirs.

The religion taught its follower to remain human and help others because there was no return for those who had shed their humanity.

Mannat looked away from the book to digest everything he had read. He knew the demons were true and they were not truly gone. He didn’t believe everything he had read, but the book was mighty convincing and thought-provoking.

He didn’t know what to think about the Demon king’s escape or its metaphorical significance. His escaped organs seemed specifically catered toward how the world had developed afterward. Coincidently, the southern people had strong reproductive capabilities, while the eastern people had strong endurance, which they definitely needed since part of their land was desert.

Mannat watched the world shine brightly outside the window and imagined a day when the demons would return in full force. The thought also made him push back into the chair and shudder. He didn’t think it was possible for hatred, or miasma, to cover the whole world. It would only happen if mana stopped flowing. That would mean no one would be able to absorb mana. And he knew the fate of those who couldn’t absorb mana from their surroundings. His mother fought against one such cruel fate. He dropped his sight and looked at the last line he had read and realized that perhaps, he wasn’t the only one who understood the truth.

He continued reading.

Mannat consumed the whole book in one sitting. When he finally closed it the bright world outside was starting to collapse into darkness.

“Oh, no,” The chair fell back when Mannat stood up in a hurry. He didn’t wait to pick it up and directly rushed toward the open door. It wasn’t the clouds; the horizon was also dyed red and yellow. The sun had begun retreating for the day.

It was evening.

He was late.

He was supposed to be back home by then to meet the old man. He knew his father wouldn’t easily let the man break up him and Sharmilla. He had successfully rejected Sardar’s proposal to annul their engagement once. Mannat hoped his father would manage it again somehow. He only worried that the old man wouldn’t listen to his father this time and the two would end up fighting.

The old man had made it clear why he was against the two of them getting together. He didn’t want his granddaughter to live shunned by the village and that was fine by Mannat. He would have kept his promise to the man had he not visited the town. He knew people’s opinion was no different from sandcastles. It could take any shape and form to intimidate you, but it was also easy to destroy. One only needed to step on it and be on their way.

There was just one thing that gnawed at Mannat’s confidence. He hoped his father hadn’t misunderstood him in the morning.

Wasting no time, he picked the crate full of roots and ran to the other side of the clearing where he had tied Bhadur under a tree’s shade. Bhadur was up on his feet upon seeing Mannat running toward him. Perhaps, he sensed Mannat’s anxiousness because he didn’t act up and stood straight so Mannat could free him from the tree.

Mannat held Bhadur’s reins and brought his face closer so he filled Bhadur’s sight.

“I need you to take me home as fast as you can. Do you understand?”

Bhadur licked his face and Mannat let him go with a chuckle. It was impossible to know if Bhadur understood him, but he had talked to Bhadur more to calm his nervousness than to instruct him.

He tied Bhadur to the cart and together they rushed out of the clearing, and down the road leading to his future.

Mannat saw a brown workhorse tied outside his house and its presence made him tense up. The old man had arrived before him. He was actually late! Oh boy,

He shouldn’t have gone to the clearing in the first place. He similarly tied Bhadur to a pole and climbed the porch stairs. The door was open, but he had trouble taking the last few steps. He hoped his father hadn’t blown things too far away. At least, he didn’t hear them fighting. The worst hadn’t come to pass yet.

Mannat found whatever courage he could and took the final steps into the house. Entering the lobby, he saw his father and the old man sitting on the table by the window. Both of them had their heads down; they were deep in contemplation. The round bottle of murky liquor in front of the old man only had a few mouthfuls remaining. His father sat with his arm crossed while the old man had his hand on the table, holding a round wooden cup in-between.

Raesh raised his head toward the door and Mannat turned into a statue when their eyes met. His father didn’t pass him a smile, and Mannat’s heart fell. The world seemed to crumble around him like a dirtball tumbling down a mountain. Coincidently, the old man followed Raesh’s sight and found Mannat standing at the door like a cowardly imbecile.

Then all hell broke loose.