As the darkness of night was enveloping the dead Down River like a grave digger filling the hole, the stars and moon acted as witnesses of what once was a village full of life, now only a land of lifeless corpses.

Another one could be seen ready to join, as little Levis's face was as stark pale white as he was running in ragged gasps of air. If only one could see through the darkness surrounding him as he descended the mountain-like hill from where his village was situated.

As he was running in the dense and closed forest, few to none of the stars and moon's light could pass even with most of the trees having very few leaves as branches and branches criss-cross one another in life and death like battle for the light of the sky as though in fear of losing the warmth of the light.

However, as the lower branches of the trees, and bushes, were everywhere, bruises and cuts accumulated on the boy's body and face, as his ragged clothes were being cut by the speed of his march.

Unaware of anything, his mind was a hectic world full of confusion, distress and horror.

Although not far from the world of blood and the passing of the living, he had never witnessed such brutal and unexplained violence.

His body was losing strength without realizing it. His mind in a trance as he was running by instinct as the words uttered by his grandpa were still echoing through his mind.

As his earliest of his memories were playing in unordered sequences.

As his rationality was trying to understand the situation he was in, the reason his grandpa, grandma, village chief and all the other villagers that he had known since he was a child, had to die. The riders from whom had arrived the whole nightmare.

In the midst of his confused, disoriented and hectic mind, he found himself at the base of the mountain-like hill on the road usually used by the villagers next to the river from where most activities were done by the village and villages in the nearby regions.

As the weak light of the moon and stars were illuminating the road and the river, the fast sound of the crashing water could be heard as he began his slow and agonizing journey southward in between the mountainous hills, as that was the only way out of the shouts point of the border west mountains, the only name that the villagers were always used to define their location each time little Levis asked for information on the outside world.

“Grandpa … I’ll liv–,”

“Cough, Cough”

As intense coughing made him unaware of the trail made by the little droplets of blood, as he continued his journey, the memories of his life were arranging and moving through his blurry eyes in a self-adjusting mechanized order to regain his clear state of mind.

The first thing to remember was the time that old Ato had told him that he was not of his blood but the child of a dead couple at the foot of the village nearly 13 years ago.

The tales that the drunk old village chief had told him about the tragic life of old Ato that had lost his wife in childbirth, follower by the disappearance of his son at age 24, only to be found days late by the village hunter in a horrifying state as wolves had bite and eat him alive, as not more than three years since the arrival of little Levis, his daughter in law and his grandson, had died during a passing illness in the region, making him the ever grumpy old man in the village, as he had given the little boy to the grandma Hel to raise, only to little by little taking care alongside her.

About his grandma Hel the kind old woman that was always surrounded by strange plants and visited by all the sick and injured people in the village. That according to the old chief had never married as she had always been in love with his grandpa but had never asked him despised being the only person to have ever put up with his grumpy and vulgar character.

And the old chief that had always watched over the village whit a kind gaze. Only to have realized that he was the scariest of all the old people in the village in his moments of anger.

As memories of the life in the village were playing in his moment of extrem confusion, his pace slow as that of an old man dying, little Levis was moving as though his life goal was to walk the road until he had to find something more important than his life.

"I'll make y--"

"Cough, cough"

"Proud"

"I'm living Grandpa At--"

"Cough, cough, cough."

As incomplete murmurers were coming out of his little mouth stained by blood but face pale as white, body trembling, and eyes unable to focus.

Steps that seemed to carry a dying world, the little arms were hanging down as he could not raise, move or feel them any longer.

As the end of the hills were approaching where the river was turning east, avoiding the prairie to the south as thou on purpose.

After a night of walking, that was nothing more of an agonizing and slow dragging of his dying body.

His little figure could be seen as the rays of the morning sun in east were just hitting him, as the horrifying scene that as little Levis was not even concise, as an arrow could be seen on his left upper chest as the tip of it was just slightly protruding out of his back.

His usually little figure for his age seemed even little as he appeared to be nothing more than a 5-year-old boy.

As though instinct or through the loss of power in his left foot, his body turned east as the river, only to walk not more than ten steps before falling, still mumbling in his half-dead mental state.

"I'll live---"

"HAHAHHAHA YOU ARE INDEED THE ONE TO BE MY GUINE---, INHERITOR HAHAHAHHA"

As laughs of madness resounded from what seemed to be an eternity away, the last of his consciousness faded as emptiness and relief were taking him.