Time passed quickly, and my fears of boredom and idle days had lessened. Every morning, I visited the green glade and found Riam and the chessboard. We exchanged a few words at first, questions and answers that fueled my curiosity.
Kias truly was a vast world. And perhaps the most important conversation we had was today's.
During our third round, Riam suddenly said, "There were once Titans." She looked at me. "And back then, the sources of power didn't favor humans."
That wasn't exactly new to me, but I believed it was the beginning of something important. She told me that humans were weak and they couldn't use magic, and mana wasn't a common source of power back then.
"The titans called the energy Rune. Maybe Rune was something like mana, but only titans could use it."
Riam said while moving her pawn. "They were a complete race that no one could stand against. But they went extinct. Isn't that funny?"
"How?" I asked, eyes on the board.
"The Rune vanished… and the titans died."
"Is there no chance I'll ever see one?" I asked, curiosity gleaming in my eyes.
I won't lie—I feared the idea, but I still wanted to see one.
"Unfortunately, Reopard, you won't see any," Riam smiled.
"They just… died?" I asked.
"Yes. They weren't immortal anymore. And they died. In a time unrecorded, with nothing left behind but the Tablets of Zalereto and some of their creations—like the Abyssal Bridge."
She had told me about the Abyssal Bridge before: a massive bridge connecting the continent of humans to the middle continent. It was so wide it resembled a village, and so long it linked two continents that couldn't be reached otherwise. Beneath it? Nothing but a deep darkness, echoing with the sound of flowing water.
Silence lingered between us for a while. Then I noticed her eyes locked onto mine. And perhaps, for the first time, I saw something I hadn't seen before… hesitation.
And that's when I knew I was about to hear something important—something personal.
"Of course, there were humans back then," Riam said. She paused for a moment. "They lived in scattered villages, bare-handed. No magic. Nothing. Life was primitive. Mud houses. Meals were mostly porridge and fox or rabbit meat. Some farmers would slaughter a cow twice a year and trade its meat."
I stayed silent, listening to her and to the forest. I listened to the small stream of water that fed the pool behind her, to the wind that picked up whenever she paused, and to the first signs of winter.
My eyes blinked when I saw the first snowflake drifting between us. Maybe winter had just declared its arrival.
"One of the villages had a strange tree not far in its forest."
Ah!
Now the story was beginning.
I couldn't hold back my smile.
"Children don't change at every age. Children played. Risa and Lisa were twin sisters who spent most of their time together. They were respected as the daughters of the village chief. They would sneak out at dawn to their secret hideout… beneath the Kumas tree- the strange tree close to the village."
Kumas? I wondered.
"Kumas was a bitter white fruit. It was Rare. It didn't grow in every forest or every place. And when it appeared, something else would appear… "
The air suddenly turned colder. Riam's crimson eyes dimmed, and her hair grew wild for a moment, as if what she was remembering wasn't just a tale—it was playing out in front of her.
"Risa and Lisa weren't just sisters. They shared the same feelings, saw the world in the same way. Loved their parents equally. Loved their village equally. Loved their cat equally."
From Riam's tone, Risa and Lisa seemed close to her heart.
And though I suspected the identity of one of them, we were talking about something from a very long time ago—maybe thousands of years.
"When they turned sixteen, they both fell for the same boy. But only one could marry him—and that was Lisa.
Still, it caused no rift between them.
But the duo that visited the forest each morning became a trio.
Risa sometimes felt jealous that she couldn't be near the boy like Lisa, but she kept her feelings hidden."
Riam played as she spoke. I listened quietly.
"That wasn't the problem. The village was still lively. No monsters came close. Death only visited those who left the borders… But peace doesn't last. A strange illness spread through the village," Riam took a deep breath. "Mana had helped increase human lifespans. But back then, life rarely reached sixty. Humans were fragile. When the disease hit, the elderly were the first to fall, with short breaths and bleeding noses. When the village chief died, Lisa took over. She and her husband became the village heads."
"At age twenty-five, while the illness still raged, Lisa gave birth to her first child.
That same night, Risa left the village to look for their missing cat… And when she found it, the body was torn apart, chewed up beside the Kumas tree,
where a strange being sat resting behind the holes of the roots."
Silence followed. Riam went quiet. She closed her eyes, as if trying to replay the scene… or maybe… force it to vanish from her mind.
She opened her eyes, parted her lips, but no words came out. Then, more silence followed, and in less than a minute, I decided to pull the words a little.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Forget it. It's not important. It's unwritten history—a tale unknown to most. No one knows if it's real or just a myth."
Riam smiled.
"Looks like you can beat me at chess now. I'm proud."
I glanced at the board. Yes, I had won a while ago. But Riam never resigned.
"I resign now. How about another round?"
I looked at her.
Clearly, she wasn't in the mood to keep talking, and I didn't want to push her. Whether real or fiction, what she spoke of clearly affected her. It wasn't just Risa and her village that suffered… Riam, somehow, suffered too.
…
At noon, Riam decided to take me deeper into the forest. From the glade, we entered a denser part of the woods. The branches were tangled and crowded, forming canopies overhead. Sunlight seeped through the cracks between the high branches, soft and gentle.
I didn't know what we were going to do… until Riam lifted my spirits with one sentence:
"We're going to practice magic," she said.
"Really?"
"Yes. Ready your knife."
Immediately, at the back of my mind, I imagined the steam from my fingers forming our kitchen knife.
Then I channeled mana through my fingertips, and the knife took shape. It hovered before me, glowing green like my mana.
It had the exact details as our kitchen blade, sharp teeth, a handle shaped like a snout, and three embedded nails.
"Stop," Riam said, placing her finger to her lips."Shhh."
She peeked from behind a massive tree, then gestured for me to come.
I leaned to the side beneath her arm and peeked as well.
In the distance, I saw a pond, four or five times larger than the one we trained by.
At its edge, a deer lowered its head to drink.
"Hit the neck. Imagine the knife flying fast. You can imagine it being fired from a bow or anything. Just imagine the speed and the sound."
Alright, I had no experience with bows, but I'd seen guns in movies. I imagined the knife like a bullet, spinning to make its tip deadlier. And like a bullet, I fired it.
In a single moment. The deer screamed.
And I did too.
"Aaagh!"
I collapsed to my knees.
Something strange had happened.
I looked up at Riam with a spasming forehead and swollen eyes, and saw her smiling in return.
"Headache?" she asked.
"How did you know?"
"Didn't I tell you before?" Riam grinned. "A free mana user only needs their mind. That means the more precise and powerful your mental abilities, the stronger your manifestation. And vice versa—if your manifestation suffers, so will your mind."
At first, I didn't fully grasp what she said. The headache wasn't unbearable, but it pulsed in my brain for a moment, like my heart had beat inside my head, twice… then stopped.
"But Reopard, I'm truly proud," Riam said, looking at the deer. "You tore its throat clean. I never told you to spin the knife—that was your own genius… You little brat."
Riam laughed,a broad, rare smile that lit her whole face.
Then she added:
"I'm truly proud."
But this time, her words were distant, her gaze fixed on the dead deer. As if those words weren't meant for me… but for someone else.
"Ah, I can't wait until you're ready… until I can use you."
Her voice dipped into a whisper… But I heard her.
Riam sometimes forgot others were around. Once, while we were playing chess, she took off her clothes without noticing. When I turned away, flustered and asked her why, she only then realized what she'd done.
She said strange things sometimes, too. And what she said just now… Was one of them.
And like usual, I would let it pass. And take what I can from her knowledge of magic.