[Book 1] Campsite

Immanuel Maier believed that whatever beings resided in the Underworld must have spat him out of their realm. That is, if the world of the dead took his soul in the first place.

Several months have passed, but he still remembered nothing of what happened after his death and before he somehow came back to life with nary a sign of wounds and injuries. No matter how many times he revisited the memories of that night, the last thing he could remember each time was the mysterious crow flying overhead in circles, seemingly lulling him to sleep as his life was fading away.

I wonder if the crow actually relayed my messages to her. He remembered the crow hopping in reaction to his thoughts. Or was it in reaction to just one thought… one message he wished it could relay to his wife, Leanne?

Regardless, he knew that one message, if the crow had actually relayed it to his wife, would suffice to let her know he had died.

What if it hadn't? Or what if it told her I was alive, living somewhere outside of the Kingdom's walls?

Worse still, the military would likely have covered up his death with claims of desertion. But in the months that had passed, he had yet to see a soldier of the Kingdom… or anyone, really. Perhaps they merely pretended to search for me and then, at some point, they stopped.

After the night Maddox betrayed him, he awakened at a section of woodlands that he had never seen before, his face warmed by sunlight that managed to pass through the tree canopy. So far, the only being he had encountered with even a semblance of human intellect was the same crow with shining silver eyes.

It was the first animal he had seen in the area—it hopped near him when he opened his eyes for the first time in his second life, as though it were relieved to have seen him alive. Then it flew away, and he had never seen it again since then.

Months had gone by since he was granted a second life, and in that span of time, he had become a one-man village. He had built a shelter for himself with leaves and branches of varying thickness. He settled down near a river, thus securing his source of water. He planted and hunted to feed himself. He killed animals for consumption and protected himself from the dangerous ones with traps and a bow and arrow, all of which he fashioned from the wood of trees he surrounded himself with.

As for his clothing, however…

The day he woke up to a second life, he found his clothes from that night in one piece, as if it had never been ruined by the claws and jaws of Maddox's summoned wolves.

The Kingdom of Varelith wanted me dead, and for a while they had succeeded. Now that I've been brought back to life, I've got to find my wife, or at least let her know I'm still alive so we could meet again somewhere.

Today was no different from the previous months. As he went about his day, he watched the skies every time he thought to do so, hoping to see the crow once again. But like in the previous months, each time he thought to look up, there was no crow in sight.

As he walked to the river to fish with his bow and arrows, he looked up, alerted to the flapping of numerous wings. A flight of birds darted above him, seemingly disturbed by a nearby threat.

Immanuel paused, eyeing the direction the birds flew from. At that moment, there was nothing that made its presence known, but he crouched and moved behind a nearby bush to hide from it. Once there, he readied an arrow for his bow.

For a while, there was nothing but the raging of the river. Then some tall grasses shook, and Immanuel positioned himself to fire an arrow.

When two seemingly innocent folks in hunting attire emerged, he had second thoughts. He put the bow down and leaned forward, squinting to see if they really were just hobbyist hunters from among the Kingdom's wealthy families. He believed it was possible that they were spies of the military.

For a moment, he thought to leave his hiding spot, even placing a foot away from the bush. But, recalling the possibility that his death was covered up by claims of desertion, he stayed.

What if the military included these two hobbyist hunters as part of their search team?

The two hunters moved forward, looking around. Like Immanuel, they were equipped with bows and arrows, but theirs were made of superior material, and thus were capable of getting an arrow farther.

One wrong move and I'm getting one of those for personal use.

Seeing that there was nothing interesting around them, the two hunters moved to the riverside to drink. In between sips, they spoke to each other, but their voices were drowned by the raging river. This forced Immanuel to read their facial expressions instead just to get a hint of what they were doing around this part of the woods outside the Kingdom's walls.

One of the hunters took in a large gulp of water, and when he put his hands down, his eyes chanced upon something behind Immanuel's position. Immanuel turned to take a look and realized that the hunter had seen his shelter. Turning to the hunter again, he saw that he was telling his companion what he saw, pointing to the shelter he had seen first for emphasis.

They looked astonished at the sight of shelter in that part of the woods and stood up, seemingly intent on approaching it. They don't look friendly! Immanuel fired an arrow, killing one of them on the spot. His companion fell backwards with him, and, for a moment, Immanuel put his bow down, believing that he had killed both of them with just one arrow. But when he saw the other hunter rising back up without any wounds upon him, he fired another arrow, which never got past the opposite edge of the river. Damn it! Now he knows where I am! He needed to find a better firing spot ahead of him if he were to hit him.

The remaining hunter readied an arrow to retaliate. But before he could even raise the bow to aim, Immanuel rushed into the open, toward the riverbank, firing twice as he moved. The first shot, like the one before it, did not get past the opposite riverbank, while the next one hit the hunter square in the chest, killing him.

Thinking of the possibility that reinforcements might arrive, Immanuel looked around for signs of movement, an arrow ready to fire. But, finding none, he sighed in relief as he put the bow down.

Immanuel hopped on boulders that collectively served as a natural bridge to either side of the river. Once he reached the bodies of the dead hunters—and they fell not too far from each other—he knelt down next to each of them and studied them.

Each brought nothing that was out of the ordinary. Aside from bows and quivers of arrows, both men brought with them waterskins—they were empty, and Immanuel believed that they could have filled them up had one of them not seen his shelter and dared the other to approach it with him.

Both men also had a dagger each. Immanuel held one on each hand and made slashing and stabbing motions with them. Finding their grips and weights comfortable, he gathered them together with the waterskins, the bows, and the quivers of arrows.

Nothing left to take but their clothes, and they look like they fit me.

Immanuel, unwilling to deal with the putrid stench of rotting flesh later on, brought both bodies next to a bush, one with thick leaves and located among trees out of sight of his shelter. He brought the bodies one at a time, and once he had both of them next to the bush, he crouched next to one and took a glove off.

On one finger rested a gold ring, which glinted under a ray of sunlight that snuck past the leaves of trees. To Immanuel, the ring reminded him of his wedding band, lost since the night of Maddox's betrayal.

As he was pulling the gold ring off the dead man's finger, intending to take it for himself, the exact words of his wife's vows and her soft, nervous voice flashed into his mind. It was as if his wife were in front of him.

Immanuel…

My Immanuel. From the day I first met you, I knew you would be my everything. I feel that I… I am the luckiest woman alive each time I see you.

And now, now that we are here, as we are about to start a life together, I feel like I am the queen of all the lands of this world. Thank you… Thank you for being with me and loving me through the good and the bad that we have faced together, and I promise to love you just the same… or even more. Always, until the end of time.

After some struggle, he cleared the ring off the dead man's finger. Then he set it on his palm to take a better look at it. But the longer he looked at the ring, the greater he struggled to suppress his feelings for his wife and his marriage.

Until finally, Immanuel fell sideways to the ground and wailed. For the first time in months, he openly grieved for a love he could no longer give.

—

"Caw!" came the familiar bird call, and Immanuel's thoughts snapped back to the present. He sat up, picked up the ring from the ground, and adjusted himself so he was seated in a cross-legged position. Then he wiped the tears from his eyes and looked around for the crow.

In time, the bird with shining silver eyes landed on a branch of a tree across him. Believing that crows show interest in shiny objects, Immanuel looked up and held out one hand to show the gold ring to it. I'll give it this ring. This should compel the bird to tell me if it relayed my messages from that night to my wife.

"Look what I got for you." But the crow just looked at Immanuel's hand from the distance.

Scratching his head with his free hand, Immanuel then asks the crow, "What's wrong? Don't crows like you collect shiny objects?"

The bird seemed to understand Immanuel's question, flying down to the ground and hopping forward until it was in front of his hand. Once there, it pecked the gold ring off his palm and set it down to the ground.

"Looks lovely, doesn't it?"

It flapped its wings as it hopped around the ring, eyes fixed on it the entire time, as if studying its entirety. What's that bird doing to the ring?

When it was done, it pecked the ring off the ground. "Now, tell me something, crow. Did you—"

To Immanuel's surprise, the bird flew towards him, landing on his shoulder.

It hopped one more time so it was facing the same way as Immanuel, then dropped the ring. It landed on Immanuel's thigh.

"What are you doing?" Immanuel asked the crow on his shoulder. It let out a caw, but that was not its only response. It hopped down to Immanuel's elbow, then to his hand. It turned to look straight into his eyes and let out another caw.

"Do you want me to put the ring on?" The bird let out a caw in response, then leapt down to the ground in front of him.

While holding the ring with his thumb and middle finger, he chanced upon numerous scratches along the inside, in contrast with the outer part which was smooth all throughout. I sense intense energy—like a massive wave—in the ring. How did I not feel this earlier?

"You want me to put this ring on? Then I'm putting it on." The bird hopped once and let out a caw in response. I've held magic items before, but none of them have given off energy this intense.

As he positioned the ring over the tip of his index finger, he took in a deep breath, for he partly expected something to happen once he set it on his finger.

"This is it. I'm putting the ring on," he declared with hands shaking. But despite his nervousness, he slid the ring down his index finger as if it was his lost wedding band.

And then he waited for something to happen as a result of wearing that man's ring. He shut his eyes and counted every heartbeat that passed to keep him from panicking at the slightest odd sighting and sensation. Yet it seemed nothing was happening no matter how much time had passed.

Then, all of a sudden, bright purple light threatened to pierce his eyelids and burn his eyeballs.