Last Survivor

Regaining consciousness, Haruto felt an intense pain gnawing in his head. His soaked clothes clung to his skin.

“Damn it! My feet and hands are tied!” he realized as he tried unsuccessfully to sit up.

Then came the cold. Brutal and searing. Coming up from the ground and seeping into his flesh and bones. He shivered uncontrollably.

Looking up, he noticed the fading daylight and the snow falling gently.

“Your nap is over, heretic. Time to get moving,” said a voice beside him.

Haruto turned his head to look at the person speaking and eyed him from head to toe. A soldier of the Church. The man smiled smugly, an empty bucket in his hands.

“You filthy bastard,” Haruto hissed between his teeth.

Another man in armor approached Haruto, holding a dagger aloft, before kneeling down beside him.

“Shit… this guy’s going to kill me…”

Haruto closed his eyes and held his breath. He braced for the blade and the pain but instead felt his bonds being cut. He let out a sigh of relief as the man lifted him to his feet.

Intense heat suddenly began to penetrate Haruto’s back. Turning around, he froze. A hellish sight appeared before him.

“What on earth have you done?!”

Pauweik was engulfed in a massive inferno that was wreaking total destruction.

The flames were devouring everything in their path, fueled by the wooden frames and thatched roofs of the buildings.

“It reeks of burned wood, but there’s something else too… like a nasty smell,” he thought.

The scent reminded him of a barbecue, but stranger... as if someone had left a piece of meat to burn on the grill.

“Wait! Don’t tell me that…”

Alarmed, but determined to get to the bottom of it, Haruto carefully scanned his surroundings and spotted the well in the center of the village, or at least what was left of it.

Half-charred pieces of the pulley were visible through the flames, along with something else.

“What’s that strange blackish thing sticking out of the opening?” he wondered.

The heat radiating from it was so intense that the air warped its contours, forcing him to focus even harder.

“It looks like… an arm?!” he whispered, horrified.

Realizing the grim fate that had just befallen the village and its inhabitants, Haruto fell to his knees and threw up on the snowy ground.

Startled, the two guards took a few steps back.

“Watch out for splashes,” said one of the guards.

“Damn it, that guy’s going to stain my boots,” complained the other man.

As the two soldiers looked at Haruto with contempt and disdain, Captain Oscar approached, his cloak fluttering behind him. He ignored Haruto, who was having trouble pulling himself together. His two subordinates immediately stood at attention and saluted.

“No need to stay here a second longer than necessary. Notify the others that we’re leaving and make sure they’re ready,” he ordered. Oscar cast a satisfied glance at the young man still on his knees.

“As you wish, sir!” they said in unison.

Less than ten minutes later, all the members of the clergy’s contingent had gathered. They had taken up positions halfway between the forest and what remained of Pauweik, forming two columns parallel to the main road.

The fiery glow of the fire consuming the village gave the convoy a sinister appearance. It stood in stark contrast to the twilight, with the sky growing darker by the second.

Haruto’s body temperature was dropping rapidly as he continued to shiver uncontrollably.

“I’m so cold… am I going to die in this cursed world? At the hands of these… these savages?!” he thought as a soldier dragged him toward two horses.

The man tied his wrists with a long rope, which he secured to one of the saddles.

“There must be a way to escape this… There’s always a way,” Haruto told himself.

His mind began racing. Muttering to himself and casting frantic glances around him, he seemed almost insane.

It was as if all his senses were shut off to the smallest external stimulus. Then a loud noise snapped him back to reality.

“We’re under attack!” someone shouted.

“Everyone, take cover!”

“What?! Could this be the work of a survivor? No… That doesn’t make sense,” Haruto thought.

His heart pounding, he carefully observed his surroundings but failed to detect the slightest hint of danger.

The clergy soldiers, meanwhile, seemed caught off guard. They were scattering in all directions, like animals fleeing from danger.

The horses were spooked by the commotion and couldn’t stay still, while Oscar barked out orders on the fly.

“Create a defensive perimeter around our position! Hurry up!”

The men obeyed and gathered around the leader, weapons drawn and ready to strike. Haruto then saw the source of all the chaos. A soldier, lying motionless in a pool of blood at the front of one of the columns.

“He… took an arrow right through his throat!” he realized with horror.

Just as Oscar’s troops were gradually regaining control of the situation, a whistling sound pierced the air at breakneck speed.

“What on earth is going on?!” Haruto thought.

“Aaarghh…” A second warrior fell heavily to the ground among his comrades-in-arms. A short groan escaped his lips as he breathed his last breath, eyes frozen in shock.

The captain instantly turned his gaze toward the victim. Several projectiles were visible, lodged right in the middle of the gleaming breastplate.

It had all happened in a fraction of a second.

“Huh?”

“Close ranks!” ordered Oscar’s second-in-command.

“Where did those arrows come from?”

“I don’t want to die,” cried one of the men.

A sense of panic and uncertainty was gradually overtaking the soldiers. Fearing the next volley, they cast frantic glances into the darkness.

Haruto, meanwhile, had instinctively crouched down for fear of being struck by an arrow. “Am I being targeted or what?” he thought.

He turned his attention to the two bodies. One detail caught his eye. “It looks like the arrows all have the same angle of impact. Could they have come from the same direction?” he wondered.

With this question in mind, he turned his focus to the neighboring forest. But between the descending darkness and the glow of the raging fire, it was impossible to see clearly.

“Damn it, I can’t see a thing,” he grumbled.

Meanwhile, Captain Oscar was quick to act. Drawing on his military experience, he immediately dismounted and moved between the horses, where he would be a smaller target and thus harder to hit by a long-range attacker.

“We can’t stay out here in the open. Form a protective perimeter around the animals and move forward along the path leading to the forest!” Oscar boomed.

The Church soldiers instantly obeyed and marched forward, swords in hand and on the lookout for the slightest sign of danger. They hadn’t covered ten meters when the whistling of an arrow was heard again. But the captain was ready.

“Everyone, get down on the ground!” he barked.

The troops threw themselves to the ground as one, narrowly avoiding the projectile. Instead, it struck the second-in-command’s horse. The animal reared up in a panic-stricken lurch. Its hooves lashed out wildly in a wild frenzy, striking its rider, who had taken cover behind it. The force of the blow sent the man flying several meters before he crashed to the ground lifeless.

Oscar stood and gritted his teeth as he took in the state of his comrade-in-arms. The man’s breastplate was horribly crushed, and his head was pointing in a grotesque direction. He then turned his attention back to his troop, who were clearly shocked by the turn of events. Their wide-eyed stares held fear, confusion, and helplessness.

“Shields forward! Locate the enemy!”

The soldiers flinched before reluctantly obeying. During this brief lapse, Oscar swept the scene with a quick glance and froze when he saw the silhouette of his prisoner.

Haruto was no longer trembling and was intently staring at the woods. Why? Something about his behavior signaled trouble.

Disregarding danger, Oscar abandoned his position and strode determinedly toward Haruto. With his cloak flapping in the wind and the flames reflecting off his metal armor, he looked like a demon straight out of hell.

“You!” he said, pointing at Haruto.

“Is he crazy or what…? Can’t he see his own men? What the—”

The captain stopped in front of the young man, who was still crouched on the ground, and gave him a violent kick to the gut. A sickening, cracking sound rang out as searing pain shot through Haruto’s entire body.

“Uughh!” He rolled onto his side, spitting out a mixture of saliva and blood.

“Tell me, worm… Are you behind this attack?”

Oscar slowly leaned over him.

“You’d better talk,” he threatened.

Haruto tried to right himself, but his body resisted.

“I see…” Oscar said with a sigh.

The second kick folded him in half once more. The third wrung a hoarse, anguished groan from him.

“I… I don’t know anything…”

The captain untied the rope, keeping the young man tied to the horse. He grabbed him by the collar and forced him to look into his eyes.

“Do you take me for a fool? You’ve been staring at that forest ever since we got here, as if you know what is hiding there.”

Heart-wrenching screams of agony rang out around them, mingled with the constant crackling of the flames, but Oscar paid scant attention to them. His eyes were fixed on Haruto.

“I swear I didn’t do anything,” Haruto managed to say, gasping for air.

Meanwhile, the snow kept falling, heavy and silent, gradually muffling the dying screams of the Church’s soldiers.

The captain put the tip of his sword at Haruto’s neck.

“If you won’t confess, you’ll die alongside all those traitors and heretics from the village.”

“I… I’m innocent,” the young man pleaded.

Oscar shook his head and raised his weapon to strike when something whizzed through the air.

“What the…? Aaarghh!” Oscar cried.

An arrow pierced his wrist. His sword slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground. He immediately let go of Haruto and clutched his bleeding wound, screaming in pain.

The icy snow stung Haruto’s cheek as he collapsed to the ground. Though exhausted and unable to move, he was still breathing.

He glanced over at Oscar. It looked like the captain’s eyes were going to pop out of his head. He saw his soldiers riddled with arrows and strewn across the ground in a macabre display. The snowy ground had turned scarlet. Oscar’s expression shifted to one of horror.

“No, no… This can’t be!” he muttered, slowly backing away as his boots sunk in the snow.

Another arrow flew past his face, missing it by just a few centimeters. He stumbled further back, his movements becoming erratic. Panicked, he rushed toward his terrified horse and nearly tripped as he mounted. Before leaving, he shot a furious glance at Haruto, who lay there motionless.

“Die in this damned snow!” he growled before galloping away and disappearing into the darkness.

Even after his tormentor had left, Haruto remained lying there as the biting cold seeped into every part of his badly injured body. Soaked and drained, he felt the slow but inexorable onset of hypothermia.

His steel-gray eyes stared at the dark, overcast sky, which seemed to weigh down on him like a shroud.

“I’m so cold… so very cold… and I feel so alone,” he muttered in a barely audible voice.

Not far away, the village was still burning. The flames were crackling as thick smoke rose into the night.

Haruto closed his eyes for a moment, letting the darkness engulf his thoughts. He no longer had the strength to move or even to cry. Everything seemed unreal. Distant. Pointless. A cruel joke that existence had played on him.

Images of the devastated hamlet mingled with images of the past few weeks and of his home world. It was all now nothing more than a jumbled mass of fragmented memories, erased by the fire and drowned in darkness.

“I… couldn’t save them…”

After an indeterminate time, a noise snapped Haruto out of his stupor. He could barely lift his head, but his wavering gaze nevertheless fell upon a figure emerging from the forest.

Then he saw them. Those same green lights. The ones he’d spotted earlier during the hunt.

He tried to sit up, but a searing pain shot through his entire body, immediately pinning him to the ground.

“Is this… a new enemy?”

A bitter laugh died in his throat.

“How ironic… After everything I'd been through…” he thought in a last flash of clarity.