. . . . . . . . . .
Shiguma rushed his legs against his bike's pedals. He tried to get as far away from the bridge as possible. He did not care to look anywhere else but at the road ahead.
Shiguma sped up his bike until the world around him began to blur together like clay.
Yet he couldn't escape his own thoughts.
The more he tried to get away, the clearer memories of crimson eyes became.
Like it was already imprinted into his mind. To the point, he started seeing that gaunt old man in the way.
It's far too vivid to be just a hallucination.
"Shit!"
Suddenly, Shiguma swerved hard on the asphalt, trying to stop his bike before hitting the figure.
But at this speed, he knew it wouldn't stop in time.
"No!"
As his foot is about to collide into the old man,
Shiguma instantly passed through the bodies. like it was just the air.
What...?
For a brief moment, Shiguma's mind started to question everything about what he had seen.
He thought that it was just an illusion that his mind created.
But when Shiguma looked back...he saw those similar rotten feet with no smell.
Skeletal bodies covered in thin skin with no movement and the same crimson eyes that stared at him without a blink.
He realized that the ghostly old man from his dream exists.
And now it's standing still like a part of a horror prop, placed in the background of the movie scene.
"Why you..." Shiguma slowly rose to his feet with a hot pain from the wound he got from the previous sliding.
"Who are you?"
The old man did not answer.
Shiguma, despite being confused, was also frightened at the thought. He decided to take a risk. and hope something would change.
He stepped forward.
But before his feet actually went on, the old man instantly opened his skeletal palm, signaling Shiguma to halt.
"You finally accepted the fate." The old man spoke with a smile widening across both of his cheeks.
That creepy face makes Shiguma flinch. "What the hell!? I did not even accept anything...!!"
Panic responses from Shiguma make the old man laugh with a voice that sounds like something blocking his throat.
"When you stop running away and face me." His crimson eye grew intensely. "You want to know why you are special? want to know why you can sense something normal people can't."
The old man paused, then turned his back bit by bit, struggling like a rag doll that tried to move itself.
"followed me..."
Instead of struggling at walking too, the old man could effortlessly go forward on two feet and the cane. With each step, his feet and cane touched the ground in perfect rhythm.
Tap.
Step.
Tap.
Step.
Shiguma sighed with a heaviness because he fully surrendered to his own curiosity.
"Damn it...I am going to regret this."
Shiguma, following the old man, passed through the forest on the side of the street.
As he saw a familiar old rusty sign: "DO NOT ENTER," Shiguma quickly realized that he had already arrived at the entrance of the forbidden forest.
He looked inside the forest, trying to see if there could be anything dangerous inside.
Instead, he saw only darkness, that even the greenness of the plants being swallowed by the shadow.
Such an unknown made his body tighten up.
He remembered the same dread scent and wet smell of the forest he remembered from the day he saw his childhood friends' bodies.
Just the idea of crossing any part of the body into the place was already terrifying.
An old man turns his back and smiles slightly at Shiguma. Before disappearing into the shadow of the forest.
" whao! "
Shiguma stepped backward with surprise.
He scanned an area again, trying to find a presence of the old man. Shiguma founded nothing but the void of the dense.
Shiguma breathed in,
There's only he now, and the old man just stepped forward into the forbidden forest...he needed to decide.
He already knew that stepping in, he might have the same fate as his childhood friend.
But what if the old man knew something about him? Something about his ability to sense another person's intention?
What if it helps him survive? He isn't sure.
Only way to know...
"I hope I did not die."
Shiguma closed his eyes and took the deepest breath his lungs could manage.
Before slowly rising a few feet and crossing into the forest domain, with wavering courage.
.
.
Slips
.
.
For a minute, Shiguma felt like time around him came to a stop.
There was no sound of winds or even the wet smell of the forest.
He slowly opened his eyes.
And saw something completely beyond the world he knew.
Shiguma stood in the middle of an enormous cave whose walls curved upward into a vast enclosed dome.
Above him was a massive opening in the ceiling, like an exposed roof, allowing sunlight to pour through as the cave's only source of light. And in the center of the cavern stood a giant stone statue with a menacing presence.
The figure wore a crown upon its head. Its face was covered in flowing tattoo-like patterns, and its grinning mouth revealed a pair of terrifying curved fangs.
Both of the statue's hands were holding on to the cudgel vertically, anchored firmly to the earth, resting casually against the sculpture's lean frame while still remaining grounded.
Shiguma admired the beauty of a giant statue. And the more he did, the more he felt like it was once alive and moving with sheer grace.
Suddenly, Shiguma feels cold air brush against the back.
"You finally accepted it."
A cold, inhuman voice immediately flings Shiguma off his feet.
He lunged forward, nearby the wall of the cave, on his hands and knees. Before, he grabbed a piece of rock near the broken stone pillar.
Then Shiguma turned back to the old man and acted like he was about to throw it away.
"Don't come close," he spoke with a trembling voice. "What's this place??? And you did not answer any of my questions."
An old man laughed, his voice echoing in the cave like a ringing bell.
"You're in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, boy...not so many people have got a chance to get here." He pointed at the roof of the cave.
"I am...the Guardian of the gate," the old man breathed softly. "My duty is to call off the mortal from entering the place."
He is slamming a cane on the ground.
"But regrettably...some of them slip in...and their souls were devoured by...starving spirits."
"And for the rest of your question..."
At the end of his breaths, the old man inhaled all the air around him.
and then sniff it out as the crimson energy.
"Wah!"
Shiguma's stumble back. The rocks inside his hand drop on the ground.
He stumbled backward, trying to crawl away from crimson energy that lunged at him like a flock of birds.
But it was inevitable.
The crimson air floated into both of his nostrils.
The next moment, Shiguma felt like his entire body got stuck, unable to move the legs and the arms, just like he did in his dream.
But this time an old man didn't step forward.
He was just standing right where he was. and staring at Shiguma like a demon who's in total control.
Shiguma's vision became blurred, and then it got darker. While he still felt everything around him.
Soon, the void inside Shiguma's vision was slowly replaced by a drawing.
drawing of crimson energy that slowly forms into a motion picture, like a cartoon, a depiction from each sentence that the old man told.
A thousand years ago. or at least that's how long it was...
This place was once the home of malevolent spirits.
It was dangerous, hostile, and dreadful.
Anyone who dares to cross into the place will be torn apart by the starved spirits' horde.
Until
They came.
The groups of powerful shaman.
They sought to settle down upon this forest, but they could not as long as the spirit existed.
Because the shaman and the malevolence spirit were hostile to one another.
So,
Five elders of the Shamans of the group had sacrificed themselves to summon one divinity guardian spirit. The king of giants and all spirits.
Thao Wetsuwan.
As the name mentioned, Shiguma chills down in his skin as it instantly reminded him of the giant statue in the cave.
An old man continued.
The Guardian spirit had destroyed the horde of malevolence. and dragging the rest of them back to its birthplace.
The Forbidden Forest.
"Forbidden forest...this place..." Shiguma thinks.
Yes...
a place where this malevolent spirit was born.
The Guardian realized something...
No matter how many malevolent spirits he dispels, if the forest keeps summoning them up, they will be forever.
So the Guardian used his body to seal the forest forever.
But the soul...is the soul.
The remaining shaman knew that one's day guardian spirit Arkhom fuel would be completely drained from the sealing.
And his souls will dissappeared.
All of their sacrifices will perish.
What do they do...?
Ha, oh...
They could only count...
and count.
Until the shaman disappeared from this land.
Until the mortal took over the place.
And when that time arrives...
The forest will go silent.
All the animals will flee with fear.
and left nothing but the time that is running out.
Shiguma's vision slowly returned again.
His control over his own body followed. But it did not make him feel any better.
"I have no idea...! How am I related to this?" Shiguma shouted with heavy breaths.
An old man slowly walking toward Shiguma with a strong step that could shake the earth.
"You're everything...don't you ever wonder why you can sense another person's emotions?"
In each word he spoke, it matched perfectly with the step.
"Why can you read their intentions?"
Shiguma quickly ran backward, trying to get away.
"Something started to make sense, didn't it?"
Realizing that he was stuck, Shiguma stood back against the wall. \
But then...the old man abruptly stopped right at his face.
Then he spoke with powerful words.
"You're the reincarnation of the five summoners of the Thao Wetsuwan...and that's your duty, Shiguma."
The old man's eye pierces into Shiguma's frightened soul.
"Sacrificed yourselves before the catastrophic happening."
Shiguma breathes faster. His mind races in fright; Shiguma can't take any of this anymore.
"NO!"
Shiguma ran.
Between the old man and the empty area, he scooches himself out.
Then Shiguma rushed away toward a big crater.
Behind it was a dense forest.
But before he reached out, an old man's terrified voice echoed inside his ear.
"If you leave...your entire village will perish."
Shiguma
But despite the warning, Shiguma did not listen.
It's too unbelievable.
He continued to step outside of the caves. And then everything in front of him faded.
The dense forest became the same endless field of rice.
and the wet soils of the forest became a familiar concrete road.
Shiguma looked to the left side instinctively as he thought he would see something he remembered.
There was his own bike lying there, with the right handle broken off.
Shiguma let out a heaviness inside his chest from a breath. before he looked back once.
The same entrance to the forbidden forest, the same old spirit house, the same scent and atmosphere.
A cave and the old man were nowhere to be found, but Shiguma did not want to think about it.
He just wants to go home and see his uncle again.
Shiguma took his bike up and then slowly walked on the concrete roads.
Hopefully anything he had seen before will just leave him be.
"Huh?"
The sunlight on the road quickly fades to darkened light.
An atmosphere turned grim and freezing cold.
Shiguma's stomach tightens up.
He looked at the sky. And saw the sun gradually consumed by the dark circle.
It's moving from only half.
Until it completely wipes the growing sun out of the sky.
Then, the reddish energy radiated out from the black circle.
In just a minute, it has covered the entire sky and turned it into a blazing crimson.
Shiguma froze in place; he was completely bewildered as to what was happening.
He tried to move his legs and quickly get out of here as soon as possible.
But Shiguma feels stuck.
As Shiguma looked down to see.
and it immediately frightened him to the core.
There were pairs of tiny arms holding on to Shiguma's legs.
It belongs to the boy, with blood covering pale bodies, like a corpse.
A boy just smiles widely, showing rotten teeth with a red liquid soaking out from the mouth.
Let's play...my brother.
The boy's voice is groaning in pain, contrasting with his cheerful expression.
But that wasn't the only voice Shiguma heard.
As Shiguma turned around, he heard the same groaning voice whoring out everywhere, every place around him.
In the forest,
On the roads.
They're all screaming and yearning for the same thing.
"Human soul"
. . . . . . . . . .