The sky was gray and overcast.
Cold raindrops drummed against the thin windows of a cheap inn in Iron Boot Town, their dull sound enough to fray anyone's nerves.
In the room without any soundproofing, the air reeked of cheap tobacco and damp wood...
And endless quarrelling.
"Do you absolutely have to go? That... that swamp crawling with monsters?!"
Laura's voice rose with anger and fear. She clutched the two frightened children tightly; the boy hid behind his mother's skirt while the girl whimpered softly.
"Yano Belmont! Look at yourself! Look at us! You're a Descendant of Knights, not some lowly peddler wandering the roads! And certainly not meat for feeding lizards!"
With his back to her, Yano stuffed the last few rough winter clothes into a badly worn leather backpack. His movements were slightly, almost imperceptibly, stiff.
"Laura, being a 'Descendant of Knights' won't fill their stomachs, and it won't pay Sol Arcane Academy's tuition."
His voice was low, carrying suppressed exhaustion. He did not turn around to look at her.
"The adventurers in Iron Boot Town said the Lizardfolk at Reed Riverbank desperately need grain and salt after spring begins. The price... is three times what it is in the kingdom. One trip, just this one trip, will be enough for you to live steadily for years."
"Steadily? How are we supposed to live steadily if you die?!"
Laura rushed in front of him, her long golden hair disheveled and her blue eyes brimming with tears. The worship of old was gone, replaced by deep disappointment and incomprehension.
"You could clearly find respectable work! Even guarding the city gates! Why does it have to be here? Why does it have to be now? Those Demihumans... they're savage, filthy, untrustworthy! Everyone in the kingdom knows it!"
Yano spun around. Beneath his dark chestnut hair, pain and stubbornness flashed through his light-brown eyes.
"Respectable? The coppers for guarding city gates wouldn't even cover the rent! Laura, be realistic! I need money! A lot of money! So you and the children won't have to live at other people's mercy in the future!"
The unconscious commanding tone lingering in his voice stabbed Laura deeply.
"Live at other people's mercy? Right now, we're living at the mercy of your mad face!"
Laura picked up her younger daughter and took her son by the hand, her voice cold and resolute.
"Fine, go! Go to your swamp and deal with those monsters! Trade your 'noble' Belmont life for filthy gold coins! Children, we're leaving! We're going back to Grandma's house in Havensstone! Let your father become his... great merchant!"
She practically ground out the final words through clenched teeth.
"Laura! Wait!" Yano reached out to stop her.
Bang—!
The door slammed shut with vicious force, and the tremendous sound shook dust loose from the walls.
Yano's outstretched hand froze in midair. Listening to his wife's muffled sobs and the children's confused questions rapidly fading beyond the door, it was as though all strength had been drained from him. His back slid down the cold wall until he sat slowly upon the filthy floor.
He lowered his head and raised his trembling right hand.
By the dim light of the oil lamp, he saw that the skin around his little and ring finger joints had taken on an unnatural grayish-white hue, like cheap marble. It felt stiff and numb.
This was not dirt. It was the encroachment of Petrification Disease.
Like a demon lurking within his bloodline, it was slowly gnawing away at his life—and at his dignity as a husband, a father, even as a "person."
He clenched his fist hard, and a needle-like pain shot through those rigid knuckles.
"...For you... I have to go..."
Facing the empty, cold room and the demon-like stone patches spreading across his skin, he whispered hoarsely.
The suffocating sensation of darkness and dampness surged over him.
The scene abruptly shattered!
"Urgh... hhk..."
Yano Belmont's eyes flew open. He sucked in a cold breath, his throat emitting a wheeze like a broken bellows.
The blinding white light instantly brought tears streaming down his face, and he reflexively raised a hand to block it.
"Damn sunlight!"
He cursed inwardly, feeling as though the light were countless fine needles piercing his sore eyes.
Every time he awoke from that nightmare of shattered parting, it came with this nauseating physical reaction and an even deeper exhaustion of the mind.
This nightmare, along with the damned curse in his body, clung to him like maggots to the bone, tormenting him with increasing frequency.
Feeling the familiar stiffness in his finger joints,
He laboriously rotated his wrist. Grayish-white stone patches were clearly visible at the base of his fingers, like ugly brands.
The "glory" of House of Belmont—Petrification Disease.
A slow and cruel death sentence: first stripping away the freedom to move, then freezing one's breath, until at last it turned a person into a silent tombstone.
Those "statues" in the Lineage records, covered in white cloth and twisted into strange poses, had been the deepest terror of his childhood.
And now, that terror was truly unfolding upon his own body.
He, Yano Belmont—once a Knight Squire, a devout follower of God Kadus, a warrior who had wielded a longsword to guard the frontier... was now curled up like a wretched thief amid the rotting leaves and frigid silt of Swamp Forest, reeking from head to toe of mud and fear.
All because he had cast aside that long-worthless "noble glory" and, like the most pathetic of peddlers, gambled all his possessions and what little life remained to him on trying to cross dangerous Reed Riverbank and trade with those green-skinned, scaled Demihumans.
All so that before he completely turned to stone, he could leave Laura and the children enough money to survive. So they could escape poverty. So the children might still have a chance at a decent education, rather than bearing the double shame of being descendants of bankrupt nobles and "stone men."
"What... a colossal irony..."
He tugged mockingly at the corner of his mouth, disturbing the dried clumps of mud on his face. Then he struggled upright and leaned against a massive dead tree that radiated the stench of decay.
Looking around, dense treetops obscured most of the sky, casting mottled, eerie patches of light and shadow.
The air was so damp it seemed water could be wrung from it. Mixed into it were the smells of rotting plants, fermenting silt, and the faintly sweet, fishy stench of some animal carcass, enough to make one retch.
Silence—a silence brimming with the sense of unseen eyes watching—shrouded everything. Only the occasional unknown insect let out a brief, piercing cry.
Even though he had fortunately escaped the conflict within the Lizardfolk tribe, he had lost his bearings and could only flee through this place in a sorry state.
His once passably respectable merchant's coat had been torn to rags, smeared with mud and dark-brown stains.
His expensive leather boots were sunk in the muck, and one had disappeared somewhere long ago.
He felt around his waist. The money pouch that held his hopes was still there, but it contained only a few cold silver coins and several coppers.
As for the pack-beast cart loaded with grain and salt?
It was gone long ago.
Those damned Gray-scaled bastards who worshiped demons!
They had been like vicious ghosts crawling from the depths of the swamp, monstrously strong, their gray scales hard enough to knock aside blades!
Those seasoned adventurers from Iron Boot Town whom he had hired, men who usually bragged until flowers fell from the sky, had been torn apart like paper beneath the claws of those corrupted monsters!
The shrill screams, the dull crack of bones breaking, the sensation of warm blood splashing across his face... and those pairs of murky, crazed, utterly mindless dark-red eyes!
Fear coiled around his heart like an icy venomous serpent.
How had he escaped? He could not remember.
He only remembered the captain of the guards shoving him just before dying, roaring, "Run!"
Then, relying on the remnants of a warrior's instinct, he had stumbled and crawled headlong into this even deadlier forest.
The torrential rain... right, there had also been that damned rainstorm, lasting two days as though it meant to drown the entire world!
The rain had been cold enough to pierce bone. It washed the blood and grime from his body, but it also brought biting cold and agony so severe it nearly paralyzed him—Petrification Disease accelerated its encroachment whenever Mana was active during stormy weather.
Like a walking corpse, he had trudged through mud and despair, finally collapsing here from exhaustion. Yet the Demonic Beasts of the forest had somehow not found and devoured him.
Perhaps those monsters found a "thing" reeking of death and stone just as unappetizing?
Two days... He had been lost for two days in this cursed Swamp Forest, filled with green-skinned savages and unknown dangers, wandering like a headless fly!
"God Kadus above..."
Yano panted, trying to gather even a shred of a warrior's courage.
Fumbling about, he pulled a dagger that was barely still intact from the lining of his tattered coat.
The cold touch of metal gave him a sliver of almost negligible security.
He had to find a way out, find the direction back to Iron Boot Town, or... find any chance at survival.
For Laura, for the children, he could not die here and become a pile of unclaimed dry bones in the swamp... or stone.
He spat out the muddy, fishy taste in his mouth with disgust. Just as he struggled to rise, he heard the anguished cry of prey being slain from within the shadowy forest.
Those damned scaled beasts again!
Though Yano cursed aloud, terror filled his heart. In blind panic, he picked a direction, entrusted his fate to the god who ruled luck, and plunged headlong into the dark woods.
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