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"I am not a mortal." Peturabo's stubbornness probably would not change even if Olympia was destroyed. "I am different from them. You merely took away part of my extraordinary abilities."

"And your talent for cooking?"

Peturabo immediately stuffed the grilled fish into his mouth and chewed twice before swallowing stiffly. "Your taste is too poor to appreciate my work."

Afraid that Mors would use this to provoke him again, he quickly lowered his hand, twisted his wrist, and hid the grilled fish behind his back, away from the other man's sight.

"Yes, yes," Mors answered casually. "You are not a mortal. You are merely a magical child who cannot do anything, perhaps one who cannot even find the courage to face a group of utterly harmless guards. Peturabo, go face your fate. The Lokos guard has been looking for you for days."

The psychic ice shuddered ever closer, and Peturabo turned to look toward the forest as well.

The corridor-like woods and the ground carpeted with ice shards formed a natural echo chamber. The scrape of metal armor against leather was magnified by the natural currents of air, rolling toward Peturabo with great speed. If he had been a pale leaf fallen from a branch, this force would have torn him apart and swept him away long ago.

But his feet still stood directly upon the hard, dry earth, heavier than high-density steel, cutting off his fantasy of shouting, "This is unavoidable," while preserving his dignity and drifting away with the wind.

But he was no longer steel. He would rather have been a reed.

Peturabo gripped the only thing he could hold tightly, feeling the slender, warm metal pressed into the lines of his palm. Then he suddenly realized it was the grilled fish he had heavily seasoned to challenge Mors.

He immediately turned his head back and saw Mors vanishing into the air through his nameless, powerful ability.

That hateful man was rapidly fading. His offensive black clothes lightened as though erased by detergent, allowing the magnificent yet chaotic painted mural on the house behind him to replace his position in this cross-section of the world.

His messy black-haired head lingered the longest, perhaps deliberately left behind for him. Those thin, upturned lips against pale skin made Peturabo feel hot blood surge up his spine, swelling every pulse and blood vessel.

"Mors—" He rushed forward to seize him, his fingers grasping at nothing in the air.

"Come out! Give my abilities back to me—my intelligence and talent. I have a unique mission. I should not dedicate my life to a city-state confined to a single planet..."

I cannot be this weak.

His heart pounded powerfully within him—a mortal heart. The slightest stimulus, as tiny as dust, made him dizzy. An illusion of cold came from all sides, wrapping around his skin, seeping in through every small wound he had accumulated in recent days, traveling against his blood vessels to coil around the paths of his nerves.

"Mors—" he shouted. He could not face a group of mortals like this!

Crack.

The toe of an iron boot kicked over a discarded corner of an unfinished stone sculpture outside the house. The counterweight at the end of a long-handled blunt spear crushed a wild blade of grass beyond the fence.

More breaths gathered around Mors's domain.

Peturabo's mind suddenly went blank. As panic gathered, his brain briefly regained its former function for a moment. Countless pieces of information thundered through him like a mighty waterfall. First: had these people heard him call Mors? Second: they had definitely heard him calling Mors loudly. Third: he was merely a passing mortal child who knew no one and had wandered into danger.

The great Peturabo? Who was that? It could never be this weak, useless shell of a body.

Absolutely not! Certainly not! Not alike in the slightest!

Then his legs turned his upper body, stiffer than the bell of a mechanical tower left unrepaired for years, emptier than a faceless suit of armor without a soul.

Without anyone teaching him, he held the metal skewer across his chest to display his martial prowess and dangerousness.

At the tip of the skewer, the blackened grilled fish, long abused, trembled constantly. Two bitten-out crescent-shaped gaps were especially conspicuous, while ragged fish skin dangled from the edge and gleamed with vicious reflections.

Peturabo stared at the face of the foremost officer, half-obscured by his helmet, trying hard to meet those eyes in the shadow.

The officer's hand brushed across the grooved gold-and-silver barrel at his waist. From the man's body language, Peturabo read a faint trace of feigned composure.

He hoped he did not appear this way in the other man's eyes, while selectively suggesting to himself that he ignore the grilled fish on his skewer.

"Who are you?" Peturabo broke the silence, stripping the urge to flee from the end of his words. "Helmeted ones, why have you come here?"

The leader stepped forward half a pace and bowed.

"By order of my lord Dameks, we have come seeking the boy of Cadisia. In the body of a child, he slew the Yepidae and killed the serpent of disaster with a wooden club and an iron hammer. Child of the gods who descended from the mountains, my lord invites you to visit Lokos."

"I do not recall any of the things you mentioned," Peturabo said. Following his imagination, he made a decorative flourish with his hand, using the chance to fling away the blackened grilled fish. Then he drove the tip of the skewer into the earth and stood straight as if holding a sword.

"I am not the child of the gods either. There are no gods in this world. Please leave."

His knowledge had indeed been sealed away by some utterly hateful freak, but Peturabo could still be certain that no gods existed in this world.

This information had naturally existed at the deepest level of his thought patterns. He had discovered it, cherished it, and stood ready at all times to prove it.

A small disturbance arose among the soldiers opposite him, like a gust brushing across water and raising layer upon layer of ripples. The plumes on their helmets quivered, the golden leather around their skirt armor swayed back and forth, and their bracers reflected the shifting light. Peturabo clearly saw someone at the rear of the formation shaking his head.

The squad leader stepped forward half a pace once more, removed his white-gold helmet painted with colorful patterns, and faced Peturabo with his true appearance.

"On our journey here, we have already witnessed the great deeds of the child of the gods," he said solemnly. "The countryside speaks of how you beheaded the great serpent. Shepherds saw you climbing Prygia's towering cliffs. As we made our way toward your dwelling, frost and dense forest granted us a path. My lord Dameks sincerely invites you to come. Lokos will fulfill every duty of hospitality."

Peturabo silently examined the squad before him, his fingers rubbing along the metal skewer. The warm metal scraped over the scabbed scar on his fingertip. He remembered what had caused that wound—the wooden handle of Mors's stone hammer. A disastrous splinter had escaped his distracted observation at the time.

A single splinter was enough to pierce a weakness and puncture the shield of words.

Just as the "miracle" Mors had meddled into existence before this squad's eyes made it impossible for him to prove that he was merely a mortal.

And just as the opportunity Mors had left him earlier had allowed him to find a crack through which to break the deadlock.

Peturabo raised his head. His voice became light.

"I am neither the master of this place nor the child of any god. The one you seek is someone else: a craftsman beyond his age, a wise man living apart from the world. The one Dameks should seek is not me, but him—"

He raised the skewer and pointed it at the empty wicker chair behind him. At the same time, he gritted his teeth and mouthed, "Mors, you still owe me one favor!"

Mors's messy black hair appeared atop the empty wicker chair with his back turned to the others, followed by an upraised, languid hand wrapped in black cloth.

"I'm here," he said weakly.