The Stake

"Splash..."

The waves gently caressed the beach. What should have been a warm, tender scene looked, beneath the rolling dark clouds, like a mother tearfully seeing off her son as he went to die on the battlefield. Two rows of stumbling footprints stretched along the dry sand untouched by the sea toward the distant fishing harbor. The young mute girl lived as she always had, repeating her monotonous task of cleaning fishing nets.

She had no idea that the town she lived in had already undergone earth-shaking changes. Desperate wails and flames soaring into the sky painted a hellish scroll behind her, while the scorching heat of the fire and the bloody stench of slaughter were blocked by the person walking behind her. Tom followed behind her with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze on the girl's back filled with struggle and curiosity.

"Kenttanka. I imagine even you don't know you have that name."

He spoke to himself. After confirming that Herpo the Foul did not possess the ability to eavesdrop on him, he poured out his pent-up thoughts to the mute girl ahead, as though speaking into a tree hollow. Kenttanka was no different from a tree hollow. At least from a tree hollow in Albania, Rowena Ravenclaw's ghost would emerge and talk with him, while Kenttanka was like a real tree hollow, silently stuck in the trunk. His words swept past her with the wind, then quickly slipped away beside her.

"I touched the magic on you."

Tom raised his right hand, opening and closing it. The stabbing pain from not long ago still lingered at his fingertips. The agony seemed to have remained on his soul, passing through his blood vessels and bones like lightning. After continuously feeling the pain, he had asked Herpo the