Who is Little Red Riding Hood?

Kas stared at Nosa, whose eyes were curved like crescent moons, for a long time before taking the umbilical cord and wrapping it around her slender neck, his arms tightening bit by bit...

A sense of suffocation overwhelmed her throat, and a slick sensation seeped from her neck into her soul. Nosa felt a warmth and peace she had never known since birth, as if she had returned to the state before she was born, curled up in her mother's amniotic fluid—a void of nothingness.

The outlines before her eyes gradually blurred. As death descended, that shadow-like figure drew closer, pulling her into an embrace until it finally transformed into a streak of light branded onto her melting retinas.

In her final moments, she whispered her last words:

"Mama..."

Nosa lost all signs of life, and Kas squeezed his eyes shut.

He could see that the kindness hidden in Nosa's heart had been awakened by her mother. For a girl who had been mocked by fate before she was even born, Nosa had already shown enough restraint.

The witch had manipulated her life, her growth, and everything she was. She should have become a monster, yet she followed her innate nature toward goodness, preventing this disaster from spreading beyond the forest...

A beast-speaker capable of influencing the Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer, filled with hatred for humanity—this would have been a massive catastrophe for the Sorrow Mountains.

He loosened his grip and held the girl whose body was losing its warmth to the wind. Looking at her upturned lips and the shriveled umbilical cord cinched into her neck, he felt an inexplicable sorrow.

"This umbilical cord was the only place in her life where she felt warmth..."

Seneya looked slightly sad, though clearly not as heartbroken as Kas, who had killed Nosa with his own hands. She tilted her head in confusion, watching the man mutter to himself.

"Aowu?"

"It's nothing. Matters have come to an end, and we must set off again."

Kas wiped away a tear that wasn't really there. He had to admit he was a sentimental man, but such sentimentality seemed far too redundant in the Sorrow Mountains.

He placed Nosa back in the house, laying her on the makeshift board of oak bed and dining table, placing her alongside Angeli and her younger brother.

After briefly treating the arrow wound on his shoulder with a red-hot blade and clean water, he watched Nosa, whose pale hands rested within her mother's skeletal ones:

"If not for all this, you surely would have been a lovely girl..."

Lifting the wild boar skin wrapped around the smoked jerky, Kas took one last look at Little Red Riding Hood lying peacefully on the crude coffin lid, then kicked over the stove.

Raging flames swallowed the wooden house. Amidst the gale formed by the pressure differential, he saw a woman in the firelight, and in his trance, he could hear a soft "thank you."

Whether she was Angeli, the Little Red Riding Hood who had been swallowed whole by hyenas, or some other girl who had died a tragic death, Kas did not know.

He nodded slightly toward the face rising in the flames and whispered to himself: "This is what I had to do..."

Aside from the map, he took only the necessary Woodcutter's Axe, letting this girl who clung to the memory of a fake family depart quietly with her warmth.

"Kas, hurry back and search! There must be clues about that Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer in the house!"

The Ancestor was still nagging incessantly; he was far more concerned with the clan totem than with the death of Little Red Riding Hood.

The successive communications with "spirits" had left Kas somewhat exhausted. He couldn't be bothered to respond to the nagging Ancestor, instead holding a torch and walking in the direction marked on the map.

The map meticulously detailed every region of the Sorrow Mountains. Referencing the terrain of Ferode Canyon, the precision of this map was terrifyingly high, even accurately marking the hidden Sacred Forest of Her Tribe.

This raised many questions in Kas's mind: could the witch who toyed with Nosa's fate be the same one who cursed Seneya?

Was the Shaman's prophecy a fleeting glimpse of the future, or a deliberate curse orchestrated in collusion with the witch...

Leaving the map for Nosa was perhaps an attempt to use her talent as a beast-speaker to manipulate beasts into attacking human strongholds in the Sorrow Mountains.

He glanced back at the wooden house, its beams already collapsed in the inferno, feeling that this sacred ritual of finding a wife for the Shaman had become even more convoluted.

Seneya walked silently one step to his side, maintaining her usual mute expression. She had many things she wanted to say, but Nosa, the only one who could understand her, was already dead.

"Miss Seneya, are you hungry?"

Kas smiled, setting aside the chaotic thoughts in his mind for the moment, and untied the boar-skin bag from his shoulder, pulling out a handful of smoked jerky.

The werewolf's throat bobbed several times as she stepped forward, took a piece of meat, placed it in her mouth, and chewed it thoroughly before swallowing.

Kas raised his hand, waiting for Seneya to take more, only to find her drooling and slowing her pace, her eyes full of struggle.

"What's wrong? Is it not good?"

"Aowu~" she whimpered softly, desperately resisting the smoked jerky Kas held to her lips. Her expression was like a husky being fed by its grandmother with a pig trough.

Kas found Seneya's resistance completely incomprehensible. Could it be that she had developed a meat allergy because of tonight's events and would only be able to eat vegetables from now on?

What was the difference between a vegetarian wolf and a dog that ate dung?

"Be good. We'll catch more after we finish this. I'll try a different way of preparing it next time; you'll definitely like it."

But no matter how Kas coaxed her, Seneya gritted her teeth and refused to eat.

He could only sigh that he was tired, tore open a corner of the boar-skin bag, and let the werewolf lady hold it herself.

Along the way, he watched as Seneya's nose twitched, her restless little hands hooked the edge of the boar-skin bag, and the drool hanging from her wrinkled lips turned into a waterfall down her chest.

"Eat it. Actually, I don't mind the fact that you can eat so much..."

With lightning speed, Seneya pressed her head against Kas's forehead, her pupils contracting violently several times, as if to say:

Really? Can I really eat that much?

As Kas nodded, Seneya first grabbed a handful of jerky and handed it to him, then crouched down by a tree. Her two arms moved in a blur in the darkness, and in less than ten minutes, she had devoured the entire bag of jerky.

Kas's brow twitched incessantly at his side. This is too much... I really can't afford to keep a glutton.

The two of them walked slowly into the distance as a silent drizzle began to fall from the sky, and the hazy, misty dust submerged the entire forest.

[Plan: Who is Little Red Riding Hood]

[Status: Complete]

[Inspiration: He loved her deeply, yet had never seen her. Even though she was etched into the shaman's prophecy, imprinted upon the swaddling clothes of the doomed, and stuck in the throat of a hyena, he could not recognize her, for the version of her he saw was merely a retelling of the prophecy.

She did not love her, not as a mother loves a child; she never realized that meticulous care was called love. She only remembered that the wrinkled little monster born from her belly with an umbilical cord attached was her child.

She did not know what love was. She wore tattered robes woven from flax fibers, clutched a hook-pole in her hand, and had damp lichen and moss covering her head. The scent of Lilac and Pansy seeped from her bone sutures, and her fleshless eye sockets were filled with both hatred and longing for her kin.

Who is Little Red Riding Hood? Every child cursed by the prophecy is Little Red Riding Hood.]

The clear sky after the rain shed its nocturnal hue, and dark red clouds, signaling the imminent sunrise, rolled by. The glow reflected in the clouds was more brilliant than ever before.

Angeli the Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer raised her head, the first ray of sunlight on the horizon illuminating her massive, crown-like antlers.

The sunlight was blinding, its dazzling colors seemingly seizing her eyes, and Angeli let out a miserable wail as she faced the ruined wooden cabin.

Nosa was dead...

But Angeli would not let her die. Alone, drifting on that River of Darkness flowing toward the end of the world, she, like another Angeli, regarded Nosa as her kin.

Amidst the sunlight, she stepped into the burnt-out ruins of the cabin and lowered her crown-like antlers. Golden light swirled within the crown, and the earth cheered.

There was no grand display of magic, not even a breeze visited this place. The Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer kicked up ash and dust, and a fair hand reached out from the ruins.

Nosa, her body bare, seemed to have been reborn. She sat cross-legged in the mud and ash soaked by the rain, the sorrow in her eyes completely washed away.

Her amber eyes stared directly at the pale sun of dawn, her hand reaching toward that hollow orb, wanting to grasp the fleeting morning glow.

This time, she no longer touched that heart wrapped in cursed fate, that soul burning and scorching in the fires of vengeance.

The ray of light she held in her hand served as a testament to the past, a rupture between curse and destiny.

Standing on the sun-drenched earth, she reached out her hand toward the rising fireball.

"Mother..."