16. The Light in a Troubled Life
“Mom…? Dad…?”
The oldest memory in Hepai’s mind was the day her village disappeared beneath black smoke.
Endless clouds of dark smoke rose into the sky, while a wall of bright red flames stretched across the horizon. Her village was slowly turning into black ash.
Hepai had been playing with her friends outside the village when she got lost.
Ironically, getting lost had saved her life.
Everyone else in the village died that day.
“Everyone…! Where did everyone go?! Sob…! Waaah! Mom!!”
Her mother, who always came to wake her up when she slept too late.
Her father, who always gently protected her.
Her friends, who had always played with her and built friendships with her.
They were all gone.
Hepai wandered through the burned village with trembling eyes, crying and calling out their names.
Eventually, she cried until she had no tears left.
There was nothing she could do.
Everything precious to her had disappeared.
Hepai had become an empty person, both physically and emotionally.
“What in the world… happened here?”
Adults from another village eventually arrived after seeing the smoke rising toward the sky.
They found Hepai sitting alone in the middle of the completely burned village.
She wasn’t even crying.
The sight of a child standing completely unharmed in the center of a village where everything else had burned gave the adults plenty of room for their imaginations.
But they couldn’t simply abandon a child.
So, despite their uneasy feelings, the adults brought Hepai back to their village.
It was an act of kindness born from hypocrisy and fear.
Naturally, it didn’t end well.
“Get out! Leave the village right now!”
“Hey! I told you not to go near her!”
“Tsk… Why did they bring something like that here…?”
“Didn’t the whole village burn down because of her?”
“Why is she the only one who survived? It’s creepy.”
People began calling her a demon’s child.
A child who brought disasters.
Those misunderstandings soon turned into contempt, fear, and eventually anger.
At that time, Hepai prayed that her life would end as quickly as possible.
She didn’t want to live in a world where she could no longer smile, where she could no longer be happy, and where she had nothing precious left.
But apparently, there was still a lower place for her to fall.
Not long afterward, the village chief sold Hepai to an unknown organization.
Young Hepai had no idea what the organization did.
She didn’t know why she was there.
She didn’t even understand what she was supposed to do.
“Keep your hands moving. You need to prove that you’re useful.”
The mysterious organization gathered abandoned children together and forced them to work.
Children who couldn’t prove their usefulness would mysteriously disappear.
Others had parts of their bodies cut off and were forced to beg on the streets.
So Hepai worked desperately.
It was there that she learned most of the skills she still used today.
By then, Hepai had already fallen into despair and resignation.
She didn’t even have the will to rebel anymore.
She couldn’t even bring herself to question anything.
The children around her grew thinner every day.
They were barely given food.
They weren’t allowed to rest even while sleeping.
They weren’t allowed to stop even while working.
Little by little, the empty Hepai was breaking.
Then—
“This is garbage! How could you do this to children?!”
Hope appeared.
A nameless knight attacked the mysterious organization.
The knight fought them and rescued Hepai, who was close to death.
The young Hepai couldn’t understand most of what the knight said.
The only thing she understood was that the bad people had intended to take her soul away.
But that wasn’t what mattered to her.
What mattered was that, somehow, she had survived again.
And this time, she had survived in a different way.
Hepai slowly crawled out of that deep darkness.
She engraved the knight’s confident and dependable appearance into her heart.
And she found hope again.
She was eventually placed in a church orphanage.
At first, things were difficult.
But little by little, she began opening her heart.
She slowly filled the empty space inside her.
She was always afraid.
If she looked away, would her friends die?
If she went too far away, would the church burn down?
Even while suffering from nightmares for years, Hepai slowly overcame her fear.
Eventually, she found her smile again.
She began dreaming about the future.
She forgot how to give up.
She learned perseverance.
And instead of looking toward despair, she began looking toward hope.
She dreamed of becoming a guide.
She met a wonderful teacher.
And eventually, when she was finally able to leave her past behind—
She fell into despair once again.
It was an ordinary path.
Ordinary weather.
An ordinary day.
She was with a reliable senior guide and a group of adventurers who had crossed the forest many times.
It should have been an ordinary day.
Then the Uma Tribe attacked.
Because she was still a beginner guide, the group protected her.
And because of that, she was the only one who survived.
“No… No! Not again…! I don’t want this!”
The happiness she had finally regained.
The hope she had started looking toward again.
The precious people she had gained.
The home she wanted to return to.
Everything disappeared once again.
Why did God keep giving her such terrible trials?
She had worked so hard to become stronger.
But hope disappeared like a candle in the wind.
And despair was like a swamp that pulled her deeper the more she struggled.
“Run, you idiot!!!”
The dying cry of her senior guide finally brought Hepai back to her senses.
She began running through the forest without thinking.
She tripped over her feet.
She crashed into trees.
Her body became covered in wounds.
And as she ran, the emotions and memories she had buried in the past came rushing back.
The memories made her weaker.
She couldn’t find the strength to face what was ahead.
She didn’t want to find that strength.
She wanted to give up on everything.
She wanted to let everything go and simply die.
There was no adult here who would pick her up, even out of hypocrisy.
There was no dependable knight armed with an unshakable sense of justice.
There wasn’t even the slightest glimpse of hope.
And during that process—
Hepai awakened a new kind of Heart Power.
Resignation.
It was different from the Heart Power possessed by Ingwang.
Without even realizing it, Hepai was quickly being consumed by that power.
With her mind barely functioning, she ran blindly through the forest.
Then she found something that shouldn’t have existed in the Maze Forest.
A crude mud house that looked as though a human had built it.
She rushed inside.
And there—
She met Ingwang.
“P-Please save me!”
“AAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
Thankfully, Hepai hadn’t completely fallen into resignation yet, so she instinctively cried out.
But Ingwang was screaming like a madman.
