Chapter 9: Erik
I tried to hide my shock, but the question slipped out of me:
"The outcasts? What do you mean?"
My voice echoed faintly in the stillness, almost swallowed by the fire's crackle.
The tattooed man turned his piercing eyes toward me. There was weight in his silence, as though he were dredging up memories better left buried. The flames painted his features in shadows, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low—measured, but heavy with anger long restrained.
"You ask how we came here? You ask as if you don't understand where you truly are."
I had no answer. My throat was tight. So he continued, each word harder, sharper:
"Every man here was once something else. A name, a story, a life. But the forest doesn't care about any of that. It strips you bare. Now, we are nothing but fragments of what we once were… men who lost everything, including ourselves."
I lowered my gaze, trying to read his expression, but he was stone—only the twitch of his fingers betrayed the tension inside him.
"But why?" I pressed, voice hushed. My eyes darted to the others. "Were you criminals? Is this… punishment?"
He smiled bitterly, though there was no humor in his eyes.
"Punishment? Hah… if it were only that, life would be far kinder. No. We are here not because we sinned, but because we stood on the wrong side of the story."
"The wrong side?" I repeated, unsure I'd understood.
"In this world, right and wrong are decided by power. If you are weak, you are guilty. If you are strong, you are righteous. We didn't fail because we were evil—we failed because we weren't strong enough to change our fate."
His words hit me deeper than I expected. Something in them felt disturbingly familiar, like an old truth I had buried within myself.
The silence that followed was heavier than any noise.
"And what does that mean for me?" I finally asked.
He arched a brow, almost surprised, before giving a small, grim smile.
"It means you have two choices. Learn the laws of this place… or cling to your beliefs and die within days."
A chill crawled down my spine. I forced myself to meet his eyes. "And you? Are you strong enough?"
He didn't flinch, didn't mock me, only replied:
"Strength isn't just muscle or skill. Strength is knowing when to fight, when to run, when to speak, and when to stay silent. I've seen men far stronger than me buried in this soil… or worse—changed into something no longer human."
"Changed…?" I whispered.
His gaze dropped, reluctant, as though speaking of it was a sin. At last he said:
"The forest changes you. It whispers in the night, crawls into your thoughts, reshapes who you are. Some resist. Others… surrender. And they become something else entirely."
My throat tightened. I forced another question:
"And how do you know you haven't changed already?"
He laughed then. A short, broken sound, more despair than mirth.
"Who says I haven't?"
The silence that followed pressed down on me like a stone.
Finally, he added, voice low and grim:
"We all change here. The only difference is who realizes it… and who refuses to admit it until it's too late."
His words left me cold. I wanted to ask more, to demand answers, but before I could, he cut the air with another truth:
"You don't survive here. You just delay the end for as long as you can."
The fire popped, sending sparks into the night. His face was unreadable now, staring into the darkness beyond us as if seeing ghosts. Then, after a pause, he turned to me again.
"Tell me… how did you get here? What brought you to this cursed land?"
My heart stuttered. The truth wasn't safe. Not here. Not yet.
So I wove another lie—this time, closer to the kind of truth a man like him might believe.
"I wasn't a sailor," I admitted. "And my ship never sank. That was a lie—I was… overwhelmed when I first saw people again. But if you'll listen, I'll tell you my real story."
He gave a dry chuckle. "Not that it matters. There is no sea in this land. The nearest ocean lies months away on horseback—if you can even leave this forest alive."
My stomach lurched. I had stood on a beach not four days ago. How could he say there was no sea? Something was terribly wrong with this world.
But I pressed on with my story.
"I was born to a tribe of mountain barbarians. Harsh lives, but free. Then one day… he came."
I paused, let the silence build, then lowered my voice.
"A stranger. He said I was different. Took me away—by force, by trickery, I don't remember. I was just a child, afraid. He raised me, taught me letters, numbers, how to watch, how to listen. I thought he was a father. I was grateful. Until the day he sold me as a slave."
The firelight flickered in my eyes as I continued, bitterness dripping from every word.
"Not just a slave… a spy. He had trained me for years without my knowing. I was his eyes, his ears. And when I became inconvenient… he betrayed me himself."
I clenched my jaw, letting silence hang heavy before adding:
"I fled, thought another kingdom would take me in. But politics are filthier than blood. They abandoned me too—handed me over rather than risk their own skins."
I let my voice fade, raw and weary, as though I had burned every word out of myself.
The fire crackled. No one spoke.
Then came the laugh. The tattooed man's laugh—broken, bitter, echoing with years of betrayal.
"So… we are all the same. Deceived, discarded, branded as traitors by those we once called family."
He studied me, then extended his hand. His eyes gleamed, not with joy, but with the weary relief of finding someone else damned like him.
"Welcome to the land of the forsaken… Erik."
The name struck my chest like cold iron.
I wasn't Yusuf anymore. I wasn't who I had been.
Now, I was Erik—a name forged in lies, stamped in exile, and sealed by survival.
For now, that was enough.