"Something so precious as life must be restored at an invaluable price, even if done through free healing."
Anvil... had finally made up his mind to depart Kargoth for Ironhold. Even despite his relocation to his new apartment, the few days he had spent there were ironically restless, considering that this eastern part of Kargoth, Kargoth Countrysides, had fewer people and was expected to be much more peaceful and at least free of the daily unsettling reports spreading through the whole of Kargoth city. The disasters these days in Kargoth were getting hotter and suffocating to him that he found it hard to sleep without sparing half his consciousness on vigilance throughout the nights.
So, he had to follow the train travelling south towards Ironhold city. Yes, the southern route, the route where many mysteries were beginning to unfold recently. The route where people would thread and then were mysteriously gone without a trace. It was this route Anvil was threading now, because apart from the gully mountains of unfavourable chilling weather which stretched over kilometers towards Ironhold, it was the only normal route that led to Ironhold. Therefore, he was left without a choice.
The train too, did not depart in cheer. It departed in watchfulness, because it was evident enough that the faces Anvil met were morose and somber, which immediately struck his senses with sonder.
POOOH!
No one laughed or joked about it when the train whistle blew. Not even the children in the train cars pressed their faces to the glass as they usually did on long journeys like this. They had also been aware of the disaster flooding the city now, which struck something deep within their tender and innocent hearts. The mysterious deaths and untreatable sicknesses were becoming massive by the day, that the mortality rate of Kargoth was starting to get significant. In the similar mood, even the train porters spoke in low tones, glancing more than once toward the rear platform before stepping down.
Anvil had chosen his seat near the end of the second carriage for no reason he could explain, or so he told himself. He sat with his beige-coloured hat resting against his knee, lowering his eyes with a plain expression on his face. There was nothing significant about him anyway. Though he had gotten more financially comfortable recently, he was still merely a laborer just traveling southwards. There was nothing remarkable anyway, so no one would bother noticing his existence.
'I just... want to go. Away from here.'
'I want to go home.'
... Yet, his pulse had not slowed since he boarded the train. He thought about it again with a hint of fear. The southern route. Too many had vanished upon it. He had heard the whispers at the square. In the market. In the smoke-yards. He has even seen someone die before him.
'What a nightmare... I hope it is.' He spoke in his mind in his modern language before resuming his ongoing thought.
... Some travellers, especially traders reportedly left at dawn and were not seen again. Because they threaded the route he was currently on. He also remembered the report about a freight wagon discovered on this route too, with its cargo untouched, but the handlers were nowhere to be found.
Recently, one of the train conductors had also resigned without giving cause. Well, it was not that the cause was not obvious. There was nothing strange about his resignation by the way.
The Enforcement Policy had made no general announcement or update still yet, which made everybody panic more and became more silent in their fear. And that silence felt even louder than their panic.
The train had now lurched into motion, beginning its journey to Ironhold. The passengers... no, everyone including the train operators, wished they got there safe. Because everyone now looked forward to getting to Ironhold, beholding it like a holy monument they looked up to.
Anvil lifted his gaze only once, toward the narrow glass of the rear door. He didn't know why he was feeling strange about something he couldn't tell for now.
---
Halfway down the same carriage was an oil merchant with a fragile temper. His name was Halver Dunn. He had sworn to his wife the previous evening that this journey was very necessary.
"Trade businesses do not pause for rumor," he had said while fastening his cloth cuffs. His wife though, had not argued. She had only held his sleeve a moment longer than usual, expressing her longing for his arrival back. Now seated on the leather seat across from strangers, Halver regretted that firmness. He regretted not kissing his wife and hugging her tightly before he left.
Two weeks ago, his younger brother had fallen strangely ill near the principal square. There was not prior complaint before the illness. He simply just coughed up blood one morning. By the fourth day, his dear brother could not rise anymore. And by the seventh day, Halver was standing before his brother's grave, weeping. He missed his brother so much and still felt very sad about his death.
Before he died, Halver had ran Helter skelter for different outstanding physicians if Kargoth. None of them could offer any explanation.
"Air corruption, perhaps," one of them had muttered shamefully.
"Air corruption? Nonsense. It would appear none among you possesses the faintest understanding of your own office!" Halver had said in sad anger on that day.
These memories made Halver fold his gloves tighter in his lap, feeling sentimental about his dear brother.
Across from him, a young seamstress, Edrine Vale by name, was watching him with faint irritation.
"You look unwell, sir," she said remarkably.
"I am not unwell," Halver replied sharply. Shrugging off his emotions, he continued, "I am only seeing it now."
"Seeing what?"
"The manner in which fortune favours the unjust… and how those of worth depart this world before their due time…"
She arched a brow. "I suppose the world in which we live is, by its nature, unfair."
Edrine leaned back. "Especially here in Kargoth. It is little wonder, then, that nearly all the thousands aboard this train are bound for Ironhold, or relocating entirely, before the city finds its equilibrium once more."
A silence followed.
The train steel wheels clattered beneath them with steadiness, but uncomfortably loud, of course.
From the rear of the carriage, Anvil shifted slightly. Halver noticed the shift. He hadn't noticed anyone sitting in that position initially until Anvil shifted.
---
Anvil tough, won't stop feeling a pulling sense of pressure, as though something unseen or wrong had suddenly occupied the same air he was breathing. His instincts were that sharp enough.
But instead, he told himself it was the memory. The memory of the fortuneteller's inn, who said words that had troubled him.
... and the memory of the beggar whose body he wore.
He pressed his thumb against his palm to steady his mind.
He had only spent nearly three weeks in this world, and already, sickness and death was spreading like it was a casual distribution. The answers to these? Hell no. Only whispers from people, and therefore no answers. He had chosen to depart because staying back felt like waiting for a blade to fall on his neck.
Yet as the train advanced in its steady but uncomfortable noise, he began to suspect that that blade... might have noticed him.
'Ahh... that's unsettling, Anvil.'
---
Corvin Hale, a seventeen year old, sat near the center aisle. He was an apprentice to a machinist in Blackforge. His earnest appearance was thin. Perhaps too thin, based on people's perspective. He clutched a wrapped parcel in his lap. In the wrapped parcel, there were tools gifted to him by his uncle who later left for Ironhold before the whole disaster started. The uncle had written only two lines in his last letter to Corvin. He had noted it early, and perhaps that was why he left early. He might have known something, maybe.
**Work continues. Come if you must, but linger not in Kargoth. Something is amiss within its streets.**
Up till now, Corvin had not shown that letter to his mother. She had already wept more than enough when the smoke-works industries Corvin worked at, began sending men home in coffins.
A week ago, Corvin had walked past the principal square and seen three black wagons drawn up at once. Three. And in daylight. There were no bells or announcement. Just cloth-covered human figures lifted with haste as few people surrounded.
He leaned slightly toward Edrine, who was sitting beside him, but on the inner part near the window.
"Miss," he whispered, "have you heard the latest?"
"I have heard far too much," she replied dryly.
"They say the eastern watch found a body along the southern line last night. My uncle wrote to me of it."
"Your uncle writes from where?" Halver asked.
"Blackforge."
Halver exhaled through his nose. "Then he writes from fear, not fact."
Edrine folded her arms.
"And yet fear has proven truer that comfort, more often than not."
Halver did not answer.
His gaze drifted again unwillingly, toward the rear. Where Anvil was seated.
Anvil had not moved. He was just there, sitting. He wasn't expected to start up a train version type of circus anyway.
---
A train vendor passed through the aisle of Anvil's carriage with a tin kettle.
"Hot broth. Two shillings." No one though, not even the children, felt so cheerful about it. Though the weather was almost always cold in Kargoth — save for the heavy billowing smokes that usually keep the entire centre of Kargoth seating with chemical heat, the one Anvil felt in the market on his first day there — and people were supposed to feel elated about the arrival of hot drinks, no one responded as usual. They simply bought blankly and reclined back to their seats. And the whispers among them too, it won't stop. Anvil heard fragments of them.
"…the Enforcement Policy has spread thin…"
"…men questioned in the smoke-yards…"
"…no cure…"
"…southern freight car found empty…"
He did not join the talk. Because he had heard all from the market.
But that strange feeling, he couldn't tug it off him.
---
Edrine's mind wandered backward to her recent past. It was four nights past.
Her foreman, Mr. Pell, had leaned against the sorting table, his appearance pale.
"You should go home," she had told him.
"Home to what?" he had replied. But unfortunately the next morning, he had kicked the bucket. By the end of the week, his wife stood alone at the gate of the grave-yard, holding flowers and weeping.
No priest had given explanation.
Only the word "Order" murmured once during the burial. Edrine hated that word. She was not really a religious person, just like most people in Kargoth.
The word sounded too calm for so much grief. But then, a sudden strange sense jolted her out of her thought. She felt something prick at her senses.
... A shift in the atmosphere, as if the air at the rear end of the carriage had thickened.
Feeling very uneasy, she glanced back instinctively.
The quiet person — Anvil — was seated there, now raising his head slightly. He was then suddenly focusing his wide open vision somewhere beyond the passengers.
Edrine immediately got more curious.
'Huh? Why does he look so... unsettled?'
But when she saw it, it was already too late.
---
Corvin heard it first.
It was a faint disturbance in the air, like a damp cloth drawn sharply through a narrow space.
He frowned, suddenly feeling confused and unless.
"Did you—" Then the sentence dies, because...
... At the rear of the carriage, a narrow flicker of green suddenly cut through the air in an instant. The impact did not explode or cracked things around, but it simply appeared and went straight...
... into Anvil's head.
Anvil's head sudenly jerked backwards. A dark shaft protruded from his forehead, deep into his skull. It looked so green, faint and unnatural.
For half a breath, the whole world paused. The innocent train continued though.
Then Edrine rose so quickly that her seat jerked awkwardly.
"Vaelis preserve us!"
Halver stood up too, knocking his knee against the bench.
"What devilry...?"
The seventeen year old Corvin's parcel slipped from his hands. The immediate passengers in the carriage shouted from further down. It started from a frightened high-pitched wail.
"Ahhhhh!"
"What happened?"
"Who fired?"
"There was no shot!"
Someone brave enough to ignore the pool of blood rushed toward Anvil. Blood had wet his whole dress, down to his beige-coloured trousers. His beige-coloured hat was somewhere beside, drenched in his blood. His eyes remained open, but unfocused.
A man reached to grasp the mysterious shaft, which looked like an arrow.
"Do not touch it!" Halver barked with warning, though his voice trembled.
And then... Before any hand could close around it, the arrow faded and vanished away like smoke.
A woman screamed. "It's gone!"
Someone else shouted with crude fright, "Is this what has haunted us?"
The conductor who was nearby and heard a minute too late, forced his way forward to the ghastly scene.
"Make space! Who saw it?"
"No one!" Edrine cried. "It was... simply there!"
Corvin suddenly turned toward the rear door instinctuvely. And for one heartbeat, he saw a figure standing on the platform that connected the train cars. The mysterious figure was donned in dark green cloak, watching them like he was observing his just concluded task.
Corvin though, caught something else. Around the figure's neck, there was a necklace. A strange emblem was etched on it. It suddenly struck Corvin with a feeling like cold iron.
And just as unnatural as he had appeared, the figure was no longer there. And the train had not slowed down any second.
---
Anvil heard none of it. The sound around him suddenly dulled. People's voices stretched thin that he could hardly make up their words together. Everything felt as though he had sunk beneath a deep water. Despite the sudden pain, it was not the last thing he registered before dying though.
He saw something else. The same thing Corvin saw too. That necklace. Upon seeing it, his instincts were already screaming before he could make meaning of what that was.
But he couldn't anymore, because he had died.
---
But then, he saw himself in darkness.
It was a vast, hollow space with no hint of light. He senses himself standing, but he could not feel his body, or even legs.
'Am I dead? Is this hell? Or the real world?' He thought there for a second, hoping he had returned back home.
Amidst the dead silence and suffusing darkness, one sound remained though.
His own heart beat..
"Where am I?" he asked himself again, in the modern language of his former life.
His senses suddenly told him he was speaking to something... something he couldn't decipher its position or shape because of the blinding darkness. But then again, he felt he had said something wrong. No one could decipher the modern language he used to know. They felt so crude here and out of place.
Somewhere from the distance, a unclear and vague shape emerged. Anvil could feel it watching him intently, so he swallowed.
He corrected himself, now that he realized. But instead of speaking in the usual tone of this world, his mouth opened to speak a much more archaic language which felt too strange to his ears, even.
"Pray tell. Where stand I?"
The vague figure did not move, but Anvil could feel its presence press upon him. The figure then answered in the strange archaic language.
"In the world thou now inhabitest," the figure spoke, its voice layered and many, "death shall not release thee."
Cold crept along Anvil's spine.
"What mean you?" He asked.
"Thou art bound."
"To what?"
"To purpose thou seeth not." The word struck him harder than the arrow.
His mind then suddenly flashed back to the priest in the market. He spoke about something unclear...
"Order." Yes, order. He could remember.
But then, the vague figure shifted its presence.
"Think not of that man. He serves but one church among many upon Vintin."
"Vintin?"
"The great land wherein mankind dwells. Kargoth is but a northern city within the Iron Crown Territories."
"If I cannot die," Anvil said slowly, "why appear unto me now?"
The figure remained silent. Before taking again.
"In this world, thou canst not escape through death. Fulfilment alone grants release."
Then suddenly again...
FWOOSH!
His memory suddenly surged!
... Hs room! His desk!
... and the moment he had suddenly collapsed in his room without warning! Why was he suddenly remem—
"Who art thou?" he demanded as a sudden unsettling realization hit him.
"Are you... Anv—"
The voice interrupted him however, overlapping itself, many tones speaking as one.
"—Farewell, Anvil. May this cycle prove the last."
With that said, the whold dark world suddenly twisted and the space around folded like smoke.
His heartbeat suddenly began to grow louder...
Too loud, even...
Suddenly, he began to breathe in air. The still dismayed and frightened noises flooded his ears instantly, before pain finally settled it. Intense pain, precisely. It was not easy being in the brink of death.
Struggling to endure, he sat up upon the wooden carriage floor soaked in his blood.
The voices in the train car suddenly erupted into shouts again. Even the men around couldn't help it. Some even had their hands trembling.
Still dumbfounded, Anvil looked down and saw the wound. His flesh was pulling inward. His skull bone was settling with a dull inner shift. And all happened with a sharp intense pain!
"Arrrghh!" He suddenly shouted. Even healing was not merciful. Something so precious as life must be restored at an invaluable price, even if done through free healing. He couldn't stop gasping in pain.
Edrine, with her eyes wide open watching the whole scene, staggered back.
"He moves!"
Halver whispered hoarsely in surprise, "This is not natural…" Corvin too who was behind him, could not speak.
Anvil pressed his shaking fingers to his temple. The wound had gone. Everything was gone... except the echo of the voice.
"Cycle" "Bound." "Purpose."
Only the echo of the voice.
As he rose, the people in the carriage fell into a strange, terrified quiet. Even those up to three carriages away were there. No one dared touch him, or dared whisper what they had seen. Everyone was just silent, watching him in wonder.
The train though, continued its steady yet noisy journey.