Magna ran so fast he found himself discovering the limits of his own body.
His heart pounded in his chest like it might burst at any moment, his legs started to feel cramping while his lungs began to swell, sending waves of unbearable pain through him.
But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down.
He figured if that woman ever caught him, death was probably the best outcome he could hope for. Seeing the state of that skeleton had made it painfully clear that there were things far worse than dying in this world.
’Where’s Titus when I actually need him?’ He thought desperately, unable to sense a single presence anywhere around him no matter how far he ran.
The ground beneath his feet, the trees he passed, even the angle of the sunlight above, all of it seemed to repeat itself over and over, as if he were running in place inside the same stretch of forest, never actually getting anywhere.
Just as his body was about to give out completely, he finally reached somewhere new.
A little further ahead, he spotted a small hut, made of old, rotting wooden planks that looked like they could collapse at any moment.
Every instinct in him screamed that the place wasn’t safe. But since it was the only direction he could run in, the only way out of whatever endless loop he had been trapped in, he rushed toward it without a second thought, unable to see any other option.
The moment he reached the front of the hut, he stopped just before the door, gasping for breath, trying to steady himself.
But the smell drifting out from the doorway hit him so hard that with every breath, it felt like a corpse was being forced down his throat.
"Ghk... bleugh!" He suddenly threw up, not able to handle it, almost choking on his own vomit.
Even in that state, he still caught the sound of soft footsteps approaching him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the Witch slowly closing in, finally able to see her face now that her hat had tilted up slightly.
If it could even be called a face.
Where her eyes, nose, lips, even her skin should have been, there was nothing but a huge, round, empty hollow, just bone. It was like someone had carved her entire face straight off her skull with a knife.
That sight terrified Magna even more. Even his cold-blooded assassin trait did little to help him stay calm. It only helped force him to push his body forward, hurling himself into the hut despite the overwhelming stench.
With nowhere left to run, all he wanted now was to get inside and slam the door shut behind him, hoping it would be enough to hold that thing back.
Struggling to breathe, coughing violently as vomit burned his throat, he stumbled and forced himself through the door.
The moment he crossed the threshold, he didn’t find himself in some dark, foul-smelling room.
Instead, he was standing in an open clearing, fresh air surrounding him, right in the middle of the forest.
"What?" He looked around frantically, then behind him, desperately trying to make sense of what had just happened.
The Witch was nowhere to be seen. The hut itself seemed to have vanished completely as well.
Even the chirping of the birds had returned, echoing through the forest.
Then his eyes landed on something painfully familiar.
The red Witch Hat, the one he had found earlier, was lying right there on the ground in front of him.
The sight of it made him flinch instantly, scrambling backward across the ground, too afraid to even touch it again.
Then another voice made him flinch a second time.
"Young Lord, what happened to you?" Harlan came rushing toward him, his face full of shock and confusion.
"I..." Magna opened his mouth, only to break into another fit of coughing, his throat still burning.
He looked so wrecked that even the hidden hunters came out from their hiding spots and rushed over to check on him, trying to figure out what had happened.
From their perspective, Magna had simply been standing there one moment, bending down into some bushes and pulling out a red hat. The next moment, he was on the ground, terrified and gasping for breath.
Soon after, Titus came walking out from between the trees too, his brows furrowed deeply.
"Kid, what happened?" He asked, his eyes locked on the hat lying on the ground.
Still shaken and confused, Magna tried to explain. "I just touched it, and everyone suddenly disappeared... then I heard screaming, and I went to check..."
As he spoke, coughing between every few words, Titus’s frown deepened, reaching its peak the moment he heard about the skeleton hanging from the tree, and the faceless Witch dressed in black.
"We’re heading back." Titus said immediately, giving the command as he turned to call for Faye, who should have been only a little ahead, still collecting fruits.
But the moment he saw no one else was around, his whole demeanor shifted instantly.
"Faye!" He shouted toward the trees, rushing forward to check if she had wandered behind one of them.
Seeing his reaction, the other hunters grew visibly anxious as well. They were already rattled by what Magna had described, so they immediately began searching the area in fear that the same thing had happened to her.
But as time passed and their search grew more and more frantic, with Titus’s patience wearing thinner by the second, they were finally forced to accept the truth.
Titus rushed back over to Magna, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him up to eye level.
His blue eyes were wide open, the whites turning bloodshot, red veins spreading across them, as he asked, his voice high with fury.
"Tell me again, from the start. Where exactly was that skeleton, and that hut?"
He had finally accepted the truth. Whatever had happened to Magna had certainly happened to Faye too.
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