The Echoes Of Souls

Chapter 6

Darian explained the training rules again before Everett left.

Everett had already heard them more than once, but he listened anyway. From the way Darian kept repeating the instructions, it was obvious that the commander was more worried than he wanted to admit.

Everett was dressed in a black cloak and carried his two-handed training sword across his back. He also had a small sack containing enough food and water for a day, a change of clothes, and a book Darian had insisted he read during his stay on the mountain.

Once everything was ready, Everett stood at the edge of the forest and looked toward Mage-Mountain.

This was the first time Darian had sent him somewhere without staying nearby.

Darian walked with him until they reached the point where the proper path into the mountain forest began. Then he stopped.

“This is where I leave you,” he said. “From here, you continue alone.”

Everett looked at him.

Darian's expression remained as calm as ever, but the concern in his eyes was harder to hide. He had trained Everett for three months, watched him struggle, improve, fail, and try again. Now he was sending him into a place where even he could not remain at Everett's side.

Everett noticed it and smiled.

“So the teacher-student bond is a real thing after all.”

Darian gave him a look.

“Do not make me regret teaching you.”

Everett laughed softly.

He adjusted the sack on his shoulder and immediately felt its weight.

Until now, Darian had carried the sword whenever they traveled, mostly because Everett had enough to deal with during training. Now there was nobody else to carry anything for him.

He looked down at the sack, then at the sword on his back.

“You could have warned me that becoming stronger came with carrying half a house.”

Darian almost smiled.

“Consider it part of your training.”

“Oh, come on.”

Everett shook his head, but he was still smiling when he stepped forward.

Darian watched him for a moment.

“Be careful, Everett.”

Everett turned.

“I will.”

He gave Darian one last wave before continuing into the forest.

After walking a short distance, Everett stopped and looked back.

Darian was already gone.

Everett stared at the empty path for a moment before shaking his head.

“No time for drama, I guess.”

He turned and continued walking.

For a while, Everett was too deep in his own thoughts to pay much attention to his surroundings. It was only after he had walked more than a kilometer that he finally slowed down and looked around properly.

The forest was beautiful.

Tall trees rose above him, their branches spreading toward the sky. The sound of waterfalls echoed somewhere nearby, while the wind moved gently through the grass and leaves. Unlike the carefully maintained parks he had seen in cities on Earth, nothing here looked arranged for people.

It was simply growing.

Everett found himself smiling.

“Earth could have used places like this.”

The thought stayed with him as he walked.

He remembered the parks in city centers, the small patches of green surrounded by buildings and roads. They were beautiful from a distance, but he had always known what waited beyond them. A short walk away, the land could be filled with factories, waste, broken machinery, and everything people had thrown away after taking what they wanted from nature.

Here, there was none of that.

The forest was wild, untouched, and almost impossible to understand.

Everett wanted it to stay that way.

He kept walking, taking in the strange plants growing along the path and the sounds coming from deeper inside the forest. Every few minutes, however, he turned around.

He was checking for Veyrith.

Darian had told him that once he went deep enough into the forest, he would reach a point where returning to the city would take more than a day on foot. Yet the city was still visible whenever Everett looked back.

He had been walking for a long time.

Far longer than he expected.

Still, Veyrith remained in sight.

Everett frowned.

He looked at the trees around him, then back toward the distant city.

“That is strange.”

Darian had explained how to reach the deeper part of the forest and continue toward Mage-Mountain, but something about the journey did not feel right.

Everett tightened the strap of his sack and continued.

If there was something unusual about the forest, he would figure it out.

He increased his pace, taking longer and faster steps as the trees became denser around him.

Then he suddenly stopped.

His expression changed.

“Wait a second.”

Everett looked back toward the city.

“I was told how to get deep into the forest and up the mountain, but…”

He stared at the path ahead.

“Did anyone actually tell me how I'm supposed to get out?”

The realization hit Everett a moment later.

He stopped walking, stared at the path ahead, and then laughed as he covered his face with one hand.

“That Darian…”

He could already imagine the commander giving him those instructions with the same calm expression, knowing very well that Everett would eventually discover the problem for himself.

Still, there was something else that surprised him.

The deeper he went into the forest, the clearer the path became. Everett had expected the trail to disappear beneath the trees, but it remained easy to follow.

Maybe people traveled this far into the forest.

Woodcutters, perhaps.

He looked around, wondering where they could possibly be going.

After several more hours of walking, however, the city finally disappeared from sight.

Everett was relieved at first. Darian had told him that he needed to go deep into the forest, and now he had finally reached the point where Veyrith could no longer be seen.

Unfortunately, his legs were beginning to complain.

The sword was the worst part.

His clothes and the book were not much of a problem, and even the food and water were manageable, but carrying the two-handed training sword for hours had become uncomfortable. The weapon was not especially heavy compared to what Everett had trained with, but the weight became harder to ignore with every kilometer.

Then his stomach growled.

Everett stopped.

He looked down at himself.

“I suppose that is another warning.”

The sun was already beginning to lose its strength, and Everett had no intention of wandering around until darkness caught him completely exhausted. He decided it would be wiser to find shelter before nightfall rather than waste his remaining energy trying to build one.

A cave would be ideal.

If he could not find one, anything with a solid roof would do. At the very least, he needed somewhere that could protect him if it rained.

Everett started searching.

But he soon ran into another problem.

Navigation in this world made very little sense to him.

On Earth, he had always known roughly how the day moved. The planet rotated, the sun appeared to rise and set, and people could use its position to estimate direction and time.

Things were different here.

Aurelis did not behave like Earth's sun.

The blue-white star moved across the sky, but it never produced the familiar sunrise and sunset Everett remembered. Sometimes its light was stronger, sometimes weaker, and that change was what seemed to determine the difference between day and night.

Everett still did not understand the science behind it.

He had asked questions before, but nobody had given him an answer he considered reliable. Even the movement of Aurelis seemed to follow rules he had yet to understand.

He thought about the King’s Hall.

The strange way Aurelis's light entered the building at a specific time and reflected through the entire hall proved that someone in this world understood its movement well enough to design around it.

Everett, however, did not.

And that left him with a problem.

How was he supposed to find his way through a forest when he could not even rely on the sky?

He stopped walking and looked around.

The trees all looked similar.

The path behind him was still visible, but once he left it to search for shelter, he could easily lose his direction.

Everett sighed.

“Darian really thought this through.”

He lowered his sack and sat on the ground to rest.

Then he remembered something Darian had taught him.

Meditation.

During his training, Darian had taught him how to enter a deeper state of concentration and focus on a single sense at a time. It did not give him supernatural abilities. Everett could not suddenly hear something from kilometers away or see through trees.

It simply allowed him to concentrate so completely that his senses became sharper than usual.

Everett closed his eyes.

He took a slow breath.

Then another.

He let his shoulders relax and pushed every unnecessary thought from his mind.

Close your eyes.

Breathe slowly.

Breathe deeply.

He repeated the instructions silently.

For a moment, everything became dark.

I can't see.

He focused on the sounds around him instead.

All I can do is hear.

He stayed like that for several seconds, listening without trying to understand anything.

Then the forest began to change.

The sound of a bird came first.

Everett opened his mouth slightly.

“A bird.”

He concentrated harder.

“Further ahead... more birds.”

He could hear them clearly now, their calls coming from different directions.

Then another sound reached him.

Much quieter.

He focused on it.

“Footsteps.”

Everett remained still.

The sound was light and irregular.

“A rabbit?”

He listened again.

There was another sound beneath it, softer but more constant.

Grass moving.

Then water.

Everett's eyes opened.

“Water flowing.”

A small smile appeared on his face.

“Aha.”

He picked up his sack and stood.

“There must be a river nearby.”

Everett smiled as he tested what his concentrated hearing had picked up.

For the first time, one of Darian's lessons had immediately solved a problem for him. The satisfaction on his face was impossible to hide.

He picked up his sack and followed the sound of the water.

The river was only about two hundred meters away, close enough that he reached it without much trouble. He was lucky the wind was weak. If the trees had been moving heavily, the noise from the leaves and branches would have made it much harder to separate one sound from another, even for someone with years of training.

Everett followed the river against the current.

He did not have to walk far before he found where it came from.

A waterfall dropped from a height of roughly fifteen meters, sending clear water into a small lake below. Trees surrounded the lake, mixed with tall plants and flowers that grew along the banks.

Everett stopped.

The sight was beautiful.

Small petals drifted through the air and landed gently on the surface of the lake. Their colors reminded him of something he had seen on Earth.

“Sakura blossoms.”

He stood there for a moment, trying to remember more.

Then he realized they were not cherry blossoms at all.

He had read about plants like these before. Their petals came in different colors, and no matter how many fell, the plant would bloom again. Even if every petal disappeared today, new ones would return the following day.

Everett looked at the lake.

“This place must be covered in petals all year.”

He smiled to himself.

The waterfall was loud enough to hear from a distance, but Everett did not mind. Having a clear source of fresh water nearby was one of the biggest advantages he could have asked for.

He studied the area before choosing a place to sleep.

The waterfall was behind him.

That gave him an easy reference point.

If he walked away from it in a straight line, he would always know which direction to return. If he needed water, he only had to turn around and follow the same path.

Everett set his sack down near a group of large rocks and began gathering branches.

He spent the next few hours building a shelter.

It was tiring work, especially after spending most of the day walking, but eventually he managed to create something that looked more like a small hut than a simple shelter. Thick branches formed the frame, while smaller branches and leaves covered the sides and roof.

The large rocks behind it would provide some warmth during the night. They had spent the entire day exposed to Aurelis's heat and had absorbed enough of it to remain warm for a while after dark.

Everett stepped back and looked at his work.

“Not bad.”

It was nothing compared to a real house, but it would protect him from the wind and anything else that might come during the night.

He opened his sack and checked his food.

“Good thing I brought enough for today.”

He looked at what remained.

“Tomorrow, I'll have to find something myself.”

The last light of day was fading.

Darkness was beginning to settle over the forest, and the waterfall was now much more noticeable against the quiet surroundings.

Everett looked toward his shelter.

He had been walking for hours, carrying a sword and building a place to sleep. His body was tired.

But he had not come to Mage-Mountain to rest.

He had come to train.

“It isn't a good idea to train right after eating.”

Everett paused, then smiled.

“But that is what I came here for.”

Everett trained directly in front of his shelter.

He did not want to wander too far and lose his way back. The forest was difficult enough to navigate during the day, and at night, it could easily make a person panic. Everett knew his mind was still fragile after everything that had happened to him, and he did not want fear to make him do something reckless.

He stayed close to the shelter and began exercising.

He did jumping jacks, crunches, and every other exercise he could remember from his training with Darian. He kept going until his muscles were exhausted and there was barely any strength left in his body.

Only then did he stop.

Everett returned to his small shelter to rest.

He decided not to make a fire. The warmth would have been useful, but the light could also attract unwanted attention. He had no idea what creatures lived in the forest, and he had even less idea whether other people traveled this deep into Mage-Mountain.

It was better not to announce his presence.

The waterfall was still loud enough to hear from where he slept, but Everett preferred it that way.

He had deliberately built his shelter some distance from the lake. Sleeping right beside the water might have been convenient, but the constant sound would make it harder to notice footsteps or anything else approaching through the forest.

Being alone in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous place meant he could not afford to lose that awareness.

Everett placed his sack beneath his head and settled down with his back against the large rocks behind the shelter. The stones had absorbed heat from Aurelis throughout the day and were still warm enough to keep him comfortable.

Outside, the forest had changed.

The wind moved through the trees, branches creaked, and strange animal sounds came from somewhere in the darkness.

Everett had expected to feel afraid.

Instead, he was surprised by how calm he remained.

Perhaps he should have been more frightened. He was alone in a forest he knew nothing about, with no Darian nearby and no idea what might be moving beyond the shelter.

But his body was exhausted.

The long walk, the weight of the sword, building the shelter, and the intense training had drained almost everything he had. Even with the sounds of the forest around him, his mind struggled to remain alert.

His eyelids grew heavier.

Everett tried to stay awake for a little longer, but sleep was already taking over.

Within minutes, he fell into a deep sleep.

Aurelis continued its slow movement across the night sky, and pale blue-white rays slipped through the trees and reached the small shelter.

The light touched the branches and leaves above Everett, then spread across the ground.

He did not notice.

He was already too deeply asleep to realize that another faint light had appeared nearby.

But it was not coming from Aurelis.

The light was coming from directly above him.

It rested on the very rock against which Everett had been sleeping.