Life didn't get easier, even in another world.

The man who was tied down had long white hair, white pupils, white eyelashes, white eyebrows, and a pale face. His unkempt beard and disheveled hair were covering almost half of his face, making it hard to see his eyes or his mouth.

The man’s head was limply hanging down as if he was asleep, and he didn’t show any signs of movement. Through the gaps created by his limping posture on in the thin prisoner’s uniform he was wearing, one could see small and large wounds all over his body, of which some hadn’t fully healed yet.

Outside the large room, beside a window that showed the inside of the room with the white-haired prisoner, a man in a special military uniform was looking inside with knitted brows and a deep gaze.

Beside him were a woman and another man, both having similar faces to the first man.

“So, they are all dead.”

The man with blue eyes, who was standing beside the door of the room while leaning on the wall, said with a hint of inquiry in his voice. The other man nodded his head slightly.

“Yes.” He paused for a few seconds as if to find the proper words to use before opening his mouth again, “We tried to capture them alive, but they resisted too much. We had no way but to kill them. I attempted to keep one of them alive, but he tried to flee so we had to get rid of him... As for the last one... She faced that man...” He once again paused, but this time not to collect his words but to take a deep breath. “You know what will happen to the ones who fall into his hands.”

The other two people in the room fell silent again after hearing his words, only for the woman to mumble something under her breath after a few minutes.

.....

“Philomns is done for...”

It was a low mumble that echoed inside the large and empty hall like a declaration of victory, though too weak to be called a declaration and too numb to be called the voice of a victor. None of the men in the hall said anything, but they too were thinking about the same thing.

Philomns was done for.

That was what a wish that had come true. An event that all of them yearned to see, an ending they all wanted to achieve.

But strangely, none of them had the feeling of accomplishment they were looking forward to. They didn’t properly know what kind of emotion they had to express. Everyone thought they would be happy and excited after they took care of Philomns. They thought they’d be filled with joy and brimming with delight after everything was done.

But now, the only thing they were left with was exhaustion.

“But it’s not over completely.”

No one objected to the commander’s words. It was not over yet. The Philomns’ bases had collapsed, its members were captured, and its ranks were killed, but Philomns were not over.

Their secrets were not fully revealed. Their goal was not still clear. Their motivation was not yet known.

And their leader was not dead yet.

“He is not going to confess.”

This one sentence from team leader Dains also had no objections to it. The leader of Philomns, the man they barely saved from their beast-like agent, someone whose life was forcefully saved after he was almost smashed to an unrecognizable piece of meat by hundreds and hundreds of stones and stabs, didn’t reveal any information no matter what method they used.

It had already been 10 months, but they still know nothing. They had taken down the organization that haunted their land, ended a war, and created peace, but the anxiousness was not gone yet.

It was because they were still worried, worried about the secrets they didn’t know, and worried about the things that might happen in the future because of those that are unknown.

“Maybe he can make him talk...”

After a long while of silence, finally, the sole woman in the hall, the deputy commander of the military organization, said in a half-hesitant half-expecting tone. She raised her head to look at her commander and the team leader of the said ‘he’ to get her answer.

“He has that weird stone... and there is that crown... I’ve seen that bastard reacting to those two objects... so... I think that might have an effect... The thing I’m worried about is that he might kill the man before getting anything out of his mouth.”

“We’ll prevent that from happening!”

The commander didn’t say anything for a few seconds and instead, exchanged some silent glances with the team leader on the other side. After another few seconds, he sighed and gave a nod.

“That’s the only thing I can think about at the moment... But we have to make some preparations before that...” The commander raised his hand and pointed at the team leader, “Fidel, You talk to him after a few days have passed.”

Team leader Dains frowned his brows slightly, showing a rare expression of unwillingness. But before he could object, the commander turned his back on him and started to walk to the exit.

“I’ll call you when the preparations are done.

. . . .

In a medium-sized house inside the vast city of Celinden, the capital of Hainston country, a little boy was sitting at a table behind a desk and was busy drawing something. He was swinging his feet back and fro and kept switching between different colors of pencils, seemingly looking excited.

However, his eyes didn’t look that excited at all. The pair of gray eyes looked rather dull than excited, nothing like how a kid his age had to look. His soft hair, which was fluttering slightly in the breeze that was coming from the open window, looked even more unusual for a kid, with almost half of his hair being gray. The gray strands were scattered randomly on his head and were blended in the dark brown strands, making his hair look actually special.

Click

When he was almost done drawing, his head jolted up at the sound of a door opening and closing. The kid jumped down from his chair and slowly approached the door of his room, only to see a figure quickly walk into the bathroom while his ‘Granny’ was standing in front of his room in an attempt to block his sight. The kid was already used to this situation. He was told that his big uncle didn’t want the others to see him when he came back from work, so the grown-ups prevented him from looking at his big uncle when he returned home.

He already knew they were lying though. He knew his big uncle looked scary when he came back from work some days, so he rushed to the bathroom to wash up and get changed as soon as he arrived home. The little kid poked his head out of the door slightly and looked inside the house. His big uncle was taking a bath, his granny was preparing food, and his ‘big sister’ was playing games on her phone. There was no one else in the house. As usual, the person he was waiting for was not back.

The little kid sighed and walked back to his desk. He climbed the chair and sat back on it, before picking up a red pencil and drawing some crimson circles on one of the figures he had drawn.

He moved his hand back after a few minutes and looked at his drawing. A big house, water that was falling down from a waterfall, a big tree that pierced the sky, birds all around, and clouds covering the sky.

Beside the tree, a few figures were drawn in light and broken lines were drawn beside each other. At the center of all of them was a very small figure who had only a smile on his face and no other facial featured. To his left stood a man and a woman, both holding hands while also having nothing on their faces but a smile. The man had his hand on the kid’s shoulder, and another hand was on the kid’s head. The figure that was patting the kid had a tall body. The soaring and triangle-shaped figure was almost half the size of the huge tree. Next to the tall figure was an even taller figure and was bulky so much that he was covering almost half of the right half of the paper. The bulky figure was taller than the other one and had some red marks on its body.

The two figures on the right were also holding hands, but they had no facial features. No eyes, no nose, and not even a smile.