บท 3: Darkness and Silence

In the time, since seeing the mysterious man, Kael has made countless different medicines with herbs. He listened to Elsin's nagging and sighing. Sometimes, Elsin would randomly turn to him, say some nonsense, and then wait for his approval without saying anything. Kael did what was expected of him.

When midnight came and Elsin finally decided she was sleepy, she left the rest of the work to Kael and went to sleep. Kael didn't complain about that. He liked to be busy with something. It was fun to work with plants too, at least it made the time pass quickly and it was... much easier than what he had done before.

So, even after Elsin left, he prepared and sent out countless medicines that the healers requested, and started making new ones.

But... eventually, he got tired too. After the last bag he sent, there had been no further requests. So, he went outside, looked at the position of the moon, which, like the sun, had a definite orbit in the sky, and realized that it was quite late. Even if he was a slave, there was no one to resent him sleeping at this hour.

It would be different if he had a task at hand, but he didn't... and he had already prepared a lot of medicine.

He went back inside, towards the far end of the greenhouse. There was a wooden bed reserved for him. It didn't have any sheets or a quilt. It was just... a big piece of wood, really. But he never complained about it. He had a bed, even if it had a rough surface.

So, he laid himself down on the piece of wood. He fixed his brown eyes on the hill and the dark sky. The transparent roof of the greenhouse was a bit dirty, so there was no clear view, but he could see the moon and some of the bright stars.

His eyes squinted. Memories from a few years ago came to mind.

His mother liked to look at the stars. She didn't have much time to look at the sky because she usually worked at night. So whenever she had the chance, she would stare at the night sky. And Kael would see his mother's happy face, which he didn't get a chance to see, and he would be happy too.

He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He stopped himself and surrendered to sleep before the good memories were buried deep in his mind with bad nightmares. He would probably be very busy tomorrow. The knight, whose name was Manar, was sure the healers would want even more medicine. After the sight he had seen today, he was sure of it too. So he wanted to sleep well.

So all his senses slowly shut down, his connection with the world was gone. He waited for one of the usual nightmares or to wake up directly into the next day with the birds chirping.

But... he did not wake up directly to the next day. Instead... he saw himself looking up into a dark sky. Stars were everywhere, twinkling with a dazzling light.

He was having a dream. But this dream... was a little different from the normal ones. It was neither a nightmare nor did it feel like a normal dream. It felt... much more real.

Kael focused on the stars in the sky. He just watched for a while, not moving. He couldn't move anyway. But then... finally he realized something.

The stars... were getting brighter and brighter with each passing second, as if they were approaching the ground. It was only now that he realized it because they were slow. But he did, in the end.

The stars came closer and closer, closer and closer... Kael did nothing, he just watched them.

After a while... he realized that the stars actually looked like flowers. Snow-white, and strangely... beautiful flowers with five petals.

He raised his hand and tried to reach for one of the flowers, the biggest one, the closest one. He didn't know why, but... they felt so beautiful. If he could, he would give himself to them, that's what he was trying to do...

But then something happened. Everything froze, crackled... and broke. His eyes were suddenly wide open.

He couldn't hear the birds chirping, he couldn't find Elsin in front of him, angry with him for working, nor could he see anyone else to remind him that he was a slave. Instead...

"Ah... AAAAAGGHHHHHHHH!"

He heard a scream.

*******

Kael jumped out of bed. The first thing he did was to look around. His vision was a little blurry as he had just woken up from a nap, but the first thing he noticed was... that it was darker than usual for some reason.

His eyes quickly shifted to the sky, looking at the moon, trying to figure out how long he had been asleep. But... all of a sudden, he just froze where he was.

He looked blankly at the sky, or rather at the place where the moon should be. But... the moon was not there. He couldn't see the stars either. Just... endless darkness.

Slowly, step by step, his eyes widened.

It was not cloudy before nightfall. Even just before going to sleep, he was sure that there was not a single cloud in the sky. Clouds were not something that gathered quickly, at least not unless someone or something was involved that could do it.

In short, what was in front of him was not something that happened naturally. And to think of the scream just now...

'Oh, the scream!'

Kael quickly stood up from the piece of wood that had been his bed and crouched down in the middle of the greenhouse, among the plants.

Of course, the first thing he did when he heard a scream was not to jump out. He was not an idiot, he was well aware that screams were not good things.

In such a situation, since the walls of the greenhouse were mostly transparent, the first thing he had to do was to move to a place where he could not be easily seen from the outside. One such place was between the plants in the greenhouse. And so he did.

He pricked up his ears, listened outside. It was strangely quiet. Nothing had happened after the clear scream he had just heard. But he still waited... and waited.

Then, in the middle of all this silence and darkness... he heard something. A singular footstep.

It was slow, really slow. It was also... heavy. Too heavy to belong to a human being.

Kael felt the sweat beading on his forehead, felt the calm he had always taken care to maintain slipping through his fingers. Everything seemed to freeze as his eyes widened. He could hear nothing but the sound of footsteps getting closer and closer, but he still couldn't move his body.

'Move, you idiot!'

Cursing himself inwardly, he gritted his teeth, realized that the footsteps had reached the door of the greenhouse, and silenced his thoughts as if he had swallowed his little tongue. With a swift movement, he threw himself down among the plants at the edge, making no sound and covering himself with the scattered plants.

If he had a little more time, if he hadn't just frozen, he would have been able to hide much more perfectly. But now... some of the plants he had used to hide were broken. It was obvious to anyone paying attention that someone had gotten between them.

He waited, praying that whatever was approaching the greenhouse, be it a creature or a malicious human being, someone unwary of his environment. He had no choice. And after this waiting... the footsteps stopped. An intense silence fell over the greenhouse.

Kael moved his head as close to the ground as he could, as far into the plants as he could. He restricted his own vision a little, he could only see the ground and a little above it. But instead of giving himself a better view, he just kept waiting. He was scared.

After the silence that settled over the greenhouse and his efforts to conceal himself... he finally heard a creaking sound. A slow creaking sound that spread throughout the greenhouse. It was the first time he had witnessed the greenhouse door, or rather a door, open so slowly.

His eyes, which could only see the floor, shifted to his left. He saw the end of the door opening with a creak, then stopping. He held his breath, his eyes never leaving the door.

...

Seconds passed.

...

But... nothing else happened in the following seconds.

The door just stayed open. There were no footsteps, no people or creatures, literally nothing...

Seconds finally turned into a minute. A single minute in which nothing happened. Silence continued to reign in the greenhouse. Time continued to pass under the absolute darkness of the night. Yet Kael did not come out of hiding.

Finally... the sound of a footstep echoed through the greenhouse again. Kael tried to stop his body from trembling, his eyes completely fixed on the edge of the door. But... he paused at the sound of the next step. Because it wasn't coming from close, but from further away... farther away than before.

Whoever or whatever had opened the door to the greenhouse was walking away.

Kael felt his heartbeat relax. His body had stopped shaking on its own, he was... safe again.

He pricked up his ears. He waited until the sound of footsteps reached the point where he couldn't really hear them. He had to wait for almost three minutes. And with that, he was certain that this... thing... was not a human being. No human being would walk so slowly.

But now... he had another problem.

'Should I go out or should I stay here?'

He could wait for the morning, maybe... But the fact that he could not see the moon when he looked at the sky frightened him. What if it wasn't morning, what would he do then?

But it was also dangerous to go outside. It was unclear whether the only danger outside was the owner of the footsteps he heard. The fact that he had experienced such an event in the palace in the first place showed that there were certainly no simple things here.

He took a very quiet but deep breath in and out. He lifted his head out of the plants he had buried it in. He simply wanted to put himself in a more comfortable position, and if he could, he would simply take a look outside and then wait inside the greenhouse until morning.

But when the rustling sounds of the plants rubbing against him as he moved echoed in his ears, he stopped.

There was no rustling of the wind, no plants stirring in the gentle breeze. Just... everything was as it was. Silent, motionless...

Nothing.

His eyes slowly lifted upwards, looking towards the door the creature had just left open. He could see out through one of the gaps between the countless plants. Thanks to a tiny hole there, the palace garden behind the open door was in front of his eyes.

But... he was not the only one looking through this hole.