Blood in the Forest Cabin (1)
The arrow shaft felt soft at my fingertips, then crumpled entirely. It was an unrefined branch, reverting to a tender green shoot before dissolving into a few scattered green cells and vanishing altogether.
I twisted my body at once, trying to look toward where the arrow had come from, but the pain still burrowing through my flesh was too much. I clutched the garden soil tightly and collapsed forward.
“Ugh……”
The arrowhead… it’s still inside me……
Had I paid too much attention to the shaft? I should have rewound the entire arrow as one. My arm, stiffening from the agony, trembled violently as I probed the wound in my side. I bit down hard on the sleeve of my robe with my opposite arm, trying to keep any moans from escaping.
The head… it’s probably metal… how do I… rewind something like that……
Perhaps a piece of unrefined steel ingot? Iron ore? Some iron sand? No matter what shape I returned it to, it would clearly remain lodged inside my body.
Should I tear through the flesh and pull it out anyway…?
Thinking rashly, I ripped open my blood-soaked dress and slipped my hand inside.
“Ugh… ughk, urgh… kgh……”
I somehow held back a scream as I forced my fingers into the wound, but I could only barely catch the edge of the sharp tip. There was no way to extract it like this.
I should have… pulled the whole arrow out… at once……
It was an arrow designed to burrow into human or animal flesh, with jagged barbs facing backward. Since only the very tip was within reach, I couldn’t pull it free. Even if the shaft had still been attached, it was doubtful I could have removed it. When you try to yank out a fishing hook’s barb by force, the fish’s entire palate gets torn away—what more needed to be said about an arrowhead this size?
For now… I should pretend to be dead. When they come closer to check if I’m really gone, I can use magic… somehow……
The pain was so severe that my vision blurred. Something kept flashing at the edges of my sight, like stars. Was my nervous system malfunctioning from the agony? I……
Stars…?
At that moment, a thought flashed through me like lightning. The memory of the eastern wall of the Imperial Capital collapsing—the very thing that had gotten me wanted as the Witch of Sand. And the knowledge from Earth that people in this world would consider utterly absurd.
It was a gamble. I knew full well it was a gamble, but it was worth trying. I……
Rewind… rewind it all the way… to the farthest edge of time, to a point so distant it defies comprehension… until the very brink of time itself…!!
A small something bubbled inside my flesh, and that was the end of it. The arrow let out a sound completely unsuited to the situation—more like a high-pitched pop than a hiss—and escaped through the torn wound as nothing more than gas bubbles.
The bubbling sensation lingered painfully inside the ravaged wound, but I clenched my teeth and endured it.
Haa…… It worked. It actually worked… something like this.
The arrowhead had ridden the thread of time that seemed to have no end, grasped its farthest tip, and become a few mouthfuls of gas.
Hydrogen.
If I had brought a flame to the wound… would it have exploded spectacularly?
I had only rewound a single piece of metal, yet I keenly felt the terrifying power I now held. I had already known it was absurd ever since I had brought the dead back to life at will, but still.
Right, then… next.
I had removed the arrowhead, but the wound itself remained. Healing it by rewinding time would have been nothing to me, but I wanted to observe the situation a little first. I needed to find out who they were and why they had shot me.
I writhed as if unable to bear the pain, then let all strength drain from my body and collapsed onto Viran’s vegetable patch. I had to act like a small girl who had passed out from an injury that had pierced even her organs.
…It really did hurt enough to make me faint. Turning what had once been ordinary iron into a light gas had left me in such agony it felt like someone had shoved a fist inside my body. It wasn’t acting—I had nearly lost consciousness for real.
Lying on the dirt, my body occasionally convulsing, I heard the footsteps of people approaching. Judging by the sound of their steps and voices, there were five… six… no, seven of them.
“Is it really okay to get that close?”
“There’s no way one shot killed her… I’m scared……”
“You saw her fall. If she tries to resist when she wakes up, just grab her arms and cover her mouth.”
Hearing that, I understood. These weren’t ordinary bandits out to kill and rob just anyone. The fact that they spoke of pinning down her arms and mouth first meant they knew I was a mage.
“Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? What if there’s magic she can use even if she can’t move her arms or speak—”
Someone seemed to have said something extremely disadvantageous to me, but from the sound of several others breaking into a run, it looked like his opinion had been ignored. I kept my eyes tightly shut.
Soon all the footsteps stopped right beside my head. Blood was flowing from the gaping wound, soaking my robe. They must have seen that too. The slow rise and fall of my back, proof that I was still breathing.
“She’s alive.”
“What should we do? Kill her?”
From the conversation so far, they didn’t sound like hardened bandits who treated human lives like weeds. They seemed more like timid villagers. Even if only out of fear of retaliation, they wouldn’t kill me so easily. I continued pretending to be dead with my eyes squeezed shut.
“Wait a moment.”
One man’s voice rang out, and I felt a hand grip my limp, prone body.
He’s going to flip me over to check my face.
Maybe they were the type who had chased me all the way here to collect the bounty on the Witch of Sand, Kaira. If so, I had no choice. To save my own life, I would have to rewind time and take theirs.
“Wait, what?! No way!”
Ah… not what I thought……
“She’s just a kid. She looks nothing like that witch…. Did we catch an innocent person?”
“She’s a witch, so maybe she used transformation or rejuvenation magic… or something like that?”
“No. Every single eyewitness account says the witch of the forest is wrapped head to toe in bandages, with a face so pale it swallows up all her beauty with an unnatural, skin-crawling eeriness. They say she gives off a faint, unpleasant stench like rotting meat. And……”
The man who had been speaking slid his hand across my chest before continuing.
“Her body is like a withered corpse, yet strangely feminine and curvaceous in a bewitching way. This girl has no chest at all. She looks like a boy.”
…….
Should I just kill them right now.
“If she could disguise herself like this, there should have been all sorts of different eyewitness reports. Or at the very least, someone should have seen a girl who looks like her. I don’t think this is the witch……”
“Maybe. But it’s suspicious that the poisonous air that kept people away from the witch’s house disappeared the moment this girl arrived…. Could she be the witch’s disciple?”
“That makes sense. She’s kidnapped so many victims over the years. There’s no way she was using all of them herself. This girl really might be her apprentice.”
Kidnapping victims… just what the hell……
“Still, all we caught is one measly disciple. We fought our way through the witch’s forest all the way here for this?”
“We can’t just go back empty-handed. Besides……”
The voice came from the closest spot to me, as if the speaker was kneeling and looking down at me.
“Whether this girl is the witch’s disciple or just a passing mage who heard the rumors, the fact remains that we shot an arrow at a person. There’s no other choice. Let’s cut off her head and show it to the baron.”
C-cut off… my head? The baron……
“What? She might be an innocent girl. Maybe she really is just a passing mage who came because of the witch rumors……”
“Or she might be guilty. We need proof that we came all the way here, a woman in a place like this can’t possibly be ordinary, and most of all, it’ll be a pain if she wakes up……”
There was no need to wait any longer. I had no idea when the blade would fall and sever my carotid artery. I rewound time immediately. So that I could move right away, so that the wound where the arrow had pierced would not hinder my movements.
They had been this close. Every single man gathered around me must have felt it—that bizarre twisting of the world’s laws. Even if they knew nothing of magic, they would have sensed instinctively that something that should never happen was occurring.
“Huh?”
Even though they realized something was wrong, it was far too late for men who didn’t even know who I was. I snapped my eyes open with a flash and grabbed the hands of the two nearest men, who were clearly shaken by the sensation of time rewinding for the first time.
“Hey!! This woman, she’s awa—”
I rewound the two men’s time. Not even a full second—barely a sliver of the moment just before the present. The man’s bewildered voice cut off along with the sound of wind leaking and blood bubbles swelling.
Two severed heads rolled onto the clean spring soil, free of even a single weed. The faces that had fallen away had not even realized they were dead, so their expressions held neither pain nor even surprise.
I hoped it was a peaceful end for them.