*** The Past ***
On a small island somewhere in the sky, the grass was waving with the gentle lick of a cold breeze. The island was floating above clouds that left no gap beneath, resembling a sea. In the very center of the island was a circular ground made of pearl-white marble, surrounded by seven erected columns. Following the circle of the ground, ancient inscriptions engraved and embedded with bronze metals were completing texts one after another. At the very center, two individuals sat on crimson and gold ethnic embroidered cushions on opposite sides of a small black wooden table, silently gazing at each other.
One of them had long golden hair reaching down to her chest, wearing a white dress, and her skin was as beautiful and vibrant as the columns, with eyes shining with a beauty too deep to belong to any human, calm and serene. The crown on her head, crafted from gold and an unknown red metal from the earth, added an unrivaled magnificence.
"Do you know why you are here?"
She took a sip from her tea with her luminous pink lips, not taking her eyes off the child who was staring at her. She couldn't help but smile at the child's unresponsive admiration.
"Do you always look with such cuteness?"
Kled, looking at the dazzling woman with his small body, fidgeted his knees, not remembering how long he'd been sitting there. He thought about the last thing he remembered. It felt like something had happened a long time ago. He had fainted somewhere, but he couldn't recall where and how. Wasn't he always here? For a five-year-old child, the thoughts running through his mind were difficult questions.
"By the way... Congratulations on your awakening, my child..."
As the woman took another sip of her tea, she continued to smile at little Kled. The golden bracelets on her arms jingled.
"Is it like waking up from sleep? I always wake up."
Little Kled smiled, thinking he understood correctly, and felt proud for some reason. Yet, he was confused.
"Don't you always wake up too?"
His eyebrows rose in innocent curiosity as he asked.
The woman put her cup on the table, squinting one eye as if pondering, and placed her finger on her lip.
"I suppose... I have completed all my awakenings!"
When she opened her eyes again, her smile widened, and she leaned toward Kled.
"This is a bit different from your normal awakenings. More like... being reborn into the same body."
As she leaned back, she extended her palm toward little Kled, raising her eyebrows in expectation. Kled placed his small hand into the woman's palm. Despite his young age, his palm was hardened and calloused due to the training he had undergone. The woman's eyes widened as she examined his palm. With great attention, she studied the lines formed between his fingers and joints. Her eyebrows rose higher with each passing moment, her eyes expressing greater surprise.
"I understand..."
With a smile of astonishment on her face, she touched Kled's palm with her index finger of the other hand, as if writing an unknown script. A smokeless black flame appeared where she touched. It changed color first to crimson, then to yellow. Watching the changing flame, Kled looked at his hand with his mouth open. Finally, the flames transformed into a swirling dense mist, hovering in place.
"I know you won't understand me for now. Still, when you come here again, you will remember everything. Remember that you will have a longer life than you anticipated. When you understand everything one day, more issues will arise for you to solve."
Listening in silence, Kled, unaware of what he needed to understand, listened to the woman. His inability to understand was not due to his intelligence level, of course. Although he had been trained to slay a beast and provided with certain knowledge, he was only five years old. Even being here at this age was an unprecedented detail in the thousands of years of awakened history.
As she said all this, the woman with golden hair falling in front of her smiled. When Kled withdrew his focus from his palm, the mist swirled and concentrated, then slipped inside his sleeve, moving toward his back. With a slight breeze and tingling, it fluttered his clothes. And as everything settled, a faint new feeling was born within him.
"Since your body has already completed its awakening, you can consider this as a gift for future times."
Kled felt his half-closed eyelids and unthinking brain. As he pondered, "Again?" the woman continued speaking.
"Kled, I think we can have more conversations during our next meeting. So for now, this is enough."
With the last of his consciousness, he looked into the woman's deep green eyes.
"Beautiful..."
***
What Sylvana didn't know was what Kled was experiencing while he was asleep with his eyes closed. When he completed his first trial, he had experienced his awakening, and while it was inevitable for even adults to faint immediately, Kled had surprisingly remained conscious until Sylvana reached him, even experiencing the transformation while conscious, which everyone else went through in a fainted state.
Thinking about how much pain he might have endured, she gently stroked Kled's head as he slept quietly in his bed. Although she was ruthless in training, she did everything she could to make it as easy as possible. If everything were rosy and fun, strong men could be raised. But existence was not like that. Every value came with difficulty. Throughout history, those who were raised with difficulty ensured justice, while those who were raised easily, even if they didn't want to, always brought hardship.
"No hero was raised in bed," she whispered. For today, she allowed him to stay in bed a little longer, of course.
***
On the morning of the second day, he woke up, rubbing his eyes like any child. He smiled, affected by the sweet dream he had seen. With the smell coming from outside his room, a deep rumble rose from his stomach. Feeling hungry, he wanted to get up and go to the kitchen, but he couldn't move under the weight of Emberlyn, who had wrapped her arms around him.
"Heey Emberlyn!!!" He shouted while trying to free his neck from Emberlyn's arms. "It's morning, wake up already!!"
Waking up to Kled's voice, Emberlyn panicked without understanding what was happening and tightened her arms around the child even more.
"What! How! Did he wake up, did he come to himself?"
"Look at me, I'm right here!!" While trying to pry her arm from his neck with his hands, Emberlyn realized what she was doing.
"Oooovv" Emberlyn released him and pulled back. "You little rascal, I see you really want to get away from me!" She yawned while rubbing her eyes. Her hair was tangled as she stretched out and pushed Kled off the bed.
"This is my room, of course, I want to get away!!"
"Haaahh remember what you said, little man!!"
As the shouting continued, the door burst open with a loud bang, crashing into the wall with a jingle. With an apron being tugged in anger, Aeris entered the room, the extended white of a broken egg dripping from her other hand, shouting to drown out their voices.
"Shut up and get your damn butts up and get to the kitchen, you ugly squirrels!!"
Kled and Emberlyn looked at each other.
"Squirrels?" Mischief appeared on both their faces. But still, they quietly got up and walked out of the room.
"You look so beautiful when you're angry," Kled said as he came in front of her, clasping his hands behind him and putting on his sweet smile. Emberlyn looked at him with her mouth open, as if to say, "What is happening?" The warmth of the blush spreading across Aeris's face increased, but this time it wasn't from anger. In disbelief at how she fell for every sweet word of this child, she sniffed, tossed her short hair, and quickly turned back to the kitchen.
Just then, Emberlyn, about to open her mouth to say something to Kled, fell silent and floated toward the sink as Sylvana arrived.
"Ohhh what a dreary morning!!"
Sylvana looked on, trying to understand what was happening. The home state was very different from training times. She wore a plain white dress tied at the waist. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, revealing her facial features. As soon as she saw Sylvana, the woman from his dream came to mind. How much she resembled her. Perhaps it was Sylvana in his dream.
"Good morning, newly awake!" said Sylvana as they walked toward the kitchen. "How are you feeling today?"
"I saw you in my dream. I think?" said Kled with a questioning expression. "Yes, and in my dream, you were congratulating me for waking up. I think it's very strange because I always wake up."
Entering the small kitchen of the house with a knowing air, Kled threw himself onto a high chair. Sylvana resisted the urge to lift him by his arms and let him handle it himself. As Aeris placed large plates piled high with breakfast items in front of them, she scanned with her eyes as if to say, 'Did you see me too?' but pursed her lips without saying anything.
"Give me the details," said Sylvana, sitting across from Kled. Meanwhile, he was trying to hide from everyone that he sat at the table without washing his hands and face.
"We were on an island above the clouds, and it was very cold, and there was grass everywhere, and you had a very beautiful crown. We were drinking tea. You were very beautiful! Yes, I said that before I woke up."
Sylvana felt as if she had been struck the moment he spoke the first words.