To My Beloved, I Present My Exquisite Nightmare - Chapter 60

The old man inhaled deeply for a moment. His clouded eyes trembled.

His memories, which had become almost ashen and hazy, were suddenly being pulled back several decades. Men threatening with raised torches, a chaotic night where everyone fought entangled, unable to tell who was who.

“So what happened next?”

Laila’s question abruptly cut off the old man’s reverie. He blinked dazedly like someone who had just woken from a dream, then smiled again, his mouth crumpling.

“The child died.”

Eustar’s expression darkened faintly.

The old man continued speaking.

“About a month later, it was when the people of Vintoshis couldn’t leave the village. That mother who had lost her child poured oil on several houses in Vintoshis and set them on fire. No one knew how she had managed to sneak into that village.”

“Fire……”

“They tried to use the well to put out the fire, but it wasn’t nearly enough. It was winter. The flames spread, and water was scarce. In the end, they had no choice but to fetch water from that river over there… What do you think happened this time?”

Laila answered.

“The people must have blocked them.”

The old man nodded with a bitter smile.

“Yes, that’s right. This time, the young men of Hoyerhis prevented the people of Vintoshis from taking even a single step out. In the end, twelve houses burned down, and twenty-one people died. Including that mother who had lost her child.”

It was an unbelievably horrific story. Laila’s body trembled at the malice she could not even begin to fathom.

“But the real problem occurred after that.”

Eustar and Laila furrowed their brows at the old man’s words.

“What do you mean, elder? What else happened?”

“After the fire incident, the relationship between Hoyerhis and Vintoshis became even more hostile than before. Whenever they happened to meet, there would always be bloodshed. But fate is so strange. Or perhaps Sercita made some mistake when creating humans.”

After saying this, the old man laughed with a sound like coughing, as if amused by his own words.

“For some unknown reason, a young man from Hoyerhis and a young lady from Vintoshis fell in love.”

“That’s astounding.”

Eustar said, shaking his head. The old man narrowed his eyes as if to say it truly was so.

“What’s more, the man was the son of a penniless family, and the Vintoshis lady was the niece of the family head. You might think there’s not much difference since neither side was nobility, but at that time, in this place, there was. When the two eloped, the two villages blamed each other and eventually a fight broke out that was tantamount to war. No, it almost did, but……”

The old man’s gaze shifted again to a distant place, not on the two people. It was a look as if his soul had been dragged into the past, leaving behind only a shell in the form of an old man.

“That night was truly terrifying……”

The old man’s words trailed off.

About 60 years ago.

The young men of Vintoshis prepared sharply honed knives and farm tools, piling them onto carts. They wrapped oil-soaked cloths around torches and lit them, donning crudely made armor reinforced with wood and iron.

Some even suggested bringing horses from the stables to drink their blood. It was an absurd claim that all the warriors of old did this before going to war.

“Listen well!”

The head of the Vintoshis family, who had lost his niece, climbed atop a pile of firewood and shouted, shaking his swollen belly. Under the blazing torches, the faces of the young men looked ghastly white. Their bloodshot eyes no longer looked human.

“We’re going to sweep away all those filthy Hoyerhis bastards! Do you understand? We can no longer live on the same land as such despicable people. From today, all the land in this area belongs to us, Vintoshis!”

“Banish them!”

“Drive them out!”

Sickles, knives, and hoes gleamed in the firelight. They were ready to rush into Hoyerhis and slit every single throat without leaving anyone behind. A sinister bloodlust hung over the entire village like a dark cloud.

“If you catch the bastard who stole my niece, bring him back alive! I’ll make him beg for death. I’ll give gold coins to whoever brings him in!”

How brilliant would the gold coins be, exchanged for a life? How heavy would they be? Malice was sharp and greed was solid.

People were gradually going mad with the incitement calling for blood. They believed without a doubt that those living in Hoyerhis were not humans but monsters that needed to be driven out of this land completely.

At that time, the old man was not yet old enough to be called an old man. He was barely seventeen, still too young to even be called a young man.

But even in his hands was a well-sharpened sickle. His father had given it to him.

His father stood next to the family head, brandishing a huge pickaxe. He was the type who would shout that they should burn down all of Hoyerhis whenever he drank.

The boy was afraid of the growing hostility. It wasn’t just in Vintoshis that torches were burning.

In Hoyerhis, separated by just a narrow ridge, madmen were also letting out resounding war cries. The rising flames flickered as if they would burn the mountainside.

If I don’t run away, I’ll die. The boy thought. He didn’t have the confidence to swing a sickle at people. What was Vintoshis and Hoyerhis anyway? Why did they have to kill and be killed, take lives and plunder?

“Hey, Simon! Where are you trying to go?”

As the boy was trying to slip away quietly, his friend’s husky voice caught him by the scruff of his neck. Though only a year apart, his friend was a span taller than the boy and had broader shoulders. Simon gripped the sickle tightly and said,

“We’re about to do something big, right? I just wanted to go to the outhouse first.”

And he deliberately raised the sickle high. His friend, whose beard had just started to grow, let out a laugh like an adult and said,

“Alright, go empty yourself completely before you piss yourself.”

Simon nodded. The young men began to gather in the center of the village again, shouting for blood, death, and exile.

The carts loaded with weapons rattled, and the few horses they had—half of which were malnourished—were brought out, whinnying uneasily in the ominous air.

Once out of sight of the people, Simon crawled frantically through the bushes.

When thorny vines and branches blocked his path, he swung his sickle. In the process, he cut his hands and arms badly, but he didn’t feel the pain or notice the blood flowing.

He ran away. He kept fleeing towards the mountains, towards the deeper slopes. By the time he collapsed from exhaustion, not knowing where he was, he had already gone far beyond the village boundaries.

He fell into a dead sleep on the cold, hard, frozen ground. Clutching the sharpened sickle.

And when he woke up, he learned that the people of Vintoshis and Hoyerhis had all evaporated overnight.

A short sigh escaped from the old man’s mouth as he continued mumbling.

“No one knew what had happened. The people living in the busy part of town… They just found it strange that the two villages had suddenly gone quiet for days, only to learn the truth later. When people went to look, there was no trace of human life left. No, not just humans. Not even a single dog was left alive. There was no sign of war, no evidence of killing or being killed. Sharp farm tools were left scattered on the main streets of the villages, and household items remained in the houses. It was as if people had flown away somewhere, leaving everything behind.”

Laila asked,

“What about bodies? Were none found?”

The old man shook his head, looking at the ground with moist eyes.

“There was nothing. Really nothing. Not even a tiny bone fragment, let alone bodies… After that, none of the people living in the busy area approached the two villages. But there are always fools with dangerous curiosity.”

He pointed at the signpost in the middle of the fork with the tip of his cane. His wrinkled fingers trembled.

“There were a few young fellows who disappeared after loitering around here. Whether they just ran away or truly evaporated, no one knows, but they never appeared again. When that rumor spread, more foolish people flocked here. Some returned, some didn’t.”

“What did those who returned say? Did they report seeing anything, or experiencing anything strange?”

Eustar asked. The old man lowered his cane again, leaned on it, and exhaled deeply.

“Those who returned weren’t really alive. They had life in them, but no soul. They had become idiots. So even if they wanted to say something, they couldn’t. However, sometimes… there were people who appeared, saying they had been going around in circles in the same place around here. Most of them were travelers passing through. They would reach the village looking as if they had been wandering in the mountains for three or four days, complaining. About how there were so many forks in the road.”

“Were they alright?”

This time it was Laila’s question. The old man looked at her with a blank expression for a moment before answering.

“At least until they entered the village. I don’t know what happened to them after that.”

After finishing his words, he chewed on his sunken cheeks for a moment, then gripped his cane tightly and stood up. The old man swatted away an ant crawling up near his ankle and looked down at the two of them as he spoke.

“When I saw you coming out of that village, for a moment I thought you might be ghosts from the past, which is why my words have been long, but don’t take an old man’s words lightly. I myself lived in that madmen’s den for seventeen years, so believe what I say. Whatever is in that village, whatever happened there, don’t dig it up and leave it be. It’s a cursed village. And rightly so. They did things that deserved it.”

With that, the old man disappeared down the road, leaning on his cane, before the two could even grab him. Laila, who had been staring blankly at his bent back, turned to Eustar.

“I think I now understand what those vines we saw earlier were.”

Eustar looked at her.

“Do you think they were used by the lovers who ran away?”

“Don’t you think so? They looked perfect for secretly climbing up a mansion.”

Eustar, after looking once more at the empty roadside where the old man had disappeared, dusted off his jacket and stood up. Laila also rose, following him.

Eustar said,

“The story behind the two villages is more complicated than we thought. But I think I understand why no synch is detected. After hearing what that old man just said, one thing comes to mind.”

Laila looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“What’s that?”

Eustar slightly moved his mouth and looked towards Vintoshis with an expression as if he had bitten into something dry.

“A curse. A curse might be hiding the synch.”