Crown of Thorns

A rattling sound resonated.

As Evan lifted the object from the table, it bumped into the glass and made a cold sound. Evan quietly looked down at the item, wrapping it tightly in his palm. At first glance, his eyes were glaring with sorrow. This was because he was reminded of the witch who had handed the item to him and the woman whom the mere thought of turning made him feel warm.

It was the witch, Nyx. She made the world tremble in fear, with an immortal body. She was thought to have been a very evil and cruel creature, but she was actually just a very pitiful woman. Foolishly good and lovely, unlike the rumors and fairy tales.

“Nyx…”

Evan held the object all-day long, calling out Nyx’s name. But his voice vanished into thin air, leaving without an echo. There was no answer to be found, not here, nor there. Originally, he wouldn’t have called out Nyx’s name carelessly, even if there were no one around. However, now it’s been made possible because there was no one else in this space, not just physically, but also spiritually.

Unseen, untouched, unheard, she disappeared the moment he brought her maid into the room. Just in case, he stayed in the room all night long for a few days, but Nyx never came. She had always kept out of Evan’s private life.

It was a relief. That meant that he could move on his own. But he couldn’t move easily. Would that be okay? If things went wrong, wouldn’t Nyx get hurt?

Evan settled down on the table, holding the object tightly. He couldn’t figure out where to start and how to solve it, his mind too complicated.

“Nyx, what the hell do you want?”

Evan murmured with a sigh. He started to recall all his old memories while fiddling with the object in his hand. It was something he’d been repeating over and over, thinking that there may have been something he’d missed. Something very important…

A witch trapped in a tower. He had heard her story when he was very young. When his mother and brother were alive, they explained why the Witch’s Forest was called that. It was a fairytale handed down from generation to generation.

But his brother clearly believed the witch was alive. There had to be a witch’s tower somewhere in the forest. There were more monsters living in the forest, so he couldn’t approach it. However, it couldn’t have just been a simple fairy tale. There was no way for Evan to know whether what his brother had said were just boundless words to tease his younger sibling or if he had really believed it.

Before long, Evan had indeed found the witch’s tower. It was after his only brother died. He didn’t want to believe that he was cursing everyone to death. He thought that everything was her fault and that it would be all over if he killed her. Whether it was true or not, Evan was almost ready to die trying because that was all he could do. Even if he had survived, he would’ve lived a life worse than death, so deep down, he knew he was going there to die.

When Evan arrived at the tower, it was not a witch that had greeted him, but a woman, crying with a heartbreaking look on her face.

The woman laughed as she cried. Then she said,

I’m glad I got to see you again…

It was certainly the first time he had seen her, but she still said so- begging him to stay by her side with an earnest and affectionate heart. Evan was shocked by her unimaginable actions and left the tower as if he were running away.

But not long after, Evan revisited the tower of the witch.

Just because it was so different from what he had imagined, he didn’t intend to believe in her. Even if she smiled and cried with such a sad expression and held him tight as if she would never let him slip away again, she could not be trusted.

But he wondered.

Why was she chasing him? Why was she helping him?

From the moment he left the witch’s tower, he felt something chasing after him. At first, he thought it was an illusion because it was silent, odorless, unnoticed, and invisible. But it was only after coming to town that he became certain that it was there.

It was something that followed Evan the whole time across the Witch’s Forest, past the walls, past the villagers, and into his home. It helped him when the children were throwing stones at him and even hugged him when he lay still in his room, closing his eyes tightly.

It felt like such a foreign feeling that words failed to describe it. To think that something Evan couldn’t even comprehend was hugging and comforting him. When he opened his eyes in amazement, there were only the remnants of a black mist, scattering away in the blink of an eye.

Evan had never seen anything like that before. It was much like the black mist that had filled the witch’s forest, yet, it was very different. It was lighter, warmer, and friendlier. After raising himself up, he looked around for a long while, unable to hide his confusion.

And before long, he concluded that it was the power of the witch. Witches use great powers that humans can’t dare to imagine. The first thing that he felt anything similar to this was definitely inside the tower of the witch. So he went back there, meaning to ask her why she was following after him.

Upon entering the tower, Evan gasped inaudibly. He looked at her excessively thin and weak appearance, along with a blurred outline. It was as if she were about to break.

“You… I mean…”

But no further words came out. His throat was choked up, and he couldn’t get his voice out.

Evan didn’t know the reason at the time, but now he thought he did. His adolescent self unconsciously realized that if he had let her know of the fact that he had been made aware of her tailing him, then she wouldn’t be chasing him anymore.

He didn’t want to lose the company of that faint, invisible existence even if he couldn’t touch nor acknowledge it.

Be it a witch or otherwise, it made little difference to him. It hovered around him, prevented others from harming him, and even consoled him for an unknown reason. He didn’t want to push away the only thing that came to his rescue unsolicited with his own hands. He couldn’t bring himself to.

He had thought that there would be no one to stay with him and protect him anymore. How could he push away anyone who was willing to do that for him? If the mysterious existence disappears, he will really be abandoned in this vast and desolate world. So how could he help drive it away?

So, instead of asking why she was chasing him, Evan tried to figure out the witch’s intentions on his own. But the only thing the witch told him was the incredible story of warriors and helped him become one. Still, he decided to follow her. At least the witch trusted him and treated him like a human being instead of calling him a monster, whether she meant it or not.

And so, Evan began to go in and out of the witch’s tower.

He thought it was a little scary at first. Not even a single beam of light permeated the tower and none of its furniture remained intact. It was literally a place for the dead. It was so bright and beautiful around the tower, but inside it seemed to be reduced to a miniature of the dreary witch’s forest.

Above all, what was really dark was the witch herself. It was like a fairy tale; her face was cold and she had a dreamy expression the first time he saw her, but she didn’t express any emotion. Moreover, she was so thin that she looked like she was about to crumble and disappear with the slightest gust of the wind.

She was so very anxious, both in her appearance and her atmosphere. He thought it wouldn’t be very unusual were she to disappear without a trace if he just looked away for a moment. The tower already looked uninhabited, so it would make more sense for him to have hallucinated all of this.

But she brought a lot of things from somewhere as if she were really trying to keep her word that she’d teach Evan. All of the items seemed precious and unusual. In addition, she was clean, unlike the first time he saw her. She had painful traces that made his eyes frown just by looking at them. She wasn’t just skinny.

He couldn’t even imagine how she came to get such scars. How great her pain must have been when his body ached at the smallest of scratches.

He felt a deeper connection with her when the witch carelessly tried to kill herself. When Evan saw her trying to put a sword in her chest without hesitation, saying she was not going to die, it was difficult for Evan to escape from the great shock. No matter how much of a witch she was, it can’t be painless, but how familiar was she with death to be able to kill herself so boldly?

“Stop it! What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?”

“Why are you stopping me? When I die, the monsters will disappear.”

“But still… you have to teach me! What if you die without keeping your promise?”

He realized his innermost thoughts for why he was stopping the witch from dying. The fact that he was relying on her. It was a very short time that they spent together. Furthermore, she was a witch feared and scorned by many for driving the world into darkness, ultimately causing the death of his older brother.

She was also the only one he had.

After losing his family, no one approached him. He was always alone, and he’d rather be lonely, but the people didn’t leave him be and constantly harassed him. Regardless, the fact that his loved ones died because of him was so horrifying and painful that their scorn felt like they were hammering a nail on his open wound. It was a pain that wouldn’t end until or even after his death.

Meanwhile, the witch he met accepted him. She acknowledged and watched over him. She always followed him around and looked at his inner self, not at his sole outer appearance, and branded him as a monster as others did. He had a glimpse of hope in a life of despair.

She was the only one like that. What was so important about her being a witch or not? Actually, he already knew. It was the lord who killed his family. Not himself, not the witch, not even Darkness, nor monsters, but a human being, just like him.

And it didn’t really matter to him if the world suffered from Darkness now that no one was left by his side.

“Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me alone.”

So he decided that he would never be parted from the witch. He was not going to let her whither into nothingness like the rest of his family, and he was certainly not going to be left alone again.

At that time, he didn’t want to miss out on the one who may be the last person to ever really look at him, but his solemn determination grew bigger day in and day out until it eventually became a black obsession that ate him up. A gruesome tenacity and earnestness, as such, was Evan’s obsession.

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T/N: This is the start of Evan’s POV, it’s marked as a side story in the original work, but I will keep it as part of V3 in order not to confuse the order.