Night after night, the village of Rigon was once again on fire.

He understood his pedigree at the age of seven. His mother crouched in front of him, holding his face in both hands, examining the bruises and scars on his face. He felt an inexplicable sense of embarrassment, because his mother rarely touched him.

"Who did it?" She asked. He took a breath and was about to answer, but he heard his mother say something that he rarely said: "What the hell did you do?" What mistakes did you make to suffer like this? ”

Before he could reply, his mother got up and walked away.

He could still feel his mother's touch on his skin, so strange that he couldn't help but shudder. This unusual closeness was fleeting, making him melancholy and reluctant. "Mom, I'm wrestling with people. The boys in the village wrestle. Girls too. ”

His mother glanced at him suspiciously. "Keegan, those wounds didn't come from wrestling," she whispered, "I'm not stupid. ”

"After wrestling, there was a fight." He lifted one of his tattered sleeves to wipe his nose and wipe away a half-dried scab of blood. "Some people are upset and angry when they see me win."

Mother is very thin - this cannibalistic land does not tolerate the weak. She looked very old, both because of her unspeakable grief and because of her talent. Keegan was only seven years old, but he could understand.

Thanks to his mother's mage, he was a precocious child.

He looked up and saw his mother's figure embedded in the hole where the mother and son had settled down. He saw a tenderness in her eyes, as strange as Fang Cai's touch. He thought his mother would crouch down and embrace him in her arms. He felt both fear and longing.

However, the mother's eyes turned cold.

"Did I say don't mess with other kids? Keegan, if the people in the village hate you, our lives will be even harder. ”

"But they did it first."

She paused, half-turned, and looked down at him, her face as gloomy and cold as her eyes. Her gaze met the boy, pale green pupils, as she used to call his father's eyes.

"But you did it first. Keegan, you ...... tempered."

"I didn't." The boy lied. "At least, not every time."

The mother went into the depths of the cave and sat cross-legged by the fire pit. The soup made from Eruk's grease was as thin as water, and it was the same for dinner for the next three days. She stirred as she said, "The magic is in our blood, in our bones, in our breath. So we have to be careful, to be more careful than others. ”

"But—"

"You shouldn't be in trouble in the village. We're already annoying. Old Rigon is a good man, at least he can take us in. ”

Keegan didn't have time to think twice before blurting out, "We live in a stone cave, so far from the village. Since they are so bad to us, don't heal them. We're moving out. ”

"Keegan, what nonsense are you talking about. I heal people because I have the ability. We live here because we have to. She nodded to the distant peaks of the mountains, the trees covered in the darkness of night and the silver moonlight. The forest will be covered with snow and ice all the way to the end of the world. We're going to die outside. Let them say whatever they want. Let sleeping dogs lie. Don't mess with the magic in your body, either. ”

But the boy remained motionless at the mouth of the cave. "If they speak ill of me, or hit me...... I'll fight back. I'm not like you, coward. ”

What happened next will forever seam this night into his memory. For the first time in his life, instead of bowing his head and assuring his mother of obedience, he clenched his little fists and glared fiercely.

Silence tugs and turns between mother and son. He thought he would get a slap in the face—a weak slap in the face, a slight pain for an hour, or a long sob. The mother cried a lot. Always at night she thought that after he fell asleep, he cried quietly alone, for a long, long time.

But this time, there was something new in her eyes. It's like fear.

"You're really your father's own." The mother's voice was calm and restrained—it seemed worse. "His eyes, all the time looking at me. His sins have been a reminder to me. And now, his words, his hatred, are thrown in my face. ”

The boy stared at her and asked fearfully and angrily, "So you hate me?" ”

She hesitated—it trumped any answer. Even after many years, after his mother's craggy skeleton was left with only ashes on the cold pyre, and many years later, he did not forget her hesitation.

He met Tswana at the age of thirteen. She came to the village of Rigon with twenty or thirty people. These people come from a nomadic tribe whose life in the wilderness has kept their population decreasing year by year, and they are the last survivors. Unlike other uninvited guests who came to plunder, they brought new blood, skills, and weapons to the thriving fishing village, and settled down.

That day, Keegan met her in the afterglow of the setting sun. He was in the mountains to the south collecting heather and herbs – stripped of the thorny stalks and put them in a deerskin pocket. The work had to be done slowly, and Kegan had a frizzy temperament and had no less than a hundred in his hands.

As soon as he looked up, he saw her.

He stopped what he was doing, stood up, and patted the dust off his sore hands. He didn't realize that the curiosity and surprise on his face looked like suspicion, otherwise he actually looked quite good. His mother once said, "You are already very handsome, as long as you stop looking at everything with that kind of eyes, as if you have a great vengeance to avenge." ”

"Who are you?" He asked.

She winced at his question—even he himself felt that he sounded rude.

"I mean, you're new here, I know that. What's your name? What are you doing here? Lost? ”

A series of questions smashed into the girl like flying stones. She was older than him, but no more than a year old. The body is slender, the eyes are large, and the whole person is buried in heavy fur. She kept glaring at him as she spoke, her voice like a mouse.

"You're the doctor's son?"

He grinned, but not happy. He knew what the people in the village were saying about him behind his back, and for the first time in years, he felt heartache. The girl in front of her must have heard of hundreds of bad things about him when she first arrived.

"My name is Keegan," he said, swallowing his saliva, trying to soften his tone. "Yes, I'm the physician's son," he added, nodding, "who are you?" ”

"My name is Tswana. Can you come with me? My dad is sick. ”

Keegan's heart sank. He found his voice lowered a little lower, as if to soothe a wounded beast.