"What?" Yin said in disbelief, looking at the knight. He felt his limbs going slightly limp.
Murmur erupted in the crowd surrounding the fountain.
"What did he say? The Reinharald kingdom!?"
"They can't do this! They have no right to this land!"
"Your right! This is not right!"
People started to become louder as the crowd became more rambunctious.
Finally, the knight spoke. "Quiet!" He roared into the crowd with the sound of the battle horn.
Silence struck through the crowd of people who heard the ringing howl as the horse below the knight lifted its front two feet up in a neigh.
"This is not for you to decide whether right or wrong. You have no power in this say!" He said, slowly looking at every individual in the silenced crowd.
"No..." Ken broke the silence.
Both the knight and the blonde young man immediately locked eye contact with him. The crowd couldn't help but look at him as well. All of the attention had switched to him, a frightening atmosphere. However, Ken gave no shits about the atmosphere right now.
"Who do you think you are." He said quietly, staring at the ground as he balled his fists and clenched them hard enough to break through his skin. Yin could see him shaking with anger.
"Who do you think you are!? To try and seize our land that has the footsteps of our ancestors engraved in it for millennia! This is our lively hoods! What do you expect us to do when it's trampled to the ground!?" He yelled in a fit of rage, staring right into the blonde young-mans eyes, which were completely nonchalant.
"What the hell did you say? You littl-" The knight was interrupted.
"We are royals." The blonde young man said as he slowly neared his horse towards Ken.
"You think I don't know that? Who cares if you're a royal? How does that give you the right to do whatever you please, without taking into consideration of anything or anyone else!?" Ken yelled, still full of anger.
"Friend, you do not understand how the world works yet. We do have the right to do whatever we want, and that is precisely because we are royals." The blonde young man paused for a second as his horse walked closer to Ken.
"The reason why we can come to your land and spread diseases." He paused. "The reason why we can trample it whenever we please." He said in his same nonchalant tone as he dismounted the horse and walked towards Ken with his hands behind his back, finally nearing his head next to Kens.
"The reason why we can slaughter every single one of you without batting an eye." He paused, putting his mouth right next to Ken's ear. "Is because we are born with greater blood than you."
On hearing these words, Ken felt as though he knew what the royal was going to say from the start. A tsunami of pure rage surged throughout his body out of nowhere.
He quickly took out a poisoned stick from his back sheath and thrust it towards the blonde royal.
The royal immediately leaned back, dodging the stick by just a few inches before leaping a couple of steps backward.
"Ho ho! An assassination attempt?" The royal said, smiling slightly. His before nonchalant eyes were now gleaming with joy.
"What else should I have expected from a tribe of savages? Well, no matter. Now, we have the right to seize this village right? You did try to assassinate me after all, that proves that this village is nothing more but a threat to the kingdom that must be eliminated at all costs." The royal said, trying to control his laughter as his devilish smile grew to both sides of his face.
On hearing this, Ken's grip immediately loosened as the poisoned stick fell to the ground. He realized that he had given them a reason to destroy his village. He couldn't control his anger, and now, his entire village had to take on the consequences.
His entire body flushed in numbness and went limp as he fell to his knees.
"Ken!" Yin said, quickly coming to Ken's aide. "Are you alright? What's wrong?"
"I- I killed... I killed everyone. I ruined everything." Ken said in utter despair.
"What? No! This wasn't your fault! It was obvious that he was trying to enrage you from the start!" Yin yelled, trying to get Ken back to his senses.
However, Ken's face continued to pale.
"I couldn't control myself. I killed everyone" He kept on repeating quietly, as though he had gone insane.
So many emotions and thoughts overflowed Yin's brain, it was too much to handle. Should he get mad, and try to stop the royals from invading his village? Or should he continue to stay by Ken? He felt powerless.
The royals left without saying that day, and everyone went back to their normal lives. However, the village had stopped laughing after that day. No one interacted with each other in the streets. No one danced and partied in the night. There were no smiles on anyone's faces, just pale, despair-filled expressions wherever you looked.
No one knew whether it was intentional by the gods, but it rained for countless days after the visitation of the blonde royal and the knight, almost as if the village was crying instead of laughing.
A week passed, with the village still in darkness. The rain still falling nonstop. During the days, Ken had fallen into a horrible illness. He had to be treated by Evlin every day with a warm cloth on his forehead, and a blanket over his body. However, that wasn't what made Yin worry about him. Instead, it was the fact that Ken hadn't stopped saying those exact words since the day of the battle horn.
"I killed everyone."
In fact, he hadn't said anything else but that one phrase. It made Yin feel depressed. He felt an overbearing about of sadness at made him choke in his neck whenever he tried to say anything. The nights were filled with no sleep, in fear that the royals would invade when the village was asleep. Also because it was impossible to sleep. How could one sleep when they knew they would all suffer a devastating fate only days later?
Finally, the day of destruction came.
Yin stood up from his bed, not having slept the whole night. He had a room to himself in the orphanage. After washing his face in the dirty water in the rusty bucket, he looked at himself in the reflection of the water.
His eyes looked only half open and had large dark spots. His face was almost as pale as Ken's, and his hair was a mess.
After eating, he went to visit Ken.
He was still the same, still saying the same phrase. Still bedridden. Yin sat down on the floor a couple of feet away from where Evlin and Ken were and stared into the bamboo, dirt wall. He let out a deep sigh.
"Let's leave." He said out loud.
Evlin paused what she was doing and stopped completely. There was a long moment of silence.
"What about Ken?" She said quietly.
"I'm strong enough to carry him on my back," Yin said, clenching his jaw in affirmation.
On hearing this, tears started to flow out of her eyes and dropped onto Ken's forehead.
"Why do they have to do this to us... why can't they just let us live." She said, trying to keep herself somewhat composed as she bit and pulled down her top lip.
"We don't have much time left," Yin said. Immediately on saying this, as if on cue, the heart-wrenching sound that everyone was waiting for, yet everyone was dreading, finally sounded.
PUAWW!!