Leaving his house at dawn, he made his way to the southern exit of the village.
After a short walk through the old wooden huts he had seen everyday since he was a child, he arrived at the exit.
For as long as North could remember, their village had been surrounded by rows and rows of wooden walls, like a fortress.
These wooden walls, about four meters high, consisted of two rows of wood as thick as a grown man's waist, nailed together and tied with vines.
They gave the villagers a sense of security and protected them from the raids of hungry herds of animals.
However, the main purpose of building such imposing walls was to protect against disasters, not against such rare events.
As he approached the gate at the exit of the village, North's face fell when he saw two guards near the gate, which was normally unguarded.
North, who had been living in this dangerous world for years, had bad feelings about why there were guards, but he moved towards the gate without thinking about them.
As he got to the door, one of the seniors with a big scar on his face stopped North. "Hello, son, long time no see, where are you going?"
"My sister is ill, so I'm going south to look for some herbs." North replied, and both men were stunned, looking at him with puzzled expressions.
After a brief silence, the other senior said, "Son, I hope you're not planning to spend the night out. As you know, yesterday was the third month since the last disaster."
The other scarred senior said, "Yes, brother Dior is right, and I don't know if you have noticed, but it seems as if the sounds of birds and monsters have suddenly diminished today. It wasn't like that yesterday." He responded to North.
Hearing this, Senior Dior shuddered slightly, feeling uncomfortable. His initial cold-blooded calm expression was replaced by a sullen face and a frown.
North reacted similarly. A deep frown covered his cold, emotionless face, as if he wanted to stop the approaching person. And he looked away as if thinking about something.
After a short silence, he said,"Son, we all know what this means. Disaster is coming if you spend the night out and at dawn..." Looking into North's eyes, the senior named Derek, who had a scar on his face, interrupted his sentence.
There was something strange about this boy that he hadn't understood since he first saw him.
He had no idea what it was, but every time he looked at the boy's deep black eyes and cold, alienating face, he felt as if he was about to freeze. A vast and deep feeling filled him.
North's mother had died giving birth to him, and his father had died in a disaster when he was young.
They had said ominous things about North, such as "This child has no one left in this world, I'm afraid he will follow his parents."
In fact, they had been right. how could a little orphan boy survive in this cruel world when he had no power to do anything. Derek had thought the same thing when he heard that the boy's father had died, until he saw North for the first time.
He couldn't forget the first time he had seen North limping through the village gate, a dead horned mountain rabbit in one hand, a dagger covered in frozen blood in the other, and tattered clothes.
He would remember that boy, covered in wounds and blood, with those sharp, deep, sea-black eyes and a cold expression, who had walked only by looking where he was going, perhaps until the day he died.
The same thing happened today. Derek was interrupted by the boy who, with a similar expression on his face, was only looking south towards his destination.
As Derek was thinking all this, the silence was suddenly broken by North, who said, "So be it if disaster comes at dawn," and moved to pass through the gate and leave the village.
Surprised by this action, Dior, one of the two seniors, stepped forward to stop North and shouted at him, "Stop, son, have you never listened to us?" Hearing this, he stopped and turned to look at the seniors.
"Leave him alone, he has already made up his mind, you can't change it," Derek interrupted. "You know, son, when the disaster approaches, we have to check the belongings of those entering and leaving the village." He looked North in the eyes.
After a short period of silence, North reached for the sturdy canvas bag on his back, untied the tie that bound it across his back, and lowered it to the ground.
He undid the tie that tightened the mouth of the bag, reached inside, and pulled out the contents one by one.
First, he took out a small axe, similar to a throwing axe, then a knife, a dagger, and some arrowheads, and finally some dry grass to make a fire and some animal skins and fat wrapped in a small cloth he had brought for food.
He didn't touch the long bow and quiver of arrows strapped to his back.
After dumping everything in the bag on the ground, he looked up at the senior as if waiting for an answer.
After Derek said, "okey no problem, have a good hunt, hope you get what you want and come back safe and sound, son."
Leaving the dagger outside, North put all his belongings back in the bag, then tied the bag tightly around his waist, took the dagger in his right hand, gave the seniors one last look, turned, and walked out of the village gate.
The area between the village and the South forest was much more dangerous in the pre-disaster period.
During this time, when the weaker predators were quieter and the stronger ones became more aggressive and hunted more, North had to travel a quarter of a day through the predator areas.
Hush.. hush..
Hush.. hush..
Walking at a steady pace, neither speeding up nor slowing down, North seemed nonchalant, but in fact, he was looking intently at the bushes, rocks, woods, and snowfields surrounding the road, as if a predator might leap out at any moment.
With his ear tuned to the sounds around him, he crossed the slightly less dangerous part of the road in the span of three incense sticks.
When he reached the most dangerous part of the road, which was mostly flat and hilly with large and small hillocks, North, whose footsteps stopped, raised his head slightly and looked up at the clear sky and the sun.
He slowly inhaled the cold air with a deep breath, then crouched down and stabbed the dagger in his hand into the snow.
He untied one of the small pieces of fabric tied around his arms over his clothes and tied it to the hilt of his dagger to increase its grip.
He took the dagger and tucked it into the cloth that was tied around his waist like a belt to cover his clothes.
Standing slowly, he placed his right hand on the hilt of his dagger and entered the hilly-flat area with full attention.
This area of small snow-covered hills might have looked harmless from the outside, but it actually harbored dangers.
While behind the small hills was the perfect ambush place for hunters, the fact that there were hills everywhere made the situation more dangerous and made even experienced hunters reluctant to enter this area.
However, this was the only way North could get from his village to the South forest in a short time.
After entering this area, he walked a little faster, and as he looked around, he occasionally saw some animal traces and became nervous, but after realizing that they did not belong to large predators or predators moving in packs, his nervousness partially abated and he continued on his way.
Towards noon, as the forest appeared on the horizon, he approached the end of the danger zone.
He was in good spirits, he hadn't encountered any predators along the way, although his face didn't show it.
However, just as he reached the end of the zone, he noticed a red stain on the snow in a nearby clear area.
Cautiously approaching the place and looking around, he realized, with surprise and then nervousness, that a human and a group of predators had recently fought here.
While having predators around was a problem, in this world where anyone could kill each other for supplies, encountering a stranger outside the safe zone was the most dangerous situation.
Taking a deep breath and looking around, he realized that in the struggle between the predators and the human, the predators and the human met and went in different directions.
While the human lost blood and moved towards the forest, the predators strangely left the wounded enemy and moved in the opposite direction.
His eyebrows furrowed deeply, he didn't seem pleased that there was a person going in the same direction as him.
'I wonder if it is one of the pointy-eared ones...' he thought as he moved towards the forest, his full attention on his surroundings.
Reaching the forest as the sun reached its zenith, North gasped as he saw the massive trees reaching into the sky a few hundred paces away, seemingly as close and imposing as if they were right in front of him.
With a strange gleam in his deep sea-black eyes, he looked at the forest, tightened his grip on the dagger he had drawn from his belt on the way, took a deep breath, and approached to enter the forest.