Enigma of Sin

Upon spotting the unconscious infant in his arms, Kayn immediately tried to use his diagnostic spell Void Eye on her to check her condition thoroughly. However, all he got back was extreme pain coming from his mana core. Being determined to know his sister's condition, he decided to just do a physical checkup.

As he expected, Lara was extremely dehydrated and malnourished. Otherwise, she was still breathing, but wasn't waking up.

Kayn had done all of this while leaning slightly in a sitting position in the hole that he was in. Upon fully sitting up, Kayn felt pain running all across his back, his shoulder blade area felt like it had been ripped open and any slight movements would break the scab he was able to feel after reaching back.

Examining his surroundings, Kayn noticed a long trail that stretched for at least a hundred meters (328') in the ground all leading to where he was currently sitting. It was no wonder his back hurt so much if he had scrapped across the ground for all that length.

He once again tried to use his mana in order to generate some water for Lara and himself, but was met with the same result. Extreme pain stemming from his man core. He couldn't even reach out to the environment to use the surrounding mana to try and condense the moisture in the air.

It seemed like his entire body was screaming at him that it was exhausted and any attempts to use mana were futile. Thinking about it like that, he realized just how exhausted he truly felt. It only occurred to him then that he wasn't truly sleeping during that time. His body was constantly moving and using mana, while his mind was running in circles in the mindscape.

In the end, he was tired, he was in pain, he was thirsty, he didn't know where he was, he also didn't know what to do for his sister. His situation seemed hopeless.

When this thought ran across his mind, the memories of what led to all of this flooded in. Holding Lara in one arm, he leaned to the side and began to dry heave as a wave of nausea overtook him, but he had nothing to throw up.

At this point he began to sob and cradled Lara in his arms while rocking her back and forth. He started to murmur a song to himself while beginning to cry, not even singing all of the words.

"Hush little baby *hic* don't you cry, everything's gonna be alright."

"Stiffen up that upper lip *hic* I'll hold you through the night."

"I know Mama's not here right now, but I promise *hic*" Kayn couldn't finish his sentence as he couldn't stop his crying.

All of the sudden, he felt like a warm and gentle touch was caressing his head and words entered his ears, "It's all up to you now Kayn, take care of her in our stead."

It was clearly his mother's voice that he heard, but he knew that wasn't possible. He couldn't help but think he was going a little crazy, but it was what he needed to hear to clear his thoughts up a little bit and build some determination to get moving.

Kayn wiped his tears and nose with the back of his hand before removing the remainders of his shirt that had been completely torn off in the back. He didn't have enough strength to rip the fabric, so he had to remove it sleeve by sleeve while shifting his sister back and forth.

Luckily, his pants were in somewhat of a better state as they only had tears here and there and the bottoms were gone, but at least they covered him a little. That was the only article of clothing that was useful though, as even his boots were nowhere to be seen.

Using the scraps of his shirt and the original baby carrying cloth, he wrapped his little sister up as if the two materials were blankets. While it wasn't exactly cold outside, he didn't know how many days she had been exposed to the elements.

Kayn couldn't help but worry since she hadn't made a sound even after all this time, he only knew she was alive through her inconsistent breathing. He knew he had to move, he had to find somewhere he could get nourishment for Lara.

Kayn forced himself to stand up and began to look around the area. He couldn't find his bag anywhere. In the short scene he saw that it was still around his shoulders while he was flying though. Thinking along this line of thought, he backtracked the crash zone to where he found the initial impact.

Flung off to the side was his bag, luckily fully intact. He figured that he must have thrown it off while turning around to hold Lara tighter when his back impacted with the ground.

Kayn couldn't help but marvel at the durability of the bag he had received as a gift for officially becoming an adult in this world. But thinking about it caused tears to trickle down his face as he thought of his father again.

Just thinking about his family and their loving smiles brought both joy and sorrow to his heart. He wouldn't again be able to argue or fight with his sister, wouldn't get beaten to a pulp while training with his father, and most of all wouldn't be able to feel the warm embrace of his mother. Kayn had to forcefully shake the thoughts out of his head.

'First things first.' Kayn thought as he once again looked down at his little sister in his embrace.

Picking up the bag and placing it on his back one strap at a time turned out to be a lot more painful than Kayn thought it would be. After walking for a while, Kayn could feel a warm liquid running down his back.

The bag was constantly rubbing against the wounded areas of his back and most of all continuously applied friction to the open wounds around his shoulder blades. His back was constantly being aggravated, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it at this time as he still wasn't able to use his mana.

Kayn was worried about meeting with a rune beast while he was trying to find water or somewhere with people. All around him was a tall forest, and he couldn't use mana currently nor did he have a weapon. He didn't even know what time of day it was as he hadn't been conscious long enough to observe the movements of the sun.

Kayn knew that being patient in this situation and figuring out a proper direction was important, but he needed to at least find water for Lara. He could only pick a direction and hope it brought him somewhere useful.

Looking up at the sun's position in the sky, he chose the direction that he thought would be west. He needed to go to the Mancean Empire's capital in the end anyway, and it was in the west.

Steeling his determination, if only for his sister's sake, he began trudging forward. He wanted nothing more than to rest and sleep, but he knew that he couldn't and just had to continue walking step by step until he found some sort of solace.

…

Hours passed and the sun had set long ago. Fortunately for Kayn, his vision was excellent and the moon was full tonight. Kayn was lucky in that the direction he assumed was west, was indeed west.

Even after all these hours, he still couldn't use any mana. This was starting to worry him as he didn't know what had happened or if he would ever be able to use it again. He was hopeful that a proper rest would return him to his normal state, but he couldn't rest until he helped Lara somehow.

As he continued walking, he came to a point where the forest stopped and beyond it looked to be land used for crops as it was tilled and organized. The harvest season had ended not that long ago, so it was understandable that nothing was growing currently.

Kayn hurriedly looked around the entire area outside of the forest, and shortly after found exactly what he had been looking for, a small house. There was even light flickering out from one of the windows he could see from his spot, indicated that there should be some people there.

While he was worried since he had more bad experiences with random strangers than good ones, he could only wish with all his heart that they were kind people who would take pity on his sister and himself.

After walking across the fields and approaching the house, he heard the muffled sounds of a crying child. Kayn's eyes lit up at this point, if there was a child, maybe just maybe the mother was still nursing!

Thus, he began to knock on the door softly enough to not startle them into thinking he was a threat, but loud and quick enough to alert them that he needed help.