Following Mathilda's gaze moving across the sky, he suddenly sucked in a breath of cold air. His entire body, or rather the entire herd of horses, was dumbstruck. It was as though he had witnessed all the horrors of the starry sky. Mathilda's four legs seemed to be nailed to the ground, unable to move an inch. He lowered his head and shook it forcefully. His surroundings flashed by, the familiar environment of his home and the plants in full bloom seemed to have turned into poison in his eyes. Unwilling to give up, he raised his head again.
Layers upon layers of fear enveloped him – the stars in the sky were not in their original positions.
A sudden feeling of falling, and hearing a familiar yet foreign shriek, Mathilda woke up. He felt his face was wet, and when he opened his eyes, he realised he had unknowingly fainted on the ground in the muddy water. The memory of the strange starry sky and the decaying stench in the air filled this centaur chieftain's heart with vigilance and unease.
Mathilda quickly flipped over and used both his hands and hooves to stand up. He raised his head to look at the sky again, only to discover that it was shrouded in a thick fog and he could not see anything. Unable to observe the stars, this centaur felt as though a part of his life was being cut off. Helpless, he could only focus on what was in front of him. Only now did he feel his limbs stiffening, but his attention was already on his surroundings.
Unlike before, the horseman settlement not far away that was terrifyingly silent made Mathilda feel that something was wrong. Beside his tent, there were traces of horse hooves dragging on the ground. From the traces, it seemed like a centaur was dragged into the nearby star lake. He walked a few steps towards the lake, but the sense of danger made him stop immediately.
Feeling uneasy, Mathilda lifted up the flap of his tent and went in, only to discover that everything in his tent had been overturned. Mathilda did not care about the treasures and various idols and emblems of the centaur gods, instead he directly retrieved the bow and spear that he had not used for a long time after becoming the chieftain.
Armed with the courage brought by his weapon, Mathilda attempted to summon his tribesmen and walked towards the Star Lake. However, he did not receive any response or discovery. He could only walk towards the gathering place of his tribe. However, not long after he heard the sound of his horse's hooves, he shuddered and was speechless. The centaur tribe that he had spent countless efforts to build and was proud of had turned into a pile of rotten ruins. The only thing that greeted him was the desolate land and gray mist. The originally verdant grassland had withered and turned into a charred land. A dull grey fog wandered in this withered and deathly still forest.
Enduring the grief in his heart, Mathilda called out the names of his tribesmen in vain. Suddenly, the sound of a horse's hooves made him pause. His gaze stopped at a mirror that he had stepped on. This mirror was the beloved treasure of the most popular little mare in the tribe, 'Beautiful Ebony'. This mirror was a gift from the little witch Hufflepuff who had entered the Forbidden Forest by mistake. Even the angry centaur Ben had turned a blind eye to this and didn't say anything to her.
Mathilda picked up the mirror that he had stepped on and saw something on his face. Mathilda subconsciously brought the mirror closer to himself to take a closer look. He was shocked to discover that there seemed to be a stitched scar on his face. It was black, like a reptile, and was lying on his left cheek.
He touched the scar and carefully examined it. Suddenly, he discovered that thin black lines had started to appear on his chin and forehead, even the back of his hand. These thin lines were rapidly spreading. Mathilda was so frightened that he threw the mirror away and took a few steps back. He could only feel his scalp going numb.
Mathilda, whose thoughts were in a mess, was pulled back to his senses by the itchy scars. The itchy pain made his hair stand on end. In a trance, he realized that the scars on his hand seemed to have moved a little. He stretched out his right hand and trembled as he approached the scar on his left arm.
But at this moment, the scar split open, revealing the thing inside. It was not flesh and blood, but an eyeball. The eyeball was as pale as a dead person's and was even rolling in the murky white of the eyeball. It stared at Mathilda, and the other scars began to split open one after another. The feeling it brought made him know that it was still happening.
A tide of madness and pain enveloped Mathilda. He jumped away from the mirror on the ground. Cold sweat dripped into his eyes. The tingling sensation instantly occupied his nerves. His uneasy heart beat faster and faster. But in the blink of an eye, it disappeared, including his scar and the eyeball in the scar.
These nightmarish scenes corroded Mathilda's thoughts. His mind gradually became chaotic to the point where he felt like he was going to lose his mind and go crazy. But in the end, these emotions turned into despair, causing him to unconsciously wander around the tribe that he was once so familiar with.
The sky above his head had already completely darkened. Shadows surrounded him, as if the light around him was slowly being sucked away. Following the dimming of the light, the summer air became especially cold under the effects of the dense fog.
After an unknown amount of time, Mathilda saw the vague figure of a centaur within the gray fog. It was like seeing an oasis in the desert. Mathilda who was filled with hope immediately leaped towards the centaur.
But before he could even get close, Mathilda froze in place in fright. The words of help were choked in his throat. The pain in his heart was unbearable. That was Ronan who he had interacted with for many years. His face had already rotted and emitted a foul stench. Mathilda could only recognize his identity from his accessories and the remaining hair.
Soon after, he attempted to walk towards the Hogwarts to ask for help. But he discovered that no matter how he turned, he was unable to walk out of this forbidden forest. Even if the Hogwarts' castle was not far away, even if he could hear Aura's conversation when he was the closest, he just couldn't walk over. He couldn't reach the place that his eyes could see. A vague, indescribable fear enveloped Mathilda.
And as he continued to walk, he discovered that there were more corpses of his clansmen on the ground. He realized that he was trapped here. He was trapped in this completely dead world. It was a barren world covered in ashes, filled with ruins and corpses.
Soon after, Mathilda began to run towards the Star Lake. He wanted to rely on the power of the Star Lake to perform divination and find out what happened. He had already subconsciously chosen to ignore the fact that there were no longer any stars in the sky.
But when Mathilda ran to the Star Lake beside his tent, he discovered to his horror that the lake that was still rippling with light when he first left, was now only a dried up riverbed. The entire body of water had disappeared without a trace, and on this dried up riverbed, there were only fishes of different sizes that used to live here. Just like the centaur chieftain, these fishes were constantly panting in despair, desperately swinging their tails in an attempt to escape from their predicament.
Suddenly, a fish on the riverbed flew towards the sky. When Mathilda raised his head to look, even more fish were falling towards the sky.
The reason why it was called falling was because it was as if heaven and earth had turned upside down. The original centaur's favorite place to perform divination was now occupied by a body of water. From the color of the lake, this body of water was clearly the Star Lake that had disappeared without a trace.
Just as Mathilda was faced with a terrifying spectacle that didn't belong to this world, his spirit and body began to tremble. Those turbulent torrents in the sky began to press down on him.
The entire centaur tribe was engulfed, Mathilda was also slapped into the water. The water pressure wasn't as strong as he had expected, but the occasional pain from his body still made him futilely use his hands to block his face, preventing the surrounding debris from smashing into his head.
After waiting for the water to calm down a little, he who had already choked on a few mouthfuls of water and was washed to the bottom of the Star Lake, desperately paddled his six limbs in an attempt to reach the surface. With great difficulty, he finally emerged from the surface of the lake. Mathilda laid on the shore of the lake and violently gasped for breath for a few seconds. Only then did he have the energy to observe the situation. The scenery above the lake was different from what he had imagined, it was still the same desolate centaur tribe that he had seen when he had just woken up.
Not far from Mathilda's tent, there was a living centaur whose limbs were stiff and paralyzed on the ground, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Mathilda judged from the other's undulating belly that he was still alive. He struggled to crawl up from the mud by the shore and approached the centaur. But as he neared, the familiar yet foreign aura on the other's body made him increasingly uneasy and alarmed. Finally, these alarmed feelings turned into reality — — the one who had fainted on the ground was himself.
Just as Mathilda recognized him, the scars that appeared when he looked in the mirror appeared out of thin air on the other party's body, and all of them involuntarily opened. The pupils in those eyeballs all turned and stared at Mathilda.
Following that, a loud noise sounded from behind, a massive black mass that seemed to be unstoppable rushed out from the Star Lake, red light roaring within.
"Momoran? Ahhh!!! "
Mathilda who had just recognized what this was, his voice turned into a shriek. He was instantly wrapped up by tentacles formed from black fog, and started to drag him towards the lake.
The black substance rapidly wrapped around his entire body, Mathilda powerlessly used his hooves to dig into the mud in an attempt to resist. But soon after, he realized that the hoofprints left behind by the centaur that was dragged into the black lake were left by himself. The immense shock caused him to lose his rationality and forget to resist. In the end, under the drag of the black substance, he was instantly swallowed by the Star Lake. The surging water splashed in all directions, splashing onto Mathilda's face who was paralyzed on the shore … …
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