The Epic of the Discarded Son-Chapter 54: Clay Stranger

The island itself was odd. The trees were overgrown—crowded together like they were trying to keep people out on purpose. The damn things stretched so high their canopy swallowed the sky whole, turning everything underneath into a permanent twilight.

And there was this familiar feeling. Something old. It wasn’t a beast or a creature. It was coming from the island itself—the trees, the soil, the air, all of it. Like the whole place was alive and aware and had been waiting.

And what made the almost nonexistent hair on his arms stand up wasn’t the presence.

It was what happened the moment his feet hit the ground. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

It caught him. Like the earth beneath him recognized him. Like the island had been holding its breath for a long time, and he was the exhale.

Every step felt cushioned. Soft. Like the island was catching his weight before it could tire him out, carrying him forward the way a current carries a ship—not pushing, not pulling. Just guiding. Like it wanted him here.

He knelt down. Pressed his palm flat against the ground.

And the ground pressed back.

Like a reflection on water, his hand meeting its own image from the other side. The island’s mana crept into him through the soil. Slow. Warm. Ancient. It traveled up through his fingers, through his wrist, through his bones, like it had been waiting beneath the surface for someone to reach down and ask.

He froze. The world spun. He looked down and noticed he was holding someone. A man made of clay—crumbling, breaking apart in his arms, and no matter how tightly he held on, pieces kept falling. Dust between his fingers. A face dissolving. A body that wanted to stay whole but couldn’t. And he was pressing the pieces together—pushing the cracks closed, holding them shut, hoping they’d just reconnect.

’No, no, no—’

But it was no use. Too many cracks. Too many pieces already gone. And bit by bit—piece by piece—the figure crumbled away in his arms.

His eyes went wide. Something climbed up his throat—a word, a name, a scream, and died before it reached his mouth. His heart slammed against his ribs like it was trying to break out and run.

He felt a touched on his shoulder.

"Shiro my dearest friend ."

He staggered. his butt introduced itself to the dirt. They did not get along.

The vision shattered, the clay figure gone, dissolved like smoke through his fingers. His hands were empty. His feet rooted to the earth. Not figuratively. He literally couldn’t move.

Then Nora stepped forward.

Arms crossed. Foot tapping. Face puffed up like she was one second away from dragging him by the collar.

And somehow, that was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.

"C’mon. They’re going to leave us behind."

She stuck her hand out. Impatient. Like she’d done this a hundred times before.

Maybe she had.

He reached for it. The invisible roots didn’t stand a chance. They broke the moment his fingers touched hers—quiet, easy. Gone. Like they were never there.

Her hand was soft. Warmer than it had any right to be. And he held on a little longer than he needed to.

She didn’t pull away, and together they entered the thick, overgrown forest.

The deeper they went, the more uneasy he felt. The vision had been too real. The feeling clung to him like wet clothes—that sorrow, the grief of a man who had everything and lost the only thing that mattered.

That pain. He remembered it so vividly.

The feeling of something being taken that he never got to hold.

His mind was spiraling. He knew it was spiraling. Knowing didn’t stop it.

Nora noticed, like she had some kind of internal alarm wired specifically to him. She always did. Which he didn’t mind.

She pulled him closer and slipped her arm through his. And just like that—slightly better. Easy fix.

They kept walking. No direction. No map. Just forward.

And like any normal person with decent common sense, suspicion started to creep across his face.

His eyes moved to Richard, who was navigating the mapless terrain a little too naturally.

Shiro’s eyes narrowed.

’You’ve been here before, haven’t you.’

He stopped.

"So where are all the monsters? Didn’t you say this place was supposed to be filled with them?"

"Because it’s not the same island. We came here looking for something," Richard muttered, without even glancing at him.

He turned to Luca and Nora, who looked just as confused as he was. All that talk about defending the island—and they were here on vacation.

Nora shrugged, arms stretched behind her head like she’d already made peace with it. A monster-free vacation? Yeah. She wasn’t about to complain.

Luca, as always, looked careful—not because he was afraid. He just didn’t want to get his boots and clothes dirty. He stepped around a patch of wet sand like it had personally offended him, arms folded, jaw tight, scanning the ground ahead like a man walking through a minefield made of mud.

The rest of them looked focused. A bit too serious for his taste.

The walking was getting to him. It wasn’t the aimless distance, he could walk for days if he had to. It was the quiet. The kind of quiet that gave his brain way too much room to stretch out and get comfortable, and his brain, being the traitor it was, had exactly one thing it wanted to think about right now.

The clay being.

He could still feel it. The weight of something falling apart in his arms. The way the cracks had spread faster than he could close them. The grief, that was the worst part. Grief that wasn’t his but somehow was, like someone had borrowed his heart, broken it, and forgotten to give it back.

It clung to the back of his mind like smoke that refused to go away. And the longer he walked in silence, the louder it got. He couldn’t take it anymore.

He needed a distraction. Badly. Something loud or stupid enough to drown out whatever was trying to get his attention.

So he did what any reasonable, emotionally stable person would do when haunted by a vision of a crumbling clay man.

He pulled out Rei’s diary and started reading about a guy who once got chased naked through a village. Maybe one of his foolish adventures would cure him.

He started to read slowly. A chuckle here. A snort there. Eyes glued to the pages, feet barely paying attention to where they were going.

He stumbled once. Then again. Then a third time that almost sent him into a tree.

So Nora grabbed his arm—awesome as she was—and steered him like he was a blind man with a death wish.

He glanced at her once, smiled, and went back to skimming. Page after page. Rei’s advances over the last five months—mapped out in messy handwriting and scattered diagrams. He could’ve made it in three, honestly. But Rei had a tendency to get distracted. Really fast. The kind of fast where you start researching combat techniques and somehow end up spending a week cataloging seashells.

His feet moved on autopilot. Step after step, eyes never leaving the pages, until they stopped.

"Are we here?"

He looked up. It was just Nora and him. And Luca. And they were back at the ship.

He blinked.

"Wait—are we lost?"

Nora looked at him. Couldn’t help but smile, the kind that said she’d been watching him read for the last twenty minutes and found it more entertaining than the actual expedition.

Luca climbed onto the ship without a word, already getting it ready.

"So what were you reading?" she asked, curious.

"It’s a diary of a close friend." He said it simply, but his face lit up in a way it hadn’t all day. Like the pages had given him something the trip couldn’t. "I’m basically learning about him."

She gave him a look. The kind that said ’you’re getting weirdly passionate about a dead man’s diary and I don’t know what to do with that information.’

"Oh. Where did you meet him?"

Simple question. But it cracked something open in his head.

He’d never asked anyone about Rei. Not a single question. Richard had probably met the man. Ana and Darius had probably fought beside him. They were walking encyclopedias of everything Rei ever was, and Shiro hadn’t opened a single one.

And the reason was embarrassing.

He’d been too busy. Fighting. Getting jealous. Picking silent wars with people who weren’t even fighting him. Too caught up in his own head to have a normal conversation with anyone.

’Real productive, Shiro.’

’Maybe I should ask them when they get back.’

"Okay. This is going to sound insane. But just—believe me."

"Shiro, you came back from the dead. My threshold for ’insane’ is pretty high at this point."

He let out a small laugh. It didn’t quite land.

"...Yeah. Fair." He looked down at his hands. "There’s a part of it I never told anyone. Not Richard. Not Ana." He paused, grimacing slightly. "Which I’m just now realizing I probably should have. Would’ve saved me a lot of reading."

She didn’t say anything. Just waited for the main part.

"When I was dead... there was someone with me. I woke up inside a well, and there was a voice in my head. Not, like, a creepy voice. A person. And whenever I was alone down there, he kept me company. For however long it was. Days, weeks, years—I stopped counting after a while."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"You could say we were alike. Or... I might’ve picked up some of him along the way. I’m not really sure which one anymore."

He paused.

"He’s the reason I was able to come back. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know why he helped me. I don’t know anything about him, really. Except that he cared about me. A lot."

His voice cracked.

"And I never got to ask him why. And the worst part..." He swallowed. "When we parted—it broke him to let me go. He was so sad. Like he’d been waiting for me his whole life and then had to hand me back to the world and stay behind."

Nora’s hand wrapped around his.

Shiro didn’t look up right away. When he did, his eyes were steady. Tired. But steady.

"I’m going to free him from that dark, empty place. I’m going to find it, and I’m going to get him out."

She was quiet for a long moment. Just held him. Then, softly:

"So what did he write about?"

He thought for a second. Tried to find a way to say it without dragging her through the man’s entire tragic life story.

"It’s about him crossing the sea to find a girl he saw in his dreams and fell in love with."

Her eyes lit up.

Not the normal kind of lit up. This was something else. Something he’d never seen before—like every star she’d ever wished on just confirmed they were listening. She was somehow more excited than he was, and he’d been the one reading it.

"I wanna read too."

She said it the way someone says ’give me that right now’ but with manners.