Prologue (4)

The boy dragged himself to the man lying on his stomach on the floor. The boy remembered that his father never once slept on his stomach. He still recalled his preaching.

"Don't sleep on your stomach, Tar!" His father would say. "It's bad for your health!"

Tar reached over to his father's body and put his utmost strength into his twig-like arms, trying to flip his body to "the neutral position of sleeping", or so his father told him. Tar accidentally brushed his finger across his father's face. With an "ah" sound, he jumped back.

"Why you so cold, pa?" he asked his father. Why was his father not replying? He wondered. It was just yesterday that he woke his father up in the middle of the night and childishly demanded a midnight snack. Although his father was annoyed, he still steamed some clams with ginger. It was Tar's favourite! Tar's father even bragged, "only Papa's clams with ginger can be that delicious, haha! Aren't you proud of Papa's special dish, Tar? Haha!" So Tar did not understand why his father was still sleeping on the floor and not giving him a reply.

The stain on his father's pyjama caught Tar's attention. Maybe it was the sauce his father was making for his own midnight snack. "Papa is naughty! He was making midnight snack by himself!" Tar giggled to himself. "Oh, I know! The super cool man in black must have seen him hogging the food by himself and tried to stop him!"

Tar moved closer. He glanced left and right before touching the dirtied spot near his father's right shoulder. His fingers were coated with a reddish-brown liquid. He gave his surroundings another quick glance before licking his fingers. "Wait… this is…"

An event popped up in Tar's mind. A few years ago, he stole his father's dagger and played with it. Naturally, he cut himself. He cried for almost an hour because he thought he was going to bleed out. In reality, the cut was very shallow and nowhere near life threatening, but how would a child know? He frantically licked his wound, thinking that if he drank the blood, the blood would return to his body, and he would not die.

That was why Tar recognised the taste of blood.

His mind went blank. A few seconds passed, a minute passed, a few minutes passed… He did not know how long he had been sitting there beside his father's corpse. It was not until a loud scream did his thoughts return.

"Don't let that guard get away!"

"Try that room!"

Heavy footsteps started coming his way. In a panic, he jumped out of the broken window onto the grass ground. He heard a "crack" sound as he landed. The only thought he had at that time was to run as far away from there as possible, so he did not pay attention to that sound.

Tar crawled through a very small hole at the bottom of the east wall. After he crawled out, a dreadful sight awaited him. Everything was ablaze. The hut in front of him was red. The mansion he was in not long ago was red. The nearby houses were all red. It was a blinding sea of fire.

He heard people shouting at each other. He heard guards crying for help. He heard a woman yelling her child's name. Tar clutched his own chest and started panting. It felt like there was a pair of hands clamping down his lungs, not letting him breathe.

Tar may have lived in the mansion for only three years, but to him it was almost half his lifetime. His face contorted at the sight of his surroundings being engulfed in flame. With his lips trembling and his voice shaking, he let out a plead, "I want out! I want out!" He started running away from the Amber Manor.

He ran without a clear direction in mind, turning corners when he saw fire and hiding in narrow alleyways when he saw people.

Suddenly, Tar felt a sharp pain in his left leg. He tried rubbing his leg but it only exacerbated the pain. It came to him that he broke his leg when he jumped down from the second floor of the mansion, and the delayed pain was due to the adrenaline rush. After a few more steps, he lost his balance and rolled over down the hill. The soft grass on the slope of the hill provided cushion for him so he only suffered from minor scratches when rolling down.

As Tar rolled further, he reached the end of the slope and his chest hit the hard stone wall of a house. It was after that he lost consciousness.