"Ah, you're here. Your siblings are safe, no one came near them. That's not true for the outpost anymore." Teike appeared in front of Kamu when the boy got close enough to the place where he had hidden his siblings. "Hey kid, is everything okay? Where did you leave your father?" The questions came, but Kamu simply hurried past the ghost. "Whoa, not so fast, what happened?" Teike turned after the child, but the boy didn't pay attention to him.
"I'm back." Kamu spoke in front of the tree and when his two siblings stuck their heads out of the den, he hugged them tightly.
"Dad, where is he?" Kele asked.
"Dad?" Keche blinked hard too, before Kamu's gaze became completely serious.
"Dad isn't coming back to us anymore." He said slowly so as not to scare his siblings.
"What?" Kele blurted out. "Kamu what happened?" He asked, but got no answer.
"Teike!" Kamu turned his head to the side to look at the ghost, who then appeared in front of the other two children.
"Yes?" He asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Put them to sleep." That was enough for the boy to say, when the ghost looked at his siblings, they fell into a deep sleep.
"So, will you finally tell me what happened?" The ancestor of the Teike family folded his arms in front of him.
"He called the attackers here." Kamu's hands clenched into fists.
"Who?" The ghost asked.
"He called them here and wanted to kill us. I couldn't let him. I had no other choice." Kamu continued, as if Teike hadn't even spoken, and at the last sentence he literally burst into tears. "I had no other choice." He repeated before sniffing and wiping away his tears, just as Teike approached him to try to calm the boy down.
"My condolences." He finally said and nodded.
"That man was no longer my father, my father died when my mother died." The boy took a deep breath. "Teike, I want my siblings to forget what our father became after our mother died. I want them to remember him as a good and loving father. Can that be done?" He asked with determination in his eyes.
"Of course, but it will take a few hours for all their memories to be rewritten." Teike's ghost said to him.
"Then what are we waiting for? Tell me what should I do?" Little Kamu asked, to which the ghost just smiled.
"Come on." He waved, then knelt down next to the two sleeping children and placed them as comfortably as possible on the ground.
"How can you touch them?" Kamu asked, which made Teike giggle.
"I am the ghost king." He looked up at the boy with the brown eyes that were typical of the Teike family, instead of the usual orange-darkness-like ghost eyes.
"Are you human?" Little Kamu's eyes widened.
"Just for tonight. Well, come help me draw the summoning circle. You need to draw the outermost part so that the incantation connects to you." Teike explained as he held up his hand so that Kamu could put the small bag of sand he used to draw summoning circles in it. When this was done, Teike leaned over the two sleeping children and right next to them began to draw a strange summoning circle dotted with letters completely unknown to Kamu.
"What kind of language is this?" The boy asked, when his curiosity could no longer take it.
"A language forgotten a long, long time ago." Teike smiled faintly, then stood up, dusted his knees and gave the small bag back to Kamu. "Your turm! Draw the outermost part of a summoning rune, make the seven cardinal points seal." He said simply, to which Kamu slowly nodded and, opening the mouth of the bag, bent down to the summoning circle that had already been drawn to finish it.
When the circle was completely closed, the two children lying inside were covered in a faint dark blue light, as if they were sparking from within. Kamu watched the events with wide, astonished eyes. Teike nodded with his arms folded in front of him and a satisfied smile on his lips.
"Perfect. Now we just have to wait." He noted, then looked up at the sky. "It should be finnished around sunrise. The summoning circle will disappear on its own as time passes and when they wake up they won't remember the past two years the way they did before." He explained, then turned to Kamu, who simply walked back towards the outpost. "Hey, kid, what are you doing?" He called after him, and Kamu stopped but didn't turn back.
"They want to kill Athira. Athira is the daemon king's favorite. And the daemon king is your friend. I won't let them do it." Kamu declared, not accepting any contradiction.
"Be careful. Use the Shadow World's energy to sense where they are. You will be alone against them. You can only rely on the power of surprise. I will watch out for your siblings." Teike said. "Good luck." He noted it again.
"Thank you." Kamu paused here, then looked back at his relative. "For everything." He finished the sentence, but Teike just waved.
"Come back alive and you won't be in my debt." He smiled faintly, then turned back to the two sleeping children.
And Kamu took to the now well-known forest. The closer he got to the outpost, the stronger the smell of smoke became. And when he reached where the furthest tents should have been, he could see why such a smell was wafting through the forest. The outpost, the place that had been his home, was in flames. And beyond the flames, he saw a group of about ten people.
The boy was better with a sword and dagger than a bow in his entire life, so he sneaked around the outpost as unnoticed as he could to get closer to the strangers. At that moment, the attackers decided to look around again to see if they could find any survivors they needed to destroy. And little Kamu took advantage of the fact that the group had split up among the tents of the outpost.
A strange calm settled over him, it was as if he knew exactly what to do, when to hide, when to appear, when to throw his weapon, where to strike, he knew everything. And so the attackers slowly fell one by one in front of him. Kamu, who seemed like a small black shadow among the small flames, executed one by one those who had taken his life and those he loved.
After the last attacker fell face down in the dust with wide eyes, Kamu put away his weapons. So far, only smoking stumps remained from the outpost camp, with dead bodies among them. The boy did not look back when he left the place to gather his siblings. The forest became silent again and when the boy returned to the hollow tree, the summoning circle in which his siblings lay was no longer there, and the children hugged each other with tears. Teike looked at them sadly again in ghost form.
"Kamu! Kamu! Where is father?" Keche asked as she ran to her brother and hugged him.
"With mother. He saved us." Kamu said sadly.
"What should we do now, Kamu?" Kele asked, walking over to his brother.
"Dad said before he..." Kamu swallowed hard. "He said we should wait for Athira and he'll look after us." The boy said seriously, to which his twin nodded.
"Then we have to go back to the outpost, right?" Kele swallowed hard.
"That would be best." Kamu agreed, as he picked up his sister from the ground and headed back towards the outpost.
"And what happened after that?" Citar asked centuries later, almost lying on the table.
"We met Athira." Kamu shrugged.
"A completely destroyed outpost with three survivors. Nothing like that happened before." Razvan also noted.
"As he says, and it never happened after that." Kamu yelled, then placed his hand on his stomach. "Hm... I think we'll take a break now. I'm starving!" He chuckled. "After all, I haven't eaten a bite in a hundred years."