Alex set the bag containing the corpse down onto the ground.
A clanking sound rang out as he once again poured the bones inside it out; the segments of bleached white bone rolled about on the surface of the old wooden floor. He exercised his wrists and ankles a little to drive away the fatigue, then the teenager walked over to the table, carefully embracing Elias's skull.
Having gained experience from the previous time, Alex very quickly returned these segments of bone to their old positions; every single joint was reconnected with precision. Afterward, a familiar red light flashed from deep within the empty eye sockets, the skeleton began to possess vitality, and an invisible stream of energy ran along the spinal column.
After a moment of panic, resembling someone who had just woken up from a long nightmare, Elias's consciousness recovered.
"We meet again, Alex." He clearly also did not expect such a thing to happen; the voice resounded directly inside the boy's head, carrying a trace of weariness that was difficult to detect.
In the moment the skeleton had shattered earlier, Elias had lost his entire consciousness. Darkness had enveloped his soul, causing Elias to fall once again into the cold, empty world of nothingness just as before.
Alex had saved Elias once again, pulling him back from the realm of death.
"Why is it like this?" The teenager raised his head, looking at the tall skeleton that appeared no different from before, standing toweringly in the middle of the cramped room.
He could emit sound and move flexibly, yet he shattered immediately when intending to leave, turning into useless bone fragments on the ground.
"I don't know," Elias said truthfully, his pitch-black eye sockets looking intently at the teenager. "Perhaps, it is because you saved me, so my existence right now is bound to you."
"Alex, can I ask you to recall carefully? Before you awakened me, what exactly happened?" Elias judged that for such a bizarre situation to occur just now, there was certainly a connection linked by ten thousand threads to Alex, the person who had unintentionally become his anchor in this world.
"I was running away." Alex furrowed his brows, chaotic memories rushing back, and he began to recall the events that transpired before meeting Elias.
At that time, white mist had wrapped around the surroundings, and his vision was obscured. In a moment of life and death, he had heartbrokenly thrown his only gold coin toward the monster.
"I used my final gold coin, hoping I could buy a path to life, but that guy was completely unaffected. He still rushed forward, and I thought I was about to die."
"After that..." Alex recalled, his forehead beaded with cold sweat. At that time, he was too terrified, his heart beating as if it wanted to burst out of his chest, and the memories he recalled were all intermittent like fragments of a broken mirror. In the extreme fear when the reaper's scythe was at his neck, he seemed to have turned toward a nameless deity, uttering the most desperate prayer.
Perhaps, it was precisely this sound of prayer that had pierced through the screen of mist and attracted Elias's attention.
"I prayed to a god," Alex said, his voice trembling slightly.
"Which one?" Elias asked, his tone becoming serious.
The teenager shook his head, his expression confused. "I don't have a specific religious belief, and my family isn't devout, so there was no specific direction. I just begged God to save me; anyone would do."
No specific direction.
Elias's heart sank. That meant the prayer was like a radio signal broadcast everywhere. Any god could hear Alex's prayer, whether it was the noble Main Gods, the powerful Angels, or the malicious Evil Gods; as long as They wanted to, all existences had the ability to intervene.
"You responded to me, didn't you?" Alex could not think it through. He raised his head to look at Elias with eyes full of hope, but due to the limitations of the bare white skeletal appearance, Alex could not see his expression and could not judge what this Angel was actually thinking at this moment.
The intentions of the gods could not be casually guessed; that was the unwritten rule of this world.
A majestic voice suddenly resounded in his head, reminding Alex that at this moment, he was offending the dignity of the divine.
Alex realized his offense and hurriedly withdrew his curious thoughts, bowing his head lower.
*It wasn't me.*
Elias remained silent, thinking about that moment. Because he had faced the Evil God directly and was cursed, his power sealed, he had fallen into an endless void at that time, having absolutely no strength to listen to or respond to anyone's prayer.
"What happened after that?"
"After that?" Alex continued, trying to string the events together. "After that, I saw you fall from high above. I wanted to run, but I tripped over a tree root, and I bled a lot..." Bled a lot; the sticky sensation and the strong metallic smell still haunted him.
Alex realized a point that had always been overlooked and hurriedly lowered his head to look down at his legs. Under the old coat that reached his thighs, the teenager's two slender, pale white calves were exposed to the cold air.
But that bleeding wound had disappeared, the skin smooth as if it had never been injured. He seemed to still clearly remember the pain of tearing flesh, but not a single trace of the wound remained.
"Strange." Alex pulled his shirt up higher, turning his leg to check. He searched carefully for half a day, yet still did not discover a single trace of a scar or bruise. "It disappeared."
He raised his head, his eyes full of doubt. "I remember I tripped and fell, tore my leg, and bled a lot, dyeing the ground red."
Elias understood Alex's meaning; this matter was becoming increasingly complicated.
He squatted down, bone rubbing against bone, emitting a dry clicking sound in the quiet space.
"The wound was on the leg?"
"It must have been on the leg." Alex looked at Elias, using his hand to measure the position on his left calf, describing the memory. "Around here, a rather long and deep cut, blood gushing out ceaselessly."
In actual perception, the wound in Alex's mouth did not exist, but Elias did not doubt the teenager's words. Intuition told him that the memory was real; furthermore, he had roughly understood the current situation through the scattered clues.
Alex's prayer had indeed been heard by a certain deity. He used His immense power to break through space, sending Elias, who was being cursed, to that nameless small forest at exactly the crucial moment.
And Alex bore a strange mark that coincided with injuring his leg right at the place where Elias fell, and it coincided that his fresh blood dripped onto the Angel of War—the one who held the authority over the fires of war and fresh blood—unintentionally activating some ancient blood contract.