Heartless - Chapter 15：The Story of How I Came To Be (Part 1)

Ever since my awakening, I’ve had to leave all my friends and family as it kept them safe and it kept me safe as well. And so I was sent to take care of this forest, becoming its keeper.

To be a keeper, one mustn’t have any emotions that might interfere with the keeping of the forest as it wasn’t just any forest; or as the rules Death created said. And so came the visions in my sleep of all the accumulated misery that the underworld has kept. Perhaps it wouldn’t have affected me as much if I had a companion to share the burden’s with, though that was most likely the reason I didn’t have one.

Back when the world believe in magic and the fountain of youth, this forest was thought to contain such a fountain, the fountain of immortality.

Those claims weren’t baseless of course, for there was a fountain within this forest it just wasn’t as glorious as what they believed it to be.

Hidden within this forest was the fountain of Death. A fountain created by Death’s tears when she lost a dear friend. Whoever drank from it, would of course achieve immortality only after they died.

Such came a point in time when many travellers would journey through mountains for a single sip of the spring. Being the humans they were, they fought with each other, wanting to be the only one to drink from it.

As time wore on, the rumors of the spring lost its wonder after many kept growing older even if they drank from the spring. It was only after they died did they realize that it did in fact grant immortality, but only in death.

As they cheated death, they had to pay a price. That price was never being able to reincarnate. Because of that price, they were even more unwilling to ‘die’. In their fear of dying a second time, they abided by the rules that nature placed on them. It wasn’t long however, before they forgot about that price however and started to become reckless as many did.

Their insatiable hunger for the living that they kept in control was unleashed, causing massacres all over the world.

As the one at fault, Death was made to do something about this mess. In the end, she imprisoned them within the forest that created them. So they had lived miserably, unable to die and unable to live with an insatiable hunger driving them.

As an extra measure of protection, I was sent to keep the vampires in the forest and so came my name, ‘Keeper’.