Reincarnated as the Fated Villain

Chapter 20: The Great Seven Kingdoms

🇦​🇺​🇹​🇭​🇴​🇷​'🇸​ 🇳​🇴​🇹​🇪​:
I'd like to thank joahnadc for the commissioned sketch of map. I mistakenly told her to emphasize the separate territories of the kingdoms so she drew it like that. It's my fault, I didn't clarified it.
Sorry about that! But I love the drawing so much!
I'll do my best to find time to edit the map soon and put up the labels on it.
For now, let's continue with the story.

NO EDITING DONE YET.

(Resuming with Aerra's point of view. )

💠
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Chapter 20: The Great Seven Kingdoms

I wearily opened my eyes.

And at that instance, a blinding light challenged my focus that wavered unsteadily.

I took a deep breath and rubbed at my eyes, almost gasping, a hurried attempt to remind my body of its dire need of air.

My body feels like I'm floating...

Where am I?

When I manage to peel my eyes open, adjusting to the brightness, I began to look around and found myself standing in the middle of a dusty sunny desert where the sand dunes and vast fields of hazy mirage from the heat, almost as though water exist over the surface, stretched across the horizons.

The wind blew as the sands and dusts billowed like a rolled out carpet of smoke.

This place... looks strangely familiar, I thought, with one hand up to shade my eyes from the bright sunlight blasting at me.

"What is it?"

Huh? Who spoke just now?

I turned around and saw a silhouette of a man standing ahead of me. Dust screen covered my view of him and all I could do is gaped at him, hopeful and patient to await for the wind to blow and clear the dusts.

"We can't stop now.
We need to keep walking..."

His voice is low and husky, a sound that seems thick to my ears like a whisper in the night; a hauntingly familiar tune nagging at the back of my head. It's awfully familiar.

I opened my lips to talk but my voice is lost.

"What's wrong?" the man began to walk back now, heading towards where I stood still as though my feet had been cemented in place. My eyes screwed open in anticipation as he took one step after another, drawing closer and closer.

I glared as though it was a challenge. I want to see him. I want to see his face.

This place is familiar and so is his voice, but I can't seem to remember and it plagued me more as I tried harder to recall.

Who are you?

And when the curtain of dust began to slowly settle down, with him— just few steps away from my reach, the wind blew violently against me from all direction. It howled and pushed at me, slapping like a whip and shoving like a huge wave of the mighty seas.