CHAPTER 155:
Silver moss muffled their footsteps. Overhead, the leaves shifted color with the light, from violet to gold to a green that Lucas had no name for, and the air hung heavy with the sweetness of flowers he had never seen. They had been descending for hours, and with every kilometer the valley below grew a little less distant.
Ezra took the lead, red eyes sweeping the trees. Myles walked beside him with his orange eyes half-lidded, loose-limbed, as though nothing in this forest could possibly concern him. Lucas followed at the rear with his Mana Eyes open, tracking the mana signatures of every creature within range. Most of them kept their distance.
The first one didn't.
It came out of the undergrowth an hour into the descent, a beast the size of a bear with fur that rippled between gray and silver as it moved. Its eyes glowed pale blue. Its claws tore furrows in the earth as it circled them, and Lucas could feel its mana pulsing outward in slow, steady beats. Ordinary Beast. Six Star, maybe seven.
Ezra ended it with one punch. His fist, wrapped in the red aura of his Keno element, struck the skull with a crack like thunder, and the beast dropped hard enough to shake leaves loose from the branches above. He flicked the blood from his knuckles.
"We should cook some of this before we go on."
Myles was already kneeling beside the carcass, carving away the choicest cuts with his claws.
They made camp in a clearing as the sky faded. Ezra skewered the meat on green branches and turned it over the flames while the fat spat and sizzled, and the smell of it made Lucas's stomach clench. The meat was tougher than anything he was used to, but it was rich and smoky and hot, and he ate until the warmth reached his fingers. Nobody spoke. Ezra kicked dirt over the embers when they were done, and they walked on into the night, beneath stars so bright they threw silver shadows on the forest floor.
The second day brought a pack of rust-furred wolves, which hit them at midday in a snarl of teeth and claws. Ezra crushed three skulls before the rest lost their nerve and fled. Two more tried to flank the group, and Myles opened them up with his claws as if their hides were wet paper. Lucas kept his hands at his sides. There was nothing left for him to do.
On the third day, they found the village.
Or what was left of it.
The destruction spread five kilometers in every direction, a wasteland of shattered stone, splintered timber and earth that had been ripped open by forces Lucas could barely imagine. Craters pocked the ground, some fifty meters across and ten deep, their rims still sharp, as though the blasts that made them were a day old. The trees that must once have ringed the village were gone entirely, reduced to ash and splinters that lay over everything like gray snow.
Lucas stopped at the edge of it.
Ezra let out a low whistle. "What the hell happened here?"
Myles said nothing. His gaze moved slowly across the craters and the rubble, searching for anything that might have survived, and found nothing.
Lucas stepped forward, and ash crunched under his boots. He skirted a crater that still glowed faintly, the air above it warped with heat. Then he saw the gravestones.
They were everywhere, in clusters and in rows, each a plain slab with a name cut into it. Some of the names were written in angular characters he did not recognize. Others used the common script of the continent, the letters rough but legible, as if carved by hands that had not been steady. He walked among them reading as he went, and the count passed hundreds and kept climbing toward thousands. Each stone marked someone who had died here, and someone else had stayed long enough afterward to bury them and carve their name.
"Who were these people?" Ezra asked quietly.
Lucas didn't answer. He was thinking about the novel from his previous life, the story that had become the world he now walked through, and the scattered clues it had left behind.
The Heavenbreaker Tribe had been mentioned only a handful of times. They were counted among the strongest physical fighters in the world, warriors who cultivated no mana core and cast no spells in the usual sense. They cultivated Ki, an energy that existed in every living being but that almost no one ever learned to reach. Through it they forged their bodies to the highest levels. Even the weakest of them could stand against a 9 Star elite, and the strongest could rival Saint Class individuals. Elemental Ki techniques sharpened them further still.
A tribe like that did not fall easily.
Lucas looked out over the craters and felt a guess take shape in his mind. Only one person he knew of could have done this alone: the Leader of the Abyssal Moon. And the evidence pointed his way. If the organization's members had carried out the attack, some of them would have died in it. There were no graves for the attackers, only for the tribe. That meant the Leader had come here himself and finished it by himself.
It also settled something Lucas had long suspected. The Leader used Ki, both to strengthen his spells and to push his body far past what any mage should be capable of. The novel had hinted at it. The ruins left no room for doubt.
"This wasn't a battle," Myles said from behind him, his voice low. "It was an execution."
Lucas nodded slowly. None of them said anything more. They walked on.
The graveyard seemed to have no end. The stones grew denser toward the center of the village, and the craters grew wider and deeper. The residual energy in the air thickened until Lucas's skin prickled under his clothes.
Ezra stopped.
Lucas looked up.
A girl knelt before a grave at the rim of a vast crater, her back to them and her head bowed. Black hair fell past her shoulders and pooled on the ash around her. Her skin was a deep, rich brown, vivid against the gray wasteland. Half a dozen beasts sat in a loose ring around her. They were ordinary in form, but they were far too still, and Lucas understood at once that they were not wild. They were hers. Nothing in the ruins moved but the wind in her hair.
Ezra raised a hand. "Hey! You there!"
She didn't react.
"We mean you no harm," Lucas called. "We only want to ask what happened here."
Her head lifted. She turned, and dark eyes, nearly black, found them across the ash. Grief lived in that face, and wariness, and something tightly held that Lucas could not name. She studied the three strangers for a long moment.
Then she rose and ran.
She was fast, absurdly fast, covering a hundred and fifty meters every second, her body smearing into a blur across the battlefield. Her beasts ran with her, paws throwing up clouds of ash.
Ezra cursed and gave chase. Myles was right beside him, matching her pace stride for stride. Lucas hesitated for a heartbeat, then followed.
"Wait!" His voice rang across the ruins. "We just want to talk!"
She didn't slow. She cleared a crater in one leap, landed on the far rim without breaking stride, and kept going, her hair streaming out behind her like a banner. She never looked back.
Ezra drove himself harder. The gap did not close. Myles ran at his shoulder, orange eyes locked on the fleeing figure.
Lucas ran behind them, Mana Eyes fixed on the girl, and every question he had stayed unanswered.