The final count of survivors was more than three hundred souls, plucked from the grey.
Where the small town of four or five thousand had once thrived, the number was… devastating. But, in the face of near-total oblivion, every single digit in that three-digit figure was a miracle. And so, they clung to it. Of course, what a scant handful of hope. But that was why they called it the gratitude of the damned.
Reinforcements, summoned by Arkai's frantic calls, finally arrived. The Arctic Fox tribes and the Polar Bear clans arrived.
It was Cecilia who devised a system to streamline the rescue. She conjured beams of mana spotlights that pierced the haze of ash as pointers for the rescuers. It was like painting targets on the buried and the breathing, guiding shovels and claws toward the faint sparks of life she alone could perceive.
