Chương 162: 153. Office

We all stopped at the opening of the alley.

"What do you mean?" Leo spat from the front of the procession.

"The previous expedition—one of them left a journal and said not to follow the children." Many people frowned, then their expressions turned angry.

"You found the previous expedition?" asked one of the paladins.

"No. I mean a scribe. I mean… oh for fuck's sake, we shouldn't follow the children."

"What the fuck are you on about?" An angry roar cut into the tense conversation. It came from the druid. His voice was furious, but there was panic on his face.

"I just read it. We were checking a journal we found, and it says not to follow the children."

"Show it!" shouted Leo, and one of the paladins made a quick move in my direction, hand on his hilt. My group took a step forward, hands on weapons. The other Third Chamber groups also turned toward the rest, leaving their backs to us. The paladins immediately went for their swords while the rest readied for battle, some immediately choosing alliances, others moving to the side—confused and even more scared. Tension rose. The air seemed to thicken and heat up, making breathing harder.

I kept my right hand ready to attack while my left went for the journal, opening it to the right page.

"Let me," Clementus's voice broke the silence. To my surprise, he approached our group with only Helga. Without hesitation, I opened the journal and showed it to him, placing my finger on the passage.

"He's right," Clementus confirmed.

"He should have told us about the journal when we were waiting," Leo argued.

"I—" Clementus took a hesitant breath.

"I don't think this is the time."

"Wait!" shouted the druid.

"Are we just gonna trust it? He could have written it himself, or had it prepared, or—" He started to name ways I could have cheated, but there was no accusation in the tone. No, it was desperation, and hope fading with each word spoken. Leo looked at me angrily while I gave him the same look. The air was still thick and heavy. And as the atmosphere calmed slightly, I realized it wasn't just tension—the air was actually growing hotter and harder to breathe.

"We should move," the druid spoke up after noticing it too.

"We need to go and meet them along the way. More people is good, right?"

"Where did they go?" the D'Arc woman asked. The druid pointed further into the city. No one would meet his eyes.

"We should go back," Leo said.

"I—" I began, but then stopped. While we were arguing, the drumming grew louder, and I realized it wasn't instruments but the sound of hands banging on wood. Now, hoarse voices could also be heard in the cacophony of sound.

"I don't think we have time," said the priest who had come back with the druid. He stood the farthest in the alley, his eyes directed toward the main street leading from the gate—the street we had passed when getting here. We approached and looked in the direction he was staring. A glow was visible over the buildings. In the ever-changing yellow light, deeper oranges and reds could be seen. Something producing that light was moving through the street, and it was coming closer.

"We should run," someone from the nobles threw out, but he was grabbed by his clothes before he could bolt back the way we came.

"They are too close," Helga said, still looking at the glow.

"If we cross the main street, they'll see us."

"Then the other fucking way!" the man shouted back, panicked. I looked the other way—deeper into the roads, away from the gate. The street was silent—deathly silent. All the windows now had shutters closed. The previous silence now felt different. There was no sensation of danger, no feeling of tension. It was empty, hollow, and devoid of anything, like staring into complete emptiness. We all looked at one another.

"What do we do?" someone squeaked, not even trying to hide the panic. Some people started wiping sweat from their foreheads, and I realized it wasn't due to fear as I wiped my own forehead. The air was growing hotter and hotter, like we were in an oven with its temperature slowly but steadily rising. Everyone was thinking of a solution, but no one was speaking. We just shared confused looks. The alleys were a no-go. The main street had something in it. We were trapped.

"W-we should hide," Aiko said, looking at the ferret now deep in her sleeve. I looked at the crowd and counted people. We weren't missing anyone—and that meant the skinwalker should be among us. I frowned. It wouldn't kill itself like this, and the plan was way too well prepared for their agent to die in a trap visible from the entrance.

"I think we should just stay in the alley," I said.

"Are you trying to kill us?" barked one of the nobles.

"Better idea?" I asked. The split second of silence that followed was filled with a now-very-loud banging sound. It was maybe a street away from us. There was no point in running. We silently entered deeper into the alley and huddled close to one another in the middle, as far away from that glow as possible. Whatever was walking the street was now passing by the entrance to one of the streets connected to our alley. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The banging became insufferable, heavy like lead poured over our hearts. I could hear some people weep silently while we sat, trying to make ourselves as small as possible. We were in a constant struggle between trying to keep silent and taking deep gulps of air as the oxygen seemed to be thinning, the heat making breathing a chore. People took deep breaths, then held them as long as possible. The source of the glow was so close now that we could make out actual shouts going over the banging.

The voice was strange—on one side destroyed and hoarse, like every word was a ball of barbed wire the speaker tried desperately to push off his tongue. Yet it had a clear rhythm, the words crisp and well-pronounced, as if by someone trained to be an orator.

"Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail?" screamed the loudest of the voices. The heat was now unbearable, the red and orange glow slipping into the alley, its tendrils extending toward us as we all huddled closer together, unwilling to be touched by it.

"And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun." Another passage broke through the banging. This one I recognized—Ecclesiastes 4: 2–3. I noticed a sharp movement to my right. Looking up, I saw D'Arc catch a man's hand before he could put a dagger to his own throat. Two more scenes like that unfolded immediately after.

Thankfully, both were stopped in time before we could be bathed in someone's blood. Finally, the source of the glow seemed to move forward—past the next road connected to ours and further toward the gate—where it disappeared. All the sound, all the light, everything was cut off as if by a knife. We all sat looking at one another and then at the street.

"What the fuck was that?" Ophelia asked, looking around. I saw she was scared but not panicked. I gave her a light smile and shook my head. I didn't have a clue, and I was way too tired to think or interpret anything we'd heard. Finally, with considerable relief, I separated myself from the sweaty dwarf and went toward the opening of the alley.

"Watch out," Luna hissed from behind my back. Taking all precautions, I leaned out of the alley and looked at the streets. They were still empty, shutters still shut tight, but the strange hollowness was gone. For the first time, I felt like I was just looking at an empty street.

"I think we should move," Helga commented in a firm voice, looking at a street on the other side of the alley. Everyone got up and joined us, agreeing. We hadn't felt how much strangeness was in the air until it was gone. We didn't want to lose this chance.

"We go where we planned initially," Leo said in a firm voice.

"Does anyone disagree?" He looked me in the eyes.

"Lead the way," I said, holding his gaze. We moved quickly toward where we'd intended to go. Making use of the current silence, we began going faster, now walking as one group in the middle of the street, looking for anywhere that might be safe. The streets were silent throughout the journey, with one exception: we found a corpse in one of the alleys. He was wearing white robes stained with blood, the body lying on its side with its back to us.

"What should count as a safe place?" asked Will with a deep frown, his gaze sweeping over the buildings we passed.

"I don't know," I shrugged.

"Anywhere the tragedy didn't touch—or was minimal enough to be forgotten. Soooo…" I tried looking for a spot.

"Some useless shack?"

"How about an office archive?" I heard Leo say from the front.

"Yeah, I said useless shack." I noticed his eyebrow twitch. He then nodded toward a street connecting to the one we were on. It was much wider and longer, with larger apartment houses and shops lining the sides. But what caught my attention was a relatively small two-story building near where our street met the bigger one. It wasn't anything special. It was a dull gray stone building, built in a harsh style, lacking any decoration.

It was the epitome of uninteresting: the roof was made of boring orange tiles; the walls were boring gray. The doors and windows were missing, but not broken, just not there. I also noticed a bit of scaffolding visible behind it. I looked at the mortal world's pope.

"Well, would you look at that. Why an office archive, though? I think they took off any signs for the renovation."

"There is the office right next to it," Leo answered without missing a beat, pointing to a building with an office sign.

"Right, and that has to be an archive."

"We know the administrative style of our own buildings, Mr. Alhazred."

"Mhm. Sure you do. And an office under renovation without any doors for people to hide inside during a tragedy just so happened to be on the way you took. What a coincidence."

"Just as much as your journal right when you needed it."

"My journal was a logical decision we made on the spot, unlike 'oh so random directions.'""Can you two shut the fuck up?" D'Arc broke our conversation.

"This seems like a safe spot. Let's thank whatever god you believe in and get some fucking rest." She barked, getting a lot of nods, including from my friends. I sighed and pointed at the building. Leo raised an eyebrow and took a step forward.

"Assholes first," I said immediately as his foot touched the ground, and followed behind him.

"Are you twelve?" Will scoffed, hitting my back. We made our way into the building. There was a desk, some empty shelves, and a basement entrance in the first room. Two adjacent ones were fully renovated and held documents, some on shelves, others still in crates waiting to be moved to their proper places. We went to the second floor. It was mostly empty but felt cozier than the ground floor. There were two big rooms here: one for document storage—mostly empty—and one that looked like a lounge for the workers.

This one apparently wasn't part of the renovations, as old tables, chairs, and cupboards stood there. It was a strange fusion of a medieval aesthetic with magic—rune devices to make tea, sconces reacting to mana, and larger clocks, which I could now see also ran entirely on magic, all stuck on the same hour as the rest. It had a surprisingly cozy feel, a normal one, not the type blanketing all sensations.

"I say we take a break," sighed D'Arc, and went to a corner of the furnished room. Without much thought, the rest of the Third Chamber and I also went to another corner of our own. The place was cramped for so many people, but thankfully, it was enough for all of us to fit, with some preferring privacy in the adjacent room.

"About the journal," Leo started once everyone was seated, but only groans answered him. No one had the strength for the discussion, and the man himself also let go of it, with visible relief on his face. I noticed that the druid who almost led us after the children was sitting near us—not because of any new group division, but because he simply collapsed to the floor once it was deemed safe. His unfocused gaze was fixed on the wall in front of him. I recognized him.

He was the husband of the couple who practically got a divorce on the spot when we were checking for the skinwalker. He sat relatively close to Ophelia and, looking to the side, caught her eye.

"I didn't remember her birthday," he said to the confused girl.

"I always forgot, but to think she would accuse me of being a skinwalker. I—I always forgot, you know?" he asked, and Ophelia awkwardly nodded. He brought his gaze back to the wall.

"I told her to go with the priest since she thought I was some creature. That was our last conversation…" His voice choked. We sat in awkward silence as he gazed at the wall, his mouth opening and closing again, unable to find the words. We rested for a few hours after choosing a few sentries from the less tired people. Some even managed to get some shut-eye, while others simply lay to get their mana back as much as possible in the singularity.

We all lay there, pretending we didn't hear a few quiet sobs, pretending we didn't hear the swear words, pretending we didn't hear the druid leave to take a leak—nor did we hear his footsteps disappearing into the street from which we came. No one had the strength or the will to stop the man. After taking the first watch and then two hours of fighting with my own thoughts, I managed to get some sleep, only to awaken shortly after.

I wasn't in top condition, but at the same time, I could feel the veil over my tired mind lift, and my thoughts once again sped along in my head. Looking around, everyone else was still resting, and I finally had some time to start planning.