Chương 23: Chapter 20 - Fractures

The light in the crimson eye finally went out. Before he could say anything more—if there had been anything more to say—darkness came, not the gradual fading into black but an arrival that seemed to happen all at once, swallowing what remained of him in a single, soundless breath. And then there was nothing. No more talking, no more action, not even a trace of the spiritual energy that had filled the room throughout the fight. For a few seconds, everyone stood still. But Saro ended the silence.

He walked up to the area where Nefari collapsed, his eyes scouring the wreckage. He searched the broken porcelain and torn cloth for any remaining part of the Soul Armor that might start moving again. When he was sure everything was gone, he finally relaxed his guard. The battle was over. But the chamber didn't feel victorious. It felt empty. Torou stood frozen, still hearing the echo of Nefari's last words. Confusion sat plainly across his face.

"Ani...?" he mumbled, turning the word over like it might mean something different the second time.

"Was that Mr. Unknown's real name?"... Outside the spiritual realm, Dendron had been listening the entire time, and his confusion curdled into something close to disappointment when the name cut off before he'd caught all of it. Ani. It meant nothing to him. Not even a half-remembered echo.

"Did he mean me, or was he talking to Torou?" He turned the thought over.

"No... Torou looked just as lost as I did." Then, out of nowhere, another thought surfaced.

"It's probably me," he mused.

"Or maybe I'm just an idiot. My surname means gentle, if I remember right—about as far from Ani as you can get." Even joking about it, he'd felt something underneath the humor: that same chilling undertone in the voice, distinct from the doll's usual cadence. He dug through what memories he had left, searching for anyone who might have ever called him something like that. Bark cracked somewhere along his trunk, the whole tree shuddering with the effort of thinking too hard.

"Tsk. Who cares." No memory answered him. No one had ever called him that, not once, not that he could remember. Whoever this Nefari was, he'd probably just mistaken him for someone else.... In the ancient castle, the silence had settled in for good. The gloom hanging over the chamber now had nothing to do with the castle's age. It came from what was scattered across the floor. Scattered pieces of flesh. Torn arms. Legs separated from whatever they'd once belonged to.

Every corner held some fragment too ruined to name. Roc stood over one body in particular. Geldo's. A memory rose up before he could stop it. A young orc, tusks still small, snout still wrinkling with the effort of trying to look fierce, gripped a wooden sword in both hands.

"Geldo! Follow me to the battlefield. We'll crush our enemies together!" he roared and hacked at the tall grass, again and again, while Geldo just sat nearby in the dirt, watching.

"Isn't that tiring?" Geldo asked.

"Huh? Well, yeah, it's tiring." Roc kept swinging anyway.

"But isn't enjoying it the whole point? You should come with me. We'll become true warriors together."

"I'll do it when I grow up," Geldo said simply. A voice broke through the memory.

"Gather every corpse. Recognizable or not." It was Saro, his voice flat, his face carved from something colder than grief. An army can't function with a commander who wavers, he told himself, and forced himself steady. Not now. Not with everyone already stretched this thin. Everything around him seemed to be moving with a half-step behind, everyone too busy catching up with reality. Finally, someone moved. Another followed his lead. Soon, the warriors were searching without needing to be told.

The corpse under the remains of a broken doll. Another by the wall. Another face down by the hallway. Some of them they recognized. Others, they didn't. There were some that were so damaged that the warriors had to search for bits of their armor or their signature weapon just to figure out who it was. They were silent each time they found another body. They eventually started putting the bodies into lines. As the bodies assembled, Seri began his count, which no one wished to listen to. One. Two. Three.

After the tenth, Seri stopped for a moment before forcing himself to continue. They were just too many. When he finished, the truth became obvious. More than half of those who had passed that threshold wouldn't be passing it back out again. Seri gazed down the line of the dead for quite some time. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The casualties between the two tribes were so equally distributed that it would've seemed like an additional offense to debate whose loss was larger. Quantity against quality. The castle had made the payment from both sides almost equal. And yet it made no difference. Every one of them had someone waiting at home. That had been what kept their feet moving through the castle. Now, the thought of those people was what weighed them down.

Saro's voice rose over the gathered warriors, heavy with the same grief everyone else carried.

"We can't bring them all home. But we can bring back what we can—something for their families to hold onto. For now, we give them a proper burial. They've earned that much, and more." One by one, they gave the dead their proper place. Under the whispering trees outside the castle's walls, they created graves that demanded more time than any of them had to give. The first one came easy. The second one was not so easy. By the tenth one, their actions were almost routine. Dig. Bring. Bury the body.

And then the next one. No one objected to the effort. No one spoke of abandoning the dead. They had all come to the castle together. They would leave the castle together. Some warriors knelt beside the graves as the bodies were placed inside the ground. Others kept several feet away, unwilling to witness the event. Some mumbled prayers. Others did not speak at all. No long speeches were made. There was not even a song of celebration for the victory won. Just dirt piled on top of the dead.

So many deaths, and yet nothing marked them. No rain. No wind. No fog. No thunder. The only thing waiting for them was silence—a stillness so complete that even the trees refused to rustle. A quiet death needed no storm to make it heavier. Saro remained standing after everyone else dispersed. He gave each row one last look.

His mind went back in time to the sounds that once echoed through the castle just a few hours ago—the barks of commands on the field, clashing of weapons against stone, and calls from one warrior to the other amidst the deafening noise. But no more. His hands clenched into tight fists. He walked away. The names rang out in his mind. Not the ones he'd read aloud but those had been for the tribe's memory. The ones that rang him were different. They belonged to the warriors he'd personally trained.

The ones who looked at him with admiration, the one who looked at him for direction before the walls came down. He stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked back at the graves.

"Tsk, I told them we would come back," he mumbled to no one.

"I didn't tell them how many of us wouldn't." He continued to walk away. There would be time for mourning later. Now, there were lives to reclaim. Grief took a different shape in each of them. Some wept openly. Others just stood there, staring at the ground, hollowed out and silent. This was the spiritual realm they'd always known, one that took without apology, over and over. And still, no matter how many times it happened, the weight of it never got any lighter....

Hours passed before anyone spoke of moving again.

"Start preparing," Saro said.

"The sooner we leave, the sooner we can come back." His voice carried across the silence. The warriors nodded and got moving, packing away the belongings of the dead alongside everything they'd fought to bring home. A few minutes later, Saro spoke again.

"Let's go."... Later, Torou sat beneath a tree, turning the day over in his mind. One image kept surfacing above the rest: Nefari's gaze, and the cold that had come with it.

"Mr. Unknown," he murmured.

"Who the hell are you, really? Is Ani your real name?" He paused, turning the question over.

"One thing I do know: you're not normal. Someone with ties to the spiritual realm itself, maybe. Or worse." He didn't finish the thought. His hands were shaking. He hadn't noticed when that started.... Miles away, Dendron felt it arrive through the bond, faint as a vibration in a wire he hadn't touched. He didn't try to block it out. I did that to him, he thought. Nothing new in the thought. Just the same one, arriving again, a little heavier for wearing Torou's face this time instead of his own.

He didn't say sorry. He'd learned by now it wouldn't reach anywhere useful. He just let it sit there. A reminder, not of what he owed—he never needed help remembering that—but of who was paying for it.... They spent the next day recovering and preparing before finally reaching the door. One by one, they stepped through, vanishing from sight. Then sunlight met them on the other side. Several warriors stopped—not because they forgot where they were but because they had forgotten the feeling of being under the sun.

Warmth touched their faces. The fresh air filled their lungs. Nobody moved first. Nobody wanted to be the one who broke it. They were home. Some of them exhaled for what felt like the first time in days. Others just stood there a moment, blinking against a light that hadn't touched their skin in far too long.

"Someone's coming through!" a voice called out.

"They're back, everyone, gather up!" another answered. These were the ones who'd stayed behind, guarding the door from the outside while the rest went in. As everyone gathered, the mismatch hit them first. Those who remained at the rear were smiling. There were people greeting their old friends with smiles, a few even laughing with relief. Then the survivors began emerging from behind the door. The smiles faded one by one. There was no need for any kind of explanation.

These were exhausted survivors, some with dried blood on their faces, others limping from wounds they hadn't yet healed. There were fewer of them too. Outside, the crowd waiting started to count silently, hesitantly. One. Two. Three. But no one else emerged from behind the door. Death was unavoidable in the spiritual realm. Then someone spotted the sacks: spiritual fruit, herbs, more of both than anyone had expected—and for a moment, eyes lit up.

This was what they had risked their lives for, what some had died trying to obtain, and what the dead had sacrificed for them to bring home. However, the excitement disappeared as quickly as it came. There were people counting the cost. Fewer than half of them had come back, and what was left felt even heavier with each breath they took. No one seemed to know which feeling to hold onto: the relief, or the loss. Roc stood apart from the rest, his face unreadable. Not grief. Not detachment.

Something closer to acceptance—death was simply part of the shape of things in the spiritual realm. He had known that for as long as he could remember. That didn't make losing Geldo hurt any less. He grieved for him quietly, the way he'd grieved for everyone he'd already outlived. He didn't let himself sit in it too long, though. Geldo had never been the type to want anyone standing over him looking miserable on his behalf. Saro's voice carried once more.

"Everyone is exhausted. Rest first. We'll sort out the gains later." No one argued. The exhaustion went deeper than muscle and bone—every death they'd carried out of that castle had left its own weight behind.... Somewhere else, a tree shook, its leaves stirring against a wind no one else could feel.

"Oi, Luan."

"Sir?" Luan's voice carried a note of surprise.

"Let's actually start the business. I've got this itch to grow stronger, and I'd rather not ignore it." Luan's eyes lit with excitement.

"Yes, sir. I already made a list." He recited it without missing a beat.

"Build a shop. Hire a builder. Clear a road merchants and buyers can actually use. Start building connections. And if we ever want to sell inside the Free Trade City of Beasts, we'll need a permit for that too."

"Ah... yeah. I'll leave it to you."

"Ehh? Why?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm a tree. I can't exactly go hire a builder myself. I'm the supplier here, not the merchant."

"Fair point." A pause.

"So why the sudden itch to grow stronger?"

"Nothing, really. I just want to be strong enough to protect myself—and the people I care about." It wasn't a lie, exactly. Just not the whole truth. The line Nefari had said stayed lodged in his mind: If this were one of my other bodies, this wouldn't even qualify as a fight. Whether Nefari had meant him or not, getting stronger was the one answer that covered every possibility.

"Anything else you want to add?" Luan asked.

"Actually, yes. Let's prioritize the shop first. Get a builder on it right away. And we'll need another tribe to trade corpses with, for efficiency's sake." Luan nodded.

"We'll need funds for that, though. I'd suggest selling off a batch of your fruit to cover the shop."

"Good timing. I've got plenty stored up. I've kept producing while only using half my spiritual essence each time, just to be safe. Let's sell through your tribe for now. They're the only ones we can reach easily, and it's safer than the city or some stranger tribe. Too many greedy hands out there. That's before you count the monsters the scent alone might drag in." He knew that danger better than anyone. He'd already paid for it in blood, more than once.

"Yes, sir. I'll price it at market rate. For reference, a Seeker Early Stage fruit usually goes for around three sen." With that, Luan said his goodbyes and headed off to notify the chief. — End of Arc 1: The Spiritual Realm — Author's Note: Arc 1 is complete! 🎉 Thank you so much for reading this far. The Spiritual Realm expedition is over, but Dendron's journey is just beginning. In Arc 2, we'll see him build something new that will reach beyond the forest. But the world is larger than he ever imagined.

Arc 2 starts in Chapter 21. See you there!