Chương 40: The Remains in the Camp

By the sixth day of the journey, moving much faster than before, they reached the site. The wreckage of Ironvale Camp announced itself long before they arrived, the smell of char and old blood carrying further than either should have on the thin mountain air. What remained of the caravan slowed as the ruined palisade came into view, splintered timber and collapsed structures scattered across ground churned black and red beneath a fresh dusting of snow. Nothing moved within the wreckage at first glance.

Then something did.

"Stay alert," Gareth grunted, unslinging his massive mace from his back, his wide shoulders tensing as he took the lead.

"Something's moving around the place." [TARGET SCAN: 6 signatures.] [Threat level: moderate.] Stelle catalogued the readout without a word, falling into a loose formation with the rest of the group as three pale, wiry figures broke from the ruin's shadowed interior, joining three others already standing near the gate. Six in total, bluish skin bared to the cold, white hair streaming behind them, scraps of white fur wrapped loosely across their shoulders.

"Blood Tribe! Gareth, take the left!" Doran ordered, his massive broad-headed claymore clearing its sheath with a harsh metallic scrape.

"Elsie, stay behind us. Watch our flanks!" So they are the Blood tribe... She thought. Gareth met the first warrior head-on, his mace catching the lunging figure mid-strike in a wide, sweeping blow that sent the pale body tumbling limp into the snow. A second warrior lunged for Doran, who met him without flinching, his blade trailing a faint, water-slicked sheen as he parried a crude iron-and-bone axe and brought the heavy steel down in a single, brutal arc.

A third warrior broke toward the rear, moving with uncanny speed. An adventurer from the column drove a spear through his side, pinning him long enough for Doran to finish the strike entirely. The fallen body began to soften and pale where it lay, crumbling slowly into ordinary snow, as though it had never been anything more solid to begin with. That left three more Blood Tribe warriors near the ruined gate.

They hadn't flinched at the deaths of their companions, watching the quick slaughter with flat, unreadable expressions.

"They're not running," Elsie said, low and urgent from behind the front line, her healer's satchel braced against her hip.

"Why aren't they running?"

"Because they intend to fight," Doran growled, resetting his heavy stance. The remaining three closed the distance with the same uncanny, bounding speed. One broke toward Doran directly, axe raised high. Doran met him, his blade catching the axe's haft and turning the blow aside with brute strength before driving a follow-up strike into the warrior's exposed side. The warrior staggered but didn't fall, twisting away with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to a body already bleeding so freely.

Stelle moved to intercept the fifth warrior herself, Cael's blade already drawn, her stance dropping into the same narrow, technical guard she'd used back in Oakhaven. [TARGET SCAN: Blood Tribe Warrior.] [Mana Output: Tier 2, stable.] [Elemental signature: Frost.] No corruption at all, she registered, holding the reading a half-second longer than necessary, running the comparison twice.

The warrior closed the distance regardless, weapon raised, and Stelle stepped forward to meet the strike— But the warrior simply passed her by. Not a dodge. Not a feint. It altered it's course mid-stride with deliberate, uncanny precision, angling around her as though she occupied space that didn't exist to him at all, and drove it spear instead into the shoulder of an adventurer trying to flank from behind her.

Stelle twisted and caught the spear's haft, wrenching it off-target before it could bury itself fully, and shoved the warrior back with enough force to buy the wounded man a clear retreat. She filed the anomaly away with the same clinical unease it had earned her before, watching the warrior recover and simply turn to find another target entirely, without so much as a flicker of hesitation toward her. They are not attacking me, in any sense that resembles restraint.

Simply unwilling to acknowledge my presence as a target. The fight ground on around her, the remaining Blood Tribe warriors falling steadily beneath the combined weight of Doran's heavy strikes, Gareth's brutal mace, and the rest of the column closing in around them.

It ended within a few tense minutes—the last warrior driven back against the ruined palisade before Gareth's mace ended the struggle entirely, leaving behind a silence broken only by the wounded adventurer's pained groaning as Elsie and another person rushed forward. Twenty people remained in the column. Excluding Stelle, the headcount broke down into twelve combatants and seven non-combatants, two of them support, Elsie among them.

With four Tier 3 Awakened among the group and a handful of Tier 2s besides, it wasn't a weak force. It was one capable of surviving real danger.

"Any injured?" Doran called, wiping his blade clean on a patch of untouched snow.

"Two here," Elsie answered, already moving between them with brisk efficiency.

"Deep, but nothing fatal."

"No losses," a ginger-haired man added, letting out a breath. Stelle stood at the edge of the clearing, her own reserves barely touched, the fight itself having happened around her rather than through her. She looked down at where the fallen Blood Tribe warriors had already begun crumbling fully into ordinary snow, nothing left behind to mark that they'd ever been anything else. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. They ignored me entirely.

That isn't the behavior of an enemy who simply hasn't noticed me. That's the behavior of something actively choosing not to. Her archive offered no answers. Whatever framework explained this sat entirely outside anything she had catalogued so far. One of the adventurers outside Doran's group, spear still in hand, glanced around the ruined camp.

"Looks like there's nothing else waiting for us," he said grimly.

"We can start the search." Leaving the safety of the wagons, the other fanned out across the wreckage, urgency overriding exhaustion as voices began calling names into the smoke-thinned air. Then a sudden cry of agony tore through the quiet. It was Tomas's father who found him first.

The sound that broke from him wasn't quite a scream and wasn't quite a sob—something raw and formless, torn loose all at once as he sank to his knees beside the wreckage of the sorting shed, gathering his son's small, still body against his chest as though sheer will alone might undo what had already happened. No one moved to stop him. No one had the words to offer instead. A woman eventually reached his side, her touch gentle and quiet, though nothing could dull what he was carrying now.

"Reya's not accounted for either," Gareth called out, moving through the ruined structures with grim, methodical care.

"Nor her two companions." The rest of the group searched on without much direction, wasting energy digging through shallow drifts and shattered sheds that held nothing but corpses or empty tools. Stelle closed her eyes and reached inward instead. [Echo-Mapping: active.] [Resonating pulse... subterranean range, 100 meters.] A faint, invisible wave rippled outward from her heels into the frost-hardened stone beneath Ironvale Camp.

Near the central shaft, twenty meters beneath a massive rockslide, the pulse caught something distinct—seven biological signatures, tightly clustered, respiration slow and shallow. She walked directly past a cluster of people searching blindly, stepping over charred planks until she stood before a solid wall of collapsed granite and shattered iron support beams.

"There are people beneath this pile," she said flatly. Doran, inspecting the outer fence nearby, turned with a deep scowl.

"Girl, that's a dead wall. The mine's main entrance is fifty yards to the west."

"I know," Stelle said, her voice entirely without doubt.

"The pocket behind this collapse leads into the secondary ventilation shaft. Seven living people are trapped inside. Their breathing is shallow." Gareth paused, resting his mace against the ground.

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I'm a Stalker Path Awakened," Stelle said smoothly, fabricating the claim without a second's hesitation.

"My ability lets me detect through dense solids. You're welcome to keep digging at the main entrance instead, if you'd rather. But the survivors are here." Doran studied her for three long, agonizing seconds, his cold gray eyes probing her motionless face, before he finally spat into the snow and stepped forward.

"Gareth, get your lever bar. Anyone who can still lift a shovel, get over here now!" It took fifteen minutes of brutal, backbreaking effort to clear the granite slabs she'd pointed them toward. Just as she'd said, beneath the second layer of crushed timber lay a hollow vertical grate leading into the old air vent. When Gareth finally pried the iron bars apart, a blast of stale, warm air rushed out—followed by the faint, ragged sound of coughing.

"We're—we're here!" a voice cried from the darkness below.

"Pull them up!" Doran barked, a rare flash of genuine relief cracking through his stern composure. One by one, seven survivors were hauled up from the dark pit—shaken, soot-covered, but alive. Elsie and another healer rushed to wrap blankets around them, and Gareth wiped the sweat from his brow, looking at Stelle with something close to newfound respect.

"A Stalker. Well, damn." He shook his head slowly.

"I thought you were just some miner's kid trailing the wagons. You just saved seven lives."

"I was simply trying to help," Stelle replied. With the survivors stabilized in the mine's safer outer tunnels, the remaining combatants gathered near the palisade gate. The total toll was grim: thirty-five confirmed dead, and nine rescued together with the others found hiding in the mine shaft. But according to a few of them, there were still missing survivors or bodies they had yet to find.

They decided to split into two groups—one to press deeper into the Ridge, the other to remain at the ruined camp and wait for the reinforcements the earlier retreating party had promised to send back. Doran's group would form the search party, joined by six other Awakened, including a second Tier 3. The group staying behind would keep the remaining Tier 3 and one healer for protection to guard the survivors and others.

"I think some of them are still alive," one of the adventurers, a bow-wielder named Enrik, noted, scanning the dried bloodied trace leading out through the north gate.

"They might have run. Or been taken toward the high crags." Doran buckled his gauntlets tight.

"The search party leaves now. We track and see if any of the possible survivors are still breathing." The group set to work, gathering supplies and maintaining their weapons. Stelle remained among them, quietly making her own preparations, until Doran approached her. His glare settled on Stelle.

"Stop that. You stay here, in the tunnels, with the second group and the survivors. This isn't a discussion. What's ahead is far more dangerous." Stelle met his glare without blinking.

"I will go with the search party. You'll need me." Doran frowned.

"What?"

"Your group consists of heavy frontline combatants and a single healer," she said, her tone cold and matter-of-fact.

"You'll need my ability to find them. They're likely hiding, and searching for them will be far harder without a way to locate them first. I can detect beasts, monsters, and people at a distance. Press into the high passes without that, and you'll be walking blind into an ambush, with a much harder time finding whoever's left to find." He let out an irritated growl.

"You don't get to just decide things on a whim, girl. Stay here and wait."

"She's right, Doran," a Tier 3 fighter named Marlon interjected. He turned his gaze toward Doran.

"We're short on scouts. If the Blood Tribe... or that corrupted Guardian the survivor talked about drops on us from the crags, we won't know it until there's an axe in our necks."

"She's a child! Marlon!" Doran snapped, his voice rising.

"I don't care how sharp her ability is—if a Tier 2 monster so much as lunges at her, she's dead." One of the women in the group stepped forward.

"I'm also a Stalker, but my range is limited. I can't sustain it alone for long. I'd suggest we need a second Stalker helping us out here. I'm suggesting here since I know my limit." Doran opened his mouth to argue further, but the plain logic of it—stacked against the undeniable fact that Stelle had just saved seven lives—stuck somewhere in his throat. He looked to Gareth, then around at the rest of the search party. No one voiced an objection.

"We know how absurd it sounds, relying on her," another adventurer put in.

"But we can't afford more mistakes. She volunteered herself, after all." He glanced at Stelle, something quietly thoughtful in his expression.

"I don't know why she's so willing to risk herself out here. Maybe she's looking for someone too, same as some of us. But if her ability can change the outcome, I think it's fine to accept the help." Doran let out a heavy breath that misted instantly in the cold air, closing his eyes for a quiet moment. As much as he hated to admit it, Marlon was right. The girl scouting skills were too vital to ignore.

He detested putting a kid on the front line—if he'd caught her slipping in when the wagons separated, he would have sent her back on the spot. But circumstances had changed. As leader, he had to make the best choice for the good of the group.

"... Fine." He opened them again, fixing her with a stern, warning look.

"You come with us as our scout. You walk in the center of the formation, ten paces behind Gareth and me. The moment you sense danger, you call it out. You do not engage. You do not try to be a hero. Am I clear?"

"Understood," Stelle said.

"Then get ready," Doran grunted, already turning toward the northern trail.

"We're burning daylight." Stelle adjusted the strap of the black blade at her waist and fell into step directly behind the two heavy warriors as the search party crossed the shattered gate of Ironvale Camp, pressing onward into the deep, unmapped reaches of Mourning Ridge.