Chương 85: Chapter 84: Scarlet Ash

The entire medical wing shuddered violently. Dust and loose stone rained down from the ceiling, clouding the entire room, overwhelming the dim lantern lights as the floorboards shook beneath their feet. In the main room outside, the shouts of the town guards and the panicked wails of the Trestfall residents erupted. Lio reacted instantly. Pushing off the wall, he moved to the side of the cot just as Ophila forced herself upright.

She hissed in pain, her face turning incredibly pale, and she had to lean heavily against Lio's shoulder just to keep her balance. He braced her entire weight, then both of them darted outside. Before they could leave the wing, however, Ergyn appeared around the corner, sprinting. The Mayor was right beside him, his expression grave, with Senna and William trailing close behind.

"Stick close to me," Ergyn commanded, smoothly drawing his sword. Together, the group headed straight over to the heavy iron entrance. There, they found that a frantic crowd of townsfolk and guards had already approached the doors, huddled together in fear. The atmosphere was tense and fearful, as everyone continued bracing for a secondary explosion. Ergyn marched right up to the front line, singling out one of the trembling guards.

"Report!" he demanded, "What the hell is happening out there?" The guard turned his pale, sweat-slicked face toward the captain, shaking his head frantically.

"We don't know, sir! It sounded like an explosion, but we haven't suffered any kind of impact—" Before Ergyn could press for more answers, a voice cried out from the very front of the crowd.

"Wait! Look!" Lio glanced over, and found that it was Luna—the woman that had let him and Ophila into the bunker. She had pushed her way right up to the heavy iron barrier and was currently peeking through the narrow door slit that looked out into the outside world. Her eyes widened at whatever she was seeing.

"Luna, get back from there!" the Mayor warned, stepping forward.

"No, look!" Luna exclaimed, keeping her eyes glued to the slit.

"The monsters... they aren't attacking us! They're leaving!" At the shocking statement, the Mayor and Ergyn shoved past a few startled townsfolk, pushing Luna aside to take her place at the heavy iron door. Each of them peered through the narrow slit, their expression clearly half-expecting a trick. But as they stared out, their features morphed into disbelief.

"They're… they're really leaving!" Ergyn cried. The people were stunned into silence for a moment. Then it broke as the residents and guards began to cheer, some weeping openly while others collapsed to their knees in relief. The suffocating terror that had gripped the bunker for hours finally dissolved as they began to celebrate. Amidst the roaring crowd, Lio quietly stepped up to the door barrier as the Mayor moved away.

Bracing Ophila securely against his side, he leaned forward to take a look through the slit for himself. Outside, the view was grim. A dark torrent of hundreds of monsters—from the towering giants to the skittering swarms—was moving in a stampede, completely ignoring the bunker. Strangely, they appeared to be working together; ground-based beasts clambered onto the backs of airborne creatures, riding them as the entire horde surged upward, fleeing straight back into the glowing depths of the rift. But why?

Lio frowned, his glowing cyan eyes narrowing. The timing was simply too circumstantial. First, Sparrow and the little girl pull back because of a sudden retreat order. Now, only minutes later, the entire horde was abandoning the attack. It didn't make logical sense for a wild, chaotic horde to just pack up and leave on a whim. For Lio, it was just one more piece of damning evidence. It was clearer than ever now that the organization hunting Ophila down had most likely orchestrated this whole thing.

It was becoming painfully obvious that they were the ones who had supplied the Lamb with that strange pill in the first place, triggering the apocalypse just to smoke out their targets. And now that their retrieval operation had failed, they were simply turning the switch off. But while the celebration inside the bunker was deafening, Lio watched as Ergyn didn't let the sudden wave of relief shake his discipline.

He slammed his fist against the heavy iron door, the metallic clang jerking the people from their cheering.

"Quiet down!" Ergyn barked.

"Just because they are moving away doesn't mean that we're in the clear. It could be a trap to lure us out." The Mayor stepped up beside him, his expression deeply strained as he adjusted his coat. He nodded at his captain.

"Yes, Ergyn is right. We don't open these doors fully. We don't know what's waiting for us if we walk out blindly." Ergyn stepped forward, drawing his sword with a sharp click.

"We'll crack open the door just enough for a shield line. If anything so much as twitches out there, we seal it back up." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Turning to three of his guards who were the least pale and trembling, Ergyn gestured toward the heavy locks on the door.

"On my mark. And shields up!" The guards scrambled into position, their breath ragged as they braced their heavy wooden and iron-reinforced shields against the seam of the massive iron door. The metal gears groaned and scraped violently as the wheel began to spin, the thick locking bolts sliding back into the stone framework with a heavy, echoing thud. The guards nodded, their trembling hands beginning to unbolt the locks. The internal gears groaned, protesting loudly, until the thick metal bolts slid back.

Cold air immediately rushed through the small opening, carrying the pungent stench of blood and smoke. The celebratory cheers inside the bunker had long died down, replaced by a tense silence. Everyone watched the expanding gap with wide, terrified eyes, as if expecting a monster to lunge through at any moment. Ergyn stepped up first, readying his blade as he peered through the gap between the guards' heavy shields.

The Mayor remained a step behind him, flanked by Briar and Demetri, their hands hovering over their respective weapons. Grandmother lingered just behind them. Lio kept Ophila's weight braced against his side, then stepped up directly behind the shield line, using his height to look over the top edge. In the view outside, Lio could see clearer than ever how the massive torrent of monsters was actually entirely orderly. None of them even looked back once.

Not a single monster turned its head toward the bunker to scavenge the ruins of Trestfall. They were all retreating from Floor 3. All the more evidence that the organization had planned all of this. As the last towering giant hauled itself into the glowing rift, a blinding flash of light rippled, the giant hole in the sky blurring. Then, with a strange whipping snap, the massive tear vanished. Following the moment, there was only silence.

Ergyn slowly lowered his sword as he stared out at the ruins of his settlement.

"They're gone," he muttered. The Mayor sighed grimly.

"Open the doors fully," he commanded.

"Let us see what is left of our town." The doors swung open fully. Led by Ergyn and the guard's shield line, everybody stepped out into the open air. The atmosphere outside felt cold and unnaturally thin, like a lot of pressure had been stripped from the surroundings. Lio walked at a steady pace, keeping his arm firmly around Ophila's waist to anchor her. Her hand clutched his coat for leverage, her breathing hitching every so often.

They silently walked past the destroyed Amberpulp fields, littered with the bodies of monsters. The most noticeable was the trail of corpses that unconscious Lio presumably had left in his wake. As they pushed deeper into the settlement itself, the sheer scale of the devastation revealed itself to everybody. Trestfall was gone. Even the most sturdy of the fungal houses had been caved in, their roofs collapsed. Heavy support beams had snapped like dry twigs.

Shattered glass from broken windows littered the cobblestones like glittering snow, crunching beneath their feet. The silence didn't last long. Behind them, the townsfolk who had tentatively followed the Mayor out began to truly see what they had lost. A wail pierced the air as a woman recognized the crushed remains of her home. Nearby, guards stumbled over overturned carts, falling to their knees as they discovered multiple pale, mangled limbs of neighbors who hadn't made it to the bunker in time.

The crying spread rapidly, a contagious wave of grief and shock. Lio glanced at his party members. William was walking with jaw clenched, staring straight ahead, while Senna kept her eyes fixed on the ground, her hands trembling. Beside him, Ophila leaned further into his shoulder, he found her tiredly staring out at the carnage with a haunted expression. Lio looked back up, his newly altered cyan eyes analyzing the destruction with an impassive look. They passed bodies, after bodies, after bodies.

An endless massacre. The lodge where they had stayed was unrecognizable. The taverns that had provided them food were charred beyond repair. The bathhouse, the Mayor's residence, even the secret Kingmaker information den. All destroyed. They reached what remained of the town square. The central fountain was cracked down the middle, its water draining into the cobblestones in a dark, muddy pool. Lio noticed that Ergyn had stopped walking. He stood at the fountain's edge, his sword still drawn.

He was looking at the guards—his guards—lying in a pile of mutilated corpses. Ergyn lowered the tip of his sword until it nearly scraped the dirty water. His ocean-blue eyes stared hollowly at the pile of blood and shattered limbs. It was a grave of the men he had drilled, commanded, and promised to protect. Now reduced to an unrecognizable heap of cold flesh. Then, Lio heard a childish voice come from the back. A young boy, no older than five, pulled tightly at his mother's soot-stained sleeve.

He wasn't looking at the bodies. His wide, innocent eyes were fixed on the artificial sky.

"Mommy..." the boy whispered, pointing a small finger upward.

"Is this the snow you told us about? The stuff that comes on the surface?" The mother choked back a sob, instantly pulling the boy's head down against her shoulder to bury his face, her body shaking violently as she wept into his hair. Lio looked away from the weeping mother and slowly raised his head. Where the giant rift had previously been, a cascading torrent of ash was beginning to blanket Trestfall. It wasn't white, but red, drifting lazily through the air.

The crimson soot fell silently, accumulating in soft mounds over the collapsed buildings and burying the piles of mutilated corpses. With every passing second, the horrific image of the massacre was being blanketed under a smooth layer of burning crimson. A stray flake of the ash landed softly on the back of Lio's hand. He watched impassively as the residual heat of his skin melted it into a dark smudge against his skin. Interesting. End of Book 1: Ashes of a Scarlet Harvest