Chapter 681: Chaos And Return

The main tribal encampment was in absolute, chaotic disarray.

The disturbance had been far too massive to ignore. Even though the spring was tucked away in a secluded place fold a fair distance from the main settlement, the phenomena had simply been too monstrous to hide.

The sky cracking open, the bleeding purple-black void, the sudden, suffocating descent of heavenly wrath, and that abrupt, world-silencing vacuum... it had shaken the settlement to its very foundations.

The victory feast, which had been winding down into slumber only hours earlier, had violently shattered into a war-camp on high alert.

Fires burned high in the braziers along the central avenues. Warriors ran in disorganized knots, gripping heavy their weapons and shouting over each other in sheer panic.

The unawakened clansmen, women, and children were huddled near the central longhouses, trembling under the belief that an angry sky-god had descended to wipe out the Veynar.

The elders were pacing outside the Great Lodge, screaming for the scouts, while the few awakened Layer 2 and Layer 3 guards stood frozen, pale-faced, still clutching their chests from the phantom suffocating pressure that had choked the valley only moments ago, whispering in terrified, awed tones about an ancestral wrath or a slumbering calamity waking beneath the Great Orrath.

Right in the middle of this swirling madhouse, near the grand stairs leading up to the Warchief’s private compound, two figures stood apart from the panic, their sharp eyes scanning the shadows.

Kira and Zeyra.

Both of them were armed, their tunics tight, eyes darting through the torchlit mist with deadly, hair-trigger focus. They hadn’t run toward the commotion like the mindless grunts; they had positioned themselves right at the defensive choke point of the inner sanctum.

Seeing Sol and Warchief Veylara suddenly appearing, their gazes snapped toward them.

Kira’s breath caught in her throat. Her grip on her daggers tightened, her eyes widening in a mixture of profound relief and sudden, intense confusion. Zeyra, standing half a pace behind her, let out a sharp gasp, her hand freezing on the hilt of her twin curved blade.

"Mother?!" Kira blurted out, taking two fast, heavy strides forward. "Sol?! What happened out there?! The whole sky cracked open... the essence felt like an avalanche! We thought the remnants of the Coalition brought down a forbidden ritual, or—"

Her voice abruptly died in her throat as she closed the distance and got a clear look at them under the flickering torchlight.

Veylara was moving with a smooth, terrifyingly grace, her face composed, but she was wearing only a rumpled linen tunic, completely bare-legged, her hair uncombed, and her collarbone bore unmistakable, dark red marks that certainly hadn’t come from an injury.

And then there was Sol.

Kira’s jaw practically hit the packed dirt of the avenue. Zeyra choked on her own breath, her dark eyes bulging as they locked onto his lower half.

Sol stood there, completely drenched in drying pond water, his broad chest, shoulders, and arms crisscrossed with dozens of shallow cuts.

He looked like an ancient butcher who had crawled his way out of a mass grave... and right between his hips, tied with a dried brown creeper vine, was a single, shredded green fern leaf barely covering the essentials.

A strange, suffocating silence descended over the four of them, completely insulated from the shouting warriors running past twenty paces away.

Zeyra slowly lowered her spear, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Sol, a faint, incredibly sharp smirk tugging at the edge of her lips. "Well. It seems our Champion engaged in some truly... desperate combat on the ridge."

"Sol... what... what are you wearing?!" Kira stammered, her face rapidly heating up, torn between sheer mortification and bewildered awe. "Where are your clothes?! Your favourite blade?! Why are you dressed like a bush?!"

Sol didn’t even bat an eye and gave a lazy, unbothered shrug.

"Ask your Warchief," Sol drawled, his voice completely deadpan. He tilted his chin toward the towering doorway of the Chief’s lodge, where Veylara was already slipping through the threshold with unhurried poise. "She’s the one who threw a tantrum and blew my clothes into god knows where."

Veylara didn’t stop to explain. She didn’t offer a single word of explanation, merely casting a glare on his face. With an imperious flick of her wrist, she stepped inside her private quarters, sliding the heavy timber door shut behind her with a definitive thud.

Despite her miraculous breakthrough and the divine transformation of her core, they had spent the good half of the night thoroughly, shamelessly rutting in the dirt.

Her skin was sticky, her thighs bore drying streaks of spent seed, and if Kira or the elders looked at her neck for more than two seconds under bright sunlight, the jig was up.

She needed hot water, clean furs, and a fresh tunic before she faced the clan.

Sol rolled his shoulders, feeling the dried mud crack along his spine. He looked at Kira, who was still staring at him with wide, suspicious, and slightly flushed eyes, and then at Zeyra, who was clearly holding back a burst of wicked laughter.

"Right," Sol grunted, pointing toward his own wooden quarters a few dozen yards down the path. "I’m gonna go clean up and put on some actual trousers before someone tries to harvest my wardrobe mistaking it for some exotic salad. You two coming, or are you gonna stand there catching flies?"

Kira snapped her mouth shut, a fierce red creeping up her neck, though she quickly fell into step behind him, her daggers sheathed at her belt. Zeyra followed right beside her, shaking her head with an amused sigh.

Behind them, the entrance flap of the Warchief’s residence opened. A senior female attendant...one of Veylara’s trusted inner-circle handmaidens... dressed in formal tribal clothing, stepped out into the chaotic courtyard.

She lifted a carved horn to her lips, blowing a single, clear, resonant blast that immediately drowned the shouting and panic of the warriors.

"Warriors of the Veynar! Calm your blades!" the attendant’s voice echoed across the square with trained authority. "The commotion has been resolved! The Warchief has returned safely to the sanctum! There is no enemy invasion! Return to your posts and extinguish the alarm fires! The Warchief will address the clan at the central platform when the first light touches the ground!"