Chapter 61: The Aftermath

The day the world changed started like any other, until a wound tore open reality and poured out monsters born of myth. They descended from a colossal eye hung in the heavens, bringing with them a system meant to offer humanity a fighting chance through contracts forged with imprisoned beings in the Astral Void.

But even with Astral contracts, Spiritual cultivation, and all of human ingenuity, humanity lost the war for their world. Now, settled behind city walls divided into twelve districts, they were only scratching a living back from the ashes.

District 12 was no longer a place for living people. It was a burning landscape of ash and pale light-flames.

The ruins stretched out as a wasteland of burning corpses, swallowed by fires that did not behave like ordinary flames. They were composed of light itself—cold and absolute—clinging to stone and flesh alike. The massive wound in reality, pulsing a sickly, brilliant emerald, poured out continuous streams of this light-fire.

All around District 12, cries and sobs echoed through the smoke, mingling with the low, grinding groan of settling debris. It was an inferno of pure illumination, burning without smoke, leaving only white-hot silence in its wake.

Across the scorched earth lay massive footprints left by the creature that had destroyed them—an Indigo-class Calamity, a walking titan of pure starlight and devastation. Orson wasn’t even sure where the titan was going, nor did he care.

Orson lay on the cracked earth, in agonizing pain. He looked down at his right hand. He was holding a core of light-flame, but it didn’t burn him—not that Orson would have felt the heat anymore. Half of his face had been scorched clean away, the flesh charred down to the white sheen of bone. Breathing felt like swallowing crushed glass. His fingers loosened, and the weapon he had been holding dissolved into shadow, slipping quietly back into his own shadow.

He was missing an eye, burned out by the proximity of the titan alongside half his flesh.

Orson was tired. He wanted to rest. He thought that perhaps in this world, there would finally be a place without fighting, but he was wrong—so terribly wrong about it all.

He forced himself upward, his muscles screaming, and the first person he saw through the haze of light was Rain. She had lost her left hand to the titan’s backlash. Though she lacked open bleeding wounds, burn marks covered her entire body in grotesque, mosaic patterns. She looked as broken as he felt.

Orson tried to stand, but a sudden spasm tore through his chest. He coughed up a thick mouthful of dark blood and collapsed back into the dirt.

He had pushed himself through every hardship, choosing to cultivate the forgotten Spiritual Path to reach higher stages. He had broken through the Qi Gathering phase and fought his way up to the Foundation Establishment realm.

But it still wasn’t enough. It was nothing against a true horror. Orson now understood why rank four monsters—let alone an Indigo-class Calamity like that titan—could never be handled by mere mortals.

He wasn’t the only one broken here. Contractors who had chased the rumored Saintess weapon were scattered across the smoking ruins. Some lay completely still, while others screamed in agony as the light-fire consumed them alive. Once that light touched human flesh, there was no escaping its blaze.

Orson turned his head heavily to the side and saw Sen.

Sen had been impaled clean through the torso by a jagged shard of space-debris, losing a terrifying amount of blood. Orson couldn’t even tell if the man was still alive, until Sen coughed up a thin plume of grey smoke, his remaining eye staring blankly up at the sky.

In the distance, the colossal titan continued its slow march toward the Vessel Forest, raining down burning arcs of light with every heavy step. Orson looked up at the fractured sky.

Was this it? Was this the place he was going to die?

Before the thought could fully form, a patch of absolute, suffocating darkness hovered just above him, defying the blazing light around it.

Orson looked at it. And the darkness looked back at him.

He remembered catching glimpses of this very darkness when he and Rain had first tried to stop the titan’s advance. He had no idea where it came from, or why it lingered. But for some unknown reason, independent of his will, Orson’s charred hand moved on its own.

His fingers brushed against the edge of the darkness.

A voice, cold and ancient, echoed directly inside his mind: Fear itself is scared of death. How pitiful.

Then, Orson blacked out.

---

High above the burning ruins of District 12, the sky tore open with a different kind of disturbance as heavy transport vessels began to break through the upper atmosphere.

A sharp, crackling static cut across the comm-channels.

"Holo, can you read me?"

"Yeah, this is Holo 2. I can read you loud and clear. What is the situation on the ground?"

"I’m sorry, Holo... but we just lost District 12."

"What do you mean we lost District 12?"

The radio operator’s voice cracked, static tearing through the comm-channel as the massive transport vessels hovered impotently above the wreckage. Down below, there was nothing left to save.

Out from the charred borders of the burning land, the astral creatures were already moving. Aberrant and Dread-rank beasts, drawn by the smell of blood and the lingering trace of light-fire, poured out of the wastes. Their multi-jointed limbs clicked against the glassed earth, bodies deformed and wrong-shaped, surging toward the smoking ruins with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

---

While the dead ground burned in District 12, a different kind of horror unfolded miles away in the shadows of another sector.

Lenora hung upside down by her ankles, suspended like a slab of meat on display, clad in nothing but her underwear. Her silver hair, matted with sweat and dried blood, now dripped scarlet, hanging down toward the stone floor like fresh threads of gore. Needle marks checkered her skin from throat to toe. The cold, piercing spark that once defined her eyes was entirely gone, replaced by an empty, hollow nothingness.

A man stepped forward, his bare feet scraping the floor. He reached out and grabbed a fistful of her blood-stained silver hair, yanking her head back. He looked past her to another man standing in the dim light.

"Did you break her already?"

"Well, her pride was starting to get on my nerves, so I had to," the second man replied, his voice flat. "I mean, look at her. She looks like a porcelain doll. Who knew breaking a crippled Saint would be this easy? It just took a few lives, and she finally folded."

Both men stood half-naked, wearing only their underwear in the stifling heat of the makeshift cell.

"How is the drug in her system? Is it reacting to the poison in her body?" the first man asked, eyeing her slack expression.

"The poison is getting stronger, but we managed to extract a clean sample of it."

"Good. Just be careful. We have to go. It looks like House Argus is being investigated, so we need to clear out."

Lenora hung limply, swaying slightly from the tether on her feet. She stared blindly at the two men. Though she could not make out their features through the blurred haze of her ruined vision, she felt nothing at all. No fury, no pain—just a vast, echoing hollow where her soul used to be as she swayed in her pants and bra, utterly exhausted.

"So, can I take her with me?" one of the men asked, his fingers tightening on her hair.

Before an answer could be given, a concussive boom echoed through the foundations of the building, rattling the dust from the ceiling. Both men snapped their heads toward the heavy metal door.

"Well, no time. We have to move."

The man with glasses—her torturer—gave her hair a final, mocking pat. "I’m going to miss you, my Storm Saint," he whispered.

With a harsh laugh, he turned and sprinted toward the exit, his companion close behind.

Lenora watched them leave, every shred of her pride, her title, and her emotions entirely erased. She was left alone in the dark, swaying in the silence as the footsteps faded away. How long had she even been here? A week, maybe two—she was no longer sure. Time had lost all meaning when your days were measured in torture.

Then she felt it.

The numbness was spreading through her limbs, cold and heavy. Her breath grew shallower, hitching and turning fainter with every passing second. This was it. This was the end.

Was she finally going to die?

And why did the thought of death bring Lenora such profound comfort? She felt as though she were standing at the edge of an abyss, and every instinct inside her wanted to fall.

Her vision blurred, smearing the shadows into grey haze. Right before the darkness rushed in to swallow her completely, three figures materialized out of the gloom, walking slowly toward her hanging form.

Then, everything went black.