Chapter 35: State of things

Leon and Snow moved through the town fast, they aimed more to ensure that everyone was safe, but the scenes they saw as they moved caused a change in the way they saw things. The two of them had always been in front of danger and had even seen humans die, but today, it was different.

They saw people getting killed a few feet away before they could arrive and stop it, they saw undead shatter walls and break into houses and kill the people inside before they could arrive.

Each death made them run faster, it made their hearts race and their eagerness to stop this rise even more, but no matter how much they loved and no matter how much they attacked, someone was dying at every moment and it was a horrific thought.

The Belmont guards and Army also did their best and as the day came to an end slowly, the amount of undead reduced and was brought to a containable low, and not long after, they were all killed, the entire town inside and outside was free of the undead, but no one could feel free, because the pillar was out there and it was still glowing.

Leon sat outside in the center of town on a broken part of a house, hunched over with his fingers interlocked, the footsteps of knights and guards moving around to ensure that everything was clear filled his ears, yet he locked it out and was focused on something else.

Somehow he kept getting flashes to when the undead broke out, as if the whole thing was trying to punish him for knowing something bad would happen and doing absolutely nothing about it till the last moment.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Snow walked up to him and asked.

"I was thinking, if we had spoken to someone about the countdown, maybe we could have avoided this." Leon expressed.

"Don’t be that way." Snow said immediately, she placed her hand on his head and raised it up so he could see her eye to eye.

"You were five when you discovered it." She said in a calm manner.

"It doesn’t excuse me not saying anything." Leon argued.

"And what if you had? What could have possibly been done? We watched as everyone tried to understand the pillar desperately. If word got out that in the entire empire two kids saw a countdown that no one else saw, what would happen?" She asked Leon.

He paused, thinking about what she said closely, it made a lot of sense. They would have been snatched away and used for experiments to find out what was happening.

"I guess there was no way out of this," he said, he looked down again. "Sigh, death comes to us all," he muttered and got on his feet.

"Alright, let’s head back to the manor, I want to hear what my father knows about the situation and if the said thing happened at all the other pillars." Leon said and walked past her.

She watched him go and clutched her chest, wondering if she should tell him about the heartbeats, she knew he was not getting it like her and she needed to tell him as he was the only one she could trust, but a very low voice within her fought against it and she allowed that voice to win.

They arrived back at the manor and Leon saw his mother standing outside, she looked extremely panicked and the maids were barely holding her back.

When she spotted Leon, she rushed over to him and threw her arms around him.

"Where have you been? You had me worried to death." She said while tears seeped out of her eyes.

"I was helping with the situation, I am an adventurer and the son of the count, it only makes sense that I help."

"You should not be out there doing that, you are a kid." She grabbed his ears and pulled it hard.

"Ow ow ow."

She let go and hugged him again.

"Thank goodness you are safe," she said with a motherly smile. She looked at Snow as well.

"Are you alright as well? I know Leon can drag anyone into his madness."

Snow shook her head, "I’m fine, we worked together to help the people, though we could not save everyone."

Her words made the mood heavy. Everyone had seen the destruction that the attack had caused and they knew lots of people had died.

"Is father inside?" Leon asked, "I want to have a word with him."

"Your father is having a meeting with his top men, advisors and important figures in the town. What happened was unprecedented but from what it seems, we must rely on ourselves to deal with this.

Every pillar around the empire unleashed the same, if not greater undead, it had turned into a war that no one expected and things are turning dire." His mother explained, even though she had no physical training to talk about, she was extremely intellectual and that was the reason his father had married her.

"The pillar outside is still activated." Leon said.

"I know, and it scares me, because that means whatever is coming has only started, and if this is the loss that we suffer from the first attack, what comes next will be terrible for us."

"Then we have to destroy it or something, find a way to stop it," Leon said.

She ran her fingers through his hair, "Leon you know that for five years everyone has tried to do that and no one has been able to. Even sword masters and arch mages have failed to scratch the pillars.

Whoever made them had the ability to make them untouchable, this is not something that was done spontaneously, someone had planned this for many years to ensure that in that five years we would not be able to stop it.

Sigh, that’s enough for now, you two should head in and get some rest, clear your heads of what you experienced."