Chapter 320: Kill them all

The biting chill of the early morning forest was a stark, almost violent contrast to the suffocating heat of Cassandra’s bedchambers.

Damp pine needles crunched under our heavy leather boots as the squad pushed deeper through the mist-shrouded canopy.

Ahead and to our flanks, a half-dozen of the scouts moved in loose formation, their hands hovering near the hilts of their blades, keeping a vigilant eye out for cultist scouts or mutated beasts.

Our objective was simple enough, retrieve an uncorrupted ward stone dropped during the prior skirmish along the northern perimeter before the miasma creeping from the capital could taint it.

Beside me, Sira adjusted the strap of her crossbow, her breath pluming in pale clouds against the cold grey light.

“I know I’ve said it already,” she murmured, breaking the rhythmic hush of the forest. Her amber eyes glanced toward me, carrying an earnest, lingering warmth.

“But thank you, Jin. I owe you my life.”

I kept my gaze fixed on the treeline ahead, offering an easy, dismissive half-smile.

“Drop it, Sira. It was nothing. We’re friends. You would have done the same for me if our positions were reversed.”

“Maybe,” she conceded softly, though a fond smile touched her lips.

She walked in silence for another dozen paces before her expression softened into something more teasing, an unmistakable glint of matchmaking curiosity in her eyes.

“So,” she began casually, leaning slightly closer so her voice wouldn’t carry to the scouts ahead. “When are you actually going to propose to Emma?”

The question hit like a splash of freezing river water.

“With the way the world is turning inside out, you shouldn’t waste time,” Sira urged, her voice entirely genuine, completely blind to the tangled knot of dark secrets that actually bound my life.

“You have circled around for so long. Life’s too fragile right now, Jin. If there’s something you want, you have to fulfill those wishes early, before another disaster steals the chance from you.”

A dry, bitter amusement flickered in the back of my mind.

“The world’s a little too unstable for fairy tales right now, Sira,” I replied evenly, keeping my tone light and unreadable as I stepped over a tangled knot of exposed roots.

“Between the upcoming summit and the rot creeping into the Capital, my hands are plenty full. Proposals can wait until we’re sure we’ll all live to see next season.”

Before she could press the matter further, I gestured toward a faint, faint pulse of pale blue light filtering through the brush a few dozen yards ahead.

“Come on,” I said, picking up the pace and leaving the conversation behind in the mist. “Let’s find the stone and get back before nightfall.”

The pale azure glow cut through the heavy shroud of pine and fog, casting jagged, elongated shadows across the damp forest floor.

Sira fell into step behind me, her teasing expression instantly wiped clean, replaced by the sharp, calculating focus of a seasoned scout.

“Spread out, two paces,” I signaled with a sharp tilt of my hand.

The six soldiers fanned out without a sound, their boots barely grazing the wet underbrush, steel clearing leather in smooth, muffled whispers.

If there was one thing Cassandra had beaten into her units, it was ruthless, reflexive discipline.

Every man and woman here knew that hesitation in these woods meant an agonizing death at the hands of whatever filth crawled out of the cult’s shadows.

We breached a small, sunken clearing ringed by ancient, dead willows. At the center lay the ward stone, a jagged prism of pure celestine, humming with a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in the soles of my boots.

But it wasn’t just sitting there.

“Hold,” I breathed, raising an arm to halt the troops.

The clearing reeked. It wasn’t the clean, biting chill of the morning frost, nor the earthy musk of damp pine. It was the rancid, copper-and-brimstone stench of coagulated demonic blood.

The ground around the stone had turned an oily, sickly shade of black, with thin, creeping crimson veins threading outward through the frozen grass like rotting roots.

“Look at the runic ring,” Sira hissed under her breath, bringing her crossbow up to her shoulder, her amber eyes scanning the surrounding ridge with fierce intensity.

“Someone tried to invert it.”

She was right. The defensive glyphs carved into the stone’s faceted sides hadn’t been shattered, they had been systematically defaced.

A dark, jagged crimson seal was etched across the primary stabilization rune, slowly twisting the stone’s purifying resonance into a localized beacon.

“They weren’t trying to destroy the northern perimeter,” I said, my voice cold, the puzzle pieces rapidly locking into place. “They were trying to siphon it. Turning our own ward network into a feeding line to mask a subterranean rift.”

Just like Vane’s confession. The cult wasn’t preparing to lay siege to the Raith estate from the outside; they were setting the stage to anchor a demonic breach right beneath the manor’s wards when the lords assembled for the summit.

A sudden, sharp snap echoed from the ridge above us.

Before the sound could even finish reverberating through the mist, my body moved.

I drew my sword in a single, fluid arc, the blade whistling through the freezing air as a twisted, sinewy silhouette lunged from the canopy.

A cultist thrall, its flesh warped into pale, grotesque plates, jaw dislocated and dripping black bile, came screaming down toward Sira.

I stepped into its descent. With a violent, upward slash, my blade caught the creature at the collarbone, cleaving diagonally through bone, ribcage, and corrupted flesh with sickening ease.

Black, boiling ichor sprayed across the frozen moss as the two halves of the corpse slammed into the dirt, twitching once before going completely still.

“Perimeter!” Sira barked, her bow already humming as a silver-tipped bolt drilled through the eye of a second figure emerging from the mist twenty yards up the ridge.

Low, guttural chittering began to rise from the dense fog encircling the clearing. More of them.

Not an organized strike force, but the rabid remnants left behind to finish poisoning the stone.

I wiped a drop of black blood from the flat of my blade, stepping directly between the tainted ward stone and the creeping shadows, my pulse settling into a cold, terrifying calm.

“Kill them all,” I ordered, my voice cutting through the fog like frozen iron. “Leave not a single one breathing to report back.”