Chapter Thirty:

  “Ashes of the Sacred”

  Haru stood amidst the wreckage of Kagemura, his tail twitching with restless energy as tension cracked through the air like static. The battered remnants of Players and indigenous warriors huddled beneath the shattered branches of Shinryu—now still once more, her form returned to that of the sacred tree she had once been.

  A young Kitsune healer crouched beside a wounded Nekomijin, pressing herbs into a deep gash. “You’ll be ready by morning,” she said, her voice calm but strained.

  Nearby, Kaori wrapped an arm around two children who had lost everything, murmuring to them between breaths. Her voice, low and steady, told stories of warriors who fought without retreat.

  A murmur spread.

  “Where’s John?” a Player rasped, propped against broken stone. “Where’s the samurai guy? Did they leave us?”

  More voices followed, louder now:

  “They ran.”

  “They left us here!”

  “Sterling’s coming! We’re all dead!”

  “He’s going to kill everyone!”

  Panic swelled like rising floodwater.

  Kaori moved into the center. Her eyes blazed beneath soot-streaked fur. Despite her wounds, she stood tall.

  “They didn’t run,” she said. Her voice cut through the uproar like a blade. “They’re buying us a future. John, Rai, Akira—they went to fix the root, not patch the leaves. Our job is to survive. To hold.”

  She turned her gaze to Haru, who gave a faint nod.

  “My friends died for this,” he said, his voice sharper than steel. “Takeshi, Kei, Yumi. They believed in something better than fear. If we give in now, we lose everything they gave us.”

  The crowd quieted. Not completely, but enough.

  “We hold,” Kaori repeated.

  Then the sky changed.

  The color leeched from the world—green, gold, and red fading into pale, washed-out gray. The wind stopped moving. Even the ash hung still.

  The air twisted. Folded.

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  And from it, Sterling emerged.

  He descended without a sound. Robes of void-dark silk unfurled behind him. The sky bent to his presence. At his side Hex—childlike, coiled, and smiling.

  Sterling surveyed the crowd with unreadable disinterest. Then, to his daughter, he said:

  “Show them what disobedience earns.”

  Hex lifted a single hand.

  The mists came next.

  The first mist curled like a whisper.

  It drifted lazily into the crowd, pale green and deceptively soft. A Player turned, weapon drawn—only to drive it into the shoulder of the friend beside him. His face twisted in horror, but his body moved without permission. Laughter—wild, unnatural—tore from his throat.

  Then came the second wave.

  Purple vapor rolled in low, wrapping around legs and throats. Breathing became agony. One elder collapsed, arms raised in a silent prayer as blood poured from nose and mouth. A warrior clutched at his chest, falling to his knees as he drowned from the inside.

  Screams fractured into choking gasps.

  The third mist arrived without sound.

  Black.

  As void.

  Where it passed, people stopped moving. Weapons dropped from hands. Eyes went dull. Some collapsed. Others stood, hollowed, broken by the weight of what they saw behind their own eyes.

  Hex hummed to herself, a child lost in a tune only she could hear. Her head tilted at an unnatural angle as she watched them fall.

  Sterling said nothing. His eyes moved over the field as if already counting the dead. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, almost bored.

  “How disappointing. Not one of you close to his strength.”

  A girl curled into herself, sobbing. Another simply walked forward, blank-eyed, straight into the mists.

  Then Sterling raised a hand.

  A sphere formed above his palm—dense and alive, its center pulsing with a gravity all its own. He stared at it for a long moment, almost contemplative.

  Then he let it fall.

  The impact did not sound like an explosion. It sounded like the end of breath.

  Fire didn’t spread. It consumed.

  A wave of ash burst outward—silent, bright.

  Absolute.

  Miles away, John felt it before he saw it.

  The wind howled past them, scorching hot and carrying the unmistakable scent of loss. It hit the skin like betrayal.

  Then came the sound.

  A low, distant roar that rolled across the land like a final judgment.

  Rai stopped mid-step. Her breath hitched.

  “We… we just left them.”

  Akira didn’t answer at first. His hands clenched. His eyes didn’t move from the rising column of smoke in the distance.

  “If we’d stayed,” he said at last, “we’d all be dead. John’s right. The only way out is forward.”

  John said nothing.

  He stared at the horizon, the smoke still rising. Yumi’s charm rested in his palm. He squeezed it until his knuckles went white.

  He didn’t have to say it.

  He had to believe.

  Because if he didn’t—there was nothing left to save.

  Ash fell like snow.

  Thin, silent, without warmth. It dusted the hilltops, settled in cracks, clung to armor and hair. The shockwave had passed, but the silence it left behind was worse.

  Rai hadn’t moved in minutes. Akira stood beside her, arms crossed, face set in a mask that looked calm only from far away.

  John sat apart.

  RW sat curled beside him, flame dimmed to a faint ember.

  “I don’t feel her anymore,” she whispered.

  John nodded. “I know.”

  He wasn’t sure if she meant Yumi or Gameweaver. Maybe both.

  “They’re gone,” Rai said softly. Not a question. Not an emotion. Just a fact laid bare.

  Akira finally moved. He knelt beside John, resting a hand on the back of his neck.

  “You sure about this path?”

  “No.”

  John closed his fingers around the charm.

  “But I’m going anyway.”

  He stood slowly, legs stiff from more than exhaustion. The wind pulled at their clothes as they turned toward the road ahead.

  They walked without speaking, the weight of the fallen carried not in their packs, but in every step.

  Behind them, the sky over Kagemura turned the color of smoke.

  Ahead, Nerathe waited.

  And somewhere beneath it, The Void called his name.