Adam, Lian Mei, Voss, Renn, and Sable were continuing the route. The heavy silence of the plains was broken only by the rushing wind against the moth’s wings.
“Was it just blocked?” Adam wondered aloud, his voice barely carrying over the rush of the air. He was staring back at the horizon.
“Mother must have protected everyone. We shouldn’t worry about them now, they are stronger than we are,” Renn responded, trying to inject his usual warmth into the words. But his characteristic grin was nowhere to be found.
Adam didn't reply. He turned his eyes forward, but he wasn't really seeing the landscape. His mind was violently pulling him backward. Noah. Jin. Queen Selena. He had left them behind right as the nightmare repeated itself. His psychological state felt entirely fractured. It's because of me again. If I hadn’t gone there, the city of Serica wouldn’t have faced such a thing. Wherever I go, this will keep happening.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the City of Light vaporizing. He felt the exact same atmospheric rupture, the exact same crushing helplessness. This overwhelming destruction simply followed him wherever he went. For him, it felt like the guilt of causing such destruction and then not being caught in it. He felt like a coward fleeing a burning house.
They were moving at maximum velocity now.
“We are going to move at maximum speed,” Lian Mei said with a stressed voice.
"This will exhaust the moths," Voss replied evenly. "They're built for distance, not sprints."
As the speed started to increase and the wind felt more violent.
“We need to gain as much distance as possible, as fast as possible. We can have the moths rest later. The risk is too high to play conservative."
The moths accelerated. The wind turned violent against them, and the formation tightened instinctively as the open wasteland blurred.
Lian Mei had discarded all caution in favor of sheer speed. They were exposed, cutting directly across the open wasteland. There was no time for stealth anymore.
Adam glanced at Lian Mei. She was facing forward, jaw set, eyes scanning the horizon with the precise focus of someone using concentration as a substitute for composure. Her eyes , usually steady in a way that felt almost dull, duller than he'd ever seen them.
By sunset, the moths began to slow on their own. Ahead, shimmering faintly through, a settlement materialized from the wasteland.
Unlike the route they'd taken to Sutra, which had been deliberately indirect, modified for unpredictability and discretion, this one was a straight, uncompromising line. The village ahead hadn't existed on their previous path. It was new ground.
"We need to stop for a while,"
As they reached the place, The desolation became apparent before they even landed. What had looked like a settlement from afar revealed itself, up close, as something in the process of being forgotten. Streets buried under pale dust. Doors hanging open, swinging with a slow, rhythmic creak in the dry wind. Windows empty. No movement anywhere.
They dismounted, boots crunching into the silence.
Adam walked through the empty village. There were no bodies, no signs of a struggle or a battle, just the haunting residue of a sudden, desperate mass exodus. Sable kept her hands hovering near her weapon, her eyes darting from shadow to shadow, but there was nothing to fight. The village was simply dead.
Adam stepped carefully into one of the hollowed-out stone houses, pushing past a hanging tarp that served as a makeshift door. The interior was dim and smelled heavily of stagnant air. On a sturdy oak dining table, chairs were pushed back, one of them toppled sideways onto the floor. Adam approached the table. Sitting in the center was a wooden bowl filled with a thick, pale stew. A fuzzy layer of white mold had bloomed over its surface, but when Adam tilted the bowl slightly, the murky liquid beneath sloshed. Next to it lay a half-carved rotten tomato and a dropped knife, as if the owner had simply stood up and vanished mid-stroke.
"Don't wander far," Lian Mei told Adam from outside, her voice quieter than usual.
They split up and kept exploring the place. No humans were found there, only wind and dust.
Until a sharp whistle cut them off.
It was Lian Mei, signaling for them to regroup.
They reunited next to the moths' resting area.
“Did you find something of interest?” Renn asked the rest.
“No, it seems this place has been abandoned,” Lian Mei responded.
“Not long ago. I would say this place was alive a few days ago at most,” Adam said with a sure voice.
“What do you mean a few days ago? How could you know?”
“I checked inside one of the houses,” Adam explained, his brow furrowed in thought. “There was a bowl of food left on a table. It had molded over, but the liquid inside hadn't dried out yet. In this heat, with this dry wind tearing through the open windows, that stew would have turned to completely dried crust in less than a week. The chairs were knocked over, and a carving knife was dropped right next to a piece of food mid through it being cut. They didn't pack up their belongings and leave peacefully. They ran. Mid-meal. Mid-sentence. Whatever happened, they didn't have time to think about it.”
A silence settled over the group.
“I see. Then how is it even possible that an entire community leaves this place this fast? Something must have happened here.”, Sable asked.
“Whatever did happen here, I don’t think it's something good. Our priority is to reach the Kingdom of Light and retrieve what we need. Staying here is too risky when our main goal is to avoid danger,” Voss said while grabbing Adam’s shoulder from behind, “Whatever drove them out, it isn’t our concern”.
A silent moment took over the discussion as everyone started considering the next move.
"Going in blind is also a risk," Adam said. "If something drove an entire settlement out this fast, it's between us and where we're going. Knowing what it is seems more useful than not knowing." He looked around the group. "Don't you think?"
All four of them turned to Lian Mei. She was quiet for a moment, her gaze moving slowly across the dead street ahead.
“Alright, but only until the moths are fully recovered. We won't spend a single additional second once they do,” she added with an authoritative voice.
“And how long would that be?”
“One hour, no more. After one hour we depart, we sleep on the moths tonight.”
“Alright then, how do we do this? Do we split again?” Renn asked.
“Absolutely not. We move as one unit now that we know this place is this suspicious.”
And so, they started moving.
They navigated the suffocatingly quiet streets in a tight formation, weapons drawn and senses heightened. The buildings grew slightly larger and more intricate as they pushed toward the center of the settlement.
"Has anyone ever been here before?" Sable asked, her voice barely a whisper as she scanned the empty alleyways. "We're pretty close to Serica. I know the outskirts well, but I've never even heard of a village this size out here."
Voss and Renn shook their heads.
"No," Lian Mei replied. "This seems to be a new settlement. It was likely established only a few years back. Mother’s surveillance network is incredibly vast, and particularly precise around the capital, but she was entirely unaware of this place. If there were records of it, there would be traces in the archives. Furthermore, if she had known what was festering here, she would have acted on whatever madness drove these people away.", A pause. "Which means whatever has been happening here, it has been happening without anyone watching."
Nobody responded to that. There wasn't much to say.
They turned a corner and stopped.
It rose at the end of the street like something that had grown there rather than been built , a Cathedral of black stone, massive and angular, and most important of all, it seemed, damaged.
The heavy wooden doors creaked shut behind them, sealing away the howling wind. But the silence inside the cathedral brought no comfort.
Adam froze a few steps into the nave, his voice barely a whisper. "It's… what is this?"
The vast stone floor was painted in dark, horrifying streaks. Puddles of red gathered in the grooves of the masonry, splashing the bases of the towering pillars.
Voss immediately knelt beside the nearest pool, removing a glove to press two fingers against the edge of the liquid. She rubbed the dark substance between her fingertips, and with a grim expression grim. "It's blood. And it's recent. It hasn't fully oxidized yet."
"There’s so much of it," Sable muttered, her eyes scanning the corners of the cavernous hall. "But… where are the bodies? You don’t lose this much blood and walk away. A slaughter happened here."
"A slaughter where the dead simply vanished," Renn added as he looked around. "Why? What could have possibly killed an entire cathedral full of people?"
Lian Mei walked past the gruesome stains, her eyes darting over the altars, the empty wooden lecterns, and the massive stone shelves lining the walls. "It isn't just the bodies that are missing. Look."
Adam followed her gaze. "The books."
"Not just the books," Lian Mei corrected. "There are no scrolls. No scriptures. No tapestries with writing. Every single piece of text that belonged to this cathedral has been completely removed."
They pushed deeper into the sanctuary, stepping carefully to avoid the grim puddles. Near the back of the cathedral, bathed in the dim light of a stained-glass window, they found a wide, recessed courtyard.
Renn frowned, looking at the empty stone tiers and the dry trenches. "What was this supposed to be?"
"A garden," Sable said softly, tracing her hand along the edge of a tiered stone basin. "You can tell by the architecture. These are planters. That trench is a tiered irrigation layout designed to catch water."
"But it's empty," Adam pointed out, stepping into the center of the structure. "I don't just mean dead. I mean there is absolutely nothing. No dead plants, no roots, no water. There isn't even a single grain of soil."
Lian Mei crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing. "Not only did something cause everyone inside to die, but whatever killed them systematically eradicated everything that held content or life in this place."
"No," Adam objected, shaking his head. "I don't think that's it."
Lian Mei turned to him, an eyebrow raised. "Explain."
Adam gestured toward the far altar. "If their goal was to take everything of value or substance, they did a terrible job. The gold chalices are still sitting right there. The silver ceremonial instruments haven't been touched."
He walked over to a nearby offering table and picked up two distinct items. "And weirder than that, there are unrelated objects left behind. Look at this, a velvet box with raw emeralds inside, and a small, hand-carved wooden horse. These look like offerings meant for a priest or a leader."
Voss stood up. "So, you're saying this wasn't a looting."
"Exactly," Adam said. "Whoever cleaned up this place only targeted things that contained text and meaning. They committed this massacre, and then they made absolutely sure no one would ever be able to read what was going on here. They erased the cathedral's purpose."
Adam paused, looking back toward the barren stone planters. "It’s already strange enough that the entire city outside is empty if this slaughter only happened inside. But if we consider the specific things the killers took with them… the garden doesn’t fit the pattern."
"What do you mean?" Sable asked.
Adam reasoned. "I understand taking the books and the scrolls to hide the truth. Removing the bodies might have also made it hard to find clues on what exactly happened here. But why clean up this garden? Why scrub it so thoroughly that not a single drop of soil, grass, or water is left behind?"
Renn leaned against a pillar, a dark look crossing his face. "There is something else that is even more disturbing. If they went through the immense, agonizing pain of dragging out every single corpse, and sweeping up every speck of dirt from that garden…" He gestured to the floor. "Why leave the blood?"
The group fell into a heavy silence.
"He's right," Voss said, her voice deep and troubled. "If you're going to clean up the bodies, you clean the floor. Leaving the blood means their goal wasn't to hide the massacre itself. It was something else entirely."
Sable hugged her arms, suddenly looking very cold. "Do you think... whatever triggered this bloodbath inside the cathedral is the reason the rest of the city outside became completely empty?"
Lian Mei didn't answer. She had walked back to the center of the garden. Slowly, she crouched down, bringing her face inches from the barren stone where the earth should have rested. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through her nose.
When she opened her eyes, there was a flicker of deep unsettling confusion in them.
"Adam. Voss," Lian Mei called out softly. "Come here."
Adam and Voss approached, crouching down beside her.
"Tell me what you smell," she instructed.
Adam leaned close to the stone, inhaling deeply. Voss did the same. Adam blinked, expecting the damp, heavy scent of old earth and roots. Instead, there was nothing. Just the cold, sterile scent of dust and dry rock.
"It doesn't smell like soil," Lian Mei murmured, looking between them.
"No," Adam confirmed, a chill running down his spine. "It doesn't."
Voss ran a hand over the smooth, odorless stone. "It's completely sterile," she whispered. "It's as if dirt was never here to begin with."
The silence of the dead cathedral rushed back in to answer him. For a long, heavy moment, the group simply stood there, letting the oppressive quiet and the sheer scale of the mystery weigh on them.
Then, it happened.
Voss and Lian Mei twitched at the exact same millisecond, their heads snapping up like hounds catching a scent.
Lian Mei shattered the quiet, her voice sharp. "We are being watched!"
"What?!" Adam gasped, his heart rate instantly spiking as adrenaline flooded his veins.
The party immediately dropped into a tight combat formation, standing back-to-back, their eyes frantically scanning to cover every possible angle.
"Are you sure?" Renn asked, his words rushing out tense. "How far are they? How many?"
"One," Lian Mei stated, her eyes darting across. "I am confident it is only one person. But I cannot pinpoint from where."
"She's right," Voss agreed. "I feel it too. Whoever it is, they are terrifyingly good at hiding their presence."
Renn felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. Both Voss and Lian Mei possess Eldritch hearts with an apex predator's instinct for living danger, he thought rapidly. If they both flinched at the exact same moment, there is absolutely zero room for mistake. Just who the hell is looking at us?
"What should we do now?!".
"We leave," she ordered coldly. "Immediately."