Chapter 59
Chapter Fifty-Nine
I stumbled forward, one hand wrapped white-knuckled around my bow, the other slick with sweat.
My grip faltered. My pulse didn’t.
It thrashed, wild and frenzied, a war drum inside my ribs.
Thick, black smoke unfurled around me, snaking around my legs, climbing over my skin, trying to claim every inch of me like something sentient—suffocating, cruel. Air scorched down my throat, bitter and acrid, searing my lungs like punishment for daring to breathe.
This wasn’t like hunting.
There was no thrill.
No calm.
Only the howl in my blood, begging to kill. To punish. To end them all.
Keep it together.
The streets I’d grown up on were gone—buried beneath ash and silence. Windows shattered. Doors gaping. Stone blackened as if the village itself had been set alight from the inside.
Each step I took dragged me closer to devastation—toward horrors I could never imagine.
The further into Ophelia we stumbled, the thicker the air became—choked with soot, with destruction, with death. My vision blurred. My lungs burned. And just when I thought I’d found my footing—I tripped.
Something soft. Yielding.
I staggered back, nearly falling. Maalikai was already beside me, steadying my body before I completely crumbled.
He crouched low, eyes locked on the ground. His face drained of all color, twisted with something primal. Revulsion. Horror.
“Go back,” he said, voice low and sharp.
I took a hesitant step forward.
“Don’t,” he said, holding his hand up to stop me. One word. Flat. Final.
He was trying to protect me. Which only meant one thing: There was something worth protecting me from.
I was already sinking. Knees hitting the dirt as I dropped beside him, squinting through the haze. The smoke parted just enough.
Then I saw it.
And then—my whole world tore in two.
Olag.
His blood soaked the earth, pooling thick and glistening beneath him. His body was twisted—limbs at unnatural angles, neck askew—like his body had been bent backward by a force that didn’t care he was human.
A sound tore out of me—raw, feral, not entirely human.
He should’ve been telling stories. Not bleeding into the soil. Not staring blankly at nothing while the smoke swallowed his last breath.
“No—no, no, no?—”
The words tumbled out of me in a breathless stammer. I scrambled back, hands sinking into the ash, slipping, sliding.
This couldn’t be real.
This wasn’t real.
Olag told bedtime stories in the square. He snuck sweets to the little kids. He smiled when he spoke.
He wasn’t?—
“Emylia.” Maalikai’s voice tried to stablize me.
But I was already on my feet, moving without thought or purpose.
The smoke swirled. Shifted.
I spun in a haze.
And that’s when I saw them.
Shapes. Dozens of them.
Small.
Too small.
“No—” My voice cracked. “No, no, no?—”
I ran. I tripped. I crawled.
I couldn’t stop.
Ash clung to their bodies. Hair matted, limbs limp, fingers curled around shattered trinkets. Dolls. Ribbons. Candy sticks, half-melted in tiny hands.
The first child I reached was still warm.
A girl. Maybe seven. Her dress scorched black. Her legs curled up like she’d tried to make herself small. Her hand still clutched a burnt doll, its little body still cindering.
I dropped to my knees, hands scrabbling. Ash clouded around me, but I didn’t care. I pressed my fingers to her neck. Her wrist. Her lips. Anywhere.
Nothing.
No heartbeat.
No breath.
No pulse.
Yet she was still warm, like her body clung to the ghost of something that could almost be alive.
I screamed.
Loud. Choking. A noise that scraped out of my chest like it was ripping skin with it.
I grabbed the next child. Then the next.
Each one colder.
Each one heavier.
Each one?—
Gone.
My body collapsed beside them. I didn’t even feel it. My fingers tangled in fabric and skin, trying to shake someone awake— anyone .
I clawed at the dirt like I could dig the truth out of it and make it something different.
“This isn’t real,” I gasped. “It’s not real—it can’t?—”
But it was.
The smoke lifted for one breathless second—just enough to reveal them.
All of them.
Dozens of tiny bodies, strewn like offerings at the feet of something merciless.
Limbs twisted. Faces slack. Still warm.
So many.
Children. Babies.
Their bodies strewn like discarded rubbish.
Blood streaked across the ground, pooling in grotesque smears—a mural of innocence, ripped apart mid-stroke. The stench of copper and burnt flesh clawed its way up my throat, thick with smoke and something worse.
I gagged, choked it down.
They’d had no time.
No chance.
Butchered where they sat.
Some remained alone, half burned trinkets now turned grave markers. Others had fallen curled around each other—siblings, maybe—locked in final embraces. Trying to protect one another.
It hadn’t mattered.
Their eyes—Gods, their eyes—wide and vacant, frozen mid-question. Waiting. Hoping. Capturing the heartbreaking moment they realized no one was coming. Like they couldn’t understand how death had come for them so fast. Still waiting for someone to stop it. To save them.
So was I.
A broken sound tore out of me—raw, animalistic. My tears weren’t silent anymore. They came hot and helpless, streaking down my soot-stained cheeks, my sobs muffled by the smoke and the weight of the small body still cradled in my arms.
This wasn’t war.
This was slaughter.
And the Gods-damned monsters who did it hadn’t even flinched.
I collapsed forward, my forehead hitting the ground. Ash billowed around me. Blood soaked into my sleeves. I let it. I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
The screams wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know if they were mine anymore. My mouth moved, but there were no words—just the sound of something breaking inside me.
Bone-deep. Soul-deep.
Irreparable.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
I flinched like I’d been stabbed.
“It’s me,” Maalikai said. Gentle. Urgent.
But everything felt false. Even him.
I didn’t turn. I couldn’t.
“They were just children,” I whispered. “They didn’t even run. They trusted us.”
My hands curled into fists. Nails bit into skin. I didn’t care.
“I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here .”
“Emylia.”
“I let them die.”
“You didn’t?—”
“They DIED.” The scream ripped through me like lightning through bone.
Maalikai didn’t falter. He dropped to his knees and reached for me, but I jerked away, still clutching a body that was no longer anything but weight and silence.
“We have to go,” he said finally.
The words didn’t register.
I was still cradling her. Still pretending there was hope.
Even now.
Even though I knew better.
But he didn’t wait for permission.
He pulled me upright. My legs gave. He held me anyway. My hands smeared blood across his chest. He didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care.
When he pressed my bow into my palm, I didn’t feel its weight. But my fingers curled around it anyway.
I wasn’t ready to move.
I wasn’t ready to breathe.
But I had to. Because the monsters who did this were still out there.
And I was still alive.
And I was coming for them—with blood on my hands, and nothing left to lose.