Chapter 112: The Night We Almost Lost Everything (03)
The atmosphere broke apart in an instant.
The ground beneath her, the same ground where her friends had fallen, where their warm blood had soaked into the cracks, suddenly turned darker. It was not normal darkness, it spread like thick black liquid, leaking across the earth in every direction.
From that blackened earth, the shadows began to rise. First one... then another... then a dozen... then hundreds.
They were not bodies. They were like torn pieces of souls, broken and shapeless, crawling their way up from the dark. They twisted and clawed their way into the air, and even though they had no faces, no voices, they screamed in silence. It was the sound of all the death Liora had carried inside her, now pouring out into the world.
Her chest heaved painfully, every breath feeling like it tore her lungs apart. Her arms hung heavy at her sides, too broken to even lift properly. Her knees shook with each movement. Her body, which was covered in blood—some hers, some not—seemed ready to fall apart any second.
Yet still, she stood.
The shadows gathered around her, circling like loyal soldiers waiting for her command.
Liora lifted her trembling hand, her fingers barely able to move. Tears blurred her vision. Her throat burned from screaming earlier, from crying for friends who would never answer again. Blood dripped down her chin, but she did not care. Pain was all she could feel. Pain and rage.
She opened her mouth, and her voice, which was hoarse from all the crying, managed a single word—