Chapter 57: THE UNSEEN FUTURE
The battle was won, but still the air was filled with tension, as if the planet itself held its breath.
Kaito and Nyra were left standing in the ruined wreckage of the battlefield, the heavens above a maelstrom of hazy traces of the Abyss’s dark energy.
The creature’s body had long since broken down into nothing, but the presence of its power still lingered, suspended in the air like smoke on burnt rock.
Even having overcome the terror, there was no escape from the price. The fatigue penetrated to the bone, flowing into muscle and into marrow. Their breathing was labored, measured, each movement filled with the dulled agony of survival. Yet neither of them could surrender to rest.
They had come too far to retreat now.
Kaito’s gaze drifted to the horizon, where ravaged land converged with a sky still scarred from war. The clouds above were tinged with the colors of violet and gray, reminders of the void’s left-over. It was beautiful in a haunting way—like the world itself was bearing witness to what they went through.
The earth was marred, as his soul was.
This world—this world that was—had been forged in too much pain.
The Abyss had desecrated its way, but worse than the devastation of flesh was the realization that what they had just vanquished was only a small facet of what was to come.
One monster vanquished did not mean the defeat of war. It meant only that they had lived long enough to combat the horror that waits ahead for them.
"I figured it would be different," Kaito complained, more to himself than to Nyra. His deep, gruff voice was laced with weariness. "I figured we’d be. I don’t know, alive after having killed it."