Chapter 357 - Bloody aftermaths
Ringing.
That was the first thing Scarlett registered. A sharp, hollow tone that filled her ears like a cracked bell held too close to the skull. It pulsed with each heartbeat, echoing through her blood, vibrating against her eardrums. Rising and falling. Drowning out everything else.
Her vision swam as she pushed herself upright. Dust hung thick in the air, drifting in pale, lazy spirals through an unnatural silence. The terrace—what remained of it—was a shattered mess.
Gouges split the stone floor in wild, branching patterns, spiderwebbing outward from the centre like the aftermath of some catastrophic impact. Chunks of the platform were simply missing, either collapsed into the void or sheared clean off. In places, only jagged edges remained, revealing the darkness below.
Corpses lay scattered amid the debris.
At least five of the Cabal Ascendants were visible, their golden masks cracked or crushed, bodies twisted at grotesque angles. Some were missing limbs. The sharp, metallic scent of blood lingered faintly in the air.
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed.
Thin streaks of red glistened in the cracks between stones. They pulsed faintly, unnervingly organic, before fading. Like light bleeding from a dream. By the time she blinked again, most of it was gone.
She looked around, a low swell of worry building in her chest. Then, among a collapsed mound of rubble and broken stone that might once have been a crude shelter, she spotted Kat. The Shielder was coughing, bracing herself on her claymore as she struggled to rise. An uneven cut traced across her dirt-smeared cheek, but she looked otherwise intact.
Just behind her, half-buried in the debris, Scarlett glimpsed a tangle of familiar brown curls sprawled motionless.
She tried to move — only to stumble forward and catch herself as her left leg buckled. It wasn’t responding properly.
She looked down. A clean tear split the fabric of her leggings at the calf. Dark red seeped through, clinging thickly to the fibres.