Chapter 112: Manifestation (2)
They moved forward in silence, fleeing the nascent light that now tinged the sky with a threatening pearly grey. The bamboo gave way to a rocky heath, bristling with strange black stone steles, similar to the ones near which they had fought the grey creature.
The air grew denser, thick with a cold, creeping mist that slithered across the ground like a living thing, clinging to their legs and obscuring anything beyond a few meters.
Ahead, a massive, indistinct shape, perhaps a statue or a sculpted rock, the "guardian" they had glimpsed earlier – emerged from the gloom, standing vigil over a field of rusted and broken swords driven into the soil like funerary markers. The atmosphere was heavy, charged with silence and old violence.
Dylan stumbled, his good hand clutching a cold stele to steady himself. The pain in his right arm was a purifying fire, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A crushing fatigue, deeper than mere physical exhaustion, had invaded him. It felt as though the mad act of tearing Elisa’s wound from her – that gaping, poisoned agony – had siphoned away something essential. His very essence.
His heart beat faintly, his vision flickered, and every breath was a monumental effort. Shame mixed with the suffering: he was slowing them down. He had become the weak link, the burden, at the most critical moment.
"Dylan?" Elisa’s voice, softer than usual, carried a concern he’d never heard from her before. She stepped closer, her gaze moving from her barely-scratched shoulder – a grotesque miracle – to his mutilated arm and ashen face.
"Can you keep going?" Maggie muttered, casting a nervous glance eastward where the grey sky turned to a milky white, heralding the imminent rise of the sun. She wasn’t looking at Dylan with horror, but with feverish impatience. Time was running out.
Without a word, Dylan fumbled in his pants pocket. His numb fingers touched the smooth, cold surface of a gem – one of those torn from the beasts they had fought, a small crystal of deep black veined with red, pulsing with a faint energy.
He clenched it in his left fist, closed his eyes, forcing his wavering mind to focus. Just like they always did after battles, to restore some essence, to catch a second wind.