Chapter 812 - 814
The realization settled deep in his chest, a mixture of relief and unease. If something still lingered here, something that had once been part of the city’s past, then it was possible, just possible , that it held answers.
And right now, answers were the only thing keeping him moving.
Jude squared his shoulders and stepped back into the shifting streets.
Jude stepped out into the shifting streets, his senses heightened, his mind still reeling from the vision. The city was quieter now, but he knew better than to trust the silence. It was the kind that came before a storm, the kind that tricked you into thinking you were safe until it was too late. His body still hummed with residual energy from whatever force had shown him the past. It had not been a hallucination. It had been real, or at least as real as anything in this strange, fractured world. The city had been alive once, its people moving with purpose, their bodies flickering between form and something else entirely. But something had come, something had shattered that reality, and the remnants of it still clung to this place like an open wound that refused to heal.
He tightened his grip around the dagger at his side, its familiar weight grounding him. He had questions, too many of them, but no answers. The entity inside him had gone silent again, retreating into the depths of his consciousness like it always did when things became complicated. It was a parasite, a presence that had always been with him for as long as he could remember, yet it only spoke when it wanted to. Jude had learned to live with it, to push past the unnatural urges it sometimes forced upon him, but moments like these made him realize how little control he truly had over it.
He walked, his boots making little noise against the ever-shifting ground. The buildings around him pulsed in and out of reality, their shapes warping and twisting like they were being rewritten by an unseen hand. Some of them were familiar, remnants of the old world trying to reassert themselves, but others were completely alien, structures that seemed to belong to another time, another place. The city was trying to exist, trying to hold onto something stable, but it was failing.
Jude glanced up. The sky was as fractured as the streets below, its swirling expanse a mixture of dark voids and faint lights, as if the very fabric of reality had been torn apart and patched together again with pieces that didn’t quite fit. He could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, an oppressive force that made every breath feel heavier than the last.
Then, the air shifted.
It was subtle at first, a ripple in the atmosphere, but Jude felt it immediately. His instincts flared, his muscles tensing as his grip on the dagger tightened. He wasn’t alone.