Chapter 39: Massacre and the Rise of a Hero
When Selene came back to her senses, her eyes burned with fury.
"What are you doing, Rina?" she snapped, her voice trembling with anger, "Why did you drag me out of the camp? We have to go back and help!"
Rina, chest heaving, dropped to the ground and shook her head. "You can't fight those things," she said between heavy breaths, pointing toward the distant horizon. Looming above the burning camp, a swarm of creatures twisted and pulsed like shadows made of stars. "Alex and I already faced them. Our attacks—nothing worked. They absorb everything. It's a monster made of the space element. If you fight it, you'll die."
Selene's defiance wavered.
Space element.
Her body stiffened; the name alone made her fear. The Veylor Clan had ruled through terror once—not because of numbers, but because of that cursed affinity. After the death of the Void Sage, the clan had fallen from power. Yet one name still lingered.
Riven Veylor.
Said to be his successor in talent. But to Selene, he was nothing more than a coward cloaked in ambition, with greed and lust always flickering in his eyes.
Far from them, moments before the siege, a lone watchtower stood at the intersection between forest and mountain. There, Josh clutched his spear, eyes narrowed at the horizon—until the sky split open.
From that rift came the Ray Phantoms. Black, translucent like a shattered mirror, they fell like a rain of death. Josh didn't have time to scream. One merely brushed his legs, and they exploded into mangled flesh. He collapsed, agony blinding. In despair, he drove his spear into his own heart.
One of the phantoms opened a grotesque maw—its mouth lined with glassy tentacles—and devoured his body, a sickening crunch echoing through the mountains.