Chapter 65: Zone of Darkness
The group set off from the village after a restless, uneasy night.
They’d tried to get Eri to talk—to explain what she saw or heard after touching the statue—but she hadn’t said a word, just curled up in a chair, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at them with eyes that looked... hollow—not broken. Not wounded, just gone.
Carlos had barked at her all night. Low, frantic growls that never stopped, like something in her presence disturbed him to the core. None of them got much sleep.
Now, walking along a cracked stone road leading east, Eri trailed behind the rest of the group, her boots dragging as if her legs moved on borrowed instinct. Gindu and Llarm had each tried speaking to her—calmly, jokingly, gently—but she never responded. She moved forward, stiff and silent, like a marionette whose strings were pulled by something they couldn’t see.
Whenever Lucy used Soulreading on her, he felt it again: a crushing dread—paralyzing fear.
He wanted to press her, to demand answers. What happened at that statue was dangerous. It could still be a threat. But... he held back.
He knew what it was like to see something that shattered how you looked at the world.
’Come find me.’
The whisper from his nightmare echoed again in the back of his mind.
’Who? What? And why?’