My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 52: Chapter 52 — Empty Houses

The second day was worse.

The road narrowed to a dirt trail winding through foothills studded with black rock. The grass grew sparse and yellow, crunching under our boots. The sky stayed overcast, heavy with clouds the color of old iron. The silence we’d felt outside Oakvein had followed us. The birds had vanished. The wind had died. Our footsteps and the pillar’s pulse were the only sounds left.

Odessa stopped twice to adjust her wards. The dark mana was thick enough now that even I could feel it: a pressure behind my eyes, a faint taste of copper at the back of my tongue. Chimera had stopped flexing her hand. The mouth had gone quiet.

Samira didn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken much since we broke camp. Her eyes stayed fixed on the mountains ahead, and her pace never slowed.

We reached Thornfall at dusk.

---

The village sat in a narrow valley between two ridges, smaller than Oakvein and meaner. The houses were built from rough-hewn logs and stacked stone, their roofs patched with moss and old thatch. A single road ran through the center, rutted with wagon tracks. A wooden sign hung from a post at the entrance, the letters hand-painted and weather-worn: Thornfall. Population: 82.

The number had been scratched out and rewritten in what looked like charcoal. 81.

Someone had been keeping count.

The gate was open. The street was empty. A loose shutter banged against a stone wall somewhere down the road, but nothing else moved.

"Where is everyone?" I asked.

No one answered. No one needed to.

We moved through the village in formation, the same way we’d cleared the inn at Oakvein: Samira first, then me, then Odessa, with Chimera covering the rear. The street was lined with houses, each one identical in its emptiness. A pot of stew sat cold on a windowsill, the contents congealed into a gray sludge. A laundry line stretched between two buildings, the clothes stiff with frost and flapping weakly in the breeze. A cart lay overturned near the well, its cargo of apples scattered across the dirt, brown and rotting.

The well itself was uncovered. I leaned over the edge and looked down. The water at the bottom was black and still. I dropped a pebble. It hit the surface with a sound like a stone hitting tar.

"Don’t drink that," Odessa said.

"Wasn’t planning to."

Chimera stopped in front of a house near the end of the street. Her nostrils flared. "Something’s here."

"Possessed?" Samira asked.

"No. Something smaller. Something scared."

We found the dog behind the house, tied to a post with a length of frayed rope. It was a mangy thing, ribs showing through its gray fur, its ears flat against its skull. It had been barking—its throat was raw, its water bowl overturned and dry—but the moment it saw us, it stopped. It just stood there, trembling, and stared at Chimera with wet, bulging eyes.

Chimera crouched down. The dog whimpered. She held out her hand, palm up, and the dog pressed its nose into her fingers. The sound it made was low and broken, like it had been crying for hours and had nothing left.

"They’re all gone," Chimera said quietly. "The whole village. It took them."

"How do you know?"

She didn’t answer. She was looking at the dog. The dog was looking at the mountains.

---

We searched the village house by house. Every door was unlocked. Every hearth was cold. The possessions of eighty-one people lay exactly where they’d left them: a half-finished letter on a writing desk, a child’s doll on a bedroom floor, a pair of boots set by the door, waiting for a morning that never came.

Eighty-one people gone, and the village didn’t look attacked. It looked abandoned mid-breath.

"The same as Oakvein," I said. "But faster. More coordinated."

"They were summoned," Odessa said. She was standing in the doorway of the largest house—the village elder’s, judging by the quality of the furniture—with her grimoire open. "The dark mana signatures all converge on a single point about two miles up the mountain. Every trace leads there."

"The herald?"

"Maybe. Or something serving it. The power signature is different from the one we felt in Oakvein. Smaller. More concentrated."

"A lieutenant," Samira said.

Odessa nodded. "A subordinate herald. A fragment of the main one. It’s gathering the possessed into a defensive line."

"How many?"

"Eighty-one, if the sign was accurate. Plus however many it brought from the other villages."

I did the math. Oakvein had around thirty. Thornfall had eighty-one. Millbrook and the three northern villages were unaccounted for. Even if half of them were already here, we were looking at over a hundred possessed between us and the rift.

"We can’t fight that many," I said.

"No," Samira said. "We can’t. But we don’t have to."

She was standing by the window, looking up at the mountains. The pillar’s light washed over her face, bleaching the color from her skin.

"The possessed are puppets. They move when the herald tells them to move. They stop when it tells them to stop. They have no will of their own."

"Which means the herald has to be close enough to give orders," Odessa said.

"Close enough to see us coming." Samira turned from the window. "The subordinate herald isn’t just a lieutenant. It’s a relay. The main herald is using it to control the blockade. If we kill the subordinate, the possessed lose their orders. They’ll scatter. Wander. Some of them might even regain themselves."

"Some of them," I said. "Not all."

"No. Not all." Her voice was steady. "But enough to open a path."

---

We found the subordinate herald just after midnight.

It was waiting for us in a clearing halfway up the mountain, surrounded by a ring of standing stones that looked older than the Kingdom of Mouka. The stones were carved with symbols I didn’t recognize—spirals and jagged lines that hurt to look at for too long. The ground inside the ring was bare dirt, packed hard and stained dark.

The herald stood in the center. It had chosen a host—a young man, maybe twenty, with broad shoulders and the calloused hands of a blacksmith. His eyes were open. His chest was rising and falling. But the thing behind his face was ancient.

"You came faster than expected," it said. The voice was calm. Pleasant. The kind of voice a neighbor uses when he sees you walking past his garden.

"Traffic was light," I said.

"The design accounted for many variables. Your speed was within acceptable margins. The herald will be pleased."

"The herald can go fuck itself."

The young man’s face twitched. The smile didn’t falter, but the host’s fingers twitched—a spasm, quick and involuntary. "You carry the echo of one of our failed seeds. The one we planted in the child with the dead mother. He was supposed to be beautiful. He was a disappointment."

Chimera stepped forward. Her right hand was shaking. Not fear. Anticipation. "You talk too much."

The herald tilted its host’s head. "You carry him inside you. The failed seed. The broken vessel. You think you are separate from him. You never were. You carry the bars inside you."

Chimera moved.

She crossed the distance between them in three strides, her fist connecting with the host’s chest before the herald could react. The impact sent the young man’s body skidding across the dirt, colliding with one of the standing stones. The crack of bone against rock echoed through the clearing.

The herald rose. The host’s arm was bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible, but it didn’t seem to notice. It smiled again, blood trickling from the corner of its mouth.

"The design is perfect. The design is beautiful. You cannot break the design."

"Watch me," Samira said.

She was already behind it. Her blade went through the host’s spine before the herald finished its sentence. The young man’s body crumpled, but the thing inside didn’t die. It streamed out of the wound like black smoke, coiling in the air, searching for another vessel.

Odessa was ready. Her grimoire flared, and a circle of golden light snapped into existence around the clearing, trapping the smoke inside. The herald screamed. The pressure rattled my teeth and made my vision blur.

And then Chimera opened her palm.

The mouth was already there, pressing against the skin, teeth and tongue and hunger. It lunged forward, stretching from her hand like a serpent, and bit down on the smoke.

The herald screamed again. The smoke thrashed, trying to escape, but the mouth held on. It tore a chunk from the darkness and swallowed. Before the herald could recoil, the mouth bit down again. And again. Until there was nothing left.

When it was done, the clearing was silent. The standing stones were empty. The host’s body lay motionless on the dirt.

Chimera closed her hand. The mouth vanished. Her breathing was ragged, her skin slick with sweat, but her eyes were clear.

"Did you get anything?" I asked.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she spoke. The voice was hers, but underneath it, something older. An echo of the herald’s last thought.

"The host is waking."

"Host of what?"

Chimera looked at Samira. "The rift. The herald doesn’t want a door. It wants an alarm clock. The rift is alive. And it’s been dreaming for four thousand years."