Chapter 97: The ashes of home
The silence following the sealing of The Wanderer was absolute and terrifying.
For years, the Mega-Sanctuary of Johannesburg had been defined by noise. The constant hum of the mana grid, the blaring sirens, the roar of hunters clashing with beasts, and the apocalyptic cacophony of the Ash Bloom. But now, there was nothing. The crimson clouds that had choked the sky were gone, replaced by the cold, indifferent expanse of a star-filled night. The wind howled across the flat, smoking plains of black glass where the upper spires had once stood, carrying with it the faint, bitter scent of ozone and cooling magma.
In the center of the massive crater, Glen Mcdonald remained on his knees.
He did not move. His hands, slick with blood and covered in deep lacerations from his ascent, were locked in a death grip around the Abyssal Prism. The obsidian glass was freezing to the touch, a physical manifestation of the void within, but Glen couldn’t feel the cold. He couldn’t feel his torn muscles or his fractured core. The void fragment inside him had gone completely dormant, its dark energy expended, leaving him hollowed out and utterly empty.
He stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the Prism. His face was covered in ash and dried blood. The terrifying, pitch-black corruption that had consumed his eyes had faded, leaving behind a pair of dull, lifeless brown irises that stared back at him without recognition. He looked like a ghost. He felt like one.
Fifty yards away, the absolute pinnacle of humanity’s strength was slowly, painfully trying to piece itself back together.
Seraphine Vance pushed herself up from the cooling bedrock. Her pristine, enchanted platinum armor was scorched black and warped by the heat of her own ultimate strike. Her six wings of holy fire were gone, leaving her back feeling strangely light and vulnerable. She leaned heavily on her silver broadsword, using it as a crutch as she limped across the crater toward the broken form of Elias Vance.
The Guild Master of Valor was in critical condition. The gold core stabilizer bolted to his chest sputtered, emitting a high-pitched whine as it struggled to keep his shattered core from collapsing. Elias was coughing up thick wads of blood, his eyes glazed over with pain.
"Elias," Seraphine rasped, her voice hoarse and dry. She dropped to her knees beside him, her hands hovering over his ruined chest, unsure of how to help without a healer present. "Hold on. Just hold on. The Bloom is dead. The demon is gone."
Elias didn’t look at her. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the distant horizon. Or rather, the lack of one.
Where the towering skyscrapers of Sector One and Two had stood—the fortresses of Astra and Valor, the luxury estates of the elite—there was only a smooth, smoking plain of black glass. The Wanderer’s final, apocalyptic wave of anti-mana had erased it all in a single heartbeat. Millions of lives. Centuries of human achievement. Deleted.
"Gone," Elias wheezed, a bloody bubble popping on his lips. A harsh, broken laugh escaped his throat, quickly turning into a wet cough. "It’s all gone, Sera. The guild... the wealth... the hierarchy. We were kings of a sandcastle. And the tide just came in."
A few dozen yards away, the rubble shifted. Evander Buchanan pushed a massive slab of melted concrete off his chest with a guttural roar. His enchanted armor was cracked, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side, the bone broken. The ethereal golden dragon that usually surrounded him was nowhere to be seen, its manifestation completely shattered by the demon’s aura.
Evander stumbled forward, his golden-amber eyes wide with shock. He was a man who lived for battle, who believed absolute physical strength could conquer any obstacle. But looking at the erased upper spires, he realized how utterly insignificant his strength truly was. They hadn’t won. They had merely survived the apocalypse.
At the edge of the crater, the ground shifted.
A jagged hole opened in the melted bedrock, the remnants of the maintenance tunnel Glen had carved his way out of. Two figures dragged themselves out of the darkness, coughing and gasping for the clean, cold air of the surface.
Isla pulled herself over the ledge, her combat tunic torn and covered in gray dust. Her green eyes were wide with a lingering terror. Fraser followed close behind her, leaning heavily against a jagged rock, his burned hands trembling.
They stood at the edge of the crater, staring at the impossible landscape. The sky was clear. The Ash Bloom was gone. But the city they had fought so desperately to save was a graveyard.
"By the gods," Fraser whispered, his voice cracking as he looked at the flat, black expanse where the upper sectors used to be. "The barriers... the spires... they’re just gone. Everyone up there... they’re all gone."
Isla didn’t look at the horizon. Her eyes frantically scanned the crater, searching through the cooling magma. She saw the broken S-Ranks. She saw the scorched earth. And then, in the center of the destruction, she saw him.
"Glen!"
Isla scrambled down the steep, glassy incline of the crater, slipping and sliding on the loose ash. She didn’t care about the heat radiating from the ground or the sharp rocks tearing at her boots. She sprinted across the battlefield.
She reached him, dropping to her knees on the hard stone. "Glen! Glen, look at me!"
Glen didn’t move. He remained locked in his kneeling position, his bloody hands clutching the Abyssal Prism to his chest. He was staring straight ahead, but his eyes were completely unfocused, looking at something a million miles away.
"Glen, please," Isla begged, her voice breaking. She reached out, her trembling hands gently cupping his face. His skin was freezing cold, covered in a layer of sweat and ash. She wiped the dirt from his cheeks, her thumbs brushing against the faint, lingering outlines of the black veins that had pulsed on his neck just minutes ago. "You did it. The Bloom is dead. The sky is clear. You saved us."
Glen blinked slowly. His dull brown eyes shifted, finally focusing on Isla’s face. He looked at her green eyes, at the tear tracks cutting through the ash on her cheeks.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his vocal cords were shredded. He swallowed hard, tasting copper, and tried again.
"He’s gone," Glen whispered. His voice was so quiet, so incredibly fragile, that Isla had to lean in to hear him over the howling wind.
Isla’s breath hitched. The memory of the maintenance tunnel—the suffocating darkness, the terrifying silhouette of the Female Noble, the way Caleb had vanished—crashed over her. She felt a hot tear spill over her eyelashes.
"I know," Isla whispered, her voice thick with grief. She wrapped her arms around Glen’s neck, pulling him into a desperate, crushing embrace. She buried her face in his shoulder, her body shaking with silent sobs. "I know, Glen. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry."
Glen didn’t hug her back. His arms remained locked around the Prism. He rested his chin on Isla’s shoulder, staring blankly at the ruined landscape behind her. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. The emotional circuit breaker in his mind had completely tripped, leaving him in a state of profound, terrifying numbness.
He had fought so hard. He had stolen skills, broken his body, defied the guilds, and challenged a cosmic entity. He had sealed a Noble of the Lost. But the only thing that actually mattered to him had been taken from him.
Footsteps crunched on the black glass behind them.
Isla pulled back, her hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of her dagger, but she froze when she saw who was approaching.
Seraphine Vance stood a few feet away. The SS-Rank Silver Valkyrie looked nothing like the pristine goddess she had been hours ago. Her armor was ruined, and she leaned heavily on her sword. But her silver eyes were sharp, calculating, and entirely focused on Glen.
Seraphine looked at the boy kneeling in the ash. She looked at the deep, terrifying lacerations on his arms, the unmistakable signs of a body pushed far beyond its natural limits. And then, her gaze dropped to the object clutched in his hands.
She recognized the Abyssal Prism immediately. She had seen the classified schematics in Astra’s deepest vaults. She knew what it was designed to do, and she knew the impossible requirements needed to activate it. A normal human would be consumed.
Yet, here was a F-Rank anomaly, holding the dormant, sealed artifact in his bare hands.
Seraphine looked back up at Glen’s face. She saw the absolute, hollow emptiness in his eyes. She saw a boy who had just lost everything, a boy who had touched the void and survived.
"You sealed it," Seraphine said, her voice quiet but carrying clearly over the wind. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of absolute, terrifying fact. "You sealed a Noble of the Lost."
Glen didn’t answer her. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence. He just tightened his grip on the cold obsidian glass, his knuckles turning white.
The wind howled across the crater, scattering the remaining ash into the night sky. Johannesburg was dead. The upper spires were erased, the lower sectors were in ruins, and the hierarchy of the hunters had been shattered forever. They had survived the end of their world, but as Glen knelt in the ashes of his home, he knew that his true war had only just begun.
