Chapter 165: Gray Area
Hope cos from the senses reflected in the eyes.
The sll of earth dampened by wind, the pale green hue of new buds pushing through, fragnts of river ice shattering in sunlight, the call of a skylark spreading through the forest. All of these elents were ant to unwind the human heart and announce a new season.
Yet in the territories of the Holy Empire, all that light, all those scents and cries were absent.
Even after a march spanning over a month, spring had not co. Cold wind grazed the skin, and grass lay collapsed in ashen gray, unable to sprout. Warmth belonged to those left behind in Astria and Niboria — not sothing the Alliance Forces could afford to enjoy.
And so, the mont the Beacon of Souls fell silent, it was inevitable that suppressed words began to seep out.
"We picked up our swords for money, not to fight for so god. Even giving it a hundred concessions — we ca here for Calix."
"That's right, exactly. If I die out here, my kids back ho starve to death."
The rcenaries, who had once gathered of their own will, began voicing their discontent. Even Zoltan, the captain of the Grima rcenary Company, struggled to calm them.
At that, soldiers who had joined late from Niboria exchanged glances.
"Cowards, every last one of them, overnight. To think we have to fight alongside people like that."
"They're not warriors — just drifters in the end."
The muttered words were plain enough to hear, and for a mont, the gazes of the two groups t. The sound of iron armor brushing in the wind rang out.
The atmosphere felt as though a clash could erupt at any second.
"Enough."
At that mont, Royce called the officers of both units forward and spoke. He did not raise his voice, nor did he reproach the commanders.
"The gods have not abandoned us. We simply have not yet taken our rightful place. See to it that your units are kept steady."
"But—"
More words followed, yet the mont they t Royce's eyes, they quickly faded. He surveyed the faces gathered around him one by one.
Lips cracked and raw, cheeks bearing the marks of battle, eyes counting the days until they could return ho. What he read there first was not the fear of the battlefield, but a longing for ho and family.
"……In the end, our purpose is the sa. Whether you fight for the gods or to send wages back ho — right now, we have to survive together."
He ran a hand along the hilt of his sword as he continued.
"If we fracture now, we lose everything. The Mountain Rabbits have beco the shield of the Alliance, and the Alliance has rallied around that shield. If you have grievances, put them in order and report them to . I will not tolerate a breakdown in discipline."
The grumbling knights chewed their lips and gave slow nods. Royce had never received a formal knighthood, yet no one dared dismiss him as a lowly rcenary.
The battlefields they had crossed together were proof enough.
"Co this way."
Just then, Ella stepped forward once more. Beyond the horizon, a small, unending stream of survivors kept cresting over. Those who had escaped from the south and the central regions ca pouring in one after another, drawn by rumor.
The woman received the refugees with her own hands. She was not alone. The number of clergy from the order following her had grown noticeably.
They sorted the patients, and Ella personally took charge of those with grave wounds. Those with lighter injuries were treated through herbal redies.
Dust clung to her sleeves, fading their color. The platinum emblem of the Order was hidden beneath the gri, yet through the gaps, a quiet ember stirred.
The rcenaries exchanged glances at the sight and fell silent.
The scouts, on the other hand, let out sighs mixed with soft laughter.
"Are these people who escaped from the pits? It's already on a razor's edge…… If more keep flooding in, what then."
But no one moved to stop Ella's care. She stood in place of a season. Spring was shrouded in darkness, yet she tended to everyone, putting goodness into practice.
From so distance away, a drum sounded. The formation, stretched thin as a single thread, slowly began to draw itself back together. The anxiety that had briefly surfaced began, just barely, to settle.
Beneath the torchlight, the scales of unity and division seed, at last, to have found a precarious balance.
* * *
The night was long. While Sier prayed before the Beacon of Souls, the Alliance Forces' scouts received the steady flood of survivors arriving from every direction.
Most were people who had been hiding in the south, though among them were so who had endured a life of slavery in the central regions before finally fleeing.
The testimonies they gave were nearly identical.
"The monsters had blanketed the plains, black as far as the eye could see. Black steles rose up at every pass along the road, and in so places they stretched on like walls."
Calix listened to it all in silence.
On the map, red marks — tracking the gorges, the southern passes, and the routes the refugees had traveled — continued to accumulate. Those marks were converging on a single direction.
"Calix, take a break, even just a short one. Don't push yourself too hard."
"Yeah."
Volga, who had been watching, patted him on the shoulder. Calix pressed the space between his eyebrows and tore his gaze from the map.
A brief mont of rest arrived.
The instant he leaned his back against a rock behind the checkpoint, his mind sank deep.
'……Just a little.'
He closed his eyes then and there. The sounds around him slowly receded. The night wind, the whispers of the campfire — everything subrged as if sinking beneath water.
And then Calix understood.
Once again, he had set foot in the space Draug had made.
He walked and walked across dark water. The ground beneath his feet was neither solid nor rippling. A darkness as deep as the abyss spread out from below his toes.
'This is a dream.'
He did not breathe, yet there was no sense of suffocation.
[It is because you too have stepped into the darkness.]
Calix lifted his gaze toward the source of the voice. The darkness swayed like waves. From between the shadows, a long, black silhouette rose.
Naturally, it was Draug.
[Your fate draws ever closer. Do not forget. Tomorrow is not so far away.]
The confusion of days past no longer existed. He felt no fear of Draug, nor any need to push it away.
For now, he was not the one who wavered.
[You…… Your future……]
Calix stared at Draug unflinchingly. Since their last eting, it had been unable to conceal its state of confusion.
A human had suppressed the darkness.
Draug had watched every part of that process. Even knowing it had a duty to fulfill, it had co to harbor a contradictory feeling.
What remained at the end of it was a profound fury.
With a gesture from the creature, the space twisted. Through the gap in the shadows, the form of De Generitum flickered past. The Legion Commander Midra appeared and let out a terrible scream. He was paying the price for turning his back and fleeing the battlefield.
Following that, fallen comrades appeared. They were the Mountain Rabbits.
Kenta, who had wielded a hand axe with great skill; Wheatley, who had shown a startlingly fierce courage; the dwarf Vel Haim, and the elf Niyan Storal, and more. Those who had t their deaths pointed their fingers at Calix and laid the bla on him.
Yet Calix's heart was still as a windless lake.
"Draug."
No — rather—
"I can see you."
Within that darkness, he looked into the true nature of the thing before him.
The chaos of the Core flowed in reverse, tearing apart the false forms. Instead of what had been crudely fashioned, it gathered the fragnts sleeping within and breathed life back into them.
Then, as his fingers swept through the air, ripples spread and gave shape to sothing new. Black dust scattered, and the scene before his eyes changed.
[C-Calix……!!]
A voice cried out in shock, but in the end, it could not stop him.
* * *
Calix stood on a gravel road. Burning rooftops and crumbled walls flickered red in the darkness. Countless corpses lay strewn in every direction. In the midst of it all, a young knight cried out toward the sky.
"God above, have you truly forsaken us! If it must be so, then lay a curse upon and bring this tragedy to an end!"
His voice echoed through the void.
Within it, Calix saw not the face of a creature that devoured nightmares, but the expression of a human being stained with sweat and blood. Yet that desperate cry scattered into nothing.
No reinforcents ca, and the banners of the Order turned toward other regions. Soon, the final line of defense collapsed. His wife and child were pierced through by spears and went cold.
He was the last to die.
Draug maintained its silence throughout, then suddenly muttered sothing low, as if denying a truth.
[……At that point, he was still human.]
For just a mont, the landscape shifted as though collapsing. The ruins of the burning city were swallowed in black earth. A graveyard where not even moonlight could reach. Draug lay among the cold, still armor of fallen comrades.
Calix saw a man buried beneath a mound of dirt. His breath had long since ceased, yet his soul wandered endlessly, yearning for sothing.
'The gods abandoned you. But we are different. We rember your struggle.'
'Accept despair. If you do not wish to endure that pain again……'
The man's soul trembled in fragnts.
Within the nightmare, his wife and comrades died again and again, and a wailing child, soaked in blood, crawled across the ground. The scene repeated itself without end.
Then, all at once, he turned to look at his own rotting body.
[All this ti, I have been bound to sothing hollow.]
Shadows gathered. The earth cracked open, and hundreds of corpses were exposed one after another, without order. Toward one particular being among them, a dark current surged.
In that mont, Calix heard the scream of a single man. And that cry soon transford into the roar of an unfamiliar beast.
A small evil is born.
A monster born from a grave, a being that feeds on nightmares — Draug.
The scene before his eyes blurred and broke apart again. Now Calix watched as 'it' shed the form of a human and transford into a wraith.
mories of family, honor as a knight, even the instincts of a human being — all of it was cast aside. The eyes that had once held hope now held nothing but emptiness.
Calix let out a brief sigh.
"Nothing was left to you."
But to Draug, his compassion was the worst possible insult.
[How dare you…… I have a mission given to by the Lord! I will lead you to the Land of Shadows and watch your wretched end unfold!]
Even at the very end of their exchange within the dream, Calix's thoughts did not change.
"That's why you didn't kill . Because the only thing left to you…… Was that command."
[I…… I have……]
Draug's breath grew ragged. It worked its mouthless lips and swallowed its fury. It fixed its gaze with dozens of eyes, as though it might burn him to nothing.
But in the next mont, a human expression flashed across its face for just an instant.
[……Are you any different from .]
Calix did not answer. He simply brushed past its shadow and swept away the remaining traces of darkness with his fingertips.
Draug's form shuddered violently. Fury and fear, and what might even have been sothing close to hope — a faint trembling seeped through. At this, even Draug itself flinched in surprise.
And imdiately after, the world the creature had made ca crashing down.
For the first ti, it was seized by fear —
And it fled from Calix.
* * *
When Calix opened his eyes, the torches of the encampnt had nearly all burned out. In the early hours before dawn, he gazed at the darkness slowly withdrawing into the distance.
He drew a long, slow breath. His fingertips still looked as though smudged with the residue of the dream. Cold air sank deep into his lungs.
'Evil is not sothing born…… It crawls out from the place it was abandoned.'
Calix repeated what he had just said to himself like a vow. Strange as it was, he understood Draug's choice. He had seen its pain and witnessed the mont a small darkness ca into being.
A tragedy like that must never be allowed to repeat itself.
The eastern sky slowly begins to brighten. The low coughs of soldiers and the sound of boots being pulled on gradually brought the world back into focus. Sier was still reciting prayers before the Beacon of Souls.
He rose to his feet and gently woke Volga, who had been huddled beside the campfire.
"Get up. We need to hold a eting."
Volga rubbed his drowsy eyes and lifted his face.
"Wh-what is it? Did you have another nightmare?"
Calix gave a short shake of his head.
"It wasn't a simple dream. Inside Draug's mory…… I saw sothing."
"Saw what?"
"Yeah. A pursuer that Verhas has let loose."
Only then did Volga's eyes sharpen. His friend sprang to his feet and left to gather the key personnel.
Right after, Calix looked out at the earth bathed in silver sunlight. In the place where the darkness had retreated, there lay the world he had to protect.
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