“So what now?” Desty patted her chest like steadying a drum, fear still clinging like cold dew. “Don’t tell me… it ran off by itself? Weren’t they dead?”

Lucimia glanced over, eyes like a knife in fog. “If you Purification Knights hit this wall, what would you do?”

“Uh… I’d guess at causes, like tossing pebbles in a dark pond. Evil Entities? A Dark Deity? Or something tied to this plague?”

“Did you hear anything last night?” Her voice drifted like a thread of smoke.

“Last night…” Desty searched her memory like sifting ash. “No. I slept like a rock. No sound at all. You?”

“Me neither.” Lucimia’s reply fell soft as falling ash.

She had woken once in the night, a lantern in a windless room, and heard nothing stir in the grass.

If the monsters ran on their own, the noise should’ve rolled like thunder over fields.

Then… were they teleported out of thin air, like leaves whisked by a sudden gale?

By who?

With that spark, Lucimia scanned the area for traces of a Magic Array, eyes sweeping like a hawk over snow. Nothing.

Speaking of arrays, she paused two heartbeats, then walked to the giant tree’s roots and set a Teleportation Array, lines blooming like frost.

She did it because the road to Jaha Town stretched like a dry riverbed; time to find the Time Ability User felt like sand slipping.

So she planned to use Reversion, then chain Teleportation Magic, like stepping stones across a torrent, straight to the town.

“So, what now?” Desty asked again, worry beating like wings. “I’d still head toward the town first.”

“Same thought. Keep for Jaha Town and see if we cross those monsters mid-road.” Lucimia checked the earth like a tracker. No marks. Decision set like a nail.

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Her agreement was a small flame in the wind.

With no monsters blocking, they only watched their footing through muck like tar. The path opened like a straight stream.

The stretch from the village to the giant tree felt short as a breath; from the tree to Jaha Town stretched long as a winter night.

They walked two full days, feet drumming the dust like rain. The town’s silhouette never rose from the horizon.

Worse than sore legs was the empty road; not a single monster corpse, like a battlefield scrubbed by tide.

Were they really teleported away, snatched like birds from a branch?

By who? And where did he throw them, like dice across a table?

Also, Lucimia had pitched a tent and lit a fire last night, a lantern in open dark; maybe that person already watched from the reeds.

Enemy or friend, like frost or sunlight?

If not teleported, if the monsters revived and marched, why didn’t the earth rumble like hooves?

If plague raised the dead to walk, like weeds after rain, then this disease wasn’t a common fever in the fields.

But Dory was cured by Lucimia, healed clean as spring water; there shouldn’t be any hidden sting.

Shouldn’t…

Lucimia’s brows knit like drawn string; the strangeness thickened like mist, and the urge to leave sharpened like a blade.

They walked another day. At dusk, Jaha Town finally surfaced, a coastline after fog.

“Finally…” Desty looked spent, a reed bent by wind.

“Mm.” Lucimia felt the weight too, bones like wet wood.

From village to Jaha Town, four days—time stretched like taffy under heat.

And the merchant ship was set to leave tomorrow, a bell already tolling.

She squinted across distance; Jaha Town wasn’t the bright hive she’d pictured. It lay gray and still, like a pond with no ripples.

By the sea stood a massive merchant ship, its masts spearing the dusk like bare trees, its sails heavy as cloud.

But those masts and sails… seemed off, like reeds leaning after a flood.

It was too far; detail blurred like rain on glass.

Lucimia narrowed her eyes, drawing the world tight; the mast and canvas looked tilted, like a wounded bird’s wing.

“Let’s get to the town,” Desty urged, voice like a tug on the sleeve.

“Mm.” Lucimia blinked back to now, then quickened her steps like a runner chasing light.

Before that, she etched another Teleportation Array underfoot, a circle blooming like moonlight on stone.

As the walls swelled near, they saw where the missing monsters had gone, truth laid out like driftwood after a storm.

In front of Jaha Town’s high walls, the ground was stacked with monster beasts, corpses laid crosswise like fallen logs. Their deaths were harsher than before.

There were clean weapon cuts like cold silver, and scorch-marks from magic like black flowers on bark.

Beside them, human bodies sprawled, torn to ruin like rag paper in claws. No limb was whole.

Blood hadn’t dried; it ran downhill like red streams, whispering that the fight was fresh.

“Did all these monsters charge the town?” Desty’s voice shook like a plucked string. “Weren’t they dead? How’d they move? Did the town hold?”

“Hard to say.” Lucimia stared at a shattered section of wall, stones split like cracked teeth.

They slipped through the gap like cats into thorn, careful and low.

Inside, the streets punched the breath from them, cold as a cellar.

Bodies lay wall to wall like drift after a flood: men with half their torsos torn, beasts mashed to pulp like bruised fruit.

The air was thick with iron and rot, a swamp of stink.

The ground was pitted like old scars; the fountain statue in the square lay ruined, a broken idol in dust.

Roofs had crashed and scattered, shingles like bone fragments, the city a body with limbs torn.

Everywhere she looked, life was a blown-out candle.

It felt like both sides had burned to ash together, a fire that ate its own fuel.

Lucimia stood amid the wreck like a stone in rain. She didn’t fear the dead, and she didn’t chase why the beasts came—man’s hand or plague’s whip.

She cared about one thing, a compass needle fixed—could the merchant ship still sail?

She pictured the tilt she’d seen from afar, a mast leaning like a tired man. A chill answer flickered.

“Are the people here… all dead?” Desty bit her lip till it paled, frozen like a deer in snow.

“Don’t know. Let’s check the ship.” Lucimia moved first, a lantern cutting into night.

Desty said nothing and followed, footsteps like twin shadows.

The way to the port offered no change, the same mural of ruin—human and monster, wood and stone, all broken like shells.

They reached the harbor fast, wind carrying salt like white dust.

Up close, Lucimia confirmed it: the ship leaned and sank, slow as a felled tree.

She jogged to the edge, peered down; the hull gaped with holes like rotten wood, and seawater poured in like a tide.

Looks like the merchant ship’s done for, she thought, a verdict carved in ice.

“Lucimia, come look.” Desty pointed at a monster corpse at her feet, finger stiff as a twig.

“What?” Lucimia stepped close and followed the line of her hand like sight along an arrow.

“Huh? Bugs?” The word popped like a spark.

“Yeah. Back at the river, those bodies had no bugs. Here, they’re crawling like rainworms after a storm.”

Lucimia opened her Magic Eye, vision blooming like a second iris, and studied the insects.

Each bug was blood-red, a living drop of rust. Its mouthparts bristled with fangs like a saw. Horny tips peeked at both ends.

It writhed and fed, a red thread stitching flesh into nothing.

Suddenly, one lifted its head. No eyes, no mouth—only a clacking maw, opening and closing like a trap.

It aimed at Lucimia, a spear of attention in a crimson field.

Her heart stalled like a bird hitting glass; night fell over her sight like a hood; her mind drifted like a leaf into dark water.

She opened her eyes into a blood-red world, a sky like meat, a horizon like a wound.

The ground underfoot was soft as jelly and tugged her legs down like sucking mud.

She looked down. Veins ran beneath her like red rivers, pale fibers webbed like roots.

Feels like I’m standing on raw meat, she thought, the words tasting like iron.

As she spoke, a shadow swallowed her like an eclipse, and she looked up by instinct.

One glance, and her pupils tightened like knots.

A colossal blood-red worm loomed above, its toothed maw pulsing like a carnivorous flower, drawing closer inch by inch.

The giant worm was the same little bug she’d just studied, a seed turned to a tree in a blink.

Now it looked down on her as she had on it, the world flipped like a coin in air.