Tragedy and the Girl

Spring was bright and beautiful, and the noon sun carried a gentle warmth. Yet the sight before Duru sent a chill through his heart.

Earlier, he had seen smoke rising and assumed there were people nearby.

When he flew the Gondola over to take a look, there indeed had been signs of human habitation. At the source of the smoke was a tiny village on the outskirts of a forest, but at this moment, there was not a single living person in it.

More than a dozen houses had already been burned to ashes. The flames had long since vanished, leaving only smoke curling through the air.

As for the villagers—

Duru looked at the mortal corpses hanging from wooden stakes outside every home, and shock and fury flashed through his eyes.

The men's limbs had all been chopped off. They had been whittled into human stumps and impaled upon the stakes. The women were scantily clad, their bellies slit open, their bodies casually piled together. What chilled Duru most was that children's corpses lay everywhere as well. Boys and girls alike had been stripped naked, their bodies covered in filth.

There was not a single survivor. Every one of them was a corpse steeped in boundless resentment.

Some had not even closed their eyes. Before their pupils had fully scattered, the expressions of venomous hatred and curses still lingered on their faces, making Duru's scalp crawl.

He had seen the dead before: corpses gnawed by sea beasts until only their heads remained, soldiers hacked into pieces on the battlefield. He had even seen a ghoul being fed by a wizard in White Shell Sea Market.

But never before had he felt such rage in his heart.

He crouched before a house that had been burned down to a charcoal-black