A silent bloom of blue and yellow fla tore the night apart, painting the ruins in a feverish glow. Even from where they stood, the light reached Sezel and the others, staining their faces with the colors of a burning sky. He could feel the cold breeze turn warm suddenly, the black cloud of dust and smoke rose in the empty sky, covering the three moons like a dark cloud.
The sole source of light now were the flas rising to the sky at so distance from them.
They all stood frozen, stunned into silence, staring at the hell that had just unfolded.
"What the fuck just happened?" Sezel said, the words a raw, astonished whisper.
Vesta's eyes were fixed on the pillar of fire, her mind clearly racing. "This is not good," she murmured, almost to herself.
She instantly shook her head, as if trying to push the grim thoughts away. Mari, woken by the concussive blast, had buried her face in Vesta's jacket, her small hands clutching the fabric, too afraid to even make a sound.
"We need to check that," Sezel suggested, swallowing a knot. The peaceful night had suddenly turned much darker.
Vesta looked at him, the distant flas reflected in her ruby eyes, and nodded once. "But what about Mari? That place slls dangerous. We can't take her there."
He agreed. Bringing a child into that was a mistake they couldn't afford. Both turned to Shiki, who stood a few paces away, lost in his thoughts, his jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the flas.
"Shiki, you stay here and look after Mari while we check the site," Vesta said. It was not a request; it was a command.
Before Shiki could say anything, they were gone. Vesta and Sezel sprinted away, their figures quickly vanishing into the chaotic, fire-lit darkness. He was left looking into the distance, dumbfounded.
'Why would she take a re Rank-3 with her, instead of her bodyguard?' The question haunted him. Shiki had been trained from the mont he awakened to be Vesta's guard, his family having served hers for generations.
Moreover, Shiki was a professionally trained Rank-4 Slayer, anwhile Sezel was just a Rank-3, and from what Shiki believed, he was trained in a governnt facility. It didn't make sense at all that he was left behind. He stared into the distance for a long mont, then let out a heavy, disappointed sigh.
His gaze shifted to the little girl trembling beside him. His expression softened, and he gave her a gentle pat on the head, offering a warm smile.
Mari seed to calm down a little. "Are you tired?" he said, his voice soft. "You can sleep. I will take care of everything."
Mari shook her head, her voice small but determined. "No. I will sleep when mister is back."
Shiki sighed hard. Not even the little girl believed in him. What a sha.
***
On the other side, after running through the wild, overgrown ruins for what felt like an eternity, Vesta and Sezel had almost reached the blast zone. The air here had beco thick and suffocating, heavy with heat and the sll of ash. Vesta suddenly halted, gesturing for Sezel to do the sa.
She sniffed the air, her expression turning grim, her eyes wide with a dawning, ugly recognition. The air here had a sharp, pungent, and slightly sweet aroma, mixed with a tallic tang.
"It's the sll of burning petroleum," Vesta said, her voice low and stiff.
"Petroleum?" Sezel asked, dazed by the discovery. 'There is petrol here?' Certainly not what they had expected. They had both suspected the blast was the result of so powerful Fable. Vesta had even run through a quick list of fla-type Slayers and speculated it might be an enemy Rank-5. But this… this was sothing else.
The flas had mostly died down by the ti they reached the epicenter. The scene was straight from hell. A wide crater had been gouged into the earth, the ground around it scorched to a black, glassy screen. After a bit of searching through the smoldering debris, they found the body of a human, or what was left of it. He was half-burned, his skin lted and fused to the blackened earth. He was already dead, not from the initial blast but the pain that followed.
Sezel's face beca a mask of disgust as he recognized the dead Slayer. It was a fellow classmate from the facility he had been staying in for the last 2 months. He already knew that they wouldn't be returning ho from a Rank-A gate, but to assu sothing and to see it happen right in front of your eyes were two very different things. The reality of it had a different weight.
On Earth, he had made peace with it. A Rank-A gate ant a graveyard. But here, looking at the charred corpse, sothing inside his heart flickered and twisted. But he neglected and pushed that feeling aside. It was useless here, in this hell.
They combed the black field for nearly an hour. The flas had almost completely vanished, save for the small, stubborn embers that still flared on the edges of the burnt plants. They failed to find anything useful.
The blast, they concluded, was a result of the foolishness of these Slayers. They hadn't paid attention to the sweet, tallic sll in the air and had lit a fire, triggering the defiant explosion.
Sezel looked at the surroundings and frowned. Everything inside the blast radius had been erased. All that was left was a black mass of ashes. The bodies of the other two Slayers couldn't be found. 'Human life is such a fragile thing, one mont it is and the next mont it's gone.' He bowed down beside the corpse of his once-classmate. Even if it had only been for a negligible ti, they had been comrades.
Suddenly, Vesta's voice called out, slow and deliberate. "Gabriel… Gabriel, listen." She was pointing in a direction.
At first, Sezel had almost ignored her, forgetting for a mont the false na he wore. He turned to face her, but she seized his wrist and yanked him into the shadow of a half-collapsed wall, which once had been a house.
"What happened?" Sezel asked, bewildered.
"Just shut up and look," she whispered, her breath barely audible. "Soone's approaching."
They both leaned into the ruined edge of the wall and peered out, eyes narrowed, bodies still.
Three confident figures were approaching the site, their movents calm. They moved like they owned the place, their steps sure and steady as they walked toward the center of the devastation.
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