Chapter 113: Death II
They flew on.
The heavy atmosphere pressed down on them like a physical weight. No one spoke. The wind seed muted, the calls of distant animals silenced, as if the Land itself knew that words were insufficient.
Serala couldn’t stop seeing them.
The images of dead children and mothers played behind her eyes every ti she blinked. Small hands reaching for comfort that would never co. Faces frozen in final monts of fear. Bodies broken and discarded like things that had never mattered.
The Hallowed Voice taught that all life was sacred.
The Covenant preached peace and understanding and the resolution of conflict through wisdom rather than violence.
But where was the wisdom in what she had just witnessed? Where was the sacredness in children trampled beneath the feet of beasts? Where was the understanding that could make sense of mothers dying with their young clutched to their chests?
There was none.
There was only cruelty.
And cruelty demanded a response.
Silent rage built in her heart, pressure accumulating behind walls of discipline and training that had been constructed across a lifeti of cultivation. Her eyes flashed with terrifying light, wing-shaped pupils blazing with power that her newly achieved Vessel Completion had granted her.
She said nothing.
But she rembered everything.
They crossed another stretch of forest, this one thicker than the last.
Ancient trees rose around them, their canopies blocking out the sun almost entirely. The air grew thick with moisture and the sll of rotting vegetation. Sounds echoed strangely through the undergrowth, bird calls distorting into sothing almost like speech.
And then Damian spotted movent below.
Not beasts this ti.
People.
A cluster of figures moved through the forest, perhaps two or three hundred in total. They traveled in a loose column, the able-bodied supporting the injured, the young helping the old. Their pace was slow, exhausted, the movents of people who had been walking for too long on too little food.
Refugees.
Damian began descending without conscious thought.
"What are you doing?" Masamuk asked.
"Stay up here. Give us distance."
The sli nodded once, his crimson eyes understanding. A Beast Lord appearing before traumatized Dross would only cause panic. Better to let the humans handle this.
Serala descended alongside Damian, her wings folding as they dropped below the canopy.
They landed on a fallen tree in the refugees’ path.
The column stopped imdiately. Faces turned toward them, expressions shifting from exhaustion to fear to desperate hope in rapid succession. These people had seen too much in too short a ti, and the appearance of two obviously powerful Warriors could an salvation or doom.
At the head of the column, a woman stepped forward.
She was young, perhaps a few sumrs older than Damian, but her eyes held the weight of soone who had aged decades in days. Crimson hair fell past her shoulders in tangled waves, matted with dirt and what might have been dried blood. Her body was lean with the wiriness of a warrior, and Mana pulsed around her in the unmistakable pattern of Bone Tempering cultivation.
A spear rested in her hands, its tip pointed toward the ground but ready to rise in an instant.
"Who are you?"
Her voice was hoarse. Wary.
Damian stepped forward, keeping his movents slow and non-threatening.
"Travelers. We saw your group and ca to see if you needed help."
The woman’s eyes moved from him to Serala and back again. She took in their power she couldn’t really sense, their bearing, the weapons they carried. Whatever she saw seed to satisfy sothing, because the tension in her shoulders eased slightly.
"Our...tribe was destroyed."
The words ca out flat and empty.
"Beasts ca. We ran. These are... these are all that’s left."
Behind her, Damian could see the full extent of what she ant. Old n and won who could barely walk. Children clinging to adults who might not be their parents. Injured people being carried on makeshift stretchers. The remnants of a community that had been shattered by forces beyond their control.
"Where are you heading?"
The woman shook her head.
"Away. We don’t... we don’t know where to go. We just kept moving."
Damian made a decision.
"Head northeast. Follow the Sleeping River until you reach the Plains of Shattered Bones and Stones, then continue until you see a mountain and a tribe with crimson-blue walls. The Purple Stone Tribe. "
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
"The Purple Stone Tribe?"
Damian kept his expression neutral.
"Tell them Tokoloshe sent you. They’ll take you in."
The woman studied him for a long mont. Her eyes moved to his spear, taking in its crimson-blue surface and the Mana humming through its form.
She didn’t ask any more questions.
"...Thank you."
The words were simple.
Damian nodded once as he began to fly up
"Good luck."
---
They rose back into the air as the column of refugees began moving in the direction Damian had indicated.
Masamuk rejoined them, his crimson eyes curious but respectful enough not to pry.
They continued their journey.
And as the landscape passed beneath them, Damian found his thoughts turning inward.
He had just sent refugees to the Purple Stone Tribe. Hundreds of desperate people looking for safety, for shelter, for soone to tell them that everything would be alright. They would arrive at those crimson-blue walls expecting protection. Expecting leadership. Expecting soone to take responsibility for their survival.
The tribe was small.
It had limited resources.
It had already taken in Serala, had already been touched by his presence in ways that had transford it from a simple Unbound Tribe into sothing more.
And now more would co.
More mouths to feed. More bodies to shelter. More lives depending on the decisions he made.
They would all be looking for soone to protect them.
They would all be looking for leadership.
But...
He was not soone to take that role.
He had lost that role eight years ago, when so many had been murdered in his na. When the Vakochev Empire fell and the people who had trusted his family paid for that trust with their lives. When he ran while others died, a Lugal fleeing into the night while his subjects burned.
What right did he have to lead anyone?
What right did he have to let others depend on him again?
The last ti people had followed the Vakochev bloodline, it had ended in fire and blood and the destruction of everything they had built. He carried that weight with him always, a reminder of what happened when people placed their faith in him.
And yet...
He looked at the direction the refugees were heading.
He thought about Uncle Adam and Grandmother Essun and the Chieftain waiting on those crimson-blue walls.
He thought about Elena raising her little fist in encouragent.
And he...didn’t really know what to feel.
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