Chapter 76
It ends (7)
Althea sprinted across the debris-strewn ground, lungs on fire, heart pounding. The rubble lay like shattered memories around her—splintered beams, broken frames, crumbled stone. Concrete dust clung to the air, turning each breath into sandpaper. She wove and ducked, adrenaline driving her forward amid twisted metal and fallen structures, glancing over her shoulder at dark, hooded figures slithering behind her. Their silhouettes, stained red with blood, moved methodically, killing anything that stirred.
She didn't stop to wonder who they'd been—what paths they followed, what drove them here. She just ran, instincts turned to instinct and fear. Hands grazed her back to steady her; she guided survivors toward safety whenever she could. But the sheer number overwhelmed her—soldiers, novices, the wounded—shouting, bleeding, choking on smoke and dust.
She ducked under a half-collapsed beam, her shoulder scraping the sharp edge of splintered wood, and pressed her back to the cold stone. Her breath hitched as she listened—her senses straining.
A pair of hooded figures passed by not ten feet from her position, their weapons caked in blood, their black cloaks dyed red in places—too much red to ignore.
Her fingers trembled, but she remained still.
They didn't see her.
She had to keep going.
She gritted her teeth and moved the moment they turned a corner. Darting across the broken plaza, she knelt beside a fallen soldier. His chest was still. His eyes were wide. A jagged wound across his side oozed slowly, already stiffening.
Too late.
Again.
She wanted to scream.
But there was no time. No room for breakdowns. Only forward.
She whispered a quiet apology and kept running, dodging through collapsed walkways, feeling her mana drain with every step, every pulse of her sensing technique. She helped where she could—dragging the injured out of harm's way, lending what healing she could manage in brief bursts—but even with all that effort, it wasn't enough.
She couldn't save them all.
But maybe she could still save some.
The hub. That was her goal.
It was the place where most soldiers were usually gathered, so she hoped to help who she could.
If she could reach them… maybe they could regroup. Maybe not all was lost.
But as she ran, weaving through the wreckage, a furious thought clung to her mind, louder than even the explosions.
How did this even happen?
Where the hell did they come from?
These attackers—the hooded figures—had seemed to appear out of nowhere. They hadn't flown in. They hadn't charged from the horizon. They had just… been here.
Out of thin air.
The Hold's towers would have seen them. The sentries would have called alarms. The formations should have been triggered. But nothing. It made no sense.
Some sort of invisibility? Concealment?
It was possible—there were paths that dealt with stealth. With hiding. But no. That wasn't it.
Althea had seen them fighting. She had seen the variety of powers they were using, none of those could belong to a path wholly dedicated to invisibility. There was too much diversity. Too much raw, unconnected chaos in their abilities.
Not all of them could have been using stealth-based paths.
Then how?
How did they get in?
How did they set up these path formations—so many, so precise?
Those things weren't simple to construct. They required planning. Time. A diverse mix of paths. Yet these attackers had somehow laid them out across the Hold without anyone noticing?
How?
Her mind reeled with questions she couldn't afford to answer. Not yet.
Maybe never.
Finally, as she pushed past a broken archway, the hub came into view.
And her heart sank.
The structure—once a stronghold, a meeting place, the very symbol of unity for the soldiers—was barely recognizable now. The stone walls were torn apart. The dome that once covered its center was split and caved in. Smoke poured from the holes like blood from a wound.
And worse than the damage… were the people.
The hooded figures were everywhere.
They swarmed the hub like insects over a corpse, moving through it with cruelty—finishing off the injured, executing those too slow to flee, their black cloaks now soaked in so much blood they had turned crimson.
She could feel it—her mana reserves, already depleted from constant scanning and healing, were down to barely fifty percent. She had used too much already. Saving who she could. Evading battles. Sensing for survivors. Every second of survival cost her more.
But she had made it this far. She wasn't turning back.
She crouched low, hiding behind the remains of a collapsed arch. She waited—patient, breath shallow—watching the flow of the enemy as they moved between crumbling stone and scorched dirt.
There.
A gap.
She slipped through.
Quick. Silent.
She moved between bodies, her steps slow and measured. Her hands shook, but she kept her breathing level. No sudden movements. Just careful, silent footsteps until she reached the outer rim of the hub.
She turned forward—
And froze.
A hammer was already coming for her head.
Pure instinct roared to life. Her body dropped low, her back arching just in time as the massive weapon whooshed past, a shockwave blasting the space where her skull had been a heartbeat earlier.
Debris exploded around her. She hit the ground and rolled, gritting her teeth against the pain.
She spun, eyes locking on her attacker.
And what she saw made her blink.
"Just like everyone else," the girl snarled. "You failed to notice me… till it really mattered… till you had something to gain. Leaving me with nothing!"
A short girl, her hood still raised, stood glaring at Althea with wild, bloodshot eyes. The hammer she wielded was nearly as large as she was, yet she lifted it like it weighed nothing. Her voice cracked as she raged—filled with hurt, hatred, and bitterness twisted so deep it nearly choked her.
Althea narrowed her eyes in annoyance.
She was just thinking about them and lo and behold, a ascender with invisibility related to her path appeared.
Invisibility.
Not just stealth. Not just concealment. This one was a true ascender of an invisibility-related path. Even her life force had been completely hidden. Althea had sensed nothing.
This girl had erased herself from the world.
And that kind of erasure came from something deeper.
Trauma.
Most ascenders shaped their concepts around the strongest memory or emotion that burned into their soul—usually trauma. That was how path concepts were born. Not from logic. Not from study. But from pain. From impact. From moments that scarred the soul.
And this girl… she had vanished herself.
Her concept was probably born from being unseen, unheard, forgotten.
It explained why she had hidden even her life force.
But it came at a cost.
Althea looked closer. The girl was shaking. Her breathing was shallow. Her steps were unsteady.
She was draining her mana too quickly.
Most people who became obsessed with their concept—lost control of themselves. They forgot to separate who they were from what they could do. The artist mistaking themselves with the art. And in the end, it consumed them.
If Althea just held out—just delayed her—this girl would likely pass out from her own exhaustion. Maybe even die from mana depletion and internal strain on her Avien.
But Althea had no weapons.
And her path method couldn't be used on herself.
So she simply raised her fists, planting her feet in the broken dirt.
No hesitation.
The girl screamed and charged.
But just a few steps in—she stumbled.
Slowed.
Collapsed face-first into the rubble.
Silence.
Althea blinked.
A moment passed.
And then—snoring.
She lowered her fists.
"…Seriously?"
Her shoulders slumped. Her entire body ached with tension she hadn't realized she was holding.
That was it?
After all that build-up?
She sighed and approached the unconscious girl, standing over her small, curled form. Her face had relaxed now in sleep—looking less like a threat, and more like a child lost in a world too cruel to understand.
Althea crouched beside her, brushing a bit of dust off the girl's cloak.
She didn't kill her.
Even now.
Even here.
Her job wasn't to take lives.
Her job was to save people. Not kill them.
And if she could avoid killing… she would.
She turned away from the sleeping figure and moved deeper into the rubble, searching for life amid the carnage.
Everywhere she turned, she saw only the dead.
Burnt limbs.
Collapsed bodies.
Eyes frozen in fear.
Crushed forms under scorched beams.
She kept going.
She wouldn't stop. Not yet. She had to keep looking.
And then—
She saw someone.
A figure slumped in the distance. Familiar. Wounded, but breathing.
Her heart skipped.
She ran.
Her steps faltered as she approached. Her knees gave slightly as she dropped beside him, hands reaching out, trembling.
She leaned over him.
Shaking him gently.
"Hey," she whispered. "Hey, wake up…"
The figure stirred.
A groan. A blink.
His eyes slowly opened.
It was him.
It was Kepa.