Outside the Hollow Trust headquarters, Elara and the soldiers could not hide their shock as they listened to the miserable screams echoing from inside the building.
The sounds were relentless.
Desperate.
Agonizing.
Elara stood frozen in place, her body stiff and unresponsive. The soldiers, despite their training, could hardly believe what they were hearing.
Is this… what people become after returning from the Abyss? they wondered silently.
As soldiers, they had seen death before.
They had witnessed battlefield carnage, fought against abyssal creatures, and watched comrades fall in the line of duty.
They believed they had grown numb to it all.
But now, they realized how wrong they had been.
The brief moment earlier, when the hooded figures slaughtered the thugs outside, had already shaken them.
But what was happening inside the building…
That was something else entirely.
Something far more brutal.
Far more terrifying.
A massacre.
