Chương 133: Where They Had Lost Him

The eastern road had not changed. That was almost insulting. The same gray rocks. The same trees twisted by the wind. The same dry ravines where the light fell badly. The same smell of dust, iron, and old fear. Elias stopped in front of the broken marker. It marked the boundary between the last human lands and the old forbidden patrol zones. Where everything had started to become false. Where the reports said Zayn had disappeared.

Where the authorities had written the cleanest words possible to cover what was not clean at all. Anomaly subject lost during transfer. Lost. Like a crate. Like a weapon. Like a mistake they had failed to keep. Lena stopped beside Elias. She no longer cried as easily as before. That was one of the things the last two months had changed. Her support robe was no longer white. She now wore light armor beneath a healer's coat, protective runes sewn into the sleeves, a short dagger at her belt.

Her face was still gentle, but that gentleness was no longer fragile. She looked at the road.

"This is where we let him disappear." Jonah, behind them, answered, "We didn't let him. We didn't know anything." Mira closed her notebook.

"That's not entirely true." Jonah turned a hard look on her. She did not lower her eyes.

"We knew enough not to ask the right questions." Silence fell. No one contradicted her. Behind the four heroes, the rest of the raid waited. Soren Vale stood on a rock, a dagger between his fingers, as if the very idea of walking normally offended him. Garron Tels checked the straps of his heavy armor with the air of a man who had already imagined three ways to run and two ways to profit from it. Ivara Solenn was rereading a forbidden fragment about the black cycles, lips tight.

And farther away, slightly apart, the hooded beastman stood motionless. Nahr. Declared name. He was not looking at the demon kingdom. He was looking at the road. As if every stone still had to prove it had not hidden a corpse. Elias felt the weight of the group behind him. This was no longer the team cheered in the capital's streets. They had changed. The kingdom had trained them, armed them, blessed them, tested them, pushed them to breaking point, then rebuilt them with prayers and procedures.

Their Soul Strength proved it. Elias's personal system briefly appeared when he tightened his grip on his sword. [Elias Rhowan] [Title: Summoned Hero] [Soul Strength: 148] Two months ago, that number would have seemed impossible. Today, it still felt too low. To his right, Jonah cracked his fingers. [Jonah Vale] [Title: Summoned Hero] [Soul Strength: 132] Lena placed a hand against the symbol engraved on her chest.

[Lena Ashford] [Title: Summoned Heroine] [Soul Strength: 119] Mira raised her short scepter, covered in circles of analysis. [Mira Calen] [Title: Summoned Heroine] [Soul Strength: 126] Together, the four of them had become a force capable of shaking a human battlefield. But they were not heading to a human battlefield. They were heading toward the demon kingdom. Toward a Throne that had just beaten. Toward a Demon King they had never seen. Or one they had perhaps already seen too late. Garron spat to the side.

"Are we going to keep staring at rocks with guilt for much longer? Because the rocks aren't going to apologize." Lena shot him a cold look. Soren smiled.

"For once, the professional butcher has a point. Disturbing." Garron grunted.

"Call me butcher one more time and I'll show you the difference between an insult and a job description." Ivara closed her book.

"Silence." Her voice was not loud. But she had learned to cut conversations the way others cut throats.

"What we heard from the Throne was not an ordinary signal. Whatever we find in the east will not be a war in preparation. It will be a succession already far advanced." Jonah looked at the dark line on the horizon.

"How advanced?" Ivara hesitated.

"Too far." Then Nahr spoke. His rough voice came from beneath the hood.

"The human demon will be there." Lena turned toward him.

"You don't know that." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He did not move.

"He follows death. The demon kingdom is full of it. He'll be there." Elias watched the young beastman. He had that way of saying things as if someone had carved them into him, sentence by sentence, until they became more solid than his own memories.

"Our target is the Demon King," Elias said. Nahr slowly turned his head toward him. Beneath the hood, his gray eyes gleamed.

"Then maybe we have the same target." No one answered. Because that was the sentence everyone had feared. They crossed the border at dawn. Not with songs. Not with banners. With dark cloaks, silence seals, three contradictory maps, and the unpleasant feeling of entering a place that was waiting for them without needing to see them. The first hours were too calm. No army. No monster. No patrol. Only black lands, ancient roads, traces of battle, and signs too obvious to ignore.

A dried organic carcass at the edge of a ravine. Mira crouched beside it.

"Voragna." Garron frowned.

"Is that a person or a disease?" Ivara answered, "Both, according to the texts. General of Gluttony." Jonah stared at the carcass.

"Dead?" Mira passed an analysis circle above the remains. The magic crackled. Her face paled.

"It's not just dead. It's torn away from its domain. As if the source was cut." A chill climbed Elias's spine.

"A Demon General has fallen." Ivara did not answer. That was worse. Farther on, they found a red road covered in ash. Pieces of gigantic weapons were planted in the ground like graves. Soren picked up a shard of blackened metal. He dropped it at once.

"It's still hot." Ivara looked at the marks.

"Vhur." Jonah clenched his jaw.

"Drakhar?" The name felt heavier in his mouth since Maelor had explained what the Generals truly were. Ivara pressed two fingers into the ash. She pulled them back almost immediately.

"Something very powerful died here too." Garron gave a humorless laugh.

"I love it. We arrive in the demon kingdom and the bosses are already in pieces. Either that's good news, or it's the worst." Elias said nothing. He was looking at the direction of the tracks. Some went west. Others toward the center. And others still, more recent ones, seemed to have been swept aside by something passing through the air above the roads rather than taking them. Lena followed his gaze.

"Elias?" He shook his head.

"Nothing." But it was not nothing. He thought of Zayn. Then forced himself to look ahead. The Demon King. They had come for the Demon King. Not for a ghost of guilt. Not for a boy they had failed to save. Not for an anomaly that might have stopped being human long ago. The ground trembled. The whole group stopped. A beat passed through the demon kingdom. Deep. Black. Immense. It did not come from the ground. It came from everywhere. The pack horses panicked. The protection seals crackled.

Lena dropped to one knee, hand over her chest. Mira let go of her scepter. Even Garron went pale. Nahr, however, remained standing. Shaking. His fists clenched so tightly his claws pierced his gloves. Ivara whispered, "The Throne." A second beat followed. Weaker. Then nothing. Elias had the feeling he had heard a door closing very far away. Not opening. Closing. Mira picked up her scepter with difficulty.

"The Demon King..." Ivara slowly nodded.

"Someone sat." The sentence fell on the group like a sentence of doom. Jonah went white.

"So we arrived too late?" Ivara answered, "We arrived after the coronation." Lena closed her eyes. Elias felt his sword grow heavy in his hand. After the coronation. All their training. All their preparations. All their regrets. Late again. Nahr stepped forward toward the east.

"Then we find him." Elias raised his head.

"Yes." His voice shook less than he thought it would.

"We follow the beat." Mira looked at her map.

"The center of the kingdom is too far. If the Demon King just took the Throne, he may not stay in the same place." Soren stepped down from his rock.

"So the heroic plan is: walk toward the most terrifying thing still visible and hope it's wearing the right crown?" Ivara looked southeast. Then east. Her eyes settled on a direction where the sky seemed darker, more elegant, almost nocturnal.

"There is still one major power left untouched." Elias followed her gaze.

"Who?" Ivara answered, "Lyséa. Queen of the ancient dragons. General of Lust." Garron gave a dry laugh.

"Queen of the ancient dragons. Of course. Why aim small?" Mira opened her notebook.

"Estimated Soul Strength?" Ivara looked at her.

"More than two hundred and sixty according to the texts. Possibly more within her domain." The group fell silent. Elias tightened his grip on his sword. Against over 260. Alone, he would die before understanding her first movement. But he was not alone. Lena placed a hand on his arm. Jonah moved to his left. Mira to his right. Soren smiled without joy. Garron spat again. Ivara tightened her grip on her forbidden book. Nahr stepped forward. The raid was not a collection of numbers.

It was an addition of flaws, talents, and debts. Elias inhaled.

"Then we go to her." Lena murmured, "Do you think it's her?" Elias looked toward the nocturnal horizon. He thought of the beat of the Throne. Of Zayn's disappearance. Of the fact that no one knew where the monster they might have helped create truly was. Then he answered, "I think we no longer have the luxury of waiting until we're sure." At that same moment, high above the demon lands, Zayn was crossing the sky in the opposite direction. His black wings beat slowly. Not perfectly.

Every movement pulled on old scars and new ones. Drakhar's blood heated at times in his veins, turning the edges of his wings into red embers. Voragna's regeneration repaired what the heat tore apart. He flew like something destroying itself slowly enough to keep moving. Below him, the demon kingdom passed. The ruins of Vhur. The lines of Ghelkar. The broken mirrors of Nhaless. Farther away, the lands Morvessa had refused to move. Behind him, the Black Throne still beat faintly inside his soul.

Ahead of him, beyond the border, the human continent waited. The fused scythe was strapped across his back, silent. It had spoken during the first hours. Then it had fallen quiet. Even it seemed to understand that Zayn was no longer traveling toward an ordinary target. He was going back to the beginning. To the circle. To the priests. To the walls. To the dossiers. To Maelor. In his mind, the Throne's memory would not stop repeating the cycles. The Demon King returned. The heroes were summoned. The Demon King died.

The world celebrated. The Throne waited. This time, the heroes were somewhere behind him. He did not know where. He did not care yet. They would come. They always came. But before them, there were the humans who had opened the door and then decided, when they saw what had come through it, that the best answer was a cage. Zayn looked west. The human sun was still far away. He smiled.

"This time, I'm coming back through the front gate." At last the scythe whispered, "And if it's closed?" Zayn beat his wings. A trail of red flame streaked behind him through the black sky.

"Then they'll learn that a gate is just a wall that thought it had the right to choose." The human raid did not look up at the right moment. A few hours later, they were crossing a valley of mist east of the demon kingdom. Above them, very high, a black shadow cut through the clouds toward the west. It passed too fast. Too high. Too far. Mira felt something and abruptly lifted her head.

"Wait." Elias stopped.

"What?" She stared at the sky. Nothing. Only dark clouds. And a red trail already vanishing.

"I thought I felt..." Nahr lifted his head too. His whole body tensed. For one second. Then the trail vanished. He remained still, like an animal that had just caught the scent of a predator but whose mind refused to understand that it had missed it. Jonah asked, "Problem?" Nahr slowly lowered his head.

"No." But his voice said otherwise. Elias looked up at the sky as well. He saw nothing. They resumed the road east. Toward Lyséa. Toward the false final boss they were about to mistake for the real one. And far behind them, the shadow they should have followed was already leaving the demon kingdom. Without knowing they had just crossed paths. Without knowing the story had made them pass one another like two blades in the dark. By nightfall, they reached the first dragon statues. Velmour. Lyséa's domain.

No soldiers stopped them. No trap was triggered. The nocturnal gardens opened before them, black, magnificent, silent. Garron grunted, "I don't like this." Soren smiled.

"You don't like anything."

"False. I like taverns where nobody tries to turn me into ash." Lena looked at the statues. Each carved dragon seemed to be watching the group.

"She knows we're here." Ivara answered, "Of course." Mira tightened her grip on her scepter.

"Then why is she letting us in?" A voice answered from the garden.

"Because you have come a very long way to be wrong." They all froze. At the center of an avenue of black roses, a woman waited. Beautiful. Calm. Terrible. Lyséa. Even in her human form, her soul crushed the space around her. Elias felt the gap immediately. The system confirmed it. [Major Entity detected.] [Estimated Soul Strength: 268] Lena went pale. Jonah tightened his weapon. Mira inhaled sharply. Soren stopped smiling. Nahr stepped forward, claws sliding out beneath his gloves. Elias raised his sword.

Heroic light ran across it. Lyséa looked at them with an almost cruel softness.

"Summoned heroes." The word passed through the group. She smiled.

"You are late." Elias planted his foot into the ground.

"Demon King." Lyséa tilted her head slightly. Her smile changed. Amusement. Pity. Maybe a little sadness.

"Ah." She lifted her eyes toward the sky, toward the west, where Zayn had already vanished. Then she looked back at them.

"I see." Her voice lowered.

"Then come." The dragon statues lit one by one. Lyséa closed her eyes. Her human body cracked apart in nocturnal light. The heroes took their positions. Elias in the center. Jonah to the left. Nahr in the shadows. Lena behind them, hands already glowing with healing light. Mira drawing circles of analysis. Soren and Garron on the flanks. Ivara whispering forbidden words under her breath. Before them, Lyséa took her royal dragon form. Her wings covered the moon. Her massive head lowered toward them.

Her Soul Strength crushed the gardens. And the heroes, who believed they had finally arrived before the Demon King, raised their weapons against a queen who already knew they had not come for the right monster. Lyséa opened her draconic maw. Her voice made the black roses tremble.

"Show me, then, what humans call hope."