Chapter 379: Scouting (5)
When the cavern lights finally glowed ahead, the faint smoke of burning barricades reaching their noses, the squad exhaled as one. The air there was no cleaner, but it was less suffocating than the tunnels behind.
Harrow raised his fist, signaling halt before they stepped back into camp. His face was gray with sweat and grime, but his voice carried the weight of command. "Keep your mouths shut about what we saw. Not until the prince speaks. Panic will do Dythrael’s work for him."
The men nodded stiffly. Fear still lingered in their eyes, but discipline, thin as a thread, held them together.
Lindarion said nothing. His own silence was heavier, anchored deep. Nysha’s shadows trailed behind her like tired serpents, coiling restlessly against the stone. She glanced at him once, crimson eyes searching, but his jaw was stone. No words left his mouth. Not yet.
They stepped into the camp.
The humans waiting there surged to their feet, their faces lifting with desperate hope. Too desperate. Lindarion felt the weight of their gazes settle like chains around his shoulders.
"They’re back."
"Did you find a way?"
"South? Is it clear?"
The questions hissed like arrows. The children clung to their mothers’ skirts, wide-eyed, listening. The wounded tried to sit up despite their weakness. All of them hungered for an answer, a path, a miracle.
Lindarion lifted his hand, and the noise died.
He strode toward the central fire, his boots striking against the stone with deliberate rhythm. Harrow followed. Nysha kept her distance, sliding into the shadows like a phantom, but her presence was no less sharp.
When he stopped, the cavern felt like a throne room. The humans ringed around him, torches burning high, their whispers caught and held by the weight of his silence.
Finally, Lindarion spoke. His voice was low, but every word struck like hammer to anvil.
"The southern tunnels are gone."
Gasps, curses, murmurs surged, only to be cut short when he raised his hand again.
"The corruption spreads faster than stone can resist. Entire chambers have been swallowed. Dozens of bodies lie warped into half-forms. What we fought tonight was not an army, it was only the blood dripping from a butcher’s knife."
The silence after was worse than the outcry. Men shifted uneasily. A woman sobbed into her hands. Harrow’s jaw flexed, his eyes flicking across the crowd.
Nysha stepped forward now, her shadows twitching faintly. Her voice was quiet, but it carried. "You thought Maeven was your terror. He is only a leash. The true hand lies behind him."
The humans stared, not understanding. But Lindarion’s next words cut through.
"Dythrael."
The name landed like stone in water, rippling outward. The humans flinched though they had never heard it. Instinct told them enough. A name that heavy could not belong to anything human.
One of the younger soldiers broke first. "If it spreads so fast... what chance do we have? Another month, you said, and it swallows the caverns. Where do we run then? The surface?"
A hollow laugh followed from another voice. "The surface is ash. No food. No walls. Just sky that burns your lungs."
Panic nipped at the edges of the crowd.
Lindarion stepped closer to the fire, shadows shivering across his blade as he drove its tip into the dirt. The hum of it rattled against the stone, cutting through their fear with sharpness of its own.
"There is no running," he said, his tone iron. "Not for me. Not for you. If the corruption spreads, then we spread faster. If the tunnels rot, then we cut new ones. If Dythrael sends beasts, then we carve them down until he has no more flesh to throw at us."
Some stared at him like he was mad. Others, most, stared like he was the only man left in the world who could speak such words and mean them.
Harrow took a step forward, his voice raw but steady. "You heard him. We fortify. We hold. We march south again when the chance comes. Sitting here waiting for death is not an option."
The murmurs rose again, not in panic this time, but in that strange rhythm Lindarion had heard earlier: desperate, guttural syllables of faith. Not hymns, not prayers, raw survival given voice.
Nysha watched them, her crimson gaze unreadable. She leaned close enough for Lindarion to hear, her voice sharp as a whispered blade. "You give them courage. But you lie."
He did not look at her. "Not lie. Delay."
"And when there is no more delay?"
"Then there is only war."
Her shadows coiled tighter, but she said nothing more.
Harrow barked orders. Men moved, women carried water, children gathered scraps of wood for the fires. The camp stirred alive again, desperate motion against the despair clawing at their bones.
Lindarion remained by the fire, his sword still humming in the dirt. He closed his eyes briefly, speaking inward.
’Selene.’
Her warmth stirred, faint, half-asleep. "Yes, Master."
’The corruption moves faster than even I expected. At this pace, these people cannot hold. Even if I carry them, it will not last.’
A pause, soft and certain. Then her voice coiled through him like silk. "That is because you still think of them as "people." They are yours, Lindarion. Not burdens. Not weights. Yours. A blade does not complain of its edge, it sharpens it."
His jaw tightened. ’If I sharpen them, I will break them.’
"Then break them into weapons sharper than they were alive." Her warmth faded back into silence before he could answer.
Lindarion opened his eyes. The fire cracked. The humans’ whispers beat like a drum.
His path was set.
—
Later, in the commander’s corner of the camp, Harrow spread what maps they had across a flat stone. The parchment was stained, the ink smudged, but it was all that remained of human records.
"The northern routes are blocked," Harrow said, pointing with a scarred finger. "Collapses. Traps. And if not, mutants. East is worse, Maeven’s horde keeps that choke. West leads back toward the sea caverns. Nothing there but salt and ruin."
Nysha leaned over the map, her hair brushing the stone. "Then south remains the only path."
"South is closed too," one of the lieutenants muttered, jabbing at the edge where Lindarion’s squad had met the collapsed chamber. "You said it yourself. Rockfall. Corruption veins already pressing through."
"Rock can be cut," Lindarion said. His tone left no room for doubt. "Stone can be moved. And if corruption spreads beyond the fall, we will meet it head on."
The lieutenant’s lips pressed thin. He wanted to argue, but the weight of Lindarion’s gaze silenced him.
Harrow rubbed his brow, muttering curses. Then louder, he said, "If we push south, it’ll cost blood. Maybe more than we have left. The men are already running on scraps. Some of them haven’t eaten a full meal in weeks. And if Dythrael sends anything worse than what you cut down tonight..."
"Then I cut that too," Lindarion said simply.
The silence after was thick.
Nysha studied him, her eyes narrowed. Shadows curled faintly at her wrists. Then she turned back to the map. "If we move, we move fast. While the corruption still sleeps in that chamber. Before it births more."
Harrow let out a sharp breath, then nodded reluctantly. "South, then. Gods help us all."
Lindarion’s eyes lowered to the map, to the veins sketched faintly across parchment, spreading like cracks in glass. His hand tightened over the paper until it nearly tore.
He did not need gods. He needed steel.
He would carry them south. And when Dythrael finally bared his true face, Lindarion would carve the smile from his lips with the weight of all these voices bound to his name.
Even if it killed him.