Ilaria and her companions spent two months inside the dungeon, clearing room after room and chasing levels the way hungry people chased food. It had started as an honour, a rare allowance for someone with her upbringing, and for the first few weeks she’d treated it like one, grinning through bruises and laughing when Arj complained about his boots being soaked again. By the end, the dungeon had stripped that shine off them all. Their banter grew thinner, their rests shorter, their movements sharper. Even so, when the last corridor opened and daylight spilled in, Ilaria’s chest lifted like she’d been holding her breath for weeks. Home. Warm beds. Proper meals. Her family’s voices. And, unexpectedly, the thought that kept sneaking in between those was Ray. They’d barely spent days together. It didn’t make sense that she missed him. It didn’t need to.

  “So,” Arj said as they picked their way through the final passage, his tone easy and his smile sympathetic, “now that vacation’s over, what do you reckon your dad’s going to make you do next?”

  Ilaria rolled her eyes, but the relief made it softer. “Not sure. I assume I’ll have to give a full report so Father doesn’t lock me in a tower for the rest of eternity.”

  “Ain’t that right,” Rayleigh laughed, and even Alif’s mouth twitched, though she was watching the tunnel mouth like it might bite them on the way out.

  They stepped into open air, blinking against the light. The world outside smelled wrong after two months of damp stone and old blood. Grass. Wind. The faint scent of smoke from far off. Ilaria was halfway through letting herself relax when she noticed Alif at the rear, carrying a woman slung carefully over her arms. Dishevelled. Unconscious. Hair a flaming red that looked almost unreal against the grime.

  They’d found her in the boss room, lying on cold stone like she’d been placed there. She breathed. Her chest rose and fell evenly. Her skin wasn’t cold, her colour wasn’t grey. She just wouldn’t wake. And the worst part was that every single time they tried to Identify her, the skill failed cleanly, as if the world had decided she wasn’t a thing that could be explained.

  “We take her to the healers,” Alif had said then, voice flat with certainty. “If anyone knows what this is, it’s them.”

  No one had argued.

  They took the road back toward Finrial with that same tired rhythm they’d built in the dungeon: Ilaria and Arj ahead, Rayleigh in the middle, Alif behind with her burden. The forest felt too open after stone walls. The sky felt too big. Ilaria kept catching herself listening for the dungeon’s drip-drip silence, like her body hadn’t accepted they were out.

  The first corpse they saw was a dark elf sprawled half off the road, armour split, throat opened. The second was worse. By the time the third appeared, Ilaria’s relief had curdled into something sharp and cold.

  They slowed without speaking.

  On the verge of the path, a broken cart lay on its side, wheel snapped clean. Further in, bodies started to appear in clusters, as if people had tried to run together and failed together. Dark elves mostly, but not only them. A tradesman’s apron. A child’s small shoes. A satchel she’d seen in the market, crushed flat and soaked dark.

  Something was very wrong.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Stealth mode,” Rayleigh murmured, and everyone snapped into it without arguing.

  They climbed into the trees and moved above the road where the branches were thickest, activating every skill they had for hiding and silence. Ilaria, the most dextrous, took point. Her perception stretched forward, threading through the canopy, catching movement and shape and the awful absence of living sound.

  The further they went, the more bodies there were. Not a handful. Not a dozen. Hundreds.

  A hush settled over the party that wasn’t stealth. It was dread.

  Ilaria’s breathing turned sharp. Her heart pounded hard enough that it felt like it would give them away. She saw the first familiar face and her mind rejected it. That could be anyone. That could be a stranger.

  Then she saw another. Then another.

  Something inside her snapped clean.

  She dropped from the branch and hit the ground running.

  “Ilaria!” Arj hissed, voice tight, but she didn’t hear him properly. Stealth was gone. Caution was gone. She sprinted down the path with red in her eyes and panic in her throat, and the others chased after her because they couldn’t afford to lose her and they couldn’t afford to let her die alone.

  They reached the Finrial village biome in record time, lungs burning, boots slipping on blood-damp earth.

  The moment Ilaria crossed the boundary, she made a sound that didn’t belong to any language. It was pure despair.

  Her knees hit the ground. Her hands sank into the dirt. She stared ahead and her vision blurred.

  Finrial was a smouldering ruin.

  Charred beams jutted up like broken ribs. The air was thick with rot and smoke and the wet, sweet stink of decay. Crows perched on collapsed rooftops and watched them arrive like they’d been waiting for the next course. Bodies lay everywhere, not just scattered, but arranged by some cruel hand that had wanted the message understood.

  In the centre of the village, a pile of corpses rose like a monument.

  Fifteen metres high, maybe more.

  The tower had been built deliberately. Layers packed tight. Limbs twisted at impossible angles. Dark elf bodies, other races mixed in like discarded scraps. And at the top, impaled and displayed, were the elders, spikes driven through torsos, heads lolling. Their dignity stripped, their authority turned into a warning.

  Ilaria forced herself to stand, swaying like she’d been punched, and then she saw the highest point.

  Her father.

  Pinned at the peak of the corpse tower, his body held down by crude spikes. A crown of bone sat on his head, not placed with reverence, but with mockery. And in his lap—

  Her baby brother.

  Six months old. Small. Still.

  Decapitated.

  For a heartbeat, Ilaria’s mind went quiet. Everything inside her stopped making sound. Her hands moved on their own as if they belonged to someone else. She drew a dagger and drove it toward her stomach with the clean intent of ending the world.

  Steel met steel.

  Rayleigh’s sword knocked the blade aside hard enough to sting her wrist.

  “It’s not your time to die, princess,” Rayleigh said, voice rough, the words forced through pain and fury. “Live and take vengeance. For our entire race. You are our leader now.”

  Ilaria’s breath hitched. She looked at him like she didn’t recognise his face. Then the scream came again, thinner this time, like her throat was tearing itself to pieces.

  They moved through the village slowly, checking rubble, checking under collapsed cloth, checking cellars and back alleys with the grim hope that someone had hidden well enough to survive. There were no voices. No crying. No footsteps besides their own. The bodies were too far gone for this to have happened today. Weeks, at least. Long enough for the smell to settle into the wood. Long enough for the crows to grow bold.

  No survivors.

  Whoever had done this hadn’t just killed. They’d made a statement. They’d had time.

  Ilaria’s tears didn’t stop. They just kept pouring, silent streaks down her face as she stared at places that used to be homes and now looked like bones picked clean.

  “Let’s go,” she said finally, voice scraped raw. “I need to get out of here.”

  “I promise we’ll get the fuckers that did this,” Alif said, quiet and vicious.

  “Where do we even go?” Rayleigh asked, scanning the tree line like he expected another blade to come out of it any second.

  “I don’t know,” Ilaria whispered. “But we can’t be safe here.”

  They left through the western gate because it was the only direction that didn’t drag her eyes back to the tower. As they crossed out, Arj slowed, gaze catching on a tree just beyond the boundary. Something had been cut into the bark, not sloppy, not old. Fresh enough that the sap still glistened at the edges. Carved where any desperate survivor would look.

  Ilaria stumbled closer, and her eyes read the words before her mind could reject them.

  Dragonkin are heading west to new lands. Nothing could be done here. Any survivors or people seeking refuge, seek us out.

  Her breath shuddered.

  A direction. A thread. Not hope, not yet… just movement.

  And right now, movement was the only thing keeping her from collapsing into the ash and letting the world take her too.