CHAPTER 129
Ghost District
It was empty.
I couldn’t believe my senses. District 11 was... soulless.
There were many things I expected to see. Maybe a destroyed ward from a fallen district. Perhaps a struggling society on the verge of crumbling, or in the best case, the once thriving District 11 from the old reports.
A battery producer, where many of the ores were refined, and one of the few districts with great farming lands despite having no cultivation artifact.
But instead, when we arrived, I saw something else entirely.
The ward still stood, which should have been good news. But as I pushed my senses forward, I found nobody.
Worse yet, there were no signs of struggle. No evidence of a temporary ward breach or that beasts had managed to enter and cause havoc inside. No blood adorned the streets. No broken buildings. Everything stood as it should, yet there was not a single living person I could see.
“Halt,” I told the chainrunners. Each of them looked at me in confusion, struggling to understand why we should stop with salvation within reach.
But I had no time to explain myself. The swarm would increase again soon. There were even multiple crimson beasts walking side by side, coming our way.
I needed to figure out what was going on before bringing them all into a possible trap.
So I scanned forward, leaving my body behind as my senses pushed into the ward and then split.
They moved like invisible hounds, pushing forward, sniffing every single rock, looking through walls, and entering every house and building in sight. I didn’t stop at the surface. I went under every stone and into the underground.
I saw signs that confirmed people had once lived here. Unwashed plates on sinks. Doors left open. Beds unmade. Tools resting where they had been set down, as if their owners had simply stepped away and never returned.
Could they have run?
If so, there would be signs of hurry. People fleeing, even in the fog, would bring their things with them. They wouldn’t simply leave everything behind, much less a functional district with a functional ward.
I found a field that had once been cultivated. The crops had long withered and died, brown and collapsed against the soil. Whoever planted them had clearly intended to harvest, yet no one had. The rows were still neat, still orderly, the spacing precise. Someone had cared about this field. Someone had expected to come back.
So they hadn't run. Which left two possibilities. The first was that they had all simply vanished one day. The second was that something capable of entering the ward without breaching it had killed them all instantly, without leaving any bodies or even blood behind.
To do that to an entire district, such a being would have to be a God.
The elf…
Just like Korrax, she had risen once again to godhood while in the Deep Abyss, and she had an affinity for shadows. Something I knew well, since it had been the elf who blessed Hazeveil, and thanks to that blessing, my cloak could hide me from the wards’ protection mechanisms.
Once, it had served her well to bless my cloak, since Sjakthar was a threat to her too, even though she acted as if he was not. But now nothing was holding us on friendly terms. She could hunt me for my core just as Korrax had tried to.
A sound tore across the horizon, deep and raw, less a roar than a scream. A crimson horror, despicable and unstoppable, towered in the distance. Its fury and madness were clear in its eyes as it came toward us, each step making the earth scream and shake.
Cairen and Gustav both looked ahead, in the same direction I was looking, trying to see what I was seeing. They could barely make out the ward from this distance, much less the complete absence of people beyond it.
Eventually, Cairen turned to me. “What are we waiting for? We can’t stand here for long.”
“We’re not waiting. I’m scouting,” I told him, though I understood how hard that was to believe since I hadn’t moved a finger since the run halted.
They all looked at me, the same question in their eyes, while chainrunners battled not far from us. I had stopped helping them as I focused on searching the district, so they were temporarily on their own.
However, Rogara’s magic was still bright and burning the battlefield around us. Beasts screamed left and right as their bodies were consumed in white flames. Her mana drained completely far too many times to be considered healthy, but thankfully, those same white flames could heal her to a certain extent.
“There might be something hiding in there,” I told them, even as I continued searching for someone alive, some sign of struggle, or worse, the elf herself.
I looked through the entire district. Every cranny, every corner, even under every single rock. It took me only a few minutes. Then I did it again. And again. But as time ticked on, more beasts approached.
Despite having recovered a great deal of mana during the calm ride since Korrax’s death, my core was nowhere near full. Fighting crimson beasts and then another God would prove... difficult.
So I waited until Haldrin reached us, despite the swarms that surrounded us. Luckily, it was just enough time to avoid the crimson horrors on the horizon. They could challenge the ward, yet I doubted they would do so with Haldrin and me nearby, considering the ward itself would weaken them severely just to cross.
"Continue. Forward," I said. Not loud, but the wind carried my voice regardless.
And so they did.
“Have you found what you were looking for?” Cairen asked once we began to move at full speed. There was a strange skepticism in his tone, understandable given that I had remained motionless for several minutes, simply staring forward while they risked their lives against the beasts with salvation so close by.
Still, they had waited. And I thought it best to repay such trust with some of my own by simply telling the truth.
“No, I did not. But honestly, if what I think might be hiding within the district is truly there, I doubt I would be able to find it if... if she didn’t want me to.”
My senses might be those of a God, but I doubted a God of Shadows would lack the tricks to hide herself from someone like me.
The chainrunners grew elated the closer we approached the ward. At first, it was like they couldn’t believe we had made it. Eventually, they did believe, and so began the euphoric screams of victory that somehow seemed to make them ride even faster.
Riders who had barely been holding on sat straighter in their saddles. I heard laughter for the first time in what felt like days. It came from desperate people who were certain they would die and now found out they were wrong.
“I told you! I told you idiots, we’d make it!” Cedric bellowed from somewhere near the front, grinning like a man who had personally escorted us here. A few riders cheered in response, too relieved to care about his tone.
Behind me, Martin elbowed Tom. “We’re alive, you miserable bastard. Take off that dead face before someone mistakes you for a zombie. Worse, they’ll see you standing next to me, so you’d better cheer up. The arrival of the Grand Martin will not be soiled by your ugly mug.”
Tom said nothing. He just stared ahead with hollow eyes, still not quite believing it and perhaps thinking it would vanish the moment he blinked.
“There’s no helping this fool,” Martin said.
Simon rode near them, quiet but upright, his broken spear replaced by a short sword. “I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, Martin, but if you’re hoping to get lucky tonight, that won’t happen. The ladies from District 11 certainly have eyes and... minimum standards.”
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“Oh, but I concur, Mr. First-Fool-to-Charge. That’s why I want both your ugly faces far away from me once we’re there.” Martin smirked.
Most chainrunners were far too happy to notice what was wrong at first.
Artemis’s eyes swept the ward’s perimeter, lingered there for a few moments and then her expression changed.
“Where are the sentries? Guards?” she asked.
Cairen heard her. His smile faded and he looked ahead with sharper eyes. A few of the more seasoned riders followed his gaze, and one by one, they saw it too.
“Could they be busy defending the other side of the ward right now?” Cairen asked.
“No,” Gustav said flatly. “They would leave a few behind to keep a watch.”
“Maybe they’re just too shy to greet us properly,” Cedric called out, drawing scattered laughs from those nearby, though fewer than before.
“Oi! Where are you lazy sods? We’ve been running through hell, and you can’t even come to greet us.” Martin shouted.
“Bring out the beer. We’ve earned it.” Cedric declared, drawing cheers and nods of agreement all around.
The cheering eventually thinned. Riders exchanged worried glances and the run slowed a little.
Gorin, who had said nothing through all of this, pulled his mount closer to Gustav and Cairen. “Something is wrong.”
But they knew it already. The fog wasn’t dense enough near the ward, and everyone could see the lack of movement inside.
The first riders crossed the ward. I watched their faces as they passed through, saw the exact moment the euphoria drained out of them. Their heads turned left, then right, then left again. The streets were empty. The buildings stood whole and untouched, but no one came to meet them. No one peered from the windows. No doors opened.
Both the Isari and Haldrin remained outside the ward as we entered. The swarm would disperse given time, and as for them, the fog was their home as much as the City of Ice. They would be fine there.
“They might be gathered somewhere else,” Cedric said, though his voice had lost its edge. “A council, or a festival, maybe. Could be anything.”
“A festival,” Artemis repeated, and the flatness of her tone cut the suggestion dead.
“And they left this place completely unguarded?” Cairen added, his hand resting on the hilt of his rapier now.
Silence settled over them. More than a hundred riders sat on tired horses in the entrance of a district that should have been full of life, and not one of them had a single word to offer.
Gustav was the one who finally spoke, and his voice was low enough that only those nearest could hear. “Where the hell is everyone?”
“Gone,” I said.
They turned to me. Cairen, Gustav, Cedric, Artemis, Gorin, and dozens of others behind them. A hundred exhausted faces waiting for the one answer I couldn’t give them.
“What do you mean, gone?” Gustav asked.
“I mean, gone. District 11 seems to be wholly functional. The ward is intact. The buildings are untouched. But there is not a single living person in this district.”
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then everyone did.
“That’s impossible. A whole district doesn’t just vanish.”
“Could the ward have been breached? Maybe they were overrun and…”
“There’s no blood,” Artemis said, cutting through the noise. “No damage. No bodies. I’ve been looking since we crossed. There’s no sign of breach.”
“Then where the hell did they go?” Cedric asked, and for once, there was no smugness in his voice.
“Maybe they left,” someone offered from further back. “Packed up and left for another district.”
Cairen shook his head slowly. “People don’t leave a whole functional district like that. Not willingly.”
The questions kept coming, piling on top of each other. I stood there and let them talk because I had already gone through every single one in my own head a thousand times and had answers for none of it.
It took them a long time to stop asking.
Gustav planted himself in front of me, arms crossed. “We search. Tomorrow, first light. Every building, every basement, every tunnel. There has to be something you missed.”
“I know there’s nobody left,” I told him.
“You scanned the place from out there,” he said, gesturing back toward the ward’s edge. “Standing still on your horse with your eyes glazed over. You’ll forgive me if I’d rather check with my own two eyes.”
“There could be a sealed chamber underground,” Cairen added. “Somewhere reinforced, hidden. If they saw something coming, they might have taken shelter.”
The underground had been one of my first thoughts. I had searched every tunnel, every cellar, every gap beneath the stone. I had pushed my senses through solid rock and found nothing but earth and rocks.
But I understood what this was. It wasn’t really about finding survivors. It was about needing to do something with their hands, needing to walk through those empty houses themselves, and see the truth with their own eyes. If not for their own sake, then to have something real to tell the others when they returned.
So I said nothing more and let them plan.
Gorin, who had been listening quietly from his horse, finally spoke. “And if whatever took them is still here?”
The chatter died instantly when he spoke. None of them had considered the possibility, but it could indeed be the case.
Cairen straightened in his saddle and looked across the chainrunners. Exhausted riders on exhausted horses, packed into the streets of a district that should have been their safe haven. He knew what they needed to hear.
“We don’t know what happened here,” he said, loud enough for them all to hear. “We don’t know where these people went or why. But we do know this ward is functional, and right now, that’s enough. We find a defensible position, we set watches, and we rest. Tomorrow, we search. Nobody wanders off alone tonight. Stay together, stay armed, stay alert.”
Nobody argued. They were too tired to argue and too unsettled to do anything but follow an order that sounded like it came from someone who still had a plan.
***
When night came to the ghost district, as some had begun to call it, everyone had already settled in what was once the manor of a wealthy noble.
The manor was packed with preserved food of all kinds, including a selection of wine so refined it made the chainrunners wonder if what they had been drinking their whole lives was merely grape juice.
Pillage was forbidden. We were not robbers, after all. But Cairen decided to allow them to take any food found there, saying he would personally reimburse every item taken once the owner of the manor was found.
When I questioned why we hadn’t chosen the chainrunner headquarters or something similar, Gustav told me it was because he didn’t know what enemy we were facing, and the manor had an open garden that extended for a few hundred meters in every direction.
It gave us a clear line of sight against any threat, while the inside had already been fully searched before nightfall. The headquarters, on the other hand, stood among cramped buildings with too many blind corners and narrow streets.
There was no energy in the district, so campfires were made right within the manor and every twenty meters around it to allow the watch.
The fire inside the manor cast everything in shifting orange light. Shadows crawled across the walls and pooled in the corners of rooms that had clearly been lived in not long ago. A coat still hung by the door of the room I claimed. A pair of boots sat beneath it, neatly placed, as if their owner would return any moment to slip them on.
Despite the many chainrunners who had died, very few mourned openly. Most simply went to sleep or stood around the campfires, watching through the windows for threats while they shared wine and roasted beast meat. The smell of cooking filled the manor and drifted out into the empty streets, where no one was left to notice it.
There were some who chose silent corners to weep, but most decided to stay together. Some even more together than others. Artemis and Cedric were... quite energetic, though they were cautious enough for few to notice.
When morning came, we did a full head count before splitting into groups. One hundred and twenty-two chainrunners in total, including me, remained. They were divided into duos and told to search for people and possible entrances to the underground. Entrances that I had somehow missed.
Which I certainly hadn’t.
Or perhaps I had?
I was certain I hadn’t missed anything. My senses had gone through every layer of stone and soil beneath the district. Every tunnel, every cellar, every crack.
Still, that certainty vanished the next day.
When the groups were being split again and new zones drawn on the map for the second day of search, somehow, we had one fewer duo.
Marie and Mathew were their names. I didn’t know them well. Two veterans who had survived the run, the swarm, and the ice, only to vanish in a district with a functional ward and a hundred armed chainrunners sleeping in the same building.
“Could they have... I don’t know... gotten too drunk on wine and simply not come back yet?” Cedric suggested.
Artemis gave him a look, but said nothing.
Cairen considered it for a moment. “Could be. Honestly, I wouldn’t fault them for it. In times like this, people often want to feel alive in any way they can.”
Nobody said what they were actually thinking. That two veterans don’t just wander off and not return.
I had been watching over the district, but I was far from omnipresent. My senses could reach everything within the ward, but that didn’t mean I could watch everything at once. A district is not a room. It has thousands of corners, thousands of walls, thousands of shadows.
That night, I looked for those two. I searched every building, every street, every stretch of ground they could have wandered to.
They were not two lovers who had drunk too much wine and lost track of time.
They were gone. Vanished entirely, without leaving a single trace behind. Right under my watch.