Chapter 77 - 76: A Road of Strangers
The group kept moving.
No one spoke much after the fight. There was nothing left to say.
The trail behind them was stained with monster blood, and the memory of the creatures tearing through the survivors remained fresh in everyone’s mind. Every few steps, someone glanced back toward the trees, half expecting another pack to emerge from the darkness.
Nina walked near the back of the group, her remaining hand resting loosely around the handle of her knife.
Her entire body ached.
Mud covered the lower half of her clothes, while dark stains of monster blood had dried across her sleeve and along the side of her trousers. A shallow cut on her cheek had stopped bleeding, but the skin around it stung whenever she moved. Her lips felt dry and cracked, and every breath seemed to remind her how long they had been walking.
She wasn’t the only one.
The others looked just as exhausted.
One of the women limped slightly. Another had a long scratch running across her forearm. The two children were barely speaking anymore, staying close to their mother as they stumbled along the trail.
Even the elderly man was struggling.
He leaned heavily on his wooden staff, his steps slower than before. His breathing had become more noticeable, but whenever anyone suggested stopping, he shook his head.
"We keep moving," he muttered.
His son glanced back at him. "Dad, you need to slow down."
"I’m already slowing you down."
"That’s not what I said."
The elderly man gave him a tired look but continued walking.
Nina watched them for a moment.
The teenage boy was walking beside his father, his short spear still clutched in one hand. There was dried blood on his clothes that didn’t belong to him. He looked exhausted, but he hadn’t complained once.
Nina remembered what had happened during the attack.
She remembered freezing.
The monster.
The child.
Then the sudden impact that had knocked her out of the creature’s path.
She hesitated before quietly calling out, "Thank you."
The boy glanced over his shoulder. "For what?"
"For pulling me out of the way."
He looked almost confused by the question. After a moment, he shrugged. "You were standing there."
Nina stared at him.
That was apparently his entire explanation.
A faint breath escaped her nose, almost a laugh, though she didn’t have enough energy to actually smile.
"Still," she said. "Thank you."
The boy nodded once and turned forward again.
His father glanced between them but said nothing.
Nina looked at the elderly man, then at the boy’s father.
She suddenly realized something.
She had been walking with these people for hours.
She had fought beside them.
She had trusted them enough to sleep near them.
And she didn’t even know their names.
"What’s your name?" she asked the teenager.
He looked back again. "Kai."
His father immediately added, "Kyle."
Nina nodded. "I’m Nina."
The elderly man, who had been listening despite pretending not to, finally spoke. "Edwin."
Nina looked toward the others.
One by one, the women and the other man introduced themselves as well.
There was no ceremony to it.
No sudden friendship.
Just names exchanged between people who had survived the same road.
Nina turned forward again.
For the first time since leaving King’s Territory, the strangers around her had names.
It didn’t make the forest any safer.
It didn’t erase what had happened.
But somehow, the road felt a little less lonely.
The road became harder to recognize with every passing hour.
What had once been a narrow trail through the forest was now a patchwork of trampled earth. Fresh footprints covered older ones, and in several places, the vegetation had been crushed so thoroughly that multiple paths branched away from the original trail.
Nina slowed slightly as she studied them.
People had been coming from different directions.
She could see them now more clearly than she had yesterday. A family appeared through the trees ahead, followed several minutes later by another small group. Farther up the slope, three men walked together while a woman and two children followed several dozen meters behind them.
There were more people than before.
Not hundreds gathered in one place, but enough that Nina could no longer pretend this was a handful of survivors making the same journey.
Dozens had become scores.
Scores were slowly becoming something larger.
Some groups had merged along the way. Others remained carefully separated, maintaining the same cautious distance they had kept since leaving King’s Territory. A few survivors walked alone, their eyes constantly scanning the forest around them.
Everyone seemed to have brought something.
A woman struggled beneath a bundle of clothes tied together with a strip of fabric. Another survivor dragged a battered suitcase over the uneven ground, its wheels catching against exposed roots every few steps. Someone else had a worn backpack hanging from one shoulder, stuffed so full that its seams looked ready to split.
Nina found herself wondering what they had considered important enough to keep.
A familiar shirt?
Food?
Tools?
Photographs?
Perhaps things that had once seemed ordinary had suddenly become precious after the world they knew disappeared.
She glanced down at her own clothes.
They were stained with dirt and dried blood, the fabric torn in several places. There was no going back to the life she had known before.
None of them could.
The thought faded as the road began to rise more sharply.
The group climbed steadily, their breathing becoming heavier as the slope continued upward. The trees gradually thinned, allowing more of the fading sunlight to reach the forest floor.
Nina wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.
Then she noticed something growing beside the trail.
She slowed.
A plant with translucent leaves stretched from beneath a cluster of dark roots. The thin leaves caught the sunlight passing through the canopy, glowing faintly as though they had been carved from colored glass.
Nina stared.
She had never seen anything like it.
A few steps farther ahead, another plant caught her attention. Tiny blue flowers covered its short stem, each one tightly closed.
A child walking near it reached out curiously.
"Don’t touch that."
The warning came sharply from an older woman.
The child immediately pulled their hand back.
"Why?"
"I don’t know."
The woman glanced at the flowers.
"They just don’t look friendly."
A few people nearby chuckled quietly.
It was the first hint of amusement Nina had heard in hours.
The flowers suddenly folded tighter.
The child took another step back.
Nobody laughed anymore.
Nina watched the strange plant for several seconds before continuing.
The forest was beginning to reveal itself as something more than a place where monsters lived.
It was alive.
Beautiful in places.
Unfamiliar everywhere.
And possibly just as dangerous.
A cool breeze swept down the rising slope, carrying the scent of damp soil and unfamiliar flowers.
Nina breathed it in cautiously.
The air was clean.
Strangely clean.
Back home, the air had carried the invisible weight of traffic, factories, smoke and countless other things she had never thought twice about.
Here, there was none of that.
Only trees, soil, plants and the distant sounds of an unfamiliar world.
For the first time since leaving King’s Territory, Nina realized something.
The monsters weren’t the only thing they needed to learn to survive.
They were living on another world now.
And they still had no idea what it was capable of.
The growing number of survivors made the road feel different.
Groups that had once been separated by long stretches of forest were now appearing more frequently. Some passed one another without speaking. Others exchanged a few cautious words before continuing in different directions.
Nina had begun noticing that the people around them did not all seem to have come from the same place.
Not because of their clothes.
Everyone looked much the same in that regard. Modern shirts, trousers, dresses and jackets in varying states of damage. Some had been torn during the Beast Tide. Others were stained with mud or blood. A few people had managed to keep themselves surprisingly clean.
There was no way to tell where any of them had come from just by looking.
Instead, Nina learned through fragments of conversation.
A woman walking several meters ahead spoke to another survivor about the territory she had left.
"You came from there too?"
"Yes."
"How many made it out?"
The woman hesitated.
"I don’t know."
Neither asked anything else.
A little farther along, Nina heard another conversation.
"We left our Lord’s territory yesterday morning."
"You had a Lord?"
The man shook his head.
"No. We never joined one."
That answer caught Nina’s attention.
She glanced toward him.
He noticed but continued walking.
"We’ve been living in the wilderness since we arrived," he explained after a moment. "A few people found us during the Beast Tide. We stayed together after that."
"And you saw the light?" someone asked.
The man nodded.
"Barely. It was behind the trees."
Another survivor walking nearby gave a quiet scoff.
"I didn’t even see it."
Several people looked at him.
"I only heard people talking about it," he continued. "They said something bright appeared somewhere ahead, so I followed them."