Chapter 103: Aftermath (1)
The Tower was screaming.
Nathan was entirely unconscious, a dead weight in Mirko’s arms. His blood was hot and sticky against her armor, a terrifying contrast to the freezing, suffocating darkness around them.
Behind them, the fountain’s corrupted magic rippled outward in destructive waves. The old floors were violently buckling. Massive chunks of the cavern ceiling were shearing off and crashing into the blackness. The Whispering Dark Tower was collapsing.
"Move!" Elise commanded, her voice slicing through the roar of the earthquake.
Her staff blazed with an aggressive, pale blue light, fighting a losing battle against the encroaching void. Without slowing her sprint, she uncorked a high-grade healing potion and practically forced it down Nathan’s throat. "It will stabilize his vitals! We have to hit the surface before the structural integrity totally fails!"
Mirko cradled Nathan against her chest, her steel boots pounding against the fracturing stone. Her pink eyes were wide, blazing with a terrifying mixture of sheer fury and panic. Through their bond, she could feel his heartbeat—a thin, reedy thrum. The potion was catching. He was alive. He had to stay alive.
From the shifting shadows ahead, Kuro materialized.
Her dark eyes were completely blank. The shadow-forged daggers in her hands were still dripping thick, dark blood onto the stones. She hadn’t wiped them. She hadn’t spoken a single word since driving them through the operative’s chest.
The route is clear, Kuro transmitted, her mental voice stripped of all emotion. The scarred leader abandoned his team. He fled through a secondary passage when the collapse initiated. The portal is two hundred yards ahead.
"And the prisoner?" Garrett roared over the falling debris.
He was hauling the cold-eyed female operative by the collar of her cloak, her wrists brutally bound behind her back with zip-ties. Red’s massive, armored bulk was pressing tight against her spine, physically shoving her forward every time she stumbled. She was bleeding heavily from the severed muscle clusters Kuro had left her with, the fanatical light in her eyes entirely replaced by the hollow stare of defeat.
"She’s coming with us," Garrett snarled, shaking her violently. "The TCA is going to rip her mind apart. Move, or I’ll let the sheep drag you by your teeth!"
Red let out a low, guttural bleat. It did not sound like a farm animal.
Dillon brought up the rear, running backward. His katana was drawn, and the Cloud Serpent was spiraling frantically around his shoulders, snapping defensive arcs of static into the falling debris. "The ceiling is coming down! The whole floor is dropping!"
"Crystals!" Elise ordered. "Now! Everyone, crush them!"
The party shattered their extraction crystals in unison.
Blinding silver light enveloped them, violently ripping them from the dark. The collapsing architecture, the roaring earthquake, the suffocating void—all of it dissolved into the sickening, sideways pull of emergency displacement. For a long, agonizing second, there was nothing but cold, ringing silence.
Then, the world slammed back into focus.
The biting chill of the northern badlands hit their faces. The dead, leaning forest surrounded them under a bruised grey sky. Old Marren was standing beside the idling guild bus. As his eyes fell on Nathan’s limp, blood-soaked form in Mirko’s arms, the veteran driver’s leathery face went completely rigid.
He didn’t ask what happened. He just threw open the bus doors.
---
The Celestial Peak infirmary was sterile, white, and suffocatingly quiet.
The low hum of medical wards filled the air, casting a faint, rhythmic blue glow across the walls. Nathan lay in a bed near the window, his torso heavily wrapped in compression bandages. The guild healers had rushed him straight from the bus. Three shattered ribs, forced back into alignment and fused. Massive internal hemorrhaging, stabilized and flushed. A severe concussion, currently being smoothed away by localized mana therapy.
He would recover. But his body had hit a hard, physical wall.
Mirko was in her rabbit form, curled tightly on the pillow right beside his head, her green fur pressed directly against his cheek. She hadn’t left his side for a single second since the doors of the infirmary closed. She refused food. She refused sleep. Her pink eyes were locked onto his pale face with the unblinking, terrifying vigilance of a guardian who had come a fraction of a second away from failing.
Kuro sat on the windowsill, a perfectly still silhouette against the glass.
She had finally cleaned her daggers. She still hadn’t spoken. But Nathan could feel her presence through their tether—a dark, quiet weight, swirling with an undercurrent of cold distress.
Master. You are awake.
Mirko’s mental voice trembled, the words carrying a profound, exhausted relief. She instantly shifted into her humanoid form, standing beside the bed and gripping his hand tightly in both of hers.
You terrified me, Mirko projected, her physical voice failing her. Do not ever do that again. I forbid it. As your Knight. As your first summon. As your... Her mental voice cracked. Just don’t.
Nathan’s eyes fluttered open. The harsh white light of the ceiling made his head throb. Breathing felt like his chest was banded in hot iron, but the sharp, blinding agony was gone. He slowly turned his head, meeting Mirko’s tear-rimmed pink eyes.
"Noted," Nathan rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper. "I will try... to avoid... taking an iron mace to the ribs."
See that you do. Mirko’s ears drooped, then immediately snapped back up as she forced her usual bravado. Hmph! This Knight cannot be expected to physically carry you out of every single dungeon! It lacks dignity! I am an elite warrior, not a pack mule!
Nathan managed a faint, strained smile. "You’re... an exceptionally good pack mule."
I am the BEST pack mule! But that is entirely beside the point!
"Three broken ribs. Severe internal bruising. Grade-two concussion."
Elise spoke from the corner of the room. She was sitting perfectly straight in a vinyl chair, her staff resting against the wall. Her face was as composed as a porcelain mask, but the dark, bruised shadows under her pale blue eyes betrayed her exhaustion.
"You were incredibly lucky," Elise said softly. "Two inches higher, and the kinetic shock would have collapsed your left lung. Two inches lower, it would have ruptured your spleen. You would have bled out in the dark." She paused, her eyes shifting to the window. "The Court operative who struck you is deceased. Kuro neutralized him before he could deliver another strike."
I was almost too slow, Kuro’s voice slid through the link, tight and self-condemning.
Nathan slowly turned his head toward the windowsill. The movement pulled painfully at his core, but he forced himself to look directly at the assassin.
"You weren’t," Nathan said, his voice weak but absolute. "You saved my life, Kuro. Both of you did. All of you."
I should have been faster.
"You were fast enough. I’m breathing. That’s the only metric that matters."
Kuro didn’t reply, but she broke her gaze from the window, looking down at her hands. The heavy, dark weight in the tether eased, replaced by a steadier, warmer current.
The infirmary door clicked open. Valerie walked in, looking like she had aged ten years in the last twelve hours.
Boris shuffled quietly behind her in his smaller form, his glacier-blue eyes uncharacteristically solemn. The Guild Master pulled up a steel chair beside Nathan’s bed and sat down with a heavy sigh. She didn’t have her mug.
"We interrogated the operative. The one your team brought back," Valerie said, her voice gravelly and grim. "She’s not high ranked, just a foot soldier. But she’s been indoctrinated for years. We broke her, and what she spilled is a nightmare."
Nathan tried to sit up. Elise was there instantly, gently but firmly adjusting the pillows behind his back to support his fused ribs. "What did she say?" Nathan asked, catching his breath.
"The Nemesis Court is finalizing an operation they call the ’Cleansing’." Valerie’s jaw muscles feathered. "They aren’t just sabotaging individual Towers at random. They are preparing a synchronized, localized collapse across the entire outer regions. Dozens of High and Mid Class Towers, detonating simultaneously. They intend to wipe the refugee camps, the border towns, the outer settlements right off the map."
The room went dead silent.
"It’s a mass culling," Valerie continued, her eyes dark. "A twisted Darwinian reset. They Truly believe that collapsing the ecosystem will force humanity to ’evolve’.. kill the weak, leave only the strong to climb the wreckage. Clamour is orchestrating the northern grid personally. And your interference of capturing Smithy, clearing the Frozen Throne and Iron Horde, has forced their hand. They are accelerating their timeline."
"How long?" Nathan asked, his heart hammering painfully against his ribs.
"Weeks. Maybe less. The TCA is mobilizing, but they are stretched too thin, Dealing with Everything and even the whispering dark Tower’s Collapse. They don’t have the manpower to garrison every single Tower in the outer regions, and the Court knows it. We are out of time."