Chapter 193: Broken Laws
Seeing the five of them flee from the outer edge of the outskirts toward the inner section, Seraphine understood immediately what they were trying to do.
’Hmm. Seems like this place has become something of a living contradiction too,’ she thought, her gaze narrowing slightly as she noted the subtle shift in energy taking place within that specific area, a shift most eyes, even trained ones, would have missed entirely.
This place blocked the entry of void energy, preventing the Abyss from corrupting it, and the same rule extended to its inhabitants as well. Beyond a certain point, the Hollows simply couldn’t go any further. If they tried, if they pushed past that invisible boundary, they would be eliminated instantly, erased before they could even register what had happened to them.
Up to that point, she understood the reasoning behind it perfectly well. It was old knowledge to her, woven into the very fabric of what this place was. But what she saw beyond that understanding was what caught her by surprise, a detail that made her pause and look closer.
She knew better than anyone what made this place so special. It was the very reason she had been both surprised and pleased when she learned Evan had found a way to enter it. She had always known that, sooner or later, both of them would have to come here.
It had been inevitable from the very beginning, a thread of fate neither of them could have avoided even if they’d tried.
What she hadn’t expected, however, was for the place to have changed so drastically since she’d last set foot here.
The laws of death that governed this place, the same laws that normally prevented life from taking root or lingering beyond a certain limit, no longer seemed to be functioning the way they should. Something had cracked the foundation of what this city had always been.
The source of life energy Evan had located, radiating outward from the castle standing at the very center of the city, had disturbed and worked directly against the laws of death here, creating a contradiction that left both sets of laws, life and death alike, unable to fully assert themselves anymore.
The natural cycle that should have governed this place, the quiet, absolute certainty that nothing living could survive here for long, had been thrown badly out of balance.
She understood this clearly the moment she examined the area more closely, tracing the disturbance back to its source. And that understanding was precisely why those five humans below were still alive.
Her gaze drifted downward, settling on the violet marks scattered across some of their bodies, dark blotches spreading beneath torn skin like ink through water. She couldn’t help but shake her head slowly.
"Even so... it doesn’t look like they’ll survive much longer."
***
The massive explosion caused by Elena’s attack didn’t last long. Within seconds, something seemed to draw it back in, folding the fire and light in on itself as though it had never been unleashed at all. And that something, as it turned out, was the creatures themselves.
They weren’t injured. They didn’t even look irritated or angry at having been struck.
Just satisfied, disturbingly so, as their misshapen mouths stretched open wide, jaws unhinging further than anything with a skeleton should allow, seemingly absorbing the entire explosion into themselves like starving things offered a feast.
In under ten seconds, a blast that should have unleashed chaos and destruction across the entire block, tearing through stone and rubble alike, was completely swallowed by those creatures, who let none of the energy contained within it go to waste.
Every last spark, every trace of heat, vanished down their throats.
The moment they finished, they surged forward again, even more ferocious than before, as if that brief pause, that momentary feast, had done nothing but whet their appetite further.
But the time bought by the attack, however brief, had been enough. Enough to put real distance between the fleeing group and the things chasing them.
"We’re almost there, hold on just a little longer," Elena called back to the others, her voice hoarse with exertion, and she could see how several of them had begun to falter, their steps growing uneven, clearly running on nothing but fear and stubbornness at this point.
A few more agonizing seconds passed, and the buildings marking the edge of the outskirts, once a distant blur on the horizon, were no longer far off at all. They stood right in front of them now, close enough to reach out and touch.
None of them wasted time looking back. They ran straight ahead without stopping, without hesitation, finally crossing the threshold into the outskirts of the city.
The creatures weren’t far behind. They reached the same spot only moments later, continuing the chase without a hint of slowing, without a single sign of exhaustion or restraint. But the instant they set foot inside that boundary, something happened.
A strange dark light seemed to rise out of nowhere, appearing right at the edge of the outskirts like a seam tearing open in the air itself. One moment there was nothing there at all, and the next, that light had coalesced into what looked like a thin, shimmering barrier stretched across the boundary line.
The creatures, already charging at full speed, had no time to notice it, no time to slow or swerve, and they slammed straight into it at full force.
The moment they did, they burst apart. A brief, blinding flash of violet light rippled outward from the point of impact, gone as fast as it appeared, swallowed whole by the barrier’s dark glow.
They didn’t pass through the barrier. They weren’t thrown back or injured by the impact.
They simply burst outward into a dark violet mist that scattered and dissolved into the surrounding air, completely gone as quickly as they’d appeared.
They had been eliminated. All of them, in the span of a single breath.