Chapter 31: The Funeral of the Redhead

  (Clara's Perspective)

  The moment preceding the escape was a red blur, the scream of Alessandro as he transformed, and the smell of burning ozone from the clown's magic. Then, silence came.

  It wasn't ordinary silence. It was a tear. I felt it in my gut before my mind registered it, as if the fabric of reality itself was ripping around us. A thick black shadow swallowed us, not like an embrace, but like a devouring maw. There was no sensation of falling or rising, but a feeling of absolute loss in a cold void that belonged nowhere.

  Then, the void spat us back into existence harshly.

  We appeared in the sky, amidst a thunderstorm that hadn't been there a second ago. There was no time to scream. We were falling. The wind was screaming in my ears, and cold raindrops lashed my face like needles. Below us, sharp, dark mountain peaks rushed towards us at terrifying speed.

  "Isabella!" I screamed, the words lost in the roar of the wind.

  But she had already moved. She shrieked sharp magical words, and I felt a wave of warm wind surround us, slowing our deadly descent and turning it into a violent, uncontrolled landing. We hit the ground hard, amongst wet pine trees and slippery rocks.

  I fell onto my side, and felt a sharp, burning pain explode in my abdomen. It wasn't the pain of the fall. It was something deeper, the echo of my son's silent cry that tore reality to save us. I placed my hand on my belly, gasping, as I vomited a bitter mixture of fear and exhaustion onto the damp pine needles.

  "Are you okay?" Isabella's voice came, hoarse and strained. She was leaning against a tree, her face pale as a ghost in the broken lightning.

  "Deo..." was the only name I could utter.

  Isabella looked toward the darkness we had left behind, and said nothing. There was no need. In her eyes, I saw the same terror and loss that was tearing me apart from the inside. We were alone. We only had each other, on the summit of a forgotten world.

  The descent from the mountain was a hell of sharp rocks and slippery mud. Every step demanded every ounce of strength we had left. The silence between us was heavy, broken only by the sound of our ragged breaths and the relentless rain.

  "Yes, I remember this mountain," Isabella said, her voice sounding strange in the silence. "It's close to the Fortress City of Philanter. Alessandro's city."

  The word "Alessandro" hung in the air between us like a ghost. We didn't dare to say more.

  After hours of strenuous walking, we finally reached the bottom of the mountain, to the hills that were supposed to overlook the Fortress City. But there was no city.

  Where the impenetrable walls of Philanter were supposed to stand, there was only a hole.

  A massive hole, like an open black wound in the body of the earth, stretching for miles. Its edges were glazed and black, as if a divine fire had melted the rock itself. There was no rubble. No debris. There was nothing but absolute void, and a deafening silence. An entire city, with thousands of souls who lived in it, had been erased from existence.

  Isabella fell to her knees in the mud. She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just stared at that hole, her eyes completely vacant, as if her soul had fallen into that void with the city.

  We didn't talk. There was no need to talk. The sight alone was enough. We walked away from that edge of nothingness, and Isabella kept convincing herself out loud, as if reciting a desperate spell: "We must find a car. And go to Rivemont. Yes, to my father's place. Surely our city will be standing. Yes... it's impossible for our city to fall."

  She wasn't convincing me. She was convincing herself. And I didn't dare to speak, because I was afraid my voice might shatter the last fragile thread of hope she was clinging to.

  A week passed. A week of walking through desolate lands, under a gray, unchanging sky. We learned how to survive. Isabella, the princess who had never touched dirt, hunted wild rabbits with deadly skill, using fire magic to cook them. And I, despite my pregnancy starting to weigh on me, gathered firewood and searched for clean water.

  Our nights were around a small fire, a warm spot of light in an ocean of darkness and doubt.

  "Do you think they are still alive?" I asked her one night, my voice just a whisper.

  Isabella looked at the dancing flames. "If anyone is going to live through this hell," she said in a voice attempting to sound faithful, "I think it will be them." Then she looked into the fire. "And Rivemont. Fire like that, it never goes out. They definitely survived too. And we will live too."

  After another week of weary walking, we finally reached a small town, or rather, its skeleton. It was a ghost town. The houses were empty, and the streets were filled with scattered bones gnawed by time and beasts. The silence was like a wall, broken only by the sound of our cautious footsteps and the wind moaning through the shattered windows.

  And in the middle of the main square, there was one thing that was still alive. A magical television screen, its screen shattered but still working, flashing and repeating the same video over and over, its distorted electronic voice the only sound in this silence.

  "Look!" I said, my voice filled with sudden hope. "A broadcast! It must be the Resistance! Someone must still be fighting!"

  We ran towards it, fragile hope fluttering in our chests like a trapped bird.

  A distorted image of five people sitting around a table appeared. I immediately recognized two faces, and my heart clenched.

  "Deo..." I whispered, feeling Isabella's hand grip my arm tightly.

  "Deo's father? And his teacher Philip?" Isabella said in surprise. "What are they doing? Are they leading the Resistance?"

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  A small child began to speak. He had blonde hair and innocent eyes, but his voice carried an icy calm that contrasted with his age. "Welcome, fallen world. We are the Jacobins. I am Saint Antoine, the Saint of Mercy."

  Hope froze in our veins.

  "We have come to punish the world for its existence," the child continued with a gentle smile. "We started with the Eisingard family. They learned the meaning of true remorse from Saint Louis, who showed them the joy of torment. As for Knoxville,

  Saint Julian showed them the true darkness after we killed their legendary guardian and Lucius, the family master. And Philip, the Saint of Poverty, took your safest city, the Fortress City of Philanter, and gifted it to the void. As for the Rivemont family,

  " he looked into the camera as if he was looking directly at Isabella, "I personally had the honor of granting them endless mercy. They screamed a lot at first, but they learned silence in the end. As for you, inhabitants of the capital, do not be afraid. The punishment is coming to you soon."

  The video ended, then started again.

  "He's lying..." Isabella whispered, her voice barely audible. "He's lying... he's lying..."

  Then she exploded.

  It wasn't a cry of grief; it was the roar of a wounded beast. "HE'S LYING!!!"

  She ran frantically through the town, searching for anything to vent her rage on. And she found them. Three low-ranking clowns, who were looting the remains of an old store.

  It wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter. Isabella no longer used her magic precisely, but unleashed explosions of raw flame, burning stone and flesh alike. She grabbed one of them, knocked him down, and started punching him and punching him, her face smeared with tears and dust. The clown was laughing, laughing as he was struck, laughing as his blood flowed, and this laughter increased her frenzy.

  I grabbed her from behind, pulling her away from the mutilated corpse. "Enough, Isabella! He's dead! Enough!"

  "They deserve this!" she screamed in my face, her eyes insane. "Do you feel pity for them after they killed Alessandro, Eva, and Leonardo, and perhaps your husband, and my father, and soon they will get your son?!"

  "No! I don't feel pity!" I screamed back, tears burning my eyes. "But if you kill them like this, you'll become like them! You'll do what they want! I don't want to lose you too! You are all I have left!"

  She fell to her knees, looked up at the sky, screamed a cry of grief and rage, and her defenses collapsed. I hugged her and we cried. We cried for a world that no longer existed, and for the monsters it was forcing us to become.

  We found a car that was still working and drove off on our final journey towards Rivemont. Two weeks passed in silence and destruction. The car was our small metal box that isolated us from the dead world outside. I drove in silence, while Isabella mostly looked out the window, her eyes tracking the destroyed landscapes that passed us like an endless cinematic reel of tragedy.

  Our relationship changed during these two weeks. We were no longer just two survivors brought together by chance; we became comrades-in-arms, sisters born from the womb of trauma. On cold nights, we shared one blanket and exchanged stories we had never told anyone before.

  She told me about her strict childhood, about the pressure of being the Rivemont family heir. And I told her about my loneliness, my orphanage, and about Deo, who was the first person to see me.

  One night, while we were stopped in an abandoned field, I slept in the back seat of the car. And I dreamed.

  I dreamed I was in our beautiful house again. Everything was perfect, warm sunlight streamed from the windows, and the smell of coffee filled the air. Deo was there, standing in the middle of the living room, his back to me. He was laughing. But when I called him, he didn't turn around.

  I tried to touch him, but my hand passed right through him as if he were a ghost made of smoke. Then I looked into the garden, and saw my son playing on the green grass. I ran towards him happily, but the closer I got, the blurrier his face became, until he was just a featureless smudge.

  I woke up feeling a deep coldness in my bones, my heart beating with pain. It wasn't just a dream. It was the embodiment of my greatest fear: that I had lost Deo forever, and that the future I had dreamed of was now just a painful memory and doubt.

  Two more days of silent travel, and the car finally stopped at the top of a ridge.

  "We've arrived," Isabella said in a hollow voice.

  We got out of the car and stood on the edge of the hill. Below us, where the proud city of Rivemont was supposed to stretch, there was only silent rubble and a strange red spot in the center.

  That spot was the lake.

  Isabella didn't cry. Her face was a mask of stone. She had seen the truth in the video, and this was just a horrific confirmation. She knew she had come to a funeral.

  We left the car and started walking down to the city. Every step was heavy, as if we were walking on the bottom of an ocean of sorrow.

  "This street..." Isabella whispered as we walked through what was once a main road. "It was called 'Blade's Path.' Duels used to be held here at every sunrise. There were no courts, only honor and the blade."

  "And that collapsed building..." she pointed to a pile of burnt stone. "It was the 'Iron Fist Dojo.' My father used to say it was the best place in the world to strengthen a warrior's spirit."

  She was painting me a picture of the fighting paradise her city used to be, which made the sight of its current hell even more painful. We saw the signature of Saint Antoine everywhere. The bodies of warriors placed in humiliating postures, as if praying, their heads crushed in front of the beheaded statues of their ancestors. Blood was smeared on the walls in hideous, sick drawings. This was the "mercy" of the Child Saint.

  We finally reached the lake.

  The stench was unbearable, the smell of old blood and death. The lake was a thick, viscous soup of blood and corpses. A silent scream turned into liquid.

  And in the middle of it, on an improvised spear, was her father's head, Gaspar Rivemont. It was a final, personal insult.

  Isabella froze. She stood there, staring at it, her whole body becoming a statue of ice and grief. Then, slowly, she started walking. She entered the red lake water, unconcerned by the viscous water staining her clothes, or the corpses touching her legs. She walked until she reached the spear, and gently took down her father's head, as if carrying a sleeping child.

  She returned to the shore and placed the head on the ground. She began gathering wood from the ruined buildings silently and methodically. She built a small funeral pyre. She placed her father's head on top, then used her magic to light the fire.

  We stood together, watching the flames devour the last remains of the Rivemont leader. There were no tears, only silence and final respect. She was burying her past to be able to move forward.

  "I'm sorry, Clara," she finally said, her voice calm as the whisper of ash. "Because of my selfishness, I risked your life and your child's life."

  I smiled and looked at her. "It's alright. I'm not weak. And my child is not weak. Who do you think saved us from the capital?"

  A faint smile appeared on Isabella's face for the first time. "Your child will be truly strong."

  "He will definitely be strong."

  We found shelter in a distant forest, with a small gathering of other survivors who thought like us. We became sisters, sharing food, grief, and fragile hope. Life was hard, but it was life.

  One night, I sat away from the camp, looking at the stars that seemed painfully bright in the clear sky. And I wrote my message in my heart.

  To my husband,

  95 days, ten hours, 31 seconds have passed. I dreamed of you so much. I hope you are still alive.

  Isabella and I have become stronger. Yes, we are hidden in a forest, living like animals, but we are stronger. She has become my sister. I never told you about my previous life, Deo. I don't understand why I didn't tell you, but I regret it now. My mother died of exhaustion from work a year before I entered the Academy to make her proud of me. And my father died working in construction when I was young. I was an orphan, then I found you, and I found a family. And now...

  Deo, I beg you, be alive. If not for me, then for our son. I don't want him to live without a father like me. He needs you, just as I need you.

  So please... be alive, my star. My Star of Change.