The sun was setting.
After the bandit attack, the caravan found a clearing between two steep ridges to rest. The trees opened into a narrow hollow filled with flat stone and sparse grass, half-sheltered by a leaning cliff above.
They spread out and began to set up camp.
Tents were erected, and campfires were ignited.
The survivors were exhausted, bruised and bloodied, too tired to speak.
The losses extended to more than just the guardsman, many civilians and even some children were lost. It was a tragedy, one that could have been avoided by simply taking a day to clear off the mountain path from before. That way, they didn't have to take this path.
They sat in silence, mourning those who died.
The guards worked silently, cleaning weapons, repairing wheels, counting the 'missing', and making reports about what was lost.
Petra sat on a distant rock near the peak of the ridge. Mousa sat beside the carriage, tired and half-asleep, while Raina leaned against a tree, eyes shut in meditation.
Mmmm~
Petra suddenly felt a low quake beneath her feet.
She frowned.
Her eyes turned towards the forest just beyond the western ridge. After a moment of silence, she seemed to feel something.
Petra narrowed her eyes.
The forest had gone quiet again.
Petra blinked suspiciously, then stood up.
"I'll be back in a bit," She called out to her party down below.
Raina cracked open an eye. "Where?"
"Mm." Petra didn't answer, she simply stepped away from the camp, vanishing into the shadows of the trees beyond the ridge, heading towards the source of that unknown feeling.
-
The forest was different at dusk.
The world had turned gold and gray, tinted by the last light bleeding through the canopy. Long shadows reached across the ground like spectral hands, stretching and turning with the fading sun. The forest breathed in slow waves with the wind, quiet yet restless, and every leaf seemed to shudder at something unseen on the horizon.
Petra walked without a sound.
The mud didn't cling to her boots, and the dew didn't dampen her clothes. This was an aftereffect of the mental energy she was vailed in while unconsciously training. She looked down as she walked and noticed a faint trail of glowing mushrooms scattered near the roots of a tree. They were round and soft, their edges pulsing gently with green light.
Petra crouched down and picked them, then continued forward.
She wasn't in a hurry, no, she didn't even know where she was going.
She had suddenly been overwhelmed by the feeling of awe, like something amazing was about to happen. It was a similar feeling to the danger sense she had felt during the seventh day in Imai.
She giggled to herself, gathered a few more, then hummed a soft tune as she skipped ahead.
Her small boots splashed up wet mud, and her bright emerald hair danced up and down with her hops.
Somewhere between the trees ahead, the air started to change. It grew heavy, tense, and hummed with a strange vibration that pressed against her face.
Petra stopped, turning her head both ways, trying to sense that strange aura.
"I feel… excited?" she mumbled to herself.
Her stomach felt fluttery.
It had been a very long time since she felt this way.
Petr couldn't understand why she was suddenly feeling so energetic. It wasn't exactly excitement, it was something else, a pulse of instinct, that faint, cold chill of refreshment that one would feel when something great was about to happen. Something important was approaching, and that was what her body seemed to be telling her…
She walked a little bit faster.
The forest thinned, the ground sloped upwards, and soon she stepped through the last line of trees.
The trees peeled back to reveal an expanse.
Petra emerged at the top of a massive cliff.
A strong gust of wind blew, and she raised her arm to protect her eyes from the dust.
After a moment, she lowered her arm and basked in the view.
The world opened before her, presenting an unrestricted view of the western region's border. The wind hit her face, cold and sharp, carrying the scent of Blackstone and grass, yet something else had started to slip its way in.
Petra could finally understand why the western region was a land of desolation and hardship.
Hoooong!
Before she could fully take in the view, something happened.
There was a moment of peace, then the ground shook.
A deep rumble rose from beneath the earth, heavy and strong, ringing with vibrations that could collapse even the strongest buildings with an earthquake that spread out over hundreds of kilometres. The cliff cracked faintly under her feet as dust slid from the edge of the cliff and rolled into the abyss below. A faint shockwave from a distant disaster stretched out its hand and pushed back Petras' cloak with a whip of wild wind.
She steadied herself, staring towards the horizon.
Then…
She saw it.
Her instincts as a witch flared violently, and she finally understood why every time she read about the witch clan, they always emphasized their attraction to chaos.
Perhaps, her bloodline had called her here to simply witness what was unfolding before her.
Her eyes widened in awe.
BOOOOOOOM!
A pillar of black burst up towards the sky in the distance. It was massive, endless, and ripped through the clouds like the hand of a divine devil. It glowed from within, flowing with purple and green moats, twisting, and folding in on itself until it exploded outwards, blooming like an umbrella across the sky.
The sound reached her a second later, a dull, rolling thunder that made the trees scream and tremble from the shockwave.
BOOM!
Sound became mute as the roar that followed was a deafening static that filled the void.
"Ooooooh~" Petra's mouth gaped.
The black cloud that bloomed out above the clouds swelled, then collapsed back towards the earth like a wall of rain. When it fell, the horizon vanished for a moment.
The world turned dark with a colossal splash that engulfed a few of the mountains on the central region's side of the western border.
Moments later, the rain began.
Thick, heavy drops fell from the blackened sky. It was slow at first, then fell in torrents. They reached all the way to Petra's cliff, undoubtedly shrouding the caravans as well. The black rain hissed when they touched the stone, leaving dark stain-like burns that spread like ink.
Petras stretched out her little hand and let a drop land on her palm.
It steamed faintly, eating a tiny hole through the leaf she was holding. Not like an acid, not as potent, but still problematic for most mortal life.
"Poison?" she muttered.
Petra's eyes looked back towards the geyser where the black pillar had erupted. "The Poison Sea...?"
-
The rain lasted ten minutes, then it stopped just as suddenly as it began. When the mist cleared, the valley below was no longer green. It was gray, filled with a small black stream that slithered towards the west. From every valley, the black rain was condensing and flowing in the same direction.
What's worse, in the direction where the black geyser had erupted, Petra could see a massive black sea slowly extending across the horizon.
The black clouds dispersed, but something had already undergone an irreparable change.
Over there, the forests were gone, the rivers boiled, and the earth, which received the densest exposure, melted under a dark curtain that crawled like oil across the mountain range. It climbed up from the lowlands and spread like a slow, liquid shadow, filling the valleys and ravines, climbing the mountains, and sealing every route that led out of the western region.
Soon, they, like all the others who had already arrived, would be trapped.
Petra also realized something at that moment.
How many of the people who had come to the western region were expecting to confront some kind of large battle, their belief was that the second calamity would be similar to the first, in the sense that it was a large-scale battle.
It would seem that they made a mistake.
This time, they would be fighting nature itself.
Fortunately for her, Petra's brain worked slightly differently.
Instead of the despair that was sweeping across the region right now, Petra felt an overwhelming sense of excitement.
Her eyes sparkled.
She tilted her head, squinting at the dark waves beyond the mountain peaks.
"Why do I, almost want to go for a swim…?"
She stuck out her tongue and chuckled before beginning her return.
* * *
By the time Petra returned to the caravan's camp, the place was already in chaos.
The air stank of incense and medicine. Dozens of mortals had collapsed near their campfires, their skin pale and speckled with black spots, with lips darkening and eyes dulling. The black rain had touched them, and the 'poison' was already working its way into their bodies.
Perhaps, only Petra, her maids, and Raina were fine.
Raina looked up as Petra stepped into the clearing.
She raised an eyebrow, almost as if asking where she had been.
"Mm… strolling around." Petra simply hummed.
Just then, a man staggered between them, carrying a wounded guard over his shoulder. Petra heard him cursing at another man in the distance.
"Half the caravan's sick," he growled. "The rain burned through the tents!"
Petra nodded as she watched his back leave.
Another quake rumbled through the ground, stronger than the last.
The few remaining fires trembled. The wagons creaked, and the earth itself had begun to feel unsteady, not at all helping the overall atmosphere. The cliffside behind them cracked with a deep, hollow sound, sending Blackstone dust raining from the ledge above.
It was not a good sign.
Petra looked up toward the western sky, where the black cloud still loomed on the horizon, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
Her lips curved into a faint, eerie smile.
-
The next morning, the caravan, despite being broken and sick, slowly moved forwards again.
The air was colder than before, and a thin mist hung low across the forest floor, wrapping the wheels of the carriages in ghostly streams that trailed behind the wheels.
If an outsider were to see them, they would find it a gloomy and unsettling sight.
The road wound through a narrow passage between the mountains. The cliffs on both sides rose high into the sky, and every sound, hoof, breath, and wheel, echoed too loudly in the silent tension. They were almost at the western region, and the encroaching sea of black from behind did nothing to slow them down.
No one spoke.
The guards were pale, the merchants were quiet, and even Mousa seemed to sense something.
Petra sat in her usual place near the window, cheek pressed to her hands. Her eyes were unusually bright, despite the gloomy mood.
She undoubtedly stood out like a light in the dark, her wide smile and star-filled eyes were surrounded by desolate and despairing faces.
Rumble—
Then, from somewhere far behind, the air began to vibrate with a low trot.
It was faint at first, like the low murmur of thunder within the ground, then it deepened…
The horses tensed, stamping nervously as the guards turned their heads to the back.
"Is that…?"
Rumble—!
The sound grew louder.
It rolled through the valley like a storm, heavy, wild, uneven, and incredibly violent. The earth began to vibrate beneath the wheels of each carriage.
Raina rose to her feet in the driver's seat, eyes narrowing toward the back. "This is bad…"
Rumble—!
It was deep enough to shake the chest.
Then the first roar came… then another, and another…
The forest behind burst apart as a bast wave of countless shapes erupted from the distance, massive and unstoppable figures, bulldozing their way towards the caravan, no, beyond the caravan.
It was a stampede!
"Magic beasts!" someone screamed in horror. "Run!"
They quickened their pace as fast as they could, but there was nowhere to run. The road ahead was too narrow, the cliffs too steep, and the only path was forward, or else one would need to confront the oncoming tide.
Thousands, no, tens of thousands of magic beasts poured through the valley. Iron Scaled Bears, Wind Hooved Elk, Shadow Spined Lions, and countless other third and fourth-order magic beasts that lived in the territory encroached by the Black Sea.
They surged like an ocean of flesh and claws, tearing and devouring anything in their way.
Raina shouted something, but her voice was lost to the stampede.
The horses panicked, twisting against their harnesses, but it was too late.
The first impact hit like thunder.
The road shattered under the weight of the herd.
Raina cursed Petra for insisting on being so far in the back.
Carriages splintered, men screamed, and the entire formation of the caravan broke apart in seconds.
Wind and Soryn had already left, returned to the Tower Spider, but the others were far from as lucky.
Petra's carriage lurched violently to one side, nearly flipping as a herd of blackstone boars charged past and caused Petra to be bounced around like a ball.
The smell of smoke and fur filled the air as Mousa screamed, clinging to the wall.
"Hold—!" Raina shouted, pulling again at the reins.
The horses reared, and the carriage spun, half-lifted off the ground by the shockwave of the passing beasts.
And then it happened again.
Another quake.
This one deeper, heavier…
Hooooooong!
The earth shook with a terrifying momentum, and the land itself began to split, as small fissures stretched across the nearby mountains.
This was not caused by the Poison Sea.
The stampede veered, crashing against the cliffs. Rocks broke free and tumbled down, crushing anything beneath them.
Unfortunately, Petra barely noticed, she was too busy being repeatedly boinged around like a toy.
Bang!
They were blasted by a nearby beast.
The carriage slammed hard against the side of the cliff, breaking the rear wheel. Mousa was directly launched out of the carriage, vanishing into the stampede below like the unlucky little mouse he was.
Raina jumped after him without thinking, trying to catch something, but she was hit by a falling piece of debris and also disappeared into the chaos.
"Heh?"
Petra watched her 'comic relief' and 'carriage driver' get ripped away and launched out of the carriage by the unseen hand of fate, then sighed.
Bang!
Another force hit the carriage, and Petra was thrust into the floor, grimacing in pain.
Bang!
The carriage spun, skidding sideways through the dirt before it tumbled down a slope, smashing through branches and boulders until it came to rest in a broken heap.
Silence.
Only soft breathing remained.
Petra sat still for a moment inside the wreckage, her eyes dull and disappointed. She was lying down, her hair sprawled out messily, and her legs were raised into the air in an uncomfortable position. The carriage was upside down, and what little things she had on her were thrown around everywhere. She clasped her hands over her little belly, then exhaled.
"…That was unpleasant." She mumbled.
The sound of the stampede continued to rumble in the distance, a constant tide of chaos moving through the valley above. She had been knocked down one of the few tributaries that split off from the main path through the valley.
Petra climbed out of the carriage, brushing dust from her hair.
Around her, the forest was in ruins. Flattened trees mixed with shattered rock, and splattered blood from the few beasts that had fallen with her, soaked the direction they had come.
The air trembled with an oppressive spiritual energy.
Not far from her was another large cliff.
Had she slid for just a few more meters, she undoubtedly would have gone over the edge.
Cold sweat ran down Petra's forehead as she praised herself for being lucky.
She shook her head to focus.
She looked towards the east, the direction the beasts had come from. There, the mountains seemed to be bleeding black. She turned her head, looking over the cliff and towards the depths of the western region. There, on the horizon, black clouds had gathered like a storm.
The ground still shook, a constant reminder of the stampede that had moved on.
Petra frowned slightly.
She turned her head and looked into the void above.
There was a flicker in space, a clear indication that the tower spider had followed her without incident.
She nodded in relief.
All the girls were accounted for, including Wind and Soryn.
Hoooooong!
Just then, the earth rumbled, deeper, stronger than before, as if the world itself was preparing to split.
Petra turned her attention to the deepest part of the western region, overlooking it from the clifftop.
"Oh… That's bad."
There, on the horizon, opposite to the poison sea, a massive black tree had begun to divide the horizon.