Chapter 156: Rose family arrival

Chapter 156: Rose family arrival The portal spat them out onto rain-soaked earth with violent force. Rose hit the ground first, her knees absorbing the impact as dimensional energy crackled around her in dying arcs. Sasha landed in a practiced roll, coming up with weapons already half-drawn, while Kira stumbled and nearly planted her face in the mud before catching herself with a string of curses. The transition between realms always left Rose feeling hollow, drained of something essential. The air here tasted different—thinner, lacking the rich elemental saturation of their homeland. It was foreign and unsettling. But they were not alone in this venture. Thirty-two of the Aetherian Kingdom’s finest warriors had passed through the portal before them, the cream of their military forces dispatched on what everyone understood might be a suicide mission. Rose could see their tracks in the churned earth, the disciplined formation they’d maintained even in this alien realm. They stood in a field that stretched toward the horizon in rolling waves of green, broken only by scattered groves of trees that looked ancient and somehow watchful. The white stone building the Queen had described rose in the distance, its multiple wings sprawling across manicured grounds like the bones of some massive creature. Even from miles away, Rose could see the precision of its construction, the way it commanded the landscape around it. "Cheerful place," Sasha muttered, adjusting the pack across her shoulders. The dimensional crossing had left her hair slightly singed at the edges, and she kept running her fingers through it with obvious irritation. "Reminds me of the Marble Fortress back home, if the Marble Fortress had been built by people with no imagination." Kira was staring at the building with wide eyes, her excitement barely contained despite their grim mission. "I can’t believe we’re actually here. Another realm entirely. Do you think they know we exist? Do you think they have legends about us like we have about them?" "They’re about to," Rose said grimly, checking the silver sparks that still danced between her fingers. The tracking sigil pulsed stronger now, no longer dormant but actively seeking its target. The sensation was like having a compass needle embedded in her bones, pulling her northeast with insistent urgency. "The sigil’s responding. He’s definitely here, and he’s that way." She pointed toward the massive gates that were just visible beyond the white building, dark metal structures that rose like the entrance to some underworld fortress. Even at this distance, Rose could see they were closed tight, their surfaces gleaming with what might have been recent repairs. They began walking, their boots squelching in the soft earth. The field had been churned recently—not by farming implements, but by something far more violent. Furrows scored the ground in chaotic patterns, and strange scorch marks dotted the landscape like the footprints of an invisible giant. "Battle damage," Sasha observed, her soldier’s eye cataloging the destruction. "Recent, too. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t more than a few days ago." As they crested a small hill, Rose’s tracking sense suddenly flared, accompanied by something else—a familiar resonance that made her elemental core sing with recognition. She held up a hand, bringing their small group to a halt. "Do you feel that?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Sasha frowned, extending her own elemental senses. After a moment, her eyes widened. "Thornvale magic. And Moonlight techniques too. There’s residual power everywhere, like echoes of a massive battle." They descended the hill more carefully now, their eyes scanning the ground for signs of what had transpired. They didn’t have to look long. The first body appeared near a cluster of blackened trees, an elf in Thornvale colors lying twisted at an impossible angle. Her armor was scorched and rent, but her face held an expression of fierce determination even in death. An arrow protruded from her chest, its fletching marked with symbols Rose didn’t recognize. "Captain Lyralei," Sasha breathed, recognition coloring her voice with grief. "She was one of Thornvale’s finest scouts." They pressed forward, and the carnage only intensified. Bodies lay scattered across the field like discarded dolls, elves from both kingdoms mixed together in death’s ultimate democracy. Some bore the forest green of Thornvale, others the silver and blue of Moonlight. All had died fighting. Rose knelt beside a cluster of five Moonlight warriors who had fallen in formation, their shields locked together even as their lives had fled. "They held the line," she said softly, her fingers tracing the intricate battle damage on their armor. "Look at the positioning. They formed a shield wall here and died rather than break." Kira was pale, her earlier excitement completely evaporated. "How many are there?" she whispered. Sasha had been making a grim count as they walked. "Forty-three Thornvale. Fifty-seven Moonlight." Her voice was steady, but Rose could hear the controlled fury beneath the professional assessment. "They came in force, and they died in force." "The Thornvale and Moonlight kingdoms put up one hell of a fight," Rose said, standing and brushing dirt from her knees. The silver sparks around her fingers were pulsing faster now, more urgently. "But they still lost. The question is what they were fighting for." "Or who they were fighting against," Sasha added darkly. They continued their advance, weaving between the fallen with respectful silence. The battle had been fierce but brief—Rose could read the story in the scorch marks and weapon strikes. The elves had arrived with purpose and determination, but they’d been overwhelmed by something that left no bodies of its own behind. As they drew closer to the white building, more details became visible. What had appeared pristine from a distance showed clear signs of recent damage. Scorch marks scarred the perfect stone walls, and several windows had been blown out entirely. The manicured grounds were torn up, revealing the chaos that had erupted in what should have been a place of order. "They fought right up to the building," Kira observed, pointing to a series of impact craters that marched across the lawn like giant footsteps. "Whatever they were after, it was inside." Rose’s tracking sense was becoming almost painful now, the sigil’s pull so strong it made her teeth ache. "He’s close," she said through gritted teeth. "Very close. Beyond those gates." The massive gates loomed before them now, their dark metal surfaces inscribed with symbols that seemed to shift and writhe when observed directly. They stood open just enough to admit a single person, as if inviting entry while maintaining an aura of menace. "Convenient," Sasha muttered, her hand moving instinctively to her weapon. "Suspiciously convenient." Rose studied the entrance, her elemental senses probing for traps or ambushes. The area beyond the gates was shrouded in an unnatural darkness that her eyes couldn’t penetrate, but the tracking sigil was practically screaming now, its silver light flaring between her fingers like captured starfire. "It’s a trap," she said finally. "Has to be. But it’s also the only way forward." "Perfect," Sasha said with grim humor. "My favorite kind of tactical situation. Walk directly into obvious danger with no backup plan and hope for the best." Kira was staring at the carnage around them, her face thoughtful despite her obvious distress. "Why did they leave the bodies?" she asked suddenly. "If whoever did this wanted to cover their tracks, why not dispose of the evidence?" The question hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Rose felt a chill that had nothing to do with the alien atmosphere of this realm. "Because they wanted them found," she said slowly. "This wasn’t just a battle. It was a message." "Message to who?" Sasha demanded. Rose’s eyes met her sister-in-arms’ gaze, and in them Sasha saw the cold certainty of someone who had walked battlefields for longer than most elves had been alive. "To us," Rose said simply. "To anyone who might come looking for him. They’re telling us exactly what happens to those who try to rescue the Veilwalker." The wind picked up, carrying with it the scent of rain and something else—something that made Rose’s elemental core recoil with instinctive revulsion. It was the smell of power corrupted, of magic twisted into shapes it was never meant to hold. "We’re walking into their web," Sasha said. It wasn’t a question. "Yes," Rose replied, her hand tightening around the silver sparks that marked her connection to Eren. "But we’re walking in anyway." Kira straightened her shoulders, some of her earlier fire returning despite the horror surrounding them. "The legends always say the hero walks into the trap knowingly. Something about how facing inevitable doom with courage is what separates the worthy from the wise." "The legends," Sasha said dryly, "were written by people who never had to actually walk into the traps themselves." "True enough," Rose agreed, but she was smiling now—a sharp, predatory expression that would have made their enemies reconsider their life choices. "But sometimes the only way through hell is straight down the middle." They approached the gates together, three elves from a realm of wonders walking toward darkness with nothing but steel, magic, and stubborn determination to sustain them. Behind them, the field of the dead bore silent witness to the price of failure. Ahead, beyond the yawning darkness between those metal gates, waited whatever had been strong enough to defeat nearly a hundred elite warriors from two of the most powerful kingdoms in their realm. Rose’s tracking sigil pulsed one final time, its light flaring bright enough to illuminate the entrance for just a moment. In that brief flare, she caught a glimpse of what lay beyond—a courtyard filled with more bodies, buildings that looked wrong somehow, as if they’d been designed by minds that understood architecture but not the purpose buildings were meant to serve. And somewhere in that maze of corruption and death, Eren waited for rescue or for his rescuers to join the growing collection of the dead. "Well," Rose said, her voice carrying the weight of inevitability, "shall we go introduce ourselves to whatever’s been busy redecorating this place with corpses?" Without waiting for an answer, she stepped through the gates and into the darkness beyond. Behind her, Sasha cursed colorfully in three different languages and followed, while Kira brought up the rear with weapons drawn and prayers on her lips. The gates swung shut behind them with the finality of a coffin lid, and the real hunt began.