Chapter 38
Dark streams of blood bled across the trampled snow, weaving patterns that resembled maps of forgotten kingdoms.
Leonia drove her sword through the chest of the last wolf foolish enough to bar her path, feeling the creature's dying convulsion shudder through the steel and into her exhausted bones.
The body collapsed with a heavy thud, dragging the blade downward beneath its dying weight.
She wrenched the sword free with a low grunt, the wet sound of steel tearing loose from flesh echoing between the twisted trees.
The silence that followed was worse than the battle's roar.
— Princess...
Her voice came out hoarse.
Broken.
Where?
Where was Elizabeth?
Leonia turned in place, her eyes sweeping frantically across the sea of corpses surrounding her.
Mutilated bodies.
Severed limbs.
Torsos split open like grotesque blossoms blooming upon crimson-stained snow.
She recognized some of the faces.
Soldiers who had once sworn to protect the Lunar Bloodline.
Now reduced to beasts starving for the power promised by traitor kings.
The armor protecting her torso had been torn away long ago, leaving only a shredded coat of chainmail hanging in ragged strips against her skin.
Every inch of her body had become a map of agony.
Deep gashes across her arms where claws had found flesh.
Bite wounds along her shoulder that still pulsed with fresh blood.
Dark bruises spread across her pale skin like gathering storm clouds.
Blood streamed from her scalp, where a savage blow had nearly torn it away.
It mingled with tears she had not even realized she was shedding.
Leonia spat a mouthful of blood onto the snow.
Its metallic taste filled her mouth like an old, bitter coin.
Her pale golden hair, once meticulously braided for battle, now hung in damp, tangled strands plastered against her face and neck, dripping with the crimson blood of her enemies...
and her own.
— Princess...
she called again.
Louder this time.
Almost a howl.
But her voice died within the forest, swallowed by the icy wind weaving through the trees like the lament of forgotten spirits.
Above her stretched a sky veiled in darkness, scattered with stars that seemed complicit in the night's cruelty.
The moon...
her goddess.
Her guide.
Her mother.
Hidden behind heavy clouds.
As though refusing to witness the slaughter below.
Leonia no longer knew how long she had been fighting.
The world's clock had shattered the moment Elizabeth disappeared from sight.
Taking with her the only anchor that still held Leonia's sanity together.
The last time she had seen her princess felt like an eternity ago.
Or perhaps only minutes.
Elizabeth.
Her blazing sword cutting through ten rogues in a single stroke.
Limbs flying like broken branches caught inside a hurricane.
The fire of her bloodline burned within her silver eyes.
Flames sealing wounds as quickly as they were made.
Every strike becoming an instant sentence of death.
Before the bodies even struck the ground...
Before their human forms could return only to perish...
Elizabeth was already moving again.
Carving a path through the army of traitors like a reaper's scythe through wheat.
— Stay alive, Leonia!
Those had been her princess's final words...
before the tide of bodies swallowed her whole.
And now?
Where was she?
Leonia staggered forward, using her sword as a cane.
Every step was torment.
Her legs trembled beneath the weight of her battered body.
The armor protecting her hips, the only significant piece still clinging to her, groaned with every movement, dented metal grinding painfully against bruised flesh.
The plates were scarred by claws.
Crushed beneath powerful jaws.
Coated in thick layers of dried blood and fresh blood alike, forming a hot, sticky crust against her hips.
She kept walking.
She had no idea where she was going.
She only knew...
she could not stop.