Chapter 57: Still Shaking
Jared ran, a desperate flight through the labyrinthine streets, his lungs burning, until the sounds of the pandemonium in the square faded to a distant, panicked roar. He finally collapsed in a quiet side street, far from the chaos, setting me down gently before slumping to the ground himself, gasping for air. We sat there, amidst a scattering of other citizens who had fled, their faces pale with shock, their eyes wide and unseeing.
I sat on the cold cobblestones, trying to calm the frantic hammering of my own heart. Everything I had just witnessed… it was too much. It felt as if the very laws of physics, the foundations of the reality I knew, had been shattered before my eyes. I knew I was in another world. I had seen the Great Fly, a cosmic horror that defied all explanation. But I had assumed that was a thing of the outer realms, the domain of gods and monsters beyond the veil. I had thought that this world, this city of Candon, was governed by the same rules as my own—a world of science, of cause and effect, even if their technology had taken a strange, steam-powered, clockwork path. But the witch… what she had done… that was not science. That was magic. Raw, terrifying, and undeniably real. And she wasn't the only one. The man in the grey robe, the one who had saved the Baron… he was a sorcerer, a wizard. Magic was real here. The rules had changed. And to think I had pitied her, this "innocent" girl. After seeing her slaughter so many, a wave of her hand draining the life from dozens of people in the crowd… she wasn't just a witch; she was a monster of terrifying power.
“Hah… hah…” Jared finally caught his breath. Before I could ask him anything, he spoke, his voice still ragged. “We made it. Thank you, Parula. For pulling me away like that. I would have been caught in it for sure. One moment they were there, the next… just husks. How did you know what was going to happen?”
“The red mist,” I said, the words coming out before I could think. “It was rising from them. Like their blood, their life force. Once it was gone, they were… empty.”
“Red mist?” he asked, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. “What are you talking about, Parula? There was no mist, just the smoke and the fire.”
“You didn’t see it?” I stared at him. The words hit me with the force of a physical blow. He hadn't seen it. A new, colder kind of fear gripped me, a fear that was purely for myself. “But… it was right there. It was obvious.” And then it hit me. Of course he hadn’t seen it. The others hadn't run from the mist; they had simply been standing there when it took them. Only I had seen it. The knights, the priests, they had only reacted after it was too late. No one else had seen the red mist.
“Parula,” Jared said, his voice now filled with a deep, sincere guilt, pulling me from my chilling realization. “I’m sorry.”
“What? What for?” I asked, confused. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You saved me.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his eyes downcast. “I just wanted to take you to see something interesting, to cheer you up. I never thought… I never thought it would be so dangerous.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a weak, humourless smile. “You said you wanted to lift my spirits. I suppose, in a way, you succeeded.” My own petty melancholy seemed like a distant, childish thing now, a luxury I could no longer afford. My mind was no longer filled with self-pity, but with the searing, unforgettable image of the witch’s terrible power, and the new, terrifying question of what, exactly, I had become.
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