CHAPTER 539: AMBUSHED!

The army of Alaric halted in a small clearing beside a stream, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves. For a fleeting moment, it was peaceful—the kind of silence that feels almost sacred. Then, without warning, that silence deepened into something wrong.

Gray and Snows, the twin wolves, stiffened. Their fur bristled, lips curling back in low, guttural growls as their eyes locked on surrounding trees.

Every soldier froze. Then their hands found hilts of their swords, while the archers took out out their bows and arrows. Jethru’s disciples and the soldiers moved as one, their disciplined stillness sharper than any blade.

Then the jungle erupted.

Arrows whistled through the air from all directions, their deadly hiss breaking the stillness like shattered glass.

"Ambush!" someone shouted.

The soldiers raised their shields in practiced unison, forming a living wall as arrows clanged and splintered against iron and wood. Others deflected incoming shafts mid-flight, sparks bursting with every clash.

Jethru and Logan crouched behind a fallen trunk. Hours earlier, they had filled their pockets with walnuts, laughing at the thought of roasting them later. Now, those same nuts became their weapons.

While the archers returned fire, Jethru and Logan hurled their walnuts with inhuman strength. The projectiles cracked through the air like sling-stones. Each time one struck, a Zuran archer tumbled from the branches, crashing through the underbrush—dizzy, broken, and bleeding.

"Not bad, brat," Jethru said with a grin, hurling another walnut that sent a hidden foe plummeting to the ground. A groan and a thud followed from a branch ten meters away. "A few more years, and you might even be half as good as my favorite disciple."

Logan smirked, already winding up for another throw. "Master, you could’ve just said I still have a long way to go."

Across the clearing, chaos turned to panic. The Zuran commander, realizing that half his hidden forces had been crippled or exposed, barked the order to retreat.

But retreat was a challenge.

The moment the Zurans turned to flee, Gray and Snows lunged from the shadows like silver phantoms, their eyes gleaming with feral rage. Screams tore through the jungle as teeth met flesh and the metallic tang of blood filled the air. The forest floor, thick with rotting leaves, was soon painted a deep, glistening crimson.

"Damn those soldiers," one spat between ragged breaths. "They said Alaric’s men would fall the moment they entered the jungle!"

He waited for a reply but none came.

When he turned around, he realized his companion was no longer beside him. Only an abandoned bow lay where he’d been. The soldier’s pulse quickened. Slowly, he looked up—

—and he froze.

From the darkness above, something glistened. A slick, green coil slithered down and wrapped around his chest. Before he could scream, the creature yanked him skyward. His mouth opened, but no sound escaped—only the rustle of leaves as the snake coiled around his body and snuffed the breath out of his lungs.

An hour later, the forest had fallen silent again—but it was not the silence of peace. It was the heavy, suffocating quiet that follows death.

The battle was over.

More than thirty Zuran soldiers lay scattered across the blood-soaked clearing, their lifeless bodies half-buried in trampled leaves. The air hung thick with the metallic tang of blood. Blood sucking insects were already beginning to gather.

Among Alaric’s men, victory came at a price. A dozen Azurverdan soldiers bore wounds , cuts, and broken bones—earned in the chaos of the battle. Three lay pale and trembling, their injuries grave.

Jethru knelt beside them, his brow furrowed with worry. They could go no farther.

"I’ll send you Galeya’s Throne with two of the Zen Warriors to accompany you," he said firmly. "Stay there until we come back. My Zen Warriors will tend to you." His voice softened for a moment, then turned sharp again. "The rest of us move now. The scent of blood will draw predators soon."

A low wind swept through the clearing, carrying the smell of death deeper into the forest. Somewhere in the distance, a growl echoed.

Meanwhile, on the southern slope of Ourea, the Zuran soldiers stood atop a jagged ridge, as they looked to the other side .

The ridge stretched like a serpent across the mountainside—narrow, broken, treacherous. Loose stones crumbled beneath every step, tumbling into the abyss below. Crossing it would take nearly an hour. A single misstep meant death on the rocks far beneath.

The Zurans moved cautiously, their eyes flicking from shadow to shadow, aware that even the wind here seemed to whisper of danger.

The narrow path clung to the mountainside like a scar—cracked, uneven, and slick from the morning mist. On one side, the rock wall loomed close and cold; on the other, the world fell away into an endless drop, veiled in fog.

Twenty Zuran soldiers and one woman, moved slowly, their boots scraping against loose stones. Lara walked among them, her wrists bound, her steps steady and measured, like she was just walking on a wide avenue. Even when she glance down, she remained expressionless at the twisted sight of the abyss. The wind seemed determined to drag her over the edge, but she would not let it.

"Keep moving!" barked the commander from the front. "No mistakes!"

But the ridge cared little for orders.

A soldier near the middle slipped. His foot found only air. There was a brief cry—then a long desperate scream—and then silence. The group froze. Pebbles rattled and fell after him, bouncing into nothingness until the echoes were swallowed by the trees below.

No one spoke. There was nothing to say. The man was gone.

Lara stared at the edge where he had vanished. Her heart hammered in her chest—not from pity, but from the brutal reminder of how fragile their lives were up here. She tightened her grip on the rope binding her hands, as if to hold herself to the mountain by sheer will.

If I fall, Alaric... will you even know where I disappeared?

The thought struck like a knife. She could still see his face in her mind—the calm strength in his eyes, the warmth that had steadied her even when chaos raged around them. Of course he would know. Where are they now? How much longer before they catch up?

The Zurans began to move again, slower now, their silence heavy and brittle. Each step echoed like the tick of a clock counting down to something inevitable.

As they neared the midpoint of the ridge, thunder rolled in the distance. The clouds gathered like bruises above them, and the mist thickened until the world seemed to vanish beyond arm’s reach.

Lara lifted her head to the sound of the wind and whispered into it, barely moving her lips.

Alaric... you have to find me before the storm does, before the rain could wash my scent.