CHAPTER 145: FORGOTTEN SOULS (2)

Dylan was the first to react. His jian flashed like steel lightning through the frozen air, aimed at the specter of the woman with the twisted neck as her diaphanous hand reached for his throat. The blade passed through the translucent form without resistance, as if cutting through icy smoke.

A spectral moan echoed—pained, frustrated—but the entity didn’t retreat. Its ghostly fingers brushed Dylan’s skin. A deathly cold bit into his flesh, leaving a bluish trail.

"Fuck!" His voice was muffled by the suffocating silence.

Maggie yanked the shaft of her weapon, the chain-linked blade following its trajectory with violent momentum as she lunged at the child phantom crawling toward her ankles. The blade passed through the small silhouette without disturbing its vaporous outline. The soul emitted a crystalline, terrifying laugh before redoubling its efforts.

"Your weapons are useless!" Élisa shouted, her voice strained from mental exertion. Sweat poured from her temples despite the ambient cold. "These creatures are intangible—your blades will only pass through them."

She spread her arms, palms turned toward the ravenous specters. A halo of emerald energy, faint yet palpable, burst from her hands. It expanded into a shimmering bubble around them. The souls crashed against the psychic barrier with a hiss of rage. Invisible impacts left luminous cracks in the force field. Élisa grimaced as if struck in the gut.

"The barrier won’t hold!" She clenched her teeth, each word a superhuman effort. "Run... west! I can’t... hold much longer—" She gasped, mentally repelling a wave of entities trying to merge with her shield. "GO! NOW!"

Dylan grabbed Maggie’s arm, snapping her out of her stupor. They charged toward the well, leaping over crumbling stones. The blurred silhouette standing by the well’s edge turned its head toward them—slowly, too slowly—as if time itself resisted its movement. Its eyeless sockets seemed to absorb the light.

"Don’t look at it!" Élisa bellowed, her shield flickering under the concentrated assault. A violet fissure split the air, allowing a ghostly hand to slip through, nearly grazing Maggie’s neck.

They raced past the well. The air here was even colder, thick with the scent of damp earth and ancient decay. Behind them, as Élisa had said, a section of the wall had collapsed, opening onto the stone plain beyond. An escape route.

But between them and the breach... the ghostly girl had appeared. Crouched, still playing with her invisible rope. She raised a blurred face toward them. Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, far beyond human limits, revealing a black void from which issued a chilling whisper:

"Stay."

Dylan dove straight through her, jian first—not to strike, but to pass. Absolute cold flooded him like instant drowning as he traversed the spectral body. Maggie followed, eyes shut, instinctively covering her ears against the mental cacophony of starving souls.

They burst onto the plain, the sun blinding after the hamlet’s shadows. The oppressive silence shattered at once—wind roared again, laden with sand and heat. The noise felt deafening after the suffocating void.

They turned, panting. Élisa remained near the central courtyard, her back to the well. Her violet bubble was now just a flickering glow, crushed under the weight of dozens of specters pressing against it, warping its surface like a soap bubble about to pop. The empty skin had turned its whole body toward her, one arm outstretched in a gesture almost... pleading.

"Élisa!" Dylan roared, taking a step back toward the hell they’d just fled.

The young woman turned her head toward them. Her face was contorted with effort, but her eyes burned with fierce determination. Her lips formed two silent words, perfectly clear despite the distance:

"RUN. FAR."

Then she closed her eyes, gathered her last strength, and clapped her palms together.

A pure force wave—silent but visible—erupted from her. It shattered what remained of her shield and hurled the specters backward like straw. The wall of silence broke with a muffled rumble—collapsing stones and howling wind flooded the hamlet. The silhouette wavered, its edges growing fainter.

Seizing the chaos, Élisa pivoted and leapt toward the breach. She wasn’t running—she was fleeing, every stride primal with terror. Behind her, the specters were already reforming, more numerous, hungrier, around the forgotten well. Their whispers merged into a single word carried by the suddenly icy wind sweeping from the hamlet, a word that clung to the fugitives like sweat and dust:

"Come baaaack..."

Dylan didn’t look back.

His gray eyes, burning with a hard, frozen glint, fixed on the horizon. He drove his legs forward, breath short but steady, pounding the dry stone with muted fury. His back streamed with sweat, but it was fear that enveloped him—dense, scorching fear that made every step vital.

"Goddammit," he growled inwardly, jaw clenched. "Martissant better be welcoming. Because since we got here, every encounter’s been crazier than the last."

Puppeteer trees. An infested graveyard. A larval demon in his guts. And now this—a cemetery frozen in time, populated by starving dead. Not even dead. Emptied. Souls starving for skin.

Beside him, Maggie panted, her gaze dark, muscles taut. She said nothing, but her rhythm matched his. They weren’t just running to escape—they were running to keep from imploding.

Behind them, Élisa rode her spear, a frail yet determined silhouette, the weapon cutting through air to trace a line of survival through the chaos. The hamlet was now just a dot at their backs, yet it pulsed still, like a diseased heart vomiting whispers across the plain:

"Come baaaack..."

The wind pushed at their backs like an invisible hand, heavy with dust and the effluvia of dead earth. The mineral desert stretched endlessly—no oasis, no sheltering rock. Just vast, unyielding whiteness.

"Why always deserts?" Dylan thought, legs leaden, breath ragged. "Why never an inn, a stream, a fucking body of water with normal people?"

Martissant. The name almost sounded like a promise.

He’d never liked promises.

But he’d cling to this one. Like a dog clinging to a bone being stolen from it.

Ahead, heat danced. Mirages again. Flickering shadows—maybe human shapes... maybe not.

Dylan tightened his grip on the jian’s hilt.

"If this is more bullshit," he breathed, unsure whom he was addressing, "I swear I’ll let them all rot."

But he sped up anyway.

Because he knew.

Hell didn’t stop.

It just changed its scenery.