Chapter 138 -: 138: Escaped Victims

Chapter 138: Chapter: 138: Escaped Victims

Everything stopped.

Time itself ceased and the criminals froze.

The gang leader stopped in the middle of his movement, his body suspended in a pose of cruelty that would never be completed. One arm remained raised, the muscles locked in the exact position they had held when the power took hold. The other men stood like statues, their faces frozen in expressions of greed and violence—mouths open mid-shout, eyes narrowed in the act of searching, hands caught reaching for weapons or for the empty space where their prize had been. Even the air seemed motionless, the dust motes hanging suspended in the shafts of light that filtered through the broken roof, each tiny particle fixed in place as if the world itself had been told to wait.

Pronoia slowly stepped out of the sack.

The fabric fell away from her in loose folds, sliding down her legs and pooling on the stone floor with a soft, final sound. She stood in the midst of the frozen world, her body surrounded by pure, dense white aura. The light did not flicker. It pulsed in a steady, living rhythm, expanding and contracting with the beat of her heart. She could feel it against her skin like a second atmosphere, warm and weightless and absolute. She could feel the power flowing through her veins like liquid light, moving from the center of her chest outward into her arms, her legs, the tips of her fingers. It did not burn. It simply was—complete, certain, and entirely hers.

She looked toward her mother.

Her mother remained motionless—frozen in the moment of her collapse, her body crumpled against the wall in a posture of exhausted defeat. One arm was still half-raised as if reaching for something that had already been taken. Her face was twisted with pain, the lines of it deep and unguarded. Blood stained her lips, her chin, her chest in dark, uneven patterns that had not yet finished spreading. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing, fixed on the empty air in front of her as if the last thing she had seen still held her attention.

Pronoia rushed toward her.

The distance between them vanished in a handful of silent steps. She dropped to her knees beside the crumpled form and gathered her mother into her arms, surprised by how light she was, how fragile. The body that had carried her through forests and across roads and into the capital now felt almost insubstantial, as if the long days of hunger and injury had hollowed her out from the inside. Her mother’s body was warm against hers, the residual heat of life still present, and she could feel the faint pulse of life still beating beneath her skin—slow, irregular, but stubbornly there. Pronoia held her carefully, supporting the lolling head, mindful of every place that might already be damaged.

She was about to leave.

Then she stopped.

She remembered the vision.

The prince.

The memory of it returned with perfect clarity: the small figure, the sense of fear and fragile hope, the future that had unfolded like a flower in the darkness. If she saved him, she and her mother could have a better life. If she saved him, her mother could heal—could rest—could finally know peace. If she saved him, everything could change. The connection between the act of saving and the possibility of rest for her mother remained as absolute as it had been inside the vision. To leave him behind would be to leave that future behind as well.

Pronoia turned toward the young prince.

She went to him, her footsteps silent in the frozen world. The white aura moved with her, casting no shadow, disturbing none of the suspended dust. She could sense him—his fear, his confusion, his desperate hope—layered impressions that arrived the same way they always did in her visions, complete and wordless. He was just a boy, she realized. Just a child, like her, caught in a world that was too big and too cruel. The recognition settled into her without drama. It simply was. She reached down, found the bonds that held him, and freed him with the same quiet certainty that had carried her out of the sack. She took him too, lifting his slight weight against her side opposite her mother.

With her mother and the prince, Pronoia escaped the shattered building.

The threshold passed beneath her feet without resistance. The frozen world remained behind her for one final heartbeat, then—

The moment she crossed outside—

Time resumed.

The gang leader looked around, his body completing the motion it had been frozen in. The raised arm finished its arc and found only empty air. His head turned sharply, eyes scanning the space that had held his prize only an instant before.

"Where is she?"

He looked toward the place where Pronoia had been, the spot still marked by the discarded sack and the disturbed dust.

"Where did she go?"

He stared around in confusion, his eyes searching the empty space where his prize had been. The other men were moving now too, their frozen expressions thawing into matching bewilderment.

"She was just right here a moment ago!"

The other criminals looked around, their faces mirroring his confusion. Hands that had been reaching for weapons now turned outward in empty gestures. Voices that had been raised in triumph now dropped into questions.

"Where could she have gone?"

The gang leader shouted, his voice echoing through the ruined building, bouncing off the broken walls and returning thinner and more frustrated.

"Search everywhere!"

They immediately began searching, their footsteps pounding against the ground, their hands tearing at debris and rubble. Boards were flipped. Stones were kicked aside. The discarded sack was seized and shaken as if the girl might still be inside it.

"Don’t let them get away!"

He looked around again, his voice rising with frustration that edged toward something closer to panic.

"Where is the girl who was in here?"

No one knew.

"And where is the prince?"

One of the gang members shook his head, the motion sharp and useless.

"We don’t know."

Another said, "It’s like they just disappeared."

The criminals remained in confusion, their search growing more desperate and more futile with each passing moment. They overturned what little remained to overturn. They shouted into empty corners. They stared at one another as if the answer might be found in someone else’s face. The ruined building offered them nothing.

But Pronoia and her mother were already gone.

---

They ran.

Pronoia’s mother carried her daughter with one arm. With her other arm, she carried the young prince. The arrangement was awkward, the combined weight almost more than her damaged body should have been able to bear, yet she held them both. Despite her injuries and exhaustion, she continued moving—one foot in front of the other, each step a victory over the pain that threatened to consume her. The wounds on her legs pulled with every stride. The deeper injuries from the gang leader’s final blows sent sharp, insistent protests through her ribs and back. Still she moved.

She ran as far as she could.

The world blurred around them—trees and buildings and shadows, all bleeding together into a single stream of motion. Details lost their edges. Distances became uncertain. Her mother’s breath came in ragged gasps, each one a struggle against lungs that no longer wanted to expand fully. Her body screamed with pain, with exhaustion, with the poison that was slowly spreading through her veins—a slow, cold burn that started in the places she had been cut and kicked and now threaded outward. The poison made her vision swim at the edges. It made her legs heavier with every step. But she didn’t stop because stopping would mean the children in her arms would be caught. Stopping was not a choice she allowed herself.

Eventually, they reached the edge of the swamp area.

The ground grew softer beneath their feet, the packed earth giving way to yielding mud that sucked at every step. The air thickened with moisture and decay, the heavy scent of standing water and rotting vegetation closing around them like a second skin. The light changed too, filtered through the denser canopy and the rising mist until everything took on a muted, greenish cast. They found an alleyway where they could hide—a narrow gap between two crumbling buildings, barely wide enough for them to squeeze through. The walls leaned toward each other as if in conversation, creating a thin corridor of deeper shadow.

Her mother entered.

Then her strength finally gave out.

She collapsed.

The motion was not graceful. Her knees buckled first, then the rest of her followed, the carefully held weights of the two children shifting as she went down. She managed, even in the fall, to turn so that neither of them struck the ground with full force. Pronoia fell beside her, her hands reaching out blindly, finding her mother’s body by touch alone. The familiar shape of shoulder and arm and the curve of her mother’s neck arrived through her fingers with the same certainty they always had.

"Mother!"

She grabbed her, shook her, tried to wake her. The body beneath her hands was still warm, still pliant, but it did not respond to the shaking.

"Mother!"

Her voice echoed through the alley, bouncing off the close walls and disappearing into the darkness beyond the narrow entrance. The sound came back to her smaller and more alone.

"Mother!"

Her mother didn’t respond.

Pronoia continued holding her, her small body pressed against her mother’s, her tears falling onto her mother’s face in a steady, silent stream. She could feel the warmth of her mother’s skin beneath the cooling air of the alley. She could hear the faint rasp of her breath, irregular and shallow, the sound of air moving through a body that was fighting to keep going. She could sense the life still flickering inside her—a small, stubborn flame that had not yet gone out. The knowledge that the flame still existed was the only thing that kept Pronoia from breaking completely.

Please, she thought. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me alone.

The plea repeated itself inside her without sound, the same words turning over and over while her hands stayed locked around her mother’s shoulders and her tears continued to fall.

Then, after some time, her mother slowly opened her eyes.

But when she opened them, she wasn’t on the cold ground anymore.

She was lying on something soft. Something comfortable.

The difference registered first through her skin. The hard, damp earth of the alley had been replaced by a surface that yielded beneath her weight. She moved her hand across it, her fingers tracing the smooth fabric, the plush stuffing beneath. The texture was foreign after so many nights of stone and dirt and rough cloth. It felt almost unreal.

"What is this?"

Her voice was weak, barely more than a whisper, the words scraping out of a throat still raw from earlier screams and the long run.

"What is this comfortable thing?"

She slowly sat up, her body protesting the movement with a chorus of aches and sharper pains. Every muscle announced its presence. The injuries that had been ignored in the flight now demanded attention. She pushed through them anyway, driven by the need to understand where she was.

"Where am I?"

She opened her eyes fully.

Bright sunlight entered the room, streaming through a window she couldn’t remember seeing. The light struck her face, warm and golden, carrying none of the greenish swamp haze or the dusty dimness of the ruined building. It was clean light, the kind that belonged to places that had never known the kind of poverty she and Pronoia had lived with. She quickly raised her hand to shield her eyes, the brightness almost painful after the long dimness of their flight.

Then she looked toward her left.

Pronoia was there.

The girl was sitting beside her, her small body curled in a chair that was far too large for her. Her arms were folded on the armrest, her head resting on them, her breathing slow and even. The white blindfold was back in place, or had never fully left; the child’s face above it was peaceful in a way it had not been for days. The tension that had lived in her small shoulders was gone. She looked simply asleep, the deep, trusting sleep of someone who finally believed, for this moment at least, that she was safe.

She was already asleep.

Her mother stared at her—at the peaceful expression on her daughter’s face, at the way her chest rose and fell with each quiet breath. The sight of that peace after everything that had happened loosened something tight in her own chest. She sighed with relief, allowing herself a moment of quiet gratitude that asked for nothing more than the continued rise and fall of her child’s breathing.

Then a memory suddenly returned.

She remembered running.

She remembered carrying Pronoia and the little boy.

The images arrived in a rush—the weight of both children, the blur of the world, the moment her strength had failed in the alley. Her expression changed, her body going rigid with sudden alarm. The peaceful room, the soft bed, the sleeping daughter—all of it became secondary to the missing piece.

"The little boy..."

She looked around, her eyes searching the unfamiliar room with growing urgency. The walls were smooth and pale. The furnishings were finer than anything she had ever owned. None of it told her where the second child had gone.

"Where is he?"

Her voice became urgent, almost frantic, the calm of a moment earlier completely erased.

"Where is he?"

Pronoia woke, her body jerking upright at the sound of her mother’s voice. The movement was immediate, the sleep falling away as if it had never been deep. Her head turned toward the source of the sound with the unerring accuracy of someone who had spent a lifetime locating people by voice alone.

"Mother?"

Her mother looked toward her, the urgency still sharp in every line of her body.

"Where is the boy?"

Pronoia immediately calmed her, her voice gentle and reassuring, the tone she used when her mother needed steadiness more than information.

"He’s safe."

Her mother paused, her mind struggling to process the words. The simple statement did not immediately fit with the last clear memories of flight and collapse.

"The boy?"

"He’s safe, Mother."

Her mother released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The air left her in a long, unsteady stream. Some of the rigidity left her shoulders.

"I’m glad he’s okay."

Then she looked around, her confusion growing as the immediate fear for the boy subsided and the larger strangeness of the room reasserted itself. The soft bed. The clean light. The chair that was too large for Pronoia. The absence of mud and blood and the smell of the swamp.

"Wait."

She became confused, her eyes taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with fresh attention, as if seeing them for the first time.

"Where are we?"

Pronoia answered simply, her voice calm and certain, carrying none of the wonder or fear the words might have been expected to hold.

"The palace."

Her mother froze.