Chapter 178 - 177: The Dark Substance

The gates of the border opened and Mary turned to Eleanore for one last farewell. "Take good care of yourself, Madam. If God permits, we might meet again."

Eleanore stood there until Mary disappeared in her lands and the door closed. She thanked the officer and returned to the carriage. They had barely completed twenty feet back to the capital, when the air in front of her rippled.

It happened too fast to properly register. One moment the path ahead was clear, empty dirt road leading back toward the capital, and the next, something dark and formless surged up from the ground itself, thick and viscous, more shadow than substance, coiling upward with a speed that defied every instinct her body had for what should have been physically possible.

Eleanore was too scared to get off the carriage. However, the door swung open and the Carriage twisted on its own, throwing Eleanore out on the road.

She barely had time to step back before it lashed out toward her, a jagged tendril of black cutting through the space where she’d been standing a half-second earlier.

"What the hell?" she shouted, stumbling backward, heart slamming against her ribs as the substance reared up again, reforming with unsettling fluidity, clearly not finished with its first attempt. "What is this?"

The thing let out no sound, made no shape she could properly identify. Simply pure, hungry darkness, moving with deliberate, targeted intent directly toward her, and Eleanore, scrambling back across the uneven ground with nothing but instinct and panic driving her, understood with sudden, terrifying clarity that whatever this was, it hadn’t found her here by accident.

She didn’t see him arrive. One moment she was scrambling backward across the dirt, the black substance surging toward her with terrifying speed, and the next, a blur of motion cut across her vision — Caelestis, sword already drawn, moving with a speed she’d never actually seen from him before, placing himself directly between her and the writhing dark mass without a single second of hesitation.

"Get back!" he shouted, and she didn’t need telling twice, scrambling further away as he brought the blade down in a sharp, decisive arc.

The substance recoiled, hissing in a way that shouldn’t have been possible for something without a mouth, without any discernible shape at all, and for a moment Eleanore thought he’d actually struck something solid but the blade passed through it like water, the darkness simply reforming itself a half-second later, unbothered, undamaged.

"It’s not physical," Caelestis said, more to himself than her, already shifting his stance, eyes narrowed as he tracked its movement. "Eleanore, get behind the carriage. Now."

"I’m not leaving you here alone with that thing—"

"That wasn’t a request."

The substance lunged again, and this time Caelestis met it head-on, some kind of force gathering visibly around his blade, faint and golden, cutting through the air with enough pressure that the mass actually flinched back this time, retreating several feet before reforming at the tree line. It pulsed there, shapeless, almost considering, before lunging a third time. Faster now, lower to the ground, clearly trying to circle around him toward her.

Caelestis pivoted immediately, cutting off its path with a movement so fast it barely registered as human, driving it back again with another arc of that faint golden light. The substance let out another one of those wrongly-pitched hisses, something that sounded less like pain and more like frustration, before it finally seemed to give up the approach entirely. It hovered at the tree line a moment longer, shapeless and pulsing, as though sizing up whether the fight was worth continuing.

Then, with no warning at all, it simply dissolved into the ground and vanished, leaving nothing behind but disturbed dirt, a faint acrid smell in the air, and an unsettling, heavy silence that pressed down over the whole clearing.

Caelestis stood there a moment longer, sword still raised, chest heaving, eyes scanning the tree line for any sign it might return. When several seconds passed with nothing but stillness, he finally lowered the blade and the moment he turned back toward her, whatever hard composure he’d carried into the fight dropped away completely.

"Eleanore." He crossed the distance between them in a few quick strides, sheathing his sword without any care for how it landed, both hands coming up to grip her shoulders, eyes moving over her frantically like he needed to physically confirm she was whole. "Are you hurt? Did it touch you? Tell me the truth."

"No—no, I’m fine, I just—" Her voice came out unsteady, the adrenaline finally catching up with her now that the immediate danger had passed. Her knees felt strange, distant, like they belonged to someone else, and her whole body had begun to tremble in the aftermath. "It came out of nowhere. One second the path was clear, and the next it was just — there. I didn’t even see it until it was already lunging."

"I know. I know." His hands moved from her shoulders to cup her face gently, thumbs brushing along her cheekbones, forcing her gaze up to meet his, grounding her in something steady when everything else still felt like it was spinning. "You’re safe. I’ve got you. Breathe for me."

She tried, the first breath coming out shaky and uneven, the second only slightly better. He didn’t rush her, didn’t say anything else, simply stayed there, solid and present, until her breathing finally began to even out beneath his patient hold.

"How did you even know where I was?" she asked eventually, the question surfacing through the haze of shock. "I told you I was going to the market."

Something flickered across his expression, guilt, mixed with a relief so overwhelming it outweighed it entirely. "I had a guard follow the carriage. Quietly. I wasn’t going to let you wander off to God knows where without knowing you’d at least be safe, not after everything that’s happened lately." He exhaled roughly. "I should have told you. I know that. But I’m not sorry I did it, not after this."