Chapter 228: Not Even Ash

Deep in the forest.

While Ravian had already reached the relative safety of the human perimeter, trouble was about to erupt on the other side.

What appeared to be a small delegation was racing through the forest toward a particular destination. Although they covered their bodies in loose garments resembling Eastern robes, their leaps occasionally exposed a hand or part of a face beneath the fabric, revealing skin that was neither white, tan, black, nor any other shade commonly found among humans.

Their skin was dark gray, giving them some resemblance to night elves, though even then, there were differences.

This distinctive trait belonged to one particular race in this world, one of the Children of Sin: the Rassasians, the ruling race of the Twilight Empire.

And this Rassasian delegation was heading toward the place Ravian had left a short while ago, a place that would soon cause a considerable uproar.

The orc camp.

...

The delegation reached the site of the orc camp after the sun had risen above the trees, but the man at the front stopped at the edge of the clearing, looking between the ground ahead and the route he had taken. He had visited the camp before and needed no further directions to know he had reached the correct location, yet that did not stop him from glancing toward the surrounding trees, searching for something to confirm what he already knew.

"Did you take the wrong route?" asked one of the three men who caught up with him, and he looked at the man briefly before pointing toward a broad tree trunk at the edge of the clearing.

"The gate was there, and the commander’s tent was on the opposite side."

The man followed his gesture, then looked back at the strange blackness covering the ground. Neither gate nor tent remained, and he could not even find remnants of the wood the orcs had used to cook their food. As for the enormous pot that had occupied the center of the camp, nothing suggested it had ever stood there, even though merely uprooting it should have left a clear mark in the earth.

Two men arrived behind them, and the four Seventh-Rank members stepped aside to let them through. The newcomers were Sixth Rank, and one man’s expression changed the instant he saw the site, while the other advanced a few steps and crouched at the edge of the blackened ground. He brushed two fingers across its surface, rubbed what clung to them, then tried again elsewhere before looking up at the man who had arrived last.

"Lord Deacon, you need to see this."

Their leader, the only Fifth-Rank member among them, approached without answering. The delegation had come on behalf of the Sect of Desire, the Twilight Empire’s patron, and he had not expected to find a camp under their authority erased like this. Even if the orcs had suffered a human attack, there should have been signs of battle or remnants of their bodies, yet all he could see were the camp’s boundaries and blackness covering the soil.

"What did you find?"

The Sixth-Rank man held out his hand to show him the dirt between his fingers.

"This looks like ash, but it isn’t. I’ve checked several places and haven’t found a single layer of ash."

The leader crouched and took some soil himself, then slid a finger easily beneath its surface. The earth remained, but everything that had stood upon it was gone, including the grass that had grown between the tents. He looked toward the surrounding trees; they were still standing, with no indication that an ordinary fire had spread from them into the camp or from the camp into the forest.

"Search the entire perimeter. I want to know whether anyone left this place."

The four Seventh-Rank men moved immediately, while the other Sixth-Rank man headed toward the center of the site. He searched for something small, a piece of metal, a bone, even the tip of a weapon buried beneath the dirt, but returned a short while later and stood beside his colleague, whatever composure he had retained upon arriving now gone from his face.

"There are no remnants of weapons either, sir."

The leader closed his fingers around the dirt, then let it fall as he looked toward the spot where the orc commander’s tent had stood. The missing tents were not what troubled him; wood and cloth burned easily, and bodies could be destroyed with sufficient force, but where was the metal the soldiers had carried? Where were the fragments of their bones? The camp had housed a hundred and fifty orcs, even the weakest larger than many humans, yet they had not found so much as a single fragment to indicate their fate.

The members of the group returned one after another, their reports offering no better answers. They had found old traces of orc movements along the nearby paths, but nothing suggesting a mass escape, no signs of a battle extending into the forest that they could follow, and no spiritual signature left by an attacking force entering the camp’s vicinity.

"Did you check the path behind where the commander’s tent stood?" one of the Sixth-Rank men asked.

"Yes, sir, and we followed it until it joined the other trail. Nothing suggests that any attackers came from that direction."

The man looked at his colleague, then spoke in a low voice, slightly hesitant and carrying an unmistakable trace of dread. "Perhaps there wasn’t an entire attacking force. It could have been one person."

Most of the delegation fell silent at that suggestion... If his guess was correct, they were facing a disaster.

The leader neither objected nor endorsed the possibility, continuing to examine the site as he reconsidered what he had heard. Killing these orcs was not beyond the capabilities of the men standing beside him, but erasing them along with their camp without leaving a trail to the perpetrator was another matter entirely, something the two Sixth-Rank men had grasped before the rest of the delegation.

Nothing could have told them that Ravian had moved through this area using Void Shadow, masking his spiritual presence from the guards and suppressing the traces that might have led investigators to him afterward. Whatever the ability had failed to conceal inside the camp, the gray flames had not left behind; they had devoured the remains and even the ash itself before dying out.

They had reached a dead end.

This plan had been devised with such cunning that nothing living within the camp, not even a blade of grass, would remain to bear witness to what had happened.

"Sir, should we widen the search?"

The leader opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly stopped as a shifting gleam passed across his eyes. One color appeared, then another overlapped it, until the man who had asked the question could no longer distinguish the original color of his irises. He stepped back slightly and fell silent, while both Sixth-Rank men immediately straightened when they noticed what was happening.

A voice reached the leader’s mind as he continued staring at the blackened ground.

’Their commander did not meet his end here. His final pulse of life ceased inside a cave near your location.’

A direction followed the words, settling clearly into his awareness, then came a brief command to go there. The leader did not move his lips or attempt to ask a question before the connection ended, remaining still for a moment after his eyes returned to normal, as though making certain he had fully understood everything he had received.

"I have received a message from the Ruler," he suddenly announced.

Those around him lowered their heads, and no one asked who had sent the message or how its sender knew what they had failed to discover. There was no need for any of that.

The leader turned toward the direction he had been given, ordered the others to follow, and left the camp behind without wasting another moment searching through the strange, repulsive blackness that had yielded not a single answer.