Chapter 632: This Is Lot

Erica and Benjamin set out on foot once Katana had disappeared down the lane toward the weapon shop.

The path ahead stretched long and uneven, the distance from the manor gates to the Lot district measuring somewhere between eight and ten miles of steady walking.

Four hours, give or take, if they kept a measured pace and did not linger.

The morning sun had climbed higher now, casting long shadows across the road, and the air carried the faint warmth of a day that had decided to be pleasant.

The road first took them through the cleaner, more ordered stretches of Thaad.

Bustling districts pressed close on either side; market stalls open, vendors calling out prices, carts rattling over cobblestones, children darting between the legs of adults who were too tired to scold them.

The smells were ordinary and comforting: fresh bread, roasting meat, the faint sweetness of fruit that had been set out to ripen in the sun.

Then quieter districts followed. The houses stood farther apart here, their windows shuttered, their doors closed.

The only sounds were the distant bark of a dog or the soft scrape of a broom against stone.

The streets there were narrow, and the people thinned. And with every mile, the ground began to tilt more sharply downward, the air growing thicker, the light shifting as the steeper corner of Thaad rose ahead of them.

Lot waited there, tucked into the incline like something the rest of the city preferred to forget.

The change arrived gradually and then all at once.

Trash that would never have been left lying in the higher streets appeared in the gutters — broken potteries, torn cloth, a child’s shoe missing its mate.

A sour smell drifted past them on the breeze, faded, returned stronger, the kind of smell that suggested something had died and been left where it fell.

Erica’s nose wrinkled once, a small, involuntary reaction, and then smoothed again.

Benjamin said nothing, and only kept walking.

A narrow belt of scrub and low trees marked the true edge.

The vegetation was not dense enough to be called a proper forest, yet it stood like a living fence between the cleaner districts and Lot itself.

The branches were low and tangled, the leaves a dull, dusty green.

The moment their boots left the last stones and stepped onto the soft, leaf-littered earth of that border, the attack came.

Three figures dropped from the low branches and two more rose from the undergrowth, blades already drawn.

Benjamin had time only to shift his weight before Erica moved.

She swiftly stepped into the first man’s reach, turned his blade aside with the flat of her forearm, and drove her knee into his midsection hard enough that the air left him in a single wet gasp.

The second attacker swung high; she ducked under the arc, caught his wrist, and used his own momentum to throw him into the third.

Steel rang once and twice.

By the time Benjamin had offered to help, the remaining two bandits were already on the ground—one clutching a shattered elbow, the other staring at the point of Erica’s katana pressed lightly against the hollow of his throat.

She held the position only long enough to be certain they understood. Then she stepped back.

The bandits scrambled away into the brush without another word. Leaves rustled and branches snapped, then silence.

Benjamin let out a low breath.

“I knew you had it in you,” he said, the fascination clear in his voice. “But I didn’t expect you to take down all of them yourself, Erica.”

Erica’s cheeks colored.

“Oh, please. They were clearly weaklings — half-trained at best, and too hungry to think straight.”

She reached up and twisted a short strand of green hair around one finger, looking anywhere but at him.

The gesture was small and self-conscious, the kind of thing someone did when they didn’t know what to do with their hands.

She straightened, meeting his eyes at last. Her voice firmed.

“There are groups out there where I would find myself at a real disadvantage. Groups that fight with coordination instead of desperation. Also…” She paused. “I will protect you from here on out. That is not a request. That is simply how it is going to be.”

“Thanks.” Benjamin nodded once.

They pushed deeper into the vegetation.

From the moment they crossed the true threshold until the trees began to thin again, twenty minutes passed.

In that short span, the attacks came in waves: two more groups of three, a lone knife-man who had waited in a hollow, a pair of archers who loosed from the higher branches and then fled when their first arrows missed.

Each time Erica moved with deadly precision, and each time the attackers ended on the ground or running.

Benjamin stayed close, yet was never required to do more than watch her back and keep the path clear.

The forest smelled of damp earth and old rot. The light filtered green and uncertain through the canopy, dappling the ground in shifting patterns.

By the time the last of the trees fell away and the open air of Lot opened before them, Erica had a thin sheen of sweat and the scent of blood that was not her own.

The moment their boots left the leaf mold and struck the packed dirt of the outer road, Benjamin felt it.

An invisible pressure settled over his skin like a second atmosphere.

It was not heavy or painful. It was simply there — a presence that had not been present before, a weight that had not been weighing on him until suddenly it was.

He slowed, head tipping back toward the washed-out sky above the valley.

“Ah,” he murmured, almost to himself. “There WAS a barrier hiding here.”

Lines of force, woven together like threads, so fine and so deliberate that they had simply blended into the background of the world.

“I had better be careful now. If the rat really is here, they are competent enough to sniff me out the second I grow careless.”

Aaron Palmer, Carl Trusaik, thanks for your support and engagement ❤️