Ragnarök, Eternal Tragedy.
Chapter 116: What They Left Behind

Chapter 116: What They Left Behind

The trees bowed overhead like they were hiding something. Wind rushed through them not in gusts but in rhythms, like the forest itself was out of breath, too overwhelmed to whisper what it had seen.

Kael didn’t stop running.

Armor shifted with a serrated clatter around his chest. Dust clung to the folds of his cloak. Every boot behind him thundered in tandem—fifty men in total, the second echelon of the royal guard. They moved fast, efficient, not with fear but with a tightening sense of too little, too late.

"Spread across the north trench!" Kael called, voice slicing through the trees like a sword drawn mid-gallop. "Three-man pods. No more. Fan wide. Stay visible—but not loud. If they’re here, we’ll drive them to flank."

A lower-ranked officer caught up beside him. "Commander, confirmation—we saw heat plumes southward. Tower fires weren’t natural."

Kael didn’t look over. "They wouldn’t be. They never are. Push a third pod that way."

He stopped speaking when the scent changed.

Burned root. Charred metal. Iron in the air—but too faint for fresh wounds. It was settled, cooked into the terrain like a memory the ground hadn’t forgotten. The party slowed as they entered the outer edge of the battleground.

One soldier to the left made the sign of the god-shell across his collar.

Another whispered, "Is this... how many were here?"

Kael didn’t answer.

His eyes were locked on the crater.

Scorched stone. Deep cracks. Embedded heat signatures curled into the bark of split trees. Bits of armor. A shattered greaves plate marked with village insignia. Three of his own men—faces half-buried in soil, necks twisted into defeat.

One was still upright against the trunk. As if he’d died refusing the ground’s permission.

Kael stepped into the clearing, heart pounding low but hard. He crouched beside the upright corpse. Two fingers slid over the man’s eyes, closing them with care, then moved to his throat. Cold. No flutter of reserve mana. No hum of latent Unco charge. Gone.

Gone.

And they hadn’t been avenged.

He rose slowly, turning in a slow arc.

"Count heads," he said. "Everyone who was deployed here. Cross-check their identifiers. We don’t leave pieces unrecognized."

A voice from the back muttered, "What kind of people do this and leave nothing behind?"

Kael’s silence was long and terrible.

Then he snapped his fingers. "Form a net. Search outward. Standard spoked pattern—fifteen-meter intervals. No more questions. We track. We don’t speculate."

One of the guards sprinted forward with urgency. "Commander! Found something."

Kael followed.

They led him through a narrow path—one scorched clean on one side, filled with broken foliage on the other. A space left by a fight in motion, not a static clash. A pursuit, maybe. Footsteps tangled in the dirt—some deeper than others. One set marked with metal tread. Another fast and light. One unnervingly regular in rhythm—impossibly so.

Kael knelt again. "That’s them."

"How do you know?"

He didn’t explain that one of the patterns moved like someone who didn’t walk. They read. Reacted to pressure miles ahead. He didn’t explain that the regular tread was a man like Kenneth—who stomped like the earth had done him wrong. Or that the shallow, skipping prints veering through the brush were likely Milo—playful, frustrating, surgical.

He didn’t explain that the bootprints made at a perfect forty-five degree angle, perfectly spaced, not one out of sequence, were Maverick’s.

He didn’t need to.

He simply turned.

"We’re not chasing boys in cloaks," he said. "We’re tracking problems in armor. Get me a mage-reader. I want residual mana. I want distance. I want trajectory."

A runner nodded, forming the signal to the flank.

"We find them," Kael continued, eyes sharp as wound wire, "before they find their next fight."

—

Thirty minutes passed.

Then a flare—not fire, not Unco. Just a raised call.

"Movement!" a scout barked. "East trench—low trail!"

Kael was already moving.

They cut through a splintered corridor—trunks bent from force instead of storm. A shallow groove carved into the path like a weapon had skimmed its spine. Then another. And then—

He saw him.

Maverick.

On one knee.

Face down. Gauntlets cold. Sword planted and silent. Blood at his side in a slow, lazy crawl.

Kael raised a hand. "Do not approach."

The men froze.

Kael stepped forward alone.

Five meters.

Four.

Maverick’s fingers twitched.

Then lifted.

Kael placed his hand on the pommel of his blade—but didn’t draw.

"Exhaustion," Kael said quietly. "Not defeat."

He turned to his soldiers. "Find the others. They’re near. These men don’t die far from each other."

Another scout called from the ridge. "Found two more—north bank. Kenneth’s trail matches the impact pattern. Johnny as well. Not far."

Kael nodded, then glanced at Maverick, who now looked up, eyes unfocused but teeth grit like he still heard war in the trees.

"They thought they ended this," Kael said, more to himself than anyone else. "They forgot what happens when we follow the blood."

The trees folded tight behind them. Roots rose like broken knuckles, jutting from soil still hot in its core. Maverick ran ahead, chest dragging for breath, coat scorched down the spine, gauntlets flickering with the residue of a fight that should’ve emptied him entirely. But here he was. Still upright. Still moving. Beside him, Kenneth barreled forward, hammering through underbrush like gravity didn’t get a vote. Milo ghosted across the ridgeline, leaping branch to branch with his knives sheathed and his mind clearly ahead of the others. Johnny trailed near the center—not lagging, just precise, scanning for signals in the horizon that might demand a pivot or a break.

They didn’t have a formation.

They had survival.

Behind them came thunder.

Kael’s command squad had found the ruins of their ambush and didn’t hesitate. Fifty men. Trained. Ordered. And now angry. They surged through the treeline like a rumor too loud to ignore, boots thundering against moss and bark, weapons drawn, Uncos charged and climbing. And Kael led the flood—jaw clenched, blade tilted behind his spine for perfect draw speed, eyes locked to the trail of heat Maverick had left across half the battlefield.

They weren’t hunting anymore.

They were correcting.

Maverick stumbled against a rock’s edge, caught his weight on a tree, and forced his legs back into rhythm. Kenneth reached for him but didn’t stop moving. "Left ridge narrows in six hundred," he grunted. "Can lose them in the choke."

"Or trap ourselves," Maverick spat, coughing once hard enough to make his ribs complain. "Options?"

Milo dropped in from above, sliding to a heel-driven halt across loose gravel. "Option’s bad. Better than none." He twitched a grin. "Unless someone brought invisibility and forgot to mention it."

"Shylo’s occupied," Johnny answered quietly. He wasn’t panting. He wasn’t shouting. But his grip on the twinblades tightened like every muscle knew what time it was. "They’re tracking heat, not movement. Kenneth—lose your gauntlet glow. Mav, tuck residual mana. We ghost, now."

"You realize I’m literally a furnace," Maverick muttered.

"Then learn to smolder," Johnny said.

Behind them, Kael’s voice shattered the treeline.

"They’re close. I want sight in five. Don’t speak. Flank them quiet."

The woods bent with pressure.

Kenneth moved to the side, forcing branches apart to clear space. "We get to the ridge, we split in twos. Milo, Mav. Johnny with me. If they follow the heavier prints, they’ll chase us. Give the knife-happy duo space to vanish."

"Reunite at the ridgefall?" Milo asked.

Kenneth nodded once. "If we live through the next ten."

Maverick said nothing. Just spit blood to the side and kept moving.

Kael broke into the clearing seconds too late.

His men fanned wide, blades drawn, senses high—but the heat trail was scattering. Dissipating. Kenneth had planted a kinetic burst in the dirt to mimic a turn. Milo had looped trees with clone residuals. Johnny’s movements were angular—designed to refract distance.

Kael growled. "They’ve split. They’re bleeding signal on purpose."

One scout called from the right flank. "We’ve got two—large one and quick strike runner heading for west bluff!"

"Intercept. Cut them off before the draw narrows. If they pass that choke, we lose visibility."

"And the others?" another asked.

Kael paused.

Then: "The others are bait."

Ahead, the ridge narrowed to a spine. Stone carved thin by water and time. Wind howled low along the pass.

Kenneth led up one side—Johnny low at his back, arms coiled tight like tether lines.

Behind, the crash of pursuit grew louder.