I Level Up by Killing Gods-Chapter 53: Ashes and Empty Roads

Kael’s hand blazed where the Etherion had touched him—a sigil glowing beneath his skin.

The same sigil that had adorned the Titan’s corpse in his vision.

Lira cursed. "What did you DO?"

He didn’t know.

But the whispers did.

*...they see you now...*

———

The ruins came apart like a dying man’s last breath—slow, then all at once.

They were meant to blow it up themselves—escape through the chaos of its crumbling structure, but it seemed the ruins insistence of burying them and their atrocities in the rubble of the titans corps felt and upmost need.

So it collapsed.

Kael followed Lira through buckling corridors as the ceiling rained stone and rust.

Behind them, the Titan’s vault screamed, its tendrils whipping through the air like furious serpents. The sigil on Kael’s palm burned, a brand searing down to the bone.

"Left!" Lira choked, blood flecking her lips.

The Blight poisoning had spread, violet veins branching across her neck.

"There’s—*cough*—an exit shaft!"

He followed her gaze to a fissure in the wall, barely wide enough to squeeze through.

His sword flashed, cleaving the rock wider. Cold air rushed in, smelling of ozone and decay.

The surface.

They crawled into daylight just as the chamber collapsed, dust pluming into the sulfur-yellow sky. Lira collapsed onto her back, laughing weakly.

"Never... doing that... again."

Kael knelt beside her, scanning the horizon. The Blightlands stretched endlessly—cracked earth, jagged spires of fossilized Etherite, and no caravans. No anything.

The city was a day trek east, its forcefield a faint shimmer in the distance.

Lira sat up, wincing.

"Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me."

---

The storm hit an hour later.

It started as a whisper, the air thickening with static. Then the sky bruised purple, and the winds came—scouring grit and Blight-spores sharp enough to flay skin.

Lira tugged her hood low, the Duskwyrm scales deflecting the worst, but Kael saw her shiver. Her breath came in shallow hitches.

"We need shelter," he said.

"No shit." She squinted at a skeletal structure ahead—the remains of an ancient watchtower, its ribs jutting from the earth like a half-buried carcass.

"There. Before my face melts off."

They ran, hunched against the gale. Kael’s cloak snapped like a sail, but he left it loose. The Blight in the storm prickled his skin, invigorating and vile.

Yet it felt strengthening.

The tower’s interior was marginally better. Rotting planks formed a makeshift roof, and the walls still held echoes of warmth from a long-dead heat-stone.

Lira slumped against the stone, peeling back her sleeve to inspect the Blight wound. The veins had reached her jawline.

"Pretty, right?" She grinned, all teeth. "Matching set."

Kael crouched, reaching for her arm. She jerked away.

"Don’t. Blight Infection" Her bravado faltered. "You touch this, you’ll end up like me."

He hesitated, then ripped a strip from his cloth.

"Bind it. Tight."

She did, teeth gritted. "Remind me to frame this moment. ’The day the corpse showed empathy.’"

Thunder rattled the tower. Somewhere in the storm, something howled.

--

They moved at dusk, when the Blight-winds eased to a low moan. The storm had scoured the path clean, leaving glassy trails in the earth. Lira limped, her boots crunching on brittle shale.

"I’m really gonna die for nothing huh?, we came all this way and risked our lives to get nothing, my sack of loot got lost in the crumbling structure and you absorbed the Titan’s heart or whatever the fuck you did back there," Lira’s words weren’t laced with anger, she just felt lost.

Kael didn’t answer, he couldn’t. He just stayed silent throughout her vent until she stopped speaking and the quiet settled again.

"Tell me a story," she said suddenly.

Kael glanced at her.

"What? I’m bored. And dying. Humor me." She kicked a stone. "How about... why’d you really come to the Nexus."

The sigil pulsed on his palm.

"Answers."

"About what? Your killer haircut?"

"About me." The admission surprised him. "...Then Revenge."

Lira studied him. For once, she had no joke.

A cry split the air—high, guttural. Ravagers.

Kael shoved Lira behind a boulder as the pack emerged from the storm’s veil. Six of them, lean and feral, their hides crusted with Blight-crystals. The alpha sniffed the air, milky eyes locking onto their hiding spot.

"Plan?" Lira whispered.

He thumbed Aether’valis’s hilt. "Stay alive."

---

The fight was short, ugly.

Kael carved through the first two Ravagers, their bodies dissolving into smoke. The alpha lunged, jaws snapping where his throat had been. He pivoted, driving the blade through its skull. freewebnoveℓ.com

Lira wasn’t as fast. A Ravager caught her cloak, yanking her off-balance. Its claws raked her thigh before Kael severed its spine.

She collapsed, swearing vividly.

"Son of a bitch—"

Kael hauled her up, her blood hot on his hands. The remaining Ravagers circled, snarling.

Then the ground trembled.

A fissure split the earth, vomiting a geyser of Blight-green flame. The Ravakers scattered, howling, as the fire consumed two stragglers. Kael didn’t wait. He half-carried Lira eastward, her breath ragged in his ear.

"You’re... welcome," she slurred.

---

Dawn found them at the city’s edge.

The forcefield hummed, its light a sickly blue. Beyond it, the slums sprawled—ramshackle towers, flickering neon, and the ever-present stench of desperation.

No caravans. No help.

Lira sagged against a rusted signpost, her skin gray. "Home sweet hellhole."

Kael stared at his marked hand. The sigil glowed faintly, a beacon.

*They see you now,* the whispers taunted.

"We need a clinic," he said. "They can fix you."

Lira laughed, a wet, broken sound. "I dont think you understand Sanctus yet,"

He lifted her arm over his shoulders. "Walk."

She did. Barely.

The gates was ahead, manned by Inquisitors in white armor. One stepped forward, visor raised to reveal a face Kael recognized—the mercenary from the Shroud Market, the one they’d robbed.

"Well," he sneered. "Look what the Blight coughed up."

Lira lifted her head, grinning bloody. "Miss us?"

The Inquisitor raised his blade. "Actually, yes."

Kael reached for his sword.

The sigil burned.

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