Chapter 150: How painful can reality be?

Yuki’s head throbbed as consciousness returned fully, dragging her out of her brother’s illusions and back into harsh reality.

She looked around to find that she was in a very unfamiliar surroundings. It was a house she had never seen before.

Remembering the tremor just now, she creased her eyebrows for a second thinking that this was yet another illusion. She slowly raised her hand and saw as thin layer of snow emerged from under her skin.

This was real… she was back to reality.

’But what did brother wanted to show me? Who was the lady here in Aethelburg.’ She pondered over her memory and what she knew, trying to make sense of the things.

Then after looking at the things from a different prospective… she realized something that she had forgotten… or maybe she had just buried that reality deep in her memories.

’Could it be that the lady here was not real… she was old and as I knew she was. Was it why brother was acting weirdly? because mom and were not real… and he knew because, because mom had always been blind.’

Yuki almost laughed at herself for being such a fool. Her mother and father were definitely dead when everything fell. Her dad perhaps might have survived… but her mother? There was no chance.

Another tremor shook the building, followed by distant sounds that made her blood run cold.

Yuki pushed herself up from the bed, ignoring the dizziness that threatened to pull her back down. Her pink hair fell across her face in tangled strands.

The room she was in was small and sparsely furnished. A bed, two chairs, a small table. Through the single window, she could see the crimson moon hanging in the sky, painting everything in shades of red that made the world look like it was drowning in blood.

Outside, the sounds continued. The bombardment that had woken her seemed to be lessening now. There were fewer impacts and longer pauses between each crash.

Yuki moved toward the door on unsteady legs.

She reached the door and paused, one hand resting on the wooden frame. Part of her didn’t want to know what was outside and she didn’t want to see what fresh horror had been unleashed while she had been trapped in her own mind.

But… she didn’t have the luxury of cowering in a dark room while people needed her.

’Besides,’ she thought with bitter humor, ’after what I just experienced in those illusions, how much worse could reality possibly be?’

Yuki gripped the door handle and slowly opened it.

The bombardment outside had finally ceased. The last rocks had fallen, leaving only settling dust and an eerie silence punctuated by moans of the wounded.

But that silence lasted only a heartbeat.

A sound tore through the air—a bestial snarl so deep and primal that Yuki felt it vibrate in her chest and bones.

It was the sound of something ancient, powerful and utterly inhuman.

For a second she froze.

But she forced herself forward to step through the doorway and out into the street.

The first thing that hit her was the smell. The metallic smell of fresh blood.

Yuki’s eyes adjusted to the crimson light outside. The street before her was barely recognizable. What had once been neat white stone were now cratered and broken, chunks of marble scattered everywhere like the teeth of some giant beast.

And there were bodies.

To her left, not far from the door, a man lay collapsed on the ground. There was a hole in his chest. She could see straight through to the blood-soaked stone beneath.

His face was frozen in an expression of shock and pain, eyes still open and staring at nothing.

Yuki’s expression twisted with disgust. She had seen death before—too much of it since the trials began. But something about the randomness and sheer brutalness with which these people had been killed, made it worse somehow.

She looked away from the body and saw another scene not too far down the street. A woman, or what she assumed had been a woman based on the clothing. The upper half was crushed beneath a boulder the size of human, blood spreading out in a dark pool that reflected the crimson moon above.

She took a step forward, then another, moving away from the door. The street was a massacre, filled with chunks of rock pieces all around.

’Did… did the rocks fell from the sky?’ She thought frowning.

Then she heard a sound that cut through the horror and pulled her back from the edge of shock.

Someone was crying. Yuki turned toward the sound. It was coming from an alley just next to the house she’d emerged from… it was a narrow space between two buildings that was shrouded in shadow.

She walked towards it slowly.

The alley was dark with the crimson moonlight barely reaching into its depths. But Yuki could make out two figures, one lying prone on the ground, the other kneeling beside it.

As she approached, the scene became clearer.

A girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, knelt over a body. Her hands were covered in blood, pressed uselessly against wounds that had long since stopped bleeding.

Her face was streaked with tears and dust, and she was shaking so badly that Yuki could hear her teeth chattering.

The body she knelt over was that of a young man, probably around the same age. He lay on his back, and Yuki could see multiple stones embedded in his torso and arms. But those wounds, horrible as they were, weren’t what had killed him.

It was the wound in his head.

A smaller wound than the others but no less deadly… a rock had struck his temple with enough force to cave in that side of his skull. The damage was catastrophic and there was no coming back from that, no matter what healing skills someone might possess.

Unless they could resurrect the dead… which might very well be possible.

Yuki froze for just a second, staring at the young man’s face. He’d probably been handsome once.

The girl must have sensed Yuki’s presence because her head snapped up. Her eyes were wild with grief and desperate hope.

“Please!” she gasped, scrambling to her feet and rushing toward Yuki. “Please, are you—are you a healer? Can you help him? He’s not dead, he can’t be dead, he was just talking to me and then—”

She grabbed Yuki’s hands, her grip was painfully tight. The young man’s blood transferred from her palms to Yuki’s… it was warm and sticky.

“Please,” the girl repeated, her voice breaking. “Please save him. I’ll do anything. I’ll give you anything. Just please—”

Yuki looked down at their joined hands and at the blood. Then she stared at the desperation in the girl’s eyes.

And slowly, gently, she shook her head.

“No,” Yuki said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m not a healer.”

The girl’s face crumpled. The last shred of hope died in her eyes, replaced by a grief so profound that Yuki had to look away.

“Princess!”

The voice came from behind, it was familiar.

Yuki turned to see Kaori running toward her, weaving between rubble and with ease. The older woman’s face was smudged with dust and there was dried blood on her clothes—whether hers or someone else’s, Yuki couldn’t tell.

“You’re awake!” Kaori said, her voice thick with relief. “Thank god, you’re actually awake. When you wouldn’t wake up no matter what we did, I thought…” She cut herself off, pulling back to look Yuki in the eye. “What are you doing out here? You just woke up!”

“What happened?” Yuki interrupted, her voice steady despite everything. “Kaori, what’s going on?”

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