Chapter 167: Human
Chapter 167: Human
A dark cord tied around a jagged shard of stone.
A shallow scratch in the shape of a hooked line.
Three small chips knocked out of the edge of a slab, all facing the same direction.
Rohan followed them with growing attention, half impressed and half unnerved. This was not a road for travellers. It was a route for locals who expected the landscape to kill strangers.
’Great. So the human settlement, assuming there is one, either doesn’t like visitors or doesn’t get many.’
The trail eventually climbed a low rise where the black slabs grew larger and more tightly packed. Rohan had to use his spear for balance as he ascended, carefully placing Hestia’s boots on the least jagged sections. The incline was not steep, but the ash made everything treacherous. Twice, his foot slid on a deceptively smooth patch of black stone, and only the spear stopped him from falling hard enough to split his knee open.
When he reached the top, the world changed.
For the first time since leaving the fog valley, Rohan saw something ahead that was not stone, ash, or sky.
A settlement stood in the distance.
It was far enough away that details blurred beneath the violet haze, but there was no mistaking the shape of walls. They rose from the plain like a jagged crown of dark metal and black stone, encircling a cluster of squat structures built low to the ground. Thin columns of smoke climbed from within, bending sharply in the wind before spreading into the bruised sky. Around the settlement, the ash seemed lighter, disturbed by movement and crossed by several faint trails that stretched outward like veins.
Rohan stared.
His hand tightened around the spear.
"Finally."
The word left him as barely more than a breath.
He hadn’t realised how much the endless emptiness had been pressing on him until the sight of walls loosened something in his chest. Even if the people inside turned out to be hostile, even if they refused to let him in, even if he had to circle around and observe from afar, the settlement proved one crucial thing.
This place could be survived.
People had done it. People were doing it right now.
That alone mattered.
Rohan crouched behind the crest of the rise and studied the settlement for a while instead of rushing toward it. The walls were irregular, patched in several places with different materials. Some sections looked like stacked black slabs bound by metal bands, while others resembled sheets of hammered iron or dark ceramic plates. Taller poles stood at intervals along the perimeter, each topped with something that occasionally flashed silver when the light overhead strengthened.
Mirrors? Warning charms? Weapons?
He couldn’t tell.
The settlement had no grand towers, no shining barrier, no clean streets visible from this distance. It looked harsh, functional, and stubborn, as though it had been built by people who cared less about comfort than about not dying in their sleep.
Rohan appreciated that design philosophy more than he wanted to admit.
Between him and the settlement lay perhaps two or three kilometres of broken slab field. Maybe more. Distance was still difficult to judge here, but he could see a marked route descending from the rise and bending toward the walls. It passed between several shallow gullies, then crossed a darker stretch of terrain where the slabs were more fragmented.
There were also signs of recent passage.
Not just footprints now.
A set of parallel grooves cut through the ash along the path, as if something heavy had been dragged or pulled across it. Wheel marks, perhaps, though the wheels must have been narrow and reinforced to leave such deep lines in this terrain. Beside them were many boot prints, some large, some small, overlapping each other until the ash had become a churned mess.
Rohan’s relief cooled.
The marks were too chaotic.
People had passed through here recently, but not calmly. Some prints were long and skidding, suggesting someone had run or stumbled. Others were deeper at the toe, as if people had pushed off hard in a hurry. In two places, the ash was smeared across the slabs in uneven arcs.
He moved down from the rise, following the signs while keeping low.
The first object he found was a strip of cloth caught on the edge of a jagged slab. It was dark brown, stiff with ash, and torn roughly rather than cut. Rohan picked it up with the tip of his spear and turned it over.
No blood.
Probably good, right?
A little farther ahead, he found a broken wooden handle. It had been snapped near the middle, the grain splintered outward. One end was wrapped in worn leather, and the other still had a corroded metal fitting attached.
Tool or weapon.
He crouched beside it, then noticed small round impressions in the ash nearby. Droplets had fallen there and darkened the grey surface before drying.
Blood after all.
Not much, but the presence of blood, no matter how little, was never a good sign.
Rohan looked toward the settlement. It was still there, still distant, still promising walls and people and answers.
Then he looked toward the trail of disturbed ash veering away from the marked route.
The drag marks continued toward the settlement, but a separate set of footprints cut away to the left, heading toward a cluster of leaning slabs that formed a broken ridge. Several prints were messy and deep, as if whoever had made them had been injured or carrying weight. Others followed behind them.
He stood there in silence, jaw tight.
’No. Absolutely not.’
He did not know these people. He did not know what had happened. For all he knew, this was a trap. A staged sign of struggle on the route to lure idiots away from the safe path and into whatever passed for a predator’s dining room in this place.
He should go to the settlement first.
He should gather information.
He should not get involved in unknown danger when he barely understood his own abilities in this universe and was still wearing borrowed boots from a goddess who treated reality like a personal crafting project.
A faint cry carried over the wind.
Rohan went still.
At first, he thought it might have been the slabs scraping together. The sound was thin and distorted by distance, dragged apart by the wind until it barely resembled a voice. Then it came again, much clearer this time.
"Help!"
The word reached him and hit him where it hurt.
Human.
It was unmistakable. Rohan could tell from the voice alone. Humans had uniquely distinct voices from other alien races in the universe, and Rohan had experienced that first hand when he heard the hoplite speak — and it was nothing like any human.
Rohan closed his eyes for one second.
’Of course.’
Another cry followed, weaker than the first.
He turned away from the settlement.
His feet moved before his survival instincts finished arguing.
Rohan followed the veering tracks toward the broken ridge, spear lowered, Molten Assimilation still active. The ash-darkened skin across his forearms seemed to drink in the dry air, and his lungs no longer burned badly enough to distract him. That was fortunate, because every other part of him had become painfully alert.
The ridge ahead was not tall, but it was jagged and cluttered, formed from dozens of black slabs leaning together at awkward angles. Some looked as though they had erupted from beneath the ground. Others had fallen against each other, creating narrow passages, blind corners, and shadowed pockets where ash collected in deep drifts.
Perfect ambush terrain.
Rohan slowed as he approached.
The cries had stopped.
That worried him more than if they had continued.
He crouched beside one of the outer slabs and listened. At first, he heard only the wind. Then came a scrape. A low clatter. Something heavy shifting over stone. Beneath that, quieter and more frantic, someone was breathing too fast.
Rohan moved along the edge of the ridge, careful not to let his boots crunch loose fragments. The marked settlement path was no longer visible from here. The walls had vanished behind the rise and the broken slabs, leaving him once again surrounded by ash and black stone.
He found more blood.
This time, there was enough of it to make his stomach tighten.
It marked the edge of a slab in a dark smear, then continued in droplets toward a narrow gap between two leaning stones. The gap was barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. Rohan knelt and examined the ground.
One set of boot prints had gone in.
Several sets had stopped outside.
That was bad.
He leaned closer, trying to see through the gap without putting his head directly in front of it. Beyond the leaning stones was a shallow basin enclosed by the ridge. Ash had accumulated there in a thick grey carpet, broken by several protruding slabs and half-buried chunks of black glass-like rock. Near the far side of the basin lay the remains of a small cart, one wheel shattered, its frame tilted sideways. Bundles wrapped in dark cloth had spilled from the back and scattered across the ash.
A person was trapped beneath part of the cart.
Human. Definitely human.
They wore a long coat reinforced with overlapping strips of dull metal, and their lower body was pinned under the broken frame. Their face was partly hidden by a scarf and a hood, but Rohan could see enough to tell they were conscious. One hand clutched a short hooked blade while the other pressed against their ribs.
There were two more bodies nearby.
Rohan’s gaze lingered on them for only a moment before moving on.
One was not moving. The other might have been alive, but they were lying face down near the cart with one arm twisted at a wrong angle. Blood darkened the ash beneath them.
But the humans were not the only things in the basin.