Chapter 1279. Coming Home Just To See Everything Was F-Up! Funny!

Chapter 1279: 1279. Coming Home Just To See Everything Was F-Up! Funny!

A pair of orcs, each larger than a doorway, lumbered down the center of the avenue. Their leather harnesses creaked with every massive step, their tusks yellowed and stained.

Behind them trailed something that defied natural law: a thick, pale mass of slime, the size of a merchant’s cart, rolling slowly along the stones. It moved with an unnatural fluidity, silent and grotesque, leaving no trail yet seeming to consume the very space it occupied.

The citizens of Aethelgard moved like ghosts among these monsters. They didn’t scream; they didn’t fight.

They walked with their heads bowed, their shoulders hunched in a posture of profound, defeated submission.

A mother pulled her child past an approaching demon patrol, her knuckles white as she gripped the girl’s hand, her eyes fixed on the ground as if she could disappear if she simply refused to acknowledge the nightmare.

Helena forced her gaze upward, seeking some familiar landmark, some shred of the old world. But there was nothing.

The white and silver banners of Aethelgard, the symbol of their home, their pride, and their very identity, were gone.

In their place, draped from every tower, every gatehouse, and every shopfront, were heavy banners of deep purple and midnight black. They stirred in the wind like funeral shrouds.

On the distant, high spire of the Academy, an immense banner hung from the summit, swaying like a spreading stain across the sky.

"The banners..." Helena gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "They’ve erased us."

"They haven’t just erased our symbols, Helena," Leonidas said grimly, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the rooftops for snipers or watchers. "They’ve replaced our civilization with a hierarchy of terror."

On the left, past the main avenue, the scars of violence were laid bare. A row of buildings lay in smoldering ruins, their bones exposed to the morning light.

Helena recognized the distinctive curve of the fallen eastern wall and the shattered remains of the old fountain. A cold ache bloomed in her chest as she remembered walking past that fountain with Elizabeth, sharing laughter and secrets in the sunlight.

Now, dust lay thick over the rubble, unwashed by rain or cleared by hands. The destruction was fresh enough that the wounds of the city still seemed to bleed.

"The district beyond the avenue," Helena said, her voice trembling with a growing fury. "That was our neighborhood...! That was where we lived!"

"Don’t look at the ruins, Helena... Look at the people," Leonidas warned, though his own heart was heavy with the same realization. "They aren’t just rebuilding; they’re repurposing."

"The city hasn’t been conquered; it’s been harvested."

The implications settled over them like a shroud. The silence of their own home, the strange scents at their doorstep, and the foreign banners in the street—it all began to weave together into a singular, horrifying tapestry.

They weren’t returning to a city that had suffered an attack. They were returning to a city that had been surrendered.

And worse, as Helena’s mind flashed back to the blood-stained ribbon at their own front door, she realized that their surrender might not be the only one that had taken place.

The tension between them was no longer just the fear of what might happen; it was the terrifying certainty of what had happened.

The air between Helena and Leonidas crackled with more than just the magical residue of her power; it was charged with the desperate, unspoken adrenaline of two soldiers realizing they had walked into a trap that had already sprung weeks ago.

Helena’s hand rose before her conscious mind could even process the threat. Her fingers curled as if grasping invisible threads of power, and suddenly, flame bloomed at her fingertips.

A small, brilliant coil of crimson fire spiraled in the cool morning air, casting dancing shadows across her pale face. The fire hissed, a sharp "Ssssss" that sounded like a warning.

Beside her, Leonidas moved with the lethal economy of a lifetime of warfare. There was no wasted motion, just the soft, ominous rasp of steel as he drew his blade halfway from its sheath.

Shhhhh, ring.

They snapped together, shoulders touching, backs pressed against one another in a seamless formation. This was the posture of survival, the way they had stood in a hundred battles, through blood-soaked trenches and desperate midnight ambushes.

Their eyes, however, did not seek out a foe to strike; they scanned a horizon that offered no obvious target.

"Where are they!?" Leonidas muttered through gritted teeth, his eyes darting from rooftop to alleyway. "Where is the enemy!?"

Nothing moved toward them.

The absence of conflict was more unnerving than any battle cry. On the corner of the building across the street, a demon in obsidian plate shifted its weight.

Its helm tilted slightly, the crimson glow of its eyes catching Helena’s flame for one heartbeat. Then, with an almost insulting casualness, it turned its head away.

An orc passing by didn’t even break stride; it simply glanced their way with a bored, heavy-lidded stare, gave a slow, almost mocking nod as if acknowledging two minor nuisances, and kept walking.

Its massive footsteps made the cobblestones vibrate THUMP. THUMP. THUMP, but no weapon was raised.

No horn was sounded. No battle cry shattered the morning.

There were everywhere hundreds of them, a sea of dark metal and monstrous flesh, and they moved with the terrifying, clockwork discipline of a machine that had already achieved its objective.

That was what froze the blood in Helena’s veins. Not the monstrous physiology of the invaders. Not the threat of violence.

It was the order. The horrific, terrifying civility of it.

"Leonidas," Helena whispered, her voice paper thin, frayed at the edges by a rising panic she couldn’t suppress.

Her eyes were moving frantically now, a tactical sweep that her mind refused to stop. "I’m counting them."

"Three on the balcony... six behind the fountain... two more on the roof above the bakery..." Her voice wavered. "If we draw steel, if we so much as breathe wrong... we are dead before our hearts finish their next beat."

"There are too many."

"I know," Leonidas said, his voice a low growl of suppressed fury.

His knuckles were white where they gripped the hilt. "But I don’t understand..."

"Where is the resistance? Where is the army? Why aren’t they engaging us?" His mind screamed for a fight for the familiar chaos of steel clashing against steel, for the brutal reality of blood and bone that he understood.

This silence was an alien language he couldn’t translate.

"Because there is no enemy to fight, Leonidas," Helena said, her throat tightening as a horrifying realization began to solidify in her mind.

The flame in her palm guttered, flickering weakly like a dying candle as her concentration wavered. "A war leaves wreckage."

"A war leaves corpses scattered in the streets and civilians screaming as they flee."

"A war has chaos."

She looked down the avenue, where the demon patrols moved with surgical precision, where the citizens walked in their silent, broken queues, and where the new banners hung like fresh wounds.

"This isn’t a battle," she breathed, the words tasting like ash. "This is... this is something worse."

"Look at them."

"They aren’t raiding... They aren’t destroying."

"They are maintaining the streets... They are policing the crowds." Her eyes darted to the distant ruins of their neighborhood, then back to the orderly demon patrols. "This is not the aftermath of a war."

"This is an occupation... just like you said."