A Journey Unwanted

Chapter 480: Offshoot: The First Calamity

[Realm: Uhorus]

[Location: ???]

September 30th. It has been an entire month now since it started—thirty days measured not by the sun or the passing of time, but by how many screams I can still remember when I try to sleep.

More than thirty damn days and still, almost no one has a real clue about what’s actually happening.

We speak, we argue, we shout orders, and then we cling to anything that sounds like understanding—but in the end, the only words that keep circling from mouth to mouth, from soldier to soldier, from officer to officer, are the same two hollow things:

"The first calamity."

They say it like it explains something. Like giving it a name makes it smaller.

It doesn’t.

If anything, it makes it worse.

Because if this is the first, then what comes after?

I keep asking myself something I don’t think I really want answered. I don’t even know why the thought keeps coming back, but it does, so damn persistent and impossible to shake.

Is this the end of the world?

I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that either.

I don’t think anyone does.

These things—we still don’t have a proper name for them, not one that sticks—are wrong in a way I don’t have the words to fully capture. Black as ink, but not the kind you can wash away or wipe clean. It’s thick and heavy. Like the color was swallowing everything around it. With these odd violet symbols.

They don’t have real forms. Not fixed ones.

Some of them tower over any battlefield we fight in—larger than most Astrothians I’ve ever seen, their shapes shifting as they move, like they can’t decide what they are supposed to be. Others are smaller, low to the ground, quick, twitching things that slip between lines and tear into you before you even realize they’re there.

They aren’t particularly strong, and that’s the part that almost makes it worse.

Because it means they don’t need to be, there are too many of them, far too many. Galadriel boasts the largest military might—trained soldiers, disciplined ranks with veterans who have seen real war, not just drills and dumb ceremony. We were supposed to be the line that doesn’t break.

And yet standing out there, watching the horizon darken not with clouds, but with them, we look small and insignificant. Like whatever pride we carried meant nothing the moment this started. They don’t stop, and that’s what breaks people.

It’s not just the killing, it’s the way it never pauses. There’s no retreat for them, no moment where you can breathe and think we’ve held them back. They keep coming. Wave after wave, without hesitation, fear, or anything that resembles restraint.

They overrun us.

They devour the ground we stand on.

I’ve seen it happen—villages swallowed whole before word even had time to travel. Towns reduced to silence. Cities, I don’t even know how many are left standing anymore.

Most of them are gone.

That’s what the reports say, at least. The few that still make it through.

I’ve seen it myself, up close.

They tear through anything in their path—wood, stone, steel, and flesh—it doesn’t matter. There’s no instinct to preserve anything.

Even wild beasts don’t act like that, even monsters feel like they belong to something. These things don’t, they don’t belong anywhere, and I don’t know why I’m writing this.

That thought keeps coming back to me every time I press the pen to the page.

There’s no guarantee this survives and no guarantee anyone finds it. No guarantee I’ll even have the chance to finish what I’m trying to say.

So why bother?

Maybe, I just don’t want to disappear completely.

Maybe I just want someone—anyone—to know that I was here. That I existed. That I stood on this ground and saw all of this with my own eyes.

Not a hero. Not a name worth remembering.

Just a soldier from Galadriel.

One among thousands.

Nameless and replaceable.

I just don’t want to di—

--------------------

The word never finished.

The ink dragged across the page in a jagged line, the final letter trailing off into nothing as his hand stopped moving. For a moment, the soldier simply stared at it, at the unfinished thought, as if willing his hand to continue on its own.

It didn’t.

The world around him filled the silence that followed.

The small crackle of something still burning somewhere beyond sight. The strained breathing of men who had not slept in days. The quiet, muffled sobs someone tried—and failed—to keep contained. Metal scraping against stone as someone adjusted their grip on a weapon they barely had the strength to hold.

He sat there, half-hidden behind a broken slab of stone that had once been part of a building—something sturdy and meant to last. Now it was just debris, one fragment among countless others scattered through what used to be a town.

A mid-level settlement. Not small enough to be forgotten, not large enough to be truly fortified.

Now it was neither.

Just ruins.

His armor—standard issue leather reinforced with silver plating, once polished and marked with clean blue accents—was dulled beneath layers of dirt, ash, and dried blood. Some of it was his. Most of it wasn’t.

He could feel where the leather had stiffened, but he didn’t think about that too much.

Around him, what remained of his unit was spread thin, not by formation but rather by necessity.

One soldier knelt with his head bowed, lips moving in a desperate prayer that had long since lost any structure. Another leaned against a broken wall, pressing cloth into a wound that bled through it faster than he could hold it back. A third sat unmoving, back against rubble, eyes open but unfocused, much too still.

No one had bothered to check if he was breathing.

Most of the others weren’t.

Bodies lay where they had fallen, twisted in ways that made it clear they hadn’t died cleanly. Some were missing pieces. Some were not whole, in such a way that it made it hard to tell where one ended and the ground began.

The soldier’s gaze moved over them slowly.

He didn’t react, not anymore at least.

There was a point, earlier—days ago, maybe—where something like this would have made him look away, would have forced something up his throat, would have made his hands shake.

Now...

Now he just looked.

His fingers loosened.

The notebook slipped from his grasp first, falling against the stone with a hollow sound before sliding to the ground. The pen followed, bouncing once, then rolling slightly before coming to a stop beside it.

He didn’t reach for either.

Didn’t even think to.

For a moment—just a moment—he allowed himself to sit there without doing anything. Not moving, not speaking, and not preparing.

Just existing.

It felt wrong.

The silence didn’t last long.

"They’re coming!"

The scream tore through the air sharply, cutting through everything else, pure panic. The soldier’s head snapped up, his body reacting before his thoughts fully caught up. His hands moved instinctively, reaching for his weapon, fingers tightening around the hilt of a sword even as he pushed himself up from where he sat.

"What—where?" someone else shouted, voice strained and already breaking.

"Front—no, everywhere—just—look!"

He looked.

And for a second—just a second—his mind refused to process what his eyes were seeing.

They were there.

Hundreds of them.

Maybe more.

They spilled over the broken remains of the town’s outer structures like a tide, black shapes shifting and writhing as they moved. Some crawled low across the ground, limbs bending in ways that didn’t follow any natural pattern. Others rose higher, their forms stretching upward, too tall and thin—or too wide and heavy—never consistent or even stable.

Featureless.

Every single one of them.

No eyes, no mouths, nothing that resembled a face.

And yet he felt watched.

Across their bodies, small but unmistakable, were markings—symbols etched into their forms, glowing with an unnatural violet light. Each one was different, with no pattern being repeated.

The creatures didn’t hesitate, nor did they slow. They tore through what little remained of the town’s outer edge, crashing through weakened walls, splitting stone and wood apart as if it meant nothing. Debris scattered beneath them, swallowed up as they advanced.

"They’re too many—there’s too many—!" someone yelled, backing up, voice cracking.

"Fall back! Fall—just move, damn it!" another barked, though there was no direction in it.

The line—what little of it remained—broke instantly.

There was no formation to hold and no ground worth defending. The soldier staggered back a step, then another, his grip tightening on his weapon as his breathing grew uneven.

This wasn’t a battle.

It hadn’t been for a long time.

"Move!" someone shoved past him, nearly knocking him off balance. "If you stay, you die!"

As if that wasn’t already obvious.

The first of the creatures reached them.

It didn’t announce itself with a roar, it simply was there. A soldier to his left barely had time to raise his blade before something black and shifting collided with him. There was a wet, tearing sound, loud, and then he was gone.

What remained hit the ground in pieces.

The soldier flinched—just slightly—but forced himself to move.

Run.

That was all that mattered now.

Run.

He turned, boots slipping slightly against stone as he pushed forward, following the others who had already begun scattering through the broken streets.

Behind him, the sounds came quickly.

It was not simple footsteps that could be tracked or predicted. Just an immense impact. Like wet, heavy sounds that made his stomach twist even as he forced himself not to look back.

"Don’t stop—don’t stop!" someone ahead of him gasped, half-running and half-stumbling. "Just keep moving!"

"Where—where are we even going?" another voice broke in, desperate. "There’s nowhere left—!"

"Anywhere but here!"

The soldier’s breath came sharp as he ran, his vision narrowing, focusing only on the path immediately ahead—collapsed walls, scattered debris, and bodies he had to step over or around without thinking about what they were.

Something brushed past him—too close.

He turned his head just enough to see one of them surge forward, its form shifting as it moved, a limb—or something like it—lashing out.

It caught someone behind him.

The scream cut off too quickly.

He didn’t look again.

He couldn’t.

"This is—this is—" the words left his mouth without him meaning to speak, his voice barely audible over the noise. "This is hell..."