The incendiary flasks rolled harmlessly away on the gravel.
It was over in less than ten minutes.
The canyon floor was littered with bodies. The smell of copper, ozone, and sulfur hung heavy in the trapped air. The knights began the grim task of checking for survivors—not to save them, but to finish them.
Kaelus wiped his blade on the cloak of a fallen enemy and sheathed it with a sharp click. He adjusted his cuffs, checked his coat for blood splatter, and turned back to the carriage.
The silence returned. But it was a heavy, wet silence.
He walked to the carriage door. He expected to find the child asleep, or perhaps cowering under his coat, waiting for her "strawberry cake." He had ensured that no sound loud enough to wake the dead had penetrated the interior. The insulation was excellent.
He opened the door.
"The game is over, mushro—"
The words died in his throat.
Seraphina was not hiding. She was not sleeping.
She was sitting in the middle of the floor, the heavy coat discarded in a heap next to her. Her small hands were clawing at her throat, her nails digging into the tender skin as if she were trying to tear away an invisible noose.
Her face was a mask of sheer, unadulterated horror. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated so much that the irises were barely visible, staring at nothing and everything at once. Her skin was the color of old parchment, a sickly, translucent gray.
"Hah... uhh..."
She was gasping, short, shallow breaths that rattled in her chest. It wasn't the breathing of someone who had run a race; it was the breathing of someone drowning on dry land.
"Seraphina?"
Kaelus stepped inside, his brow furrowing. He had seen fear before. He had seen soldiers break down after their first kill. He had seen hostages weep after being rescued.
But this... this was different.
This wasn't fear of him. She wasn't looking at him. She was looking through him, at the empty air behind his shoulder, at the ceiling, at the walls of the carriage.
"Make it stop," she whimpered, her voice a broken, high-pitched squeak. "Make it... quiet. Too loud. Too loud."
Kaelus froze. "It is silent, child. The enemies are dead."
"No!" she shrieked, clamping her hands over her ears. She curled into a ball, pressing her forehead against the floorboards. "Not dead! Not gone! They are screaming! Why are they screaming?!"
Kaelus looked around the empty carriage. There was nothing. Just velvet and wood.
But to Seraphina, the carriage was a glass box submerged in a sea of hell.
The moment the killing had started, the spiritual silence she loved so much had been shattered.
Violent death is not quiet. In the spiritual realm, it is a thunderclap.
When a soul is ripped from its body in sudden agony, it doesn't cross over immediately. It lingers. It is confusing. It is angry.
Seraphina saw them.
Through the wooden walls, she saw the glowing, jagged outlines of the assassins Kaelus had just butchered.
A man with his chest caved in was floating through the closed door, his mouth open in a silent, unending scream of "Why?".
Another spirit, headless, was groping blindly at the wheels, its spectral blood spraying in a mist that Seraphina could feel on her skin like cold rain.
The three assassins who had tried to burn the carriage were standing right next to the Duke, their faces twisted in the agony of their heart-stop, yelling incoherently about fire and duty.
They were loud. A cacophony of wails, grunts, and psychic shrieks that drilled directly into her pineal gland.
The Duke's "aura" usually scared ghosts away. But these ghosts were too fresh, too confused to be scared. They were drawn to the nearest source of life like moths to a flame. They crowded around the carriage, pressing their spectral faces against the windows, asking for help, asking for revenge, asking for their mothers.
It was a sensory overload that no human mind, let alone a child's undeveloped brain, could handle.
The smell of the physical blood outside mixed with the rot-scent of the spiritual decay.
"Ugh..."
Seraphina's stomach lurched. The rich venison stew, the heavy bread, and the handful of Gloomberries and leaves she had eaten earlier—it all rebelled.
She scrambled forward, her body convulsing.
"Bucket..." she gasped.
There was no bucket.
She vomited violently all over the expensive velvet floor of the carriage.
It was a wretched sight. The purple stain of the Gloomberries mixed with the stew created a grotesque, dark puddle. The smell of acid filled the small, enclosed space instantly.
She didn't stop. She retched again and again, her small body heaving with the force of it, tears streaming down her face, mixing with the snot and the saliva. She was purging everything, trying to empty herself to make the screaming stop.
Kaelus stood there, his boots inches away from the mess. He didn't recoil in disgust, nor did he rush to comfort her. He simply watched, his expression unreadable, almost clinical.
Weakness, a cold voice in his head whispered. She is physically repulsed by the aftermath of violence. She sensed the death, and her body rejected it. She is too fragile for this life.
But then he saw her hand.
Even as she vomited, her small hand reached out, trembling, groping blindly for his boot. She wasn't pushing him away. She was trying to hold onto him.
Because even surrounded by the screaming ghosts of his victims, he was still the quietest thing in her world.
"My Lord!"
Sir Gallahan appeared at the door, his sword drawn, expecting an intruder. He took one look at the scene, the sobbing, vomiting child, and the motionless Duke, and sheathed his sword instantly.
"Oh gods," Gallahan breathed. He rushed past the Duke, dropping to his knees regardless of the mess.
"My Lady! Seraphina!"
Gallahan didn't care about the vomit. He scooped the trembling child up into his arms, pulling her away from the puddle.