“Tell me truthfully,” Ashes said coldly, eyes fixed on the man under his control, “how many have died in that mine?”

  The man repeated the same answer again and again.

  “Fifty,” he said. “Only fifty this year.”

  Ashes didn’t believe it. Fifty deaths a year, on average, wasn’t enough to raise a creature to Grade-3. Especially not a Chaotic.

  ‘Are they kidnapping people and feeding them to it?’ The thought sickened him.

  Celestes had already combed through the man’s memories. She found nothing suspicious, no secret transportations, no hidden rituals. Either Ashes was wrong, or this man wasn’t the one doing it.

  Outside, the light dimmed. The second night was coming. Squad members would return soon to rest.

  Days in this world were strange, two days and two nights, broken by a brief and unnatural darkness, as if the planet was covered by a blanket.

  Ashes left the man with orders to act normal, and went back to his room, acting as if he is sleeping.

  Not long after, he heard voices. The squad had returned. Ink was among them. Only the Mine Head was missing, again.

  Apparently, the Mine Head never left the mine. His residence was inside, and he roamed the tunnels constantly, always on alert.

  Why? Why guard a mine day and night?

  Ashes didn’t believe for a second it was just to inspect how the work was going.

  A normal Grade-3 monster might be wary of humans. But a Chaotic? They didn’t feel fear. They didn’t wait.

  The only explanation he had thought about was that the Mine Head knew about the creature, and he knew that it would attack the moment he leaves.

  It is as if he was there to control its actions and not let it go out of his control!

  Ashes suddenly sat up straight, his eye wide.

  A thought had hit him.

  In all his time here, scanning the village, watching the people, walking among them, he hadn’t seen a single elderly person!

  Not one!

  His perception stretched for miles. He could sense every heartbeat, every breath. He’d seen children, adult men and women, people with symptoms of rainbow disease, but no one fully infected, sick, old, weak, or bedridden.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  And more than that, there were no burial grounds. No cemeteries. No shrines. Not even a shack for working with the dead.

  ‘What do they do with the bodies?’

  The river was to the south, a little farther from the village. Maybe, maybe they tossed them in and let the current take them. But Ashes had been sensing the world around him for hours.

  Yet he hadn’t sensed a single body being moved!

  No grief. No rituals. No farewells.

  Only silence.

  ‘They’re feeding them,’ he realized. ‘The old. The dying. The sick. They were offering them to the centipede like cattle.’

  He clenched his fists. ‘No doctors either… of course not. Why treat someone you plan to kill?’

  His thoughts were interrupted by laughter and noise, the squad was celebrating.

  They were feasting.

  Exotic meat, expensive wines, loud voices.

  Ashes grimaced. ‘They eat like animals.’

  Then his attention shifted.

  Someone else was in the house!

  ‘A female.’

  Her presence was faint, fragile. She was in a back room, curled up on a large, luxurious bed.

  And she was crying.

  Her clothes were torn, ripped away to expose her small, shaking frame. Her sobs were soft, broken, desperate.

  Ashes understood instantly.

  They were going to rape her.

  He ground his teeth, the fury rising again.

  ‘How much longer am I going to wait?’ he asked himself. ‘How much more suffering can I watch?’

  He focused, trying to listen her sorrows.

  “Mommy… save me…” she whispered, voice cracking with each breath. “Why did… Father… do that…? I was good… I always listened…”

  Her voice collapsed into soft, hiccupping sobs.

  “I love you Mommy so much… sniff… just because… sniff… please someone save me…”

  Every word stabbed into his chest like a knife.

  He closed his eyes.

  And walked back to his room.

  “Celestes,” he said. His voice was low, shaking.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  There was a long pause.

  “…She’s suffering from aether abuse,” Celestes said softly. “This isn’t the first time she’s been raped. Her body’s failing. She probably has only a few days left to live.”

  Her voice became softer.

  “Her father noticed this and knew she wouldn’t be able to earn anymore. So he sold her to them. She needs to earn him money even after death."

  Ashes didn’t reply.

  He sat down, hands clasped tightly together.

  “Celestes,” he said quietly, eyes still closed. “Tell me her entire life.”

  Celestes hesitated. She sighed, and her voice felt broken,as if she believed it was her own mistake.

  “It’s not easy,” she said. “Being able to read minds… it’s not just a gift. It’s a curse too.”

  Ashes said nothing, waiting.

  “…She was born sixteen years ago,” Celestes began. “She had a name, but I… I can’t see it. It’s erased, by the hell she went through.”

  “The mines opened thirteen years ago. Back then, the village was peaceful. Poor, but people had hope. Her family was like any other, struggling, but surviving.”

  “But within three years, everything changed. The mines poisoned the land. The people. The air. Ofcourse that's a lie....The lands were poisoned by...these animals so as to make food expensive..Her mother… she was one of the first women sent to work there. She died early from rainbow disease.”

  Ashes’s jaw clenched.

  “When the administration realized that women were more vulnerable, they banned them from the mines,” Celestes continued. “But that didn’t make things better.”

  “With no work, girls were at the mercy of their families. Some were killed. Others abandoned. And many were forced into prostitution. She… she was one of them.”

  Ashes’s breathing slowed.

  “She didn’t even know what the outside world was,” Celestes whispered. “She was just a child. She was beaten. Violated. Her friends… murdered. And when she returned home, thinking maybe there was some safety there…”

  Celestes paused.

  “…Her own father assaulted her.”

  Ashes winced. His eyes remained shut, but his whole body was trembling.

  “…But one day,” Celestes said, her voice dull, “one of the squad members noticed her. They brought her here. She was raped all day. The next morning, they threw her out. Naked. Onto the street. In front of everyone."

  Ashes’s fists clenched, tighter than before. Fingernails dug deep into flesh, blood dripping silently onto the floor.

  “Then?” he asked, his voice calm. Too calm.

  Celestes hesitated.

  “I asked what happened next.”

  The tone in his voice made her flinch, not from fear but from the pressure in it. She herself felt guilty. She, who once fought for these people, once endangered her own life for humans and this is how they are living? She who can read the thoughts of the entire planet, never even once noticed the pain and suffering of these people?

  If the Emperor saw all this, what would he think? What would he feel?

  “…She became a regular victim,” Celestes said, her voice low. “They came for her again and again. Her body started to fail. Aether abuse is harmful for someone so weak. It doesn’t just hurt… it burns inside.”

  “She said it felt like being stabbed every second.”

  “She couldn’t walk. Couldn’t move. She became bedridden and unable to work anymore. Her father, very angry at the thought of her not being able to earn, threw her out of the house. She lived on the streets, under the open sky, through the heat and the extreme cold."

  “He gave her just one meal a day. Just enough so the transcendents that had intrest in her wouldn’t be displeased.”

  Ashes didn’t speak.

  He sat there, completely still, his head bowed, hands soaked with his own blood.

  The laughter from downstairs never ended ringing in his ears.