The Villain Alpha's Cursed Mate-Chapter 276 - 276: Colossal Tree
For a long moment, the two of them remained where they were, sitting on the cold, dirt-caked floor with their only surviving lantern at their side. The weak light flickered between them, throwing their weary faces into trembling relief and painting the ruined passageway in shades of gold and shadow.
The realization still hadn't fully settled in.
The presence of a demon here, in the hearts of Mariana, had come as a great shock to the both of them. It wasn't one of the common fiends he repelled or slayed with a vial of lycobane serum. No, this one was far worse. It could wear a human face. It could be anyone at all. At first, he found the old man strange, but not once did it cross his mind that he was a demon.
It was alarming.
The thought alone was enough to chill Leonardo's blood.
"We've got a witch to hunt," Cora murmured, clutching her chronicle tight against her chest. Her voice remained steady, but her knuckles had turned white. "And now a demon is on our trail. What really happened to the inn?"
Leonardo exhaled softly, raking his fingers through his ash-dusted hair. The acrid scent of smoke and burned timber still clung to him. Perhaps bringing down the entire inn had been too much, but for the first time, he truly panicked.
If Cora hadn't shown up to assist him, he'd be a little more than a scorched corpse beneath the rubble.
"We should keep moving… see if we can figure a way out of here," she gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before rising to her feet. "I saw another door up ahead, but I couldn't leave without you. You… always said we'd make it out of here at the end of the day. You weren't lying to me now, were you?"
Cora narrowed her eyes at him, trying to sound teasing, but there was a tremor beneath her words.
Leonardo looked at her after sensing her worry, and their gazes met in the dim glow. Something twisted uneasily in his chest, and he didn't know why.
The passageway they lingered in shouldn't exist. This shouldn't be real at all, or perhaps they were both trapped in some twisted illusion? Stranger still, his earlier command that had brought the rest of the inn crashing down, hadn't touched this place. While the building broke apart, this passageway remained perfectly still.
Pushing himself up, he ignored the ache that lanced through his leg, a quick reminder that this was in fact not a stupid dream. The demon's claws had torn through his calf, and every step sent a sharp sting through the muscle, but he was still standing. Still breathing.
He dared not falter now.
Cora picked up the lantern as they resumed their walk, and she openly speculated. "Do you think we're being tricked with magic too? Maybe there's someone else behind this. That demon could've just been an accomplice, don't you think?"
She glanced at him, but he knew what she was doing. She was hoping to keep them both engaged so that they wouldn't focus on their fears too much, to distract their mind from the creeping dread that clawed at their nerves.
Leonardo pressed his lips into a thin, thoughtful line as the sound of their footsteps quietly filled the silence. The transition from the inn's exit to this winding corridor had been seamless – impossibly so. That kind of distortion could only be done through powerful magic.
And yet.. he hadn't felt a trace of it.
That was what unsettled him the most.
He wasn't an expert, but he had been surrounded by magic well enough to be able to sense magical signatures, distortions and even faint manipulation of energy. But this? It was as though they stepped straight into another world without warning – blind, unprepared and completely at its mercy.
Just like how he never sensed the innkeeper's true nature until it was already too late. Also, the demon spoke of some resemblance to his older brother, which means it knew Donovan?
They wondered if it was still out there, actively searching for them, looking more pissed now.
After walking for what felt like hours though the corridor, they arrived at a vast, shadow-choked hall, a place that might once have been the remnants of an altar. Broken columns leaned at uneasy angles, and fragments of what looked like offering bowls lay scattered across the cracked stone floor.
Beyond the ruined altar, the archway yawned open, and from it drifted a low, haunting wind. The sight made both Leo and Cora freeze in disbelief, and without taking the altar into consideration, they hurried toward the archway in hopes that that would be the exit.
When they paused through the archway, the air suddenly shifted. Exchanging glances as if acknowledging the fact that there was no going back after this, they stepped out into the rocky slope beneath a bruised, storm-dark sky, a sight that stole their breaths from their lungs.
They stood on a barren slope that looked and felt lifeless. The landscape stretched almost endlessly, stripped for all life, save for a single, colossal tree that loomed at the center of the wasteland.
"What the hell is that?" Cora's voice broke the silence, her eyes narrowing as they cautiously stepped closer.
The tree's trunk loomed before them, massive and grotesquely gnarled, and it twisted skyward like the spine of some ancient, long-dead beast. Its bark was blackened and split, oozing sap that gleamed like congealed blood in the dying light.
It was hauntingly terrifying.
The branches clawed at the heavens like long, skeletal arms stretching out in every direction.
And from those branches hung bodies.
Figures dangled in the cold wind, limp and swaying, their faces unnaturally pale and empty, their clothes torn and fluttering like the remnants of shrouds.
Cora froze mid-step. Her hands flew to her mouth as her eyes widened in horror.
"What… what is this?" she whispered, her voice breaking.
Leonardo could only stare. The breath caught in his throat, and the color on his face drained faster than it ever did before. For a heartbeat, his mind refused to understand what his eyes were showing him — and then it did.
The bodies hanging from the tree were familiar.
His father.
His mother.
Irwin.
Donovan.
The Morgrim family.
All of them — lifeless and swaying in the bitter wind.
"The hell…" he choked out, staggering back a step. His heart pounded, a raw ache blooming in his chest. "This… this can't be real."
What was happening? It felt like he was really starting to lose his mind.
.
!
Chapter 276 - 276: Colossal Tree
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