Light Beyond the Dome II

The fog hung heavy over the outskirts. Behind us, the dome shimmered faintly, its wards glowing like a distant sunrise. Ahead stretched nothing but ruin: broken walls, empty streets, farmland long since drowned in ash and silence.

At my chest hung the crystal the council had forced on me when they gave me the title of Healer. A shard cut from the same lattice that powered the dome, glowing faintly, its aura wrapping close against the skin. It was the reason Karin and Kaguya could walk without masks, why Executors strode bare-faced into the fog.

To me it was useless. Sickness never touched me, whether it was plague, poison, or anything else this world carried. But the aura had another use. It added weight to every strike, fire to every swing. Anyone else rationed it, afraid of burning their lifeforce away. I was the only one who could pour everything into a single hit without fear of collapse.

Yamada rested his cleavers on his shoulders, grinning as if the last wave had been sport. His scarred face gleamed with sweat, but his eyes burned with a wild hunger. “Pathetic. If that’s all the plague can throw at us, I’ll rot of boredom before I rot of claws.”

Ulric stood silent, his blade lowered but not sheathed. The faint runes along the steel flickered like dying embers. His gaze never left the fog ahead. “Do not call for more. The plague always answers.”

I planted the ends of my crowbars into the dirt, heat still rising from the metal. My body ached, though the pain was already gone. “He’s right, Yamada. The plague never stops. You laugh at the waves, but that hunger doesn’t end.”

Yamada barked out another laugh. “That’s the point. Every fight is proof I’m still alive. Every cut makes me sharper. You think I swing these for glory? I swing them because nothing else keeps me breathing.”

“Well, you’re certainly mentally healthy,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

Yamada’s grin widened and he laughed so hard his shoulders shook. “Finally, someone who understands me!”

Ulric’s voice cut through the fog, steady and calm. “It is not about coming back. It is about holding the line so others never have to step into this place. That is why we are Executors.”

Yamada tilted his head, grin sharp. “You talk like a wall that thinks it is more than stone. Always preaching discipline, always staring at the horizon. Do you ever laugh?”

Ulric’s gaze stayed fixed on the mist. “Laughter does not hold the line. Trust in your resolve and you shall stand strong. ”

Yamada barked out a laugh anyway. “See? This dude is a living wall. Maybe that is what keeps you alive.”

I watched the two of them, one blazing with hunger for the fight, the other steady as carved granite. According to fantasy tropes, I would have called Ulric a paladin, a knight sworn to light, unshaken where others break. But this world has no such word, and he never speaks of faith or gods. 

The ground trembled under our boots. The fog pulsed outward, thicker than before, rolling low over the ruins. The cobblestones shook as something vast moved within the haze.

Ulric raised his blade, runes flickering back to life. Yamada’s grin sharpened as he shifted his cleavers. I lifted my crowbars, heat humming along their length.

The outskirts were about to wake.

◇◇◇◇

The fog twisted into a single mass of limbs and tails, bodies knotted together into a grotesque shape. The shriek that followed wasn’t one voice but dozens, tangled into a single, discordant cry.

A rat king.

Back home it had been an omen of plague, a sign that rot was spreading so fast even vermin fused together. Some said it appeared before the Black Death itself, when a third of Europe was consumed. 

Yamada spat into the dirt, gripping his cleavers. “Looks like the plague tied its pets into one big ugly knot. About time.”

Ulric’s eyes narrowed. “This is no knot. It is something more.”

I tightened my grip on the crowbars, bile rising in my throat. “It is a warning. If it gets through the dome, the city will be consumed.”

The rat king lurched forward, dragging itself across the cobblestones in a wave of claws. Yamada was already running, cleavers flashing. He leapt into the air with a bellow, steel carving a cross-pattern through the nearest cluster of torsos. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling as it splattered across the stones.

The wounds didn’t slow it. The ichor bubbled, then flowed, knitting the bodies tighter. The shriek grew louder.

“Ken!” Yamada roared. “What now?”

“Keep tearing it open!” I shouted, uncapping a flask from my belt. The solution shimmered faintly, thick and caustic. Soap. Crude, half-finished from last night’s vats, but enough to strip the filth.

The rat king’s tails lashed out, slamming into the cobbles. Yamada dodged, rolling to his feet with a grin. “Ugly bastard’s got some life in it!” He spun, cleavers hacking at the limbs, chopping through tendons and bone until they fell twitching.

I darted closer, crowbar in one hand, flask in the other. A fused ribcage jutted from the monster’s side like a broken gate. I jammed the crowbar between the bones, prying them apart with a crack, then poured the soap mixture inside.

Up close, I saw the truth. The rat king wasn’t a knot of bodies at all. It was a sac of plague. Its flesh rippled like a stretched membrane, ichor flowing between torsos as if they were veins in one organism. The seams pulsed, spilling infection from one corpse into the next.

It looked less like anatomy and more like corrupted code, a script repeating itself without end. One torso twitched, then ten twitched the same way, then all of them spasmed together, like a single error spreading across a broken system.

And worse, the rats inside were swelling. Their limbs thickened, their claws grew, their bodies bulged as if the infection itself was feeding them into something larger.