The caravan managed to hold out through sheer numbers. Those who had been too terrified to fight gradually gathered enough courage to engage the Puppets themselves. Unfortunately, the creatures had already spread throughout the fog during the chaos, making their positions difficult to track clearly.

Oliver grimaced before saying loudly:

"We have to get out of here now, or more of them will keep coming."

"Run forward! Keep running and don’t look back, not even once!" Teresa shouted at the top of her lungs.

For a brief heartbeat, nobody moved. The entire caravan froze between confusion and fear.

Then Teresa yelled again.

Instantly, the young man near the rear, the same one who had attempted to flee earlier, burst into a frantic sprint ahead.

Oliver scoffed faintly.

’...That’s the spirit. You can always rely on the biggest coward when it’s time to run for survival.’

"Everyone, keep moving forward and don’t stop until we’re out of the fog! Don’t even pause to breathe, or you’ll end up meeting the gods!" Oliver added while pointing his blade ahead.

Soon, the others followed after the fleeing young man.

They ran desperately with everything they had, refusing to glance backward. Countless hurried footsteps echoed through the fog, filled with fear, desperation, and the instinct to survive, all of it crashing against Oliver’s heightened hearing.

The three of them joined the sprinting caravan, while Effie flew overhead, beating its wings in an attempt to disperse parts of the fog for visibility. Unfortunately, the mist was far too dense for its strength to clear properly.

Even so, the dragon still managed to disrupt the vision of Puppets attempting to flank them from the sides, though the ones pursuing from behind remained the greatest threat.

Naturally, Kaden handled the front during the retreat, prepared to cut down anything that emerged ahead of them. Meanwhile, Effie lowered its claws repeatedly to snatch aside any Puppet that slipped past his blade and hurl it away from the caravan.

More and more String Puppets began swarming after the fleeing group in a maddened frenzy, tightening the fear in everyone’s chest and flooding them with adrenaline.

The creatures surged through the fog from behind, colliding against one another like starving predators.

Teresa shouted as she grabbed the nearest person who stumbled to the ground and shoved him forward again.

"Don’t look back! Just run! If anyone falls, keep moving! Don’t turn around!"

The silhouettes of both the caravan and the Puppets flickered endlessly through the mist.

To Oliver, however, everything resembled writhing shadows moving within darkness itself. His vision had sharpened enough through his Shadow Hue to track the distorted movements far quicker than the others.

Sometimes the silhouettes closed in from every direction.

Other times they vanished entirely before reappearing even closer than before.

’These things are practically an army inside this fog...’

***

The pursuit continued chaotically.

However, the group could not outrun the frenzied String Puppets without suffering losses.

Humans eventually grew exhausted, their bodies weakening once they reached their limits.

Puppets did not.

The woman who had been holding tightly onto her brother since their departure suddenly stumbled and collapsed, her grip slipping away from his hand.

He tried to pull her back up, but the instant he saw a String Puppet lunging toward them, panic overtook him.

Without hesitation, he abandoned her and bolted away without looking back even once.

Tears immediately streamed down her face.

The Puppet reached her in the next moment. Its claws ripped through her arm before it brutally drove its hand into her stomach, causing blood to spray across the ground as agonised screams escaped her throat.

Then it began feeding on her.

Oliver arrived moments later.

The instant he saw the scene, he cut down the Puppet while it remained distracted, while Rook intercepted another creature attempting to attack from the side and hurled it away into the fog.

The young woman was barely alive.

Her eyes were clouded with blood, and her breathing came out in ragged, uneven gasps. There was no saving her anymore.

She whispered weakly:

"Please... protect my broth..."

The words died in her throat as her body finally gave in.

Oliver’s expression darkened before he pushed forward again alongside Rook. He had witnessed everything that happened between the siblings before she was abandoned to die.

The bastard had left her behind without hesitation.

That alone revealed exactly how much he valued her life.

And somehow, even after that, she was still begging for him to be protected.

If Oliver had been some righteous hero, perhaps he would have respected her dying wish.

But he was not.

Instead, he wanted the coward dead so he could reunite with his sister and continue their pathetic, one sided sibling devotion together before the gods.

As the pursuit dragged on, regret gradually seeped into the hearts of many within the caravan.

They could not stop running, yet several had already begun regretting the moment they chose to leave the palace.

Inside the Settlement, their freedom and dignity had been stripped away, but death had not hunted them this mercilessly.

There, they had not been chased through a nightmare by hordes of ravenous monsters.

There, death had not felt so absolute.

"I should’ve stayed... I should’ve stayed... they had food... they had walls... I’m doomed... I shouldn’t have followed them..." one man muttered tearfully while running.

Meanwhile, others felt no regret at all.

They had already decided they would rather die than return to the Settlement and live beneath the rule of lunatics who were no less monstrous than the Puppets themselves.

What difference was there?

Out here, at the very least, they still possessed their own will and humanity.

Another young man suddenly stopped running just behind Teresa. He shut his eyes tightly and turned around, sprinting back into the mist in complete desperation.

Before Teresa could even react and grab him away from such a foolish suicide, three String Puppets burst out from the fog and descended upon him violently. Their distorted limbs tore into his body amidst bloodcurdling screams, forcing Teresa to grit her teeth and continue onward instead of turning back.

’Damn it... Damn it! Damn it!’ Teresa cursed inwardly in fury.

Elsewhere within the fleeing caravan, another woman kept her gaze locked firmly on Kaden’s back ahead of her. Unlike the others whose faces were consumed by panic and despair, her expression carried pure determination.

She whispered repeatedly beneath her breath as if trying to hypnotise herself into enduring.

"We’re going to make it... we’re going to be free... I just have to keep running..."

The frantic pursuit dragged on endlessly.

Feet pounded against uneven ground while ragged breathing echoed through the grey haze. The survivors no longer knew how far they had travelled through the fog. Time itself had become distorted amidst the chaos and exhaustion.

Eventually, after what felt close to an hour of relentless escape, Kaden abruptly emerged through the dense mist first.

A String Puppet immediately lunged at him from the side the moment he stepped out.

Without hesitation, he swung his sword downward accurately and dispatched the creature’s head midair before its claws could reach him.

However, the instant the Puppet collapsed, the ground beneath his feet suddenly crumbled.

Kaden’s eyes sharpened.

The terrain ahead was not solid land.

It was a steep decline concealed beneath layers of dead vines, damp weeds, loose soil, and scattered debris. His footing slipped instantly, sending him sliding downward through the hidden slope.

The people rushing behind him had no time to react.

One after another, the exhausted survivors stumbled directly into the collapse as screams erupted everywhere. Bodies rolled violently down the incline alongside broken branches, stones, and torn vegetation before crashing hard at the bottom.

Dust and loose dirt rose heavily into the air.

By the time the disoriented caravan regained themselves, they realised they had fallen into a narrow enclosed passage hidden beyond the fog.

Towering walls rose on both sides of them like massive cliffs, stretching so high upward that the dim twilight above barely reached the bottom. Ancient cracks and hollow openings riddled the colossal walls, ranging from tiny gaps to enormous dark cavities large enough to swallow several people whole.

The entire place resembled a forgotten trench carved straight through the Garden itself.

Thick vines crawled endlessly across the stone surfaces like tangled serpents, while heaps of rubble and rotten vegetation littered the pathway below. The air here felt colder than before, damp and suffocating, carrying a strange stillness that unsettled everyone present.

Ahead of them, the pathway extended deeper into the massive canyon without any visible end.

Behind them, the fog still lingered above the collapsed slope like a living wall of ash.

Teresa herself nearly lost balance during the sudden collapse, but Effie reacted quickly and caught her before she could tumble downward alongside the others. The four winged dragon descended carefully afterward and lowered her onto the ground near Kaden before folding its wings.

The young girl instantly began searching the surroundings frantically.

Her heartbeat accelerated.

Her eyes darted wildly across the survivors.

Then her expression froze completely.

"Where’s Oliver?"

Silence followed.

...Oliver nor his beast were nowhere to be found among the fallen caravan.