Cameraman Never Dies-Chapter 259: If only construction was so easy

The temple rose before them like the ribcage of some long-dead beast, its stone pillars cracked and gnawed away by centuries of rain and wars no one remembered anymore. Vines crawled along the broken walls as if trying to stitch the structure back together, but even nature had given up halfway through. The remaining carvings were little more than ghosts: worn faces, chipped halos, symbols whose meanings had eroded into mud.

The soldiers moved in as a single mass of damp uniforms and ragged breathing. Their boots sank into the thick layer of dust and rotted leaves that coated the floor, each step echoing beneath the hollow dome. Following tiny footprints etched on the dust, mixed with blood.

They didn’t have the luxury of reverence. Their chase for a little girl had led them in circles for hours, slipping through trees and shadows with a kind of desperate brilliance that none of them could explain. Luck, they had murmured among themselves. Or something less comforting.

Still, luck only went so far against exhaustion.

They found her on the altar at the heart of the temple.

The stone slab was cracked through the center, split like a spine. The girl lay atop it, her small body curled on its side, hair matted to her skin with sweat and grime. Even in death she looked like she was still trying to run. Her face was peaceful in that unnerving way only corpses managed.

The soldiers froze. It wasn’t grief or guilt. It was the strangeness of it all. A child, a princess no less, dead on an ancient altar as if placed there by the world itself.

"The hell... she made it all the way here?" one of them murmured.

Another spat to the side, tension bleeding into the air like smoke. "Goddess Fortuna showered the brat with such luck."

They weren’t savages. They had families, old scars, bad knees, the usual human clutter. But kindness had never been part of the mission briefing. War made even the softest men practical.

"What should we do, Lead?" One asked.

The leader stepped forward, hand tight around his spear. There was no triumph in his eyes, only the same exhausted pragmatism they all carried like a second uniform.

"We ensure her death and leave quickly," he said. His voice didn’t waver.

He reached for the girl, fingers brushing against skin that was already losing its warmth. When he lifted her from the altar, it was with startling care, as if some stubborn part of him refused to treat her like an object. He set her down on the cold floor, away from the carved slab, away from whatever deity had once been worshipped here. The temple hummed faintly, a breath of wind passing through the broken beams, almost as if watching.

He hesitated only for a heartbeat.

The fastest and cleanest way was a stab to the throat. A single thrust. No pain. No mistakes.

But he didn’t dare spill blood on an altar older than their lineage. He didn’t know who the temple belonged to. He didn’t want to find out. Soldiers survived by respecting the unknown, not by challenging it.

He knelt. His blade flashed.

A swift, practiced motion. No sound from the girl. No shudder. Just an end.

His men watched in strained silence.

"She’s gone," he said simply, wiping the blade on his sleeve.

There was nothing to carry back. No ransom. No trophy. No grim token of victory. A corpse wasn’t going to shift the tide of war, and certainly not one so small. The girl had died, and in war, the dead were as weightless as the dust beneath their boots.

The men turned toward the shattered archway, toward the path they had carved through the forest, toward orders that didn’t leave space for hesitation. Behind them lay only a ruin with a story no one would bother writing down. Ahead lay duty, survival, and the indifferent world that swallowed both victors and victims without distinction.

Their footsteps echoed against the ancient stone, growing fainter as they exited the temple. For a moment, silence reclaimed the hollow space, settling over the broken pillars and faded murals like a heavy blanket.

Then the wind moved.

It snaked through the fissures in the dome, coiling around the altar before sweeping across the floor. The long-accumulated dust shivered. It lifted in soft plumes and drifted lazily toward the doorway, as though the temple itself exhaled and everything light enough responded by leaving. Even the dust seemed eager to abandon this place, skittering out after the soldiers with a strange kind of purpose.

When the air finally calmed, the altar remained alone. Or so it seemed.

A faint glow blinked into life at its base.

It was small, barely more than a candle-flame, pulsing softly like a heartbeat. Lying next to the cracked stone was the child’s candy: a simple, wrapped piece of sweetness, cheap by any market’s standards yet priceless by hers. It was the last thing she had managed to keep, clutched in her tiny hand through cold, hunger, terror, and miles of fleeing.

Her greatest treasure, offered not by choice but by circumstance.

Blood, in many rituals, was the crown of offerings. It carried life, sacrifice, power. And the leader had been wise to keep it off the altar. But the temple did not stir for blood today.

It stirred for value.

For meaning.

For the unspoken truth that the most precious things in existence were rarely grand. Sometimes they were simple. Sometimes they were sugar crystals wrapped in paper and held by a dying child who had nothing else left.

The glow intensified... and the world shifted.

It was not a gradual change. There was no shimmering ripple, no dramatic thunderclap. One blink, and the ruin was a ruin. The next blink, the ruin was gone.

In its place stood an immaculate sanctuary.

The cracked stone was replaced with polished marble that glowed faintly with its own inner light. The broken dome returned to its full majesty, intricately carved with symbols that pulsed like veins beneath skin. Murals once erased by time now glimmered with vivid color: celestial figures, elegant scripts, depictions of rituals long forgotten.

The torches along the walls flickered to life in unison, bathing the interior in a warm, golden radiance. Incense — not the dusty rot of centuries — filled the air, carrying a faint sweetness that clung to the senses.

On the pristine altar lay the girl.

Whole.

Untouched.

There was no wound at her throat. No blood on her skin. The grime and exhaustion that had clung to her vanished. She breathed softly, steadily, though her soul was nowhere near her body.

The candy rested beside her, still glowing faintly.