Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 22: Home of Undefined

Everything happened too suddenly. I didn’t have the time, didn’t have the privilege to make sure Axel was alright. All I knew was that my head slammed against a metal piece on the opposite side before it fell back onto something soft, something warm, which I could only assume was his chest.

After that, there was nothing. Pain and darkness, swirling together until even the pain left, and there was only the dark. And then not even that.

But after a while, the darkness returned, gentler this time. And inside it, I found a dream.

My mother was alive. My father was never away. Silas had a sister complex that drove me crazy and Rin was best friends with Axel, the four of us were inseparable. A world where I’d awakened as a Legend and Axel had awakened as a Sovereign, and our parents stood behind us, proud, so proud, the way parents are supposed to be.

Axel’s father was the Ruler of the Earth dimension. His mother never disappeared. He was royalty, walking slowly and steadily in his father’s footsteps, and I... I was his betrothed.

It was warm. All of it. The kind of warmth that only exists in places that were never real.

The dream shattered when the cold bit into my bones and the pain in my head returned, dragging me back alongside Axel’s voice, shouting, calling my name from somewhere I couldn’t reach.

My eyes flung open and I lunged up halfway, gasping.

I was surrounded by a silence that felt loud.

I wasn’t in the transport. That was the first thing that registered. And I wasn’t on the path of the transport either.

I was in a room. A small one, barely furnished. I’d been lying on a straw mattress that smelled faintly of dry grass and something earthy. A wooden shelf stood in the corner, rough carpentry work with visible splinters. A clay cup sat on a table beside it, and a flat board mounted to the wall held a lantern, its golden light was the only thing filling the space with any warmth.

I stood slowly. My head throbbed with the effort, spreading a dull pulse that synced with my heartbeat, but it was bearable. After pulling myself upright, I walked to the entrance and gently swept the straw curtain aside with my hand. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The world beyond made me stop.

My eyes went wide, then narrowed a second later as I tried to take it all in. There were people, a lot of people, moving with purpose through what looked like the ruins of a settlement that had been torn apart by the storm of Undefinition and stitched back together by sheer stubbornness.

Some were climbing. Some were constructing long wooden structures, standing on the edges of cliffs and hammering planks so tall that others had to stay down below to hold them steady. Ladders. They were building ladders.

’Wow...’

Constructing ladders like that required real skill in wilderness survival. We’d been taught the basics at the academy, though I doubted I remembered much of the construction methods.

I remembered very little, actually. The cooking module had been the worst. Making stew from the bones of Undefined didn’t exactly sound like something a healthy person should be doing.

There were other structures too, other people. The whole place had been pulled together into something resembling a mountain village, ruins repurposed with wood and trees and whatever else they could find. Rough, but functional. Someone here knew what they were doing.

"Ma! Ma! The pretty lady is awake!"

My head turned. A little boy was shouting right next to me, bouncing on his feet. From the inside of another patched-up ruin, its walls reinforced and roof sealed with that same rough carpentry, came a woman.

She reached her son first, ruffling his hair with an easy hand, then reached for mine. Her grip was warm and her smile looked relieved.

"Young lady, how do you feel? Does your head still hurt?"

I touched my forehead when she spoke. The pain was slight now, almost ignorable.

"Not so much..." I studied her as I answered.

Brown eyes, kind face, she seemed to be in her forties, wearing a mismatched combination of clothes, her hair pulled back behind her head with beads. Everything about her projected warmth.

Which was exactly why I couldn’t let my guard down.

In a moment like this, Axel’s warnings echoed perfectly. Trust is a luxury, don’t spend it on strangers.

I slipped my hands away from hers and fixed her with a level gaze.

"Where am I? Where is Axel?"

She studied me with concern. "Young lady, you’re in the wilderness. You were brought back by King and his Raiders. You were the only one he brought back and we did not meet this Axel person you mentioned."

A frown pulled at my brows as she spoke, but I held my composure.

"Can I meet this King?"

She looked past me and bowed slightly.

"My King..."

I followed her gaze before turning fully.

A gentlemanly voice answered from behind me. "Ayesha, how many times must I tell you not to refer to me as King? My name is Marcel. I don’t want that to become a thing around here."

He moved his gaze from her to me, then offered a small smile.

"You wanted to see me? Do you mind a walk?"

I glanced back at Ayesha, who gave me a warm look, her eyes following Marcel with something close to admiration.

He was young, couldn’t have been more than a year older than me. he had deep, rich dark skin and pale green eyes that seemed to glow faintly, especially against the dark surroundings. He moved easily, confidently, in a way that made people watch him without being told to.

He walked me forward, and we climbed a series of rocks leading upward. He was nimble despite a slight limp, barely using his hands. It got difficult for me to keep pace at certain points, but the heights weren’t unscalable. Just enough to make me work for it.

He finally stopped on the highest cliff, and from there, the full picture opened up beneath us.

The cliffs we’d been climbing were like stairs, rising in tiers around the settlement, with even taller cliffs and mountain ridges walling in the formation from behind. Between the tiers, ruined buildings had been joined together with wood and living trees, converted into shelters and workspaces. People moved through the levels, some hauling timber, others pouring water into a groove that had been carved into the stone at the center of it all.

A village... built from wreckage and will.

He looked at me evenly.

"You’re an Undefined, aren’t you?"

I flinched. The word landed like a slap, instinctive and cold.

But he added almost immediately, turning his head back to the settlement below.

"These people... are like you. All of them are also Undefined."

’Huh?’

A deep frown creased my brows.