The SSS class adventurer is a divine cleric-Chapter 67: Alira’s trial [1]

Alira stood before a ruined city which she once called it home.

The sky that night had no warmth and the stars above were suffocating.

A vast, uncaring void pressed down upon her, its infinite darkness studded with cold, merciless points of light. They did not twinkle, did not waver, only stared, unblinking, like the eyes of a thousand silent judges.

They had watched the slaughter unfold, had witnessed every scream, every fall, every last gasp of life snuffed out beneath their indifferent gaze. And now they watched her, as if waiting to see what she would do.

The air was a blade of ice against her skin, the wind a mournful chorus, keening through the ruins of the battlefield. It carried with it the stench of charred flesh and wet iron, of smoldering wood and the sour tang of spilled bowels.

The ground beneath her boots was a graveyard of steel and shattered bone, a wasteland where the earth itself seemed to weep ash.

Weapons lay discarded like the broken toys of cruel gods, swords snapped at the hilt, spears driven deep into the dirt, arrows feathered in the backs of the fallen.

Shields, once proud emblems of house and honor, were cleft in two, their splintered remains jutting from the mud like grave markers.

And there, half-buried in the filth, the banner of House Mor, the Golden Hands crossed in sacred oath, ripped asunder, its fabric stiff with dried blood, flapping in the wind like the last, shuddering breath of a dying thing.

And at the center of it all.

Laid two bodies.

Her father lay on his side, his face locked in a rictus of agony, his mouth still parted around a final, soundless cry. But his eyes still burned.

Even in death, they were fierce, unyielding, his fingers curled as though he could still reach for his sword, could still rise and fight. But the earth had claimed him. The battle had taken its due.

Beside him, her mother was nearly swallowed by the wreckage, crushed beneath the broken beams of a fallen war engine, her body half-submerged in a blackened pool of her own blood.

One arm was outstretched, as if she had been crawling toward her husband in her last moments, as if even then, she had refused to be parted from him.

Alira stood there, her breath ragged in her throat, her hands trembling at her sides.

"I remember this", she whispered clenching her fist.

The sky that night had no warmth.

It was not merely the absence of the sun, nor the thick, choking smoke that coiled from the ruins of her home like serpents of ash. It was not just the way the fires painted the night in hellish hues, turning the world into a bleeding wound of ember and shadow.

It was the stars.

They hung there, distant and unmoved, their cold light a mockery of mercy. They watched—always watching—as the monster carved its way through flesh and stone, as screams rose and fell like a dying chorus.

Their glow did not comfort; it only made the corpses gleam faintly, their glassy eyes reflecting back the heavens that had abandoned them.

Little Alira stumbled forward, her small feet slipping in the gore that slickened the cobblestones of the courtyard. Her slippers, once soft, embroidered with delicate silver thread, were now soaked through, the fabric clinging to her skin with every step.

Her dress, white as fresh snowfall only hours before, was now a ruin of soot and crimson, the lace torn by desperate fingers as she crawled through the wreckage.

Her hair, the pale silver of moonlight, stuck to her face in damp tangles, her tears carving clean streaks through the grime on her cheeks. She opened her mouth and screamed as another explosion shattered the night, the sound raw, animal, but no answer came.

No hand reached for her.

No arms gathered her close, no heartbeat thrummed against her ear to tell her she was safe.

No voice, soft and sweet as a lullaby, murmured, "It’s alright now, baby. Mama’s here."

Instead.

She found her father. At the center of all this wreckage.

He lay where he had fallen, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, like puppets whose strings had been severed mid-dance.

Her father’s sword, the one he had sworn would never break, lay in pieces beside him, its steel shattered as if the gods themselves had struck it down.

His eyes were still open, wide with something worse than pain. A grief so vast it had frozen him in his final moment, his gaze locked onto something, someone, yet just out of reach. His arm was outstretched, fingers curled as if he could still grasp them, still pull them back from the edge of death.

Alira stood there, small and trembling, the last living thing in a graveyard of memory. The stars said nothing. The wind carried only the scent of blood and burning.

And the night stretched on, endless and cold.

Alira froze.

The world dissolved into streaks of color and sound—smoke curling, embers drifting, the metallic tang of blood thick in the air, all of it smearing together as if the very fabric of reality had been torn.

"NOOOOOO!.."

The scream ripped from her throat, ragged and guttural, a sound so raw it scraped her lungs bloody. She lurched forward, legs buckling beneath her, hands scrambling over broken stone and slick earth as she threw herself toward her father.

Her small body collided with his, arms wrapping around his chest in a desperate, crushing embrace.

But he did not catch her.

The arms that had once swung her into the air, that had tucked her into bed with playful growls, that had squeezed her tight until she squirmed and giggled—now lay stiff and unyielding.

The warmth that had always radiated from him, the scent of leather and steel and the faintest hint of pipe smoke were gone. Replaced by cold, unfeeling stillness.

"Papa, stop playing this silly game!" Her voice was shrill, trembling, fingers clutching at his tunic. "It’s not funny anymore! Papa, please!!"

She pressed her face against his chest, waiting for the rumble of his laughter, for the way his chest would shake when he pretended to be a bear, for the kiss he’d press to the top of her head. But there was nothing.

Only silence. Only the terrible, hollow absence of a heartbeat.

Then suddenly her body jerked upright, a spark of frantic hope flaring in her chest.

"Mama—!"

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