Chapter 70: The Weight of Blood

Dedari scanned his surroundings with a heavy heart, his mind lingering on the scene from earlier, just before the attack on Zande. The memory of the old woman haunted him. He didn’t know her well, but she had often stared at Zande during their concerts, her gaze intense and unsettling. This time, however, Dedari had seen her speaking with a young boy, barely seventeen, before vanishing into thin air. Who was that boy? And what connection did the old woman have to their kind? His mind drifted, recalling another woman from long ago, the one who had saved them during the massacre of their race. It was a memory etched deeply into his soul. Amid the chaos of that day, while the marauders had ruthlessly slaughtered their people, a peasant woman had escaped unnoticed. Unlike the adults of their kind, who were immobilized by the sun’s deadly rays, the children were not as severely affected. Dedari, though only six years old, had hidden the five younger children from the carnage, using every o