Moonlight - Miya x Alucard (Completed)

Chapter 27

It had been so long since she felt the presence of her sister.

However, as she was wandering around the damp part of the Shadow Swamp, her sense started to jingle like a bell. Being an experienced Dark Elf herself, it wasn't that hard for Karina to identify the dark magic in the air. After tracing the smell of the dark magic for quite a time, she was finally certain.

It was abyssal magic.

The one you were only supposed to find in the Crack of the Abyss, and the close area surrounding it. To say that it's possible for abyssal magic to exist in the Shadow Swamp is also a plausible argument, but it should never be this strong. If the air could carry this much abyssal magic, Shadow Swamp would've been no different than the Crack of the Abyss.

"Please spare me!" A cry could be heard from the distance. It made Karina halted, and she squinted her eyes to see clearer in the misty surrounding. Again, another cry echoed. "I can be your slave, but please don't turn me into a Dark Elf!" It was a female, Karina thought. Such cries are no strange thing to be heard in the swamp. Ever since the Purifying Massacre that happened a few years back, Dark Elves have become a monster tainted by the Abyss.

The massacre was led by sorcerers and wizards living in Moniyan. As the threat of the Abyss started to spread beyond the Barren Lands, anxiety was triggered among the civillians of Moniyan Kingdom. At first, curfew was set to raise safety, but even that wasn't enough. After their reports of seeing strange things in their homelands were ignored completely by the government, they began a revolt so they will be heard.

The revolt gradually became worse in a short span of time, which forces the King of Moniyan to drive an action. He called his best magicians and asked for their solution. It was sooner or later then that they came up of massacring these monsters from where they came. They called this movement as Purifying Massacre, as the purpose is to 'purify' the darkness spreading across their land by spilling blood themselves.

The Shadow Swamp became their first target. Karina, who was roaming the Barren Lands to find Selena, only find out when she returned a few months later. The Shadow Swamp that used to have houses and buildings made by the Dark Elves themselves; all were destroyed. The swamp trees were set ablaze, covering the entire forest with black smoke. By the time Karina returned, the swamp became more silent than it used to be. Not even screams nor cries could be heard anymore.

It was also the moment when distant whispers could be heard. It confuses Karina at first; before she remembered that she is an elf. Elves are likely to haunt the place they died, and there seems to be no way to help them go to the afterlife. The fact that she could hear a lot of whispers everywhere she went...it broke her heart into pieces. More than half of her clan was slaughtered in the massacre.

She only managed to find several survivors a few days later. They were hiding, or rather hidden; by their late family members. They were shaking and cowering in fear when she found them, unable to speak until they noticed Karina's elven ears or until Karina told them about her identity. The place where she was taught to become an assassin was also nowhere to be found, along with her fellow Dark Elf assassins.

After an investigation around the swamp, she finally decided to stay and help the other elves. There are times when she left to explore the Barren Lands, but she will return as fast as possible soon after. She does not want another carnage to happen while she was away.

However, ever since then, she felt a change in her fellow elves. Despite being consumed by shadow, Dark Elves weren't supposed to be hostile. But after the traumatic event, the elves began to start their own revolt. Suddenly, reports of Dark Elves attacking other elven village reached her. It was a total shock to her, in which she herself came to witness it.