Chapter 62 — The Last Seed Keeper

The smell of burning came before the sight of it—a strong, sickly smell, completely different from the smell of old volcanic ash that Khe Mien had become accustomed to during her many months of crossing Dong Tro, for this had the harsh sweetness of burning wood and something else she didn't want to name as it began to cling to her throat half a mile before they arrived.

The settlement appeared over a gentle slope, and the sight made the group pause in silence—what had once been a cluster of rammed earth and wood houses, once capable of housing perhaps a few hundred people, was now only blackened skeletons, a few walls still standing but hollow like broken teeth in the jaws of the dead land. The aqueducts, elaborately dug trenches to collect dew and rare rain, had been ripped open, dirt and rocks filling what had once been careful channels.

"Fifteen years," Bach Lam said softly, repeating what the refugee woman had told her at the Green Arch gate a few days ago. "Fifteen years to build, and less than a night to destroy."

Diem Quynh, walking next to Khe Mien, raised her hand to cover her mouth as they got closer, her eyes watering at a scene that no report, no matter how detailed, could fully prepare someone who had never witnessed it firsthand.

Ngan The Binh, taking the lead out of habit, raised his hand to stop, his eyes scanning the area with the caution of someone who has learned never to trust silence until he has verified it for himself. "There's no sign of anyone still here," he said after a moment of observation. "But there's also no sign of anyone leaving completely."

Kien, standing nearby, pointed toward one of the still standing walls, where a thin stream of smoke still rose from the pile of coal below. “Someone's still got the fire going,” he said, his voice tense.

They entered the settlement cautiously, and it was Bach Lam who first heard the sound — a weak, dry cough, coming from inside one of the few structures that still had a roof, an old warehouse used to store food that the fire seemed to have not yet fully spread.

Inside, amid torn sacks and partially scorched wooden crates, about twenty people were huddled together—mostly old people and children, a few adults with wounds bandaged makeshiftly with torn cloth. At the head of the group, a middle-aged woman with prematurely gray hair and a face covered in ash, immediately stepped forward to block the rest when she saw a stranger appear at the door, her hand clutching a sharp wooden stick as her only remaining weapon.

“We have nothing more to steal,” she said, her voice hoarse but not afraid. "If you come to take the rest, take it, but leave these children alone."

"We didn't come to rob," Khe Mien said immediately, raising her hands to show she was unarmed, her voice trying to stay calm even though her heart was aching at the scene before her. "We came from the Green Dome, carrying medicine and supplies. A woman with a small child reached us a few days ago, telling us what happened here."

The woman looked at her for a long moment, her eyes examining every detail of Khe Mien's face as if trying to determine whether this was another elaborate lie in a world that had taught her to trust no one. Finally, the wooden stick in her hand lowered, though not completely released.

"Trach Thi Hoa," she said, briefly introducing herself. "I'm the oldest person left to look after those who weren't strong enough to escape in time that night." She glanced over her shoulder at the people huddled behind her. "We hid in the grain cellar when Binh Diem arrived. They didn't search carefully here — perhaps because they thought there was nothing worth taking in an almost empty warehouse."

Diem Quynh knelt down right next to an old man with an open wound on his arm, quickly opened the medical kit box to begin treating the wound with the expertise she had practiced throughout the journey through Dong Tro. "This wound is slightly infected," she said, without raising her head. "But it's not too late. You need clean water to wash before applying the bandage."

Kien immediately took one of the special bottles of filtered water Khe Mien's father had just given her before leaving, bringing it to Diem Quynh without being asked, a quickness that he had not had just a few months ago.

While Diem Quynh and Kien began tending to the wounded, Khe Mien sat down next to Trach Thi Hoa, trying to remember every detail she told her — not out of curiosity, but because she understood that what she witnessed could be important evidence to bring back to the Council, so that the other Arches could not continue to pretend that these were just exaggerated rumors.

"They arrived at dawn," Trach Thi Hoa said, her voice even, as if she had retold this story so many times in her head that it no longer made her tremble, only a deep fatigue remained. "No warning, no negotiation. One of their commanders—I don't know his name, but they call him general—stood outside the gate and announced that we had betrayed the treaty with Salt Dome by receiving supplies from Sand Dome. Then they started burning."

"What does he look like?" Bach Lam asked, having sat down nearby, his voice carrying the caution of someone who wanted to identify a specific enemy instead of a vague fear.

"Tall, wearing black leather armor with corrugated metal trim — symbol of the Salt Dome," Trach Thi Hoa replied, closing her eyes for a moment as if trying to banish the image. "His voice was as cold as stone, never raising it even once, even when ordering the food warehouse to be burned in front of the crying children. His people called him Kich Ba Hoanh."

That name made Khe Mien feel a chill run down her spine, not because she had heard it before, but because she had never heard it — a completely new name, a new face of the spreading war, no longer just the distant Confucius in his palace of power, but a concrete, cold and disciplined hand of execution.

"Did he say anything else?" Khe Mien continued asking, trying to keep her voice calm even though inside she was remembering every detail like it was carved in stone.

"He said this is just the beginning," Trach Thi Hoa replied, her voice low. "That any other settlement that dared to 'betray the order' would meet the same fate. And he mentioned another name—Upper Arch—as if quoting someone more powerful than Confucius."

Bach Lam and Khe Mien exchanged a heavy look, both realizing the same thing: if Trach Thi Hoa's words were correct, then this attack was not simply a local act of retribution by an angry warlord, but could have been part of something larger, coordinated or at least sanctioned from the highest center of power in the post-Great Change world.

"We will take you and the injured to a safer place," Khe Mien said, turning to look at the group of people huddled in the warehouse. "The Sand Dome isn't too far away, and they've started accepting other refugees from the area."

“We don't want to leave this place,” another middle-aged man said, his voice filled with stubbornness mixed with desperation. "This is our home. Our ancestors built it from the ashes of the Great Cataclysm."

“I understand,” Khe Mien said, and she really understood, remembering how she felt when she first left the Green Dome, the fear of losing the only place she had ever known. "But staying here now, with no clean water, no food, no protective wall, means you won't live long enough to rebuild it. Let us help you survive first, then you can decide to return when you feel safe."

Trach Thi Hoa looked at Khe Mien for a long time, then turned to look at the rest of her group, a silent conversation taking place through the eyes between people who had endured too much together to need more words. Finally, she nodded.

“We will go,” she said. "But we will return, one day. This land is still ours, no matter how many times ash covers it."

That afternoon, as the group began preparing the wounded and the elderly to move slowly toward the Sand Dome — much closer than back to the Green Dome — Ngan The Binh pulled Bach Lam to a corner, his voice dropping to a wary whisper.

"I found new tracks on the southern edge of the settlement," he said. "Footprints, fresh, no more than a day old. At least six people, moving in an organized manner, in military formation."

"They can come back," Bach Lam said, not a question but a heavy confirmation.

“I think we need to leave here before dark,” Ngan The Binh replied, his eyes scanning the scorched walls as if calculating distance and time in his head. "And I think, this time, we're not lucky enough to avoid meeting them completely on the way back."

Those words hung in the air like the smoke still rising from the ashes around them, a warning that no one in the group dared to take lightly, as they hurried to help the survivors gather what little was left and began the journey away from the land that had been home fifteen years in the making, now only a silent testament to what war could do in a single night.