After Rejection, she crawled to my feet for forgiveness

Chapter 87

Rain lashed down in lashing sheets, cold pitiless rain that turned Valkoria's streets into streams of mud and hopelessness. The city was in ruins, its wet pavement-smooth streets cracked and broken, its empty markets suspended in haze. Rot and smoke hung in the air with the wet chill seeping to bone. Lightning crackled the sky, its cutting light illuminating the ruins of buildings, their windows boarded and broken, their walls spray-painted with desperate pleas. The Grand Heavens, Valkoria's emblem of excess, stood defiant on a hill, its white stone wall glowing softly through the storm, its spires reaching toward the clouds. But even its excess could not be spared the city's devastation, the rain searing its walls like tears.

Norman plodded through the alleys, a lone figure bundled in a tattered coat, the hood pulled low over his face to shield it. His boots splashed puddles, wetting his legs, but he continued on, his broad body hunched against the wind. His black hair, graying at th