Dreados and Katos plummeted through the earth like warheads, locked together in violent descent. Dreados's grip never loosened from the Lycan's face, his body tense with fury. Soil and stone split around them in molten streaks.
Far above, Omfry had just snapped a Lycan's neck when he felt it—an immense drop in pressure, a pulse of Bravo that made his bones rattle. His eyes widened.
"Dreados, you bastard."
He vanished.
Outside the fortress, Omfry erupted into the sky, leaping with precision and grace. His feet slammed against the air with brutal rhythm. The technique—Thunder Stride. A skill only wielded by the elite. With it, Omfry ran across the sky itself, mimicking flight at Mach 20.
He blurred through the storm, wind peeling from his skin, his focus absolute.
How could you lose your cool like this, Dreados? he thought. You have people to protect. Are you trying to kill them all?
Time froze in Omfry's eyes as he caught sight of his falling team.
He descended like a bullet.
In a single fluid motion, he touched each of them—Beily, then the unconscious brothers in his arms, Anuel and Ziraiah, one by one—each fortified with Fortis Bravo. Jeriana was last. Omfry scooped her into his arms, infused her with Bravo, and leapt again, high into the sky.
And then—
Dreados slammed Katos into the earth.
The impact was cataclysmic.
A crater—nine kilometers wide—was born in a breath.
When time resumed, the city screamed.
The ground buckled, trembled, then shattered. Entire districts folded inward. Cracks raced across the city like lightning. Towers snapped like twigs. Debris was whipped through the air faster than sound. People vanished beneath stone. Screams echoed. Then silence.
Shockwaves ripped through the ruin. Jeriana's team was hurled like paper, debris raining on them faster than reflexes could keep up.
Omfry's intervention saved them.
Even for the strongest members, it was not enough to resist the blast—it was enough to survive it.
Stone and steel crashed around them.
The earth twisted.
Beily twisted mid-air, locking his legs toward the collapsing abyss. He activated his Seed.
A massive blue disk, thirty meters wide, formed under his feet.
He hit it like a hammer, stopping instantly. One by one, the others slammed into it behind him.
Anuel landed with grace, still holding Ziraiah in her arms. She looked down with a smile.
"Hey. You alright?"
Ziraiah, panting, eyes wide, whispered, "I thought… I was gonna die."
Still in Beily's arm, Eryndor blinked into the chaos. He adjusted his glasses, breath shallow.
It seems… we have once again danced upon the knife's edge of oblivion.
Marie rolled to her feet, bruised and coughing. "Thanks, Beily. We owe you one."
Beily cracked a grin. "Don't mention it."
High in the air, Omfry hovered, Jeriana clinging to his neck. His legs pounded the air beneath him, one after another—Thunder Stride keeping him aloft.
Jeriana, dazed, looked down. "What… just happened?"
Omfry's jaw clenched. "Dreados happened."
Below, Valerius dry-heaved. Nothing came out.
"I think… I'm all out of vomit."
Anuel's eyes caught something—light flickering beneath the crater. A deeper level.
"Beily—take us down. There's something under us."
Beily nodded. His disk lowered.
They descended through the chasm and into a new world.
---
It was a cave. Massive. Cavernous. Lit only by glowing runes carved into the stone. Symbols etched by hands older than memory.
The ruins below the ruin.
Most who had invaded Beniek had fallen to this floor. Some survived. Others didn't. Blood stained the rocks. Screams echoed again.
From the shadows came new beasts—twisted creatures of horn and scale, of unnatural shape and hunger. They descended upon the survivors without hesitation. Unbounds. Raiders. Ignir's finest.
No one was spared.
Far above, the Spellbounds fell.
The storm had cast even them from the sky.
Maloi crawled through rubble, coughing dust, her eyes wild. She spotted movement.
"My lord!" she cried. She fell beside the King of Ignir, shaking him. "My lord, are you alright?
The King stirred. His brow bloodied. His vision blurred.
Something growled nearby.
A beast lunged.
In one motion, he summoned flame to his blade and cleaved the creature in two. Its blood sprayed across his golden armor.
Maloi gasped. "I… forgive me, I should have seen it—"
"It's alright, Maloi," the King said, stepping past her.
Then he looked up—saw the crater above. The yawning wound in the ceiling.
His eyes widened.
"My daughter… where is she?!"
He ripped a small glass orb from his belt—its arrow spun, then locked.
"She's nearby," he whispered.
Then he roared:
"FIND HER! NOW!"
Soldiers scattered in every direction.
And the King of Ignir whispered to himself, as blood dripped from his crown:
"She's all I have left."
---
The Black March landed hard onto the second floor of the ruin—if it could even be called a floor.
The air was damp and thick with echo. Above them loomed the jagged opening they'd fallen through, now reduced to a distant circle of faint light miles above. The walls of this new depth glowed faintly with pale blue runes, and the massive cavern sprawled outward in every direction like a hollowed planet core.
Gustin lay curled up on Beily's fading disk, his hands covering his head, eyes shut tight. At this rate, he thought bitterly, I'm going to die down here...
The disk vanished.
He dropped to the stone floor with a startled yelp.
Sumshus slowly rotated, gazing around. "This is… some kind of ruin inside the ruin."
Valerius turned his head skyward, jaw slack. "How far did we fall…?"
Ziraiah slowly pivoted, her eyes scanning a moss-covered wall where violet flowers bloomed between the cracks. She narrowed her eyes. Those look familiar…
The arch-armor's HUD pinged: UNKNOWN SPECIES.
And across the stone walls, massive green crystals jutted out in jagged veins—uncut, unrefined, humming faintly with inner light.
Anuel spotted them immediately.
"Hey, Sumshus," she said. "Go grab some of those crystals. Whatever they are—they're probably worth a fortune."
She gently lowered Ziraiah onto the ground and turned to Daiel. "Open a portal. Let him toss them in."
Daiel didn't budge. "Didn't you hear me?" he said. "I need time to recover."
Anuel frowned. "How can you be spent already? You just ported Dreados, Beily, and a few others. You always carry those stamina potions. Where are they?"
Daiel's expression soured.
He slowly turned to Sumshus—eyes narrowing.
Sumshus avoided eye contact, whistling softly.
Anuel raised a brow. "Okay… what happened?"
Daiel turned to Sumshus fully now, arms folded. "Yes, Sumshus. What happened?"
---
The Previous Night.
Daiel stormed through the hideout like a man possessed, tearing through his bags.
"It's a lie," he whispered. "It's a LIE—it's not possible."
Then he froze.
Stared.
His bag was empty.
All of them.
Gone.
Daiel let out a dry laugh, placed a hand over his face… then exploded.
"WHAT SON OF A WHORE TOOK MY STUFF!?"
He rampaged through the hideout, grabbing people by collars.
He reached Beily, grabbed two of his four arms, and shook him. "WHERE. ARE. MY. POTIONS?!"
Beily blinked. "Whoa whoa whoa—hey! Chill! I didn't touch 'em."
"Don't lie to me!"
"I don't need your potions, man! I can fight for hours."
Daiel let go, grumbling. "Did you ask the others?"
Just then Lisa walked past.
Daiel pointed a finger like a loaded weapon.
"HEY! Give me my potions or I'll send you to the damn sea!"
Lisa gave him the flattest look imaginable. "Again with the sea threats? Seriously?"
She walked away. "I don't have your damn potions."
Beily put a hand on Daiel's shoulder. "Her brother just died. Don't push her. Next time you run your mouth at her, I'll break your jaw."
He walked off, then paused.
"Oh—and I think I saw Sumshus with them. He's out in the field."
---
Daiel approached the field—and froze.
A twister towered before him. At least 500 meters high, 200 at the top, narrower at the base. It howled with a sound that drowned thought and scattered dust for miles. Inside, at the eye of the storm was Sumshus.
The wind screamed too loud to shout.
Daiel shielded his face, scowling.
"What the hell is that IDIOT doing?!"
The bottles. They were falling.
He summoned a portal beneath the twister's center. It flared open—then moved and consumed Sumshus entirely.
The boy dropped through it and landed in a heap beside Daiel.
Then—clink clink clink.
Empty potion bottles fell like rain around them.
Daiel stared in silence.
He walked into the portal.
Stepped onto the scorched stone where the twister had been.
Bottles. All shattered. All empty.
His jaw twitched.
"These were… my last potions…" he whispered. "They cost everything I had."
Daiel stood still for a moment, as if mourning a battlefield of fallen soldiers. Wind tugged at his coat. The silence was heavy. Eerie.
Then came the shift.
A twitch at the corner of his eye. A shallow inhale.
He turned.
Walked—no, glided—back through the portal like a man possessed.
Sumshus was still lying on the ground, arms splayed, blinking up at the stars.
Daiel didn't say a word. He opened a new portal.
Above Sumshus's face.
A cork dropped out and hit him square on the nose.
Plok.
"Ah—!"
A second portal opened—this one wider.
And down came the rain.
Clink. Clack. Crash.
Dozens of glass bottles poured from the sky, bouncing off Sumshus's chest, forehead, and knees. Some shattered beside him. One bounced off his foot and rolled away.
"OW! OKAY! Okay! I get it!" he yelled, flailing and trying to crawl away. "I didn't mean to use all of them!"
Daiel knelt beside him—calm, unblinking.
"Do you know how long it takes to gather those ingredients? How many favors I burned? How many trade routes I pulled strings to sneak through Smogthorn embargoes?"
Sumshus opened one eye. "I'll… I'll pay you back?"
Daiel raised a brow.
"Every coin. Every bottle. With interest."
Daiel just kept staring.
Sumshus coughed. "Plus... maybe an apology dinner?"
Nothing.
"Two dinners?"
Still nothing.
"I'll sign a contract—seven dinners. And a back massage."
A slow blink.
Then finally, Daiel rose, dusted off his coat, and walked away without another word.
Sumshus exhaled deeply, lying flat against the dirt.
"…I should've used fewer bottles."
A final cork rolled by his ear and stopped beside his head.
Sumshus stared at it, sighed, and closed his eyes.
Back in the present—
---
Sumshus scratched his head, eyes darting. "I, uh… kind of used them all."
Anuel sighed. "Guess we're stuck waiting for your energy to come back the old-fashioned way."
Daiel crossed his arms, staring daggers at Sumshus. "No. Anuel... I don't think we'll have time for that."
From the shadows—they emerged.
Monstrous creatures of strange anatomy and impossible biology. Some hunched low, their bodies no taller than a child. Others were massive, armored, snorting steam through cratered skin. All of them crept forward like predators in a sacred place.
Marie stepped forward, eyes locked on the movement.
"Be on your guard," she said grimly. "These creatures… I feel mana from them."
Sumshus blinked. "Wait—what?!"
But there was no time to think.
Only time to survive.
---
Orian groaned awake beneath a layer of broken stone, coughing dust as blood ran down the side of his face. His breaths came in shallow, ragged bursts. He blinked up at the flickering light above, disoriented.
Slowly, he pushed rubble off his chest, then tried to move his left arm—pain shot up his body. He glanced down.
Broken.
Shattered at the forearm, bent at an unnatural angle.
But worse—his camera.
Crushed. Flattened.
He stared at it for a moment, lips parting. Then he shouted, desperate:
"Omar! Omria!
No answer.
His gaze swept the collapsed chamber—then he saw it.
A hand, limp and pale, jutting from the rubble nearby.
"Omria!"
He rushed over, ignoring the screaming in his ribs. With his good arm, he pulled away stone after stone until her face appeared—dirt-streaked, bloodied, but alive.
He patted her cheek. "Omria! Come on, hey—look at me."
She stirred with a groan, eyes fluttering open.
"Uhh… my head…" She slowly sat up, holding her temple. Her vision swam—but then she looked up.
High above them, hundreds of meters in the air, was a jagged hole—light pouring down from the first floor.
She blinked. "We fell through… that?"
"Yeah," Orian said, still panting. "Something exploded mid-air… blew us straight down. We're lucky we survived."
Omria's eyes dropped to his bloodied arm. "Orian—your arm…"
He followed her gaze, then smiled grimly. "It's fine. Still breathing, right? Some kind of miracle."
"Actually," came a voice from behind.
Omar stepped out of the dust, arms folded.
"You're welcome."
Orian blinked. "Wait… you saved us?"
"I cast a protection barrier before we hit the floor," Omar said casually. "Though… not enough to keep your arm intact."
He looked away, then gestured toward the path ahead.
"Come on. Ola's somewhere up there."
Orian sighed, standing with effort. As they walked, his eyes lingered one last time on the mangled frame of his camera.
"Great. My best lens gone. Just perfect…"
They stepped into a wide hall with enormous green crystals protruding from the walls like luminous thorns. Vitalis shimmered within them—dense, concentrated.
Omria's eyes widened. "Have you ever seen crystals like these?"
She touched one, then reached into her pouch. "They're rich with Vitalis." She chipped a few small shards and tucked them into her bag.
Orian was about to respond—when a gust of wind howled above them.
They looked up.
Through the ruin's massive ceiling wound—formed by Dreados's fury—Omfry descended like a falling comet. Jeriana was cradled in his arms.
As they plummeted, Omfry kicked against the very air itself. Thunder stride activated. His legs blurred, and with a powerful burst, he stopped their descent—landing gracefully at the edge of a massive crater on the second floor.
Dust curled around his boots as he straightened.
At the center of the crater, two figures stood locked in place.
Dreados knelt atop Katos, one hand gripping the Lycan's skull, pressing it deep into the earth.
From afar, Omfry and Jeriana watched in silence.
Dreados spoke—voice low, not for anyone else but the monster beneath him.
"You don't even remember me, do you?" he said quietly. "Just one of many. Another child broken and discarded."
He leaned closer, eyes lit with a strange calm.
"But I should thank you, really. You're the one who made me. Everything I am… everything I became… began with you."
He pulled back, gazing up at the fractured sky.
"What was it you said that night?" he asked aloud, as if recalling a memory etched into his bones.
"Ah… yes. 'To become a man, a boy must endure character development.'"
His eyes dropped back down, cold and still.
"So tell me, Katos."
He pressed harder—cracks forming beneath the Lycan's skull.
"How does it feel… knowing you are the author of your own destruction?"
To Be Continued...