As Lusian's darkness enveloped him and his own, concealing them as they moved toward the safe zones of the Mother Tree, the valley sank into a silent chaos.
The retreat was not an organized maneuver; it was the instinctive flight of ten thousand souls who had just felt the breath of nonexistence.
No one screamed.No one celebrated surviving.
Inside the command tent, the atmosphere was suffocating. There were no maps left on the table—only white ash seeping through the seams, settling in thin layers, a constant reminder of what remained of Aurelius.
"It's suicide!" Kael slammed his fist against the table, but did not do it again. "My men don't fear death, Amon."He paused—briefly. Involuntarily."But what happened today… that wasn't dying. That was being erased."
Five seconds in which they had not known who they were.
Amon, standing in the shadows with his face concealed, did not move. His aura was cold, stripped of the doctrinal warmth he usually projected.
"It was a necessary purification," he replied. "Aurelius was the conduit. Sacrifice is the language of the gods."
"Sacrifice?" the Archmage of the Lithaar interjected, his stone body vibrating with a low note of alarm. "The Lithaar joined to restore Order, not to witness the collapse of causality itself.That explosion… that signal… has drawn the attention of planes that should remain sealed.Your gods are not winning a war, Amon. They are shattering the crystal in which we all live."
For a moment, the silence weighed more than any external threat.
"The alliance stands," Amon declared.
The tent's light flickered—not from wind, but from barely restrained intent.
No one answered.
The silence that followed was not that of allies.
It was the silence of prisoners who had understood the price of obedience.
A thin layer of ash settled over the maps, covering routes that no longer made sense.
"Because if you withdraw now," Amon continued, "the Eye closing in the sky will turn to your cities first."
No one replied.
High above the valley, far from the smoke, the ash, and the voices broken by fear, the hidden paths of the Great Mountain filled once more with footsteps.
Lusian walked at the front, Adela still clutching his tunic as though letting go would allow the world to break again. Behind them, the herbivores and the demi-human clans ascended in reverent silence.
They no longer looked at Lusian with simple respect.
They looked at him with the sacred dread reserved for a volcano that, for incomprehensible reasons, had chosen not to erupt.
Thunder moved at his side, hooves striking sparks from the cold stone, his black coat still steaming with contained energy. Aureus, the Ice Tiger, brought up the rear, his gaze fixed on the valley, ensuring no shadow followed.
"Lusian-sama…" Adela whispered, breaking the wind's murmur."Is that thing without a body really coming?"
Lusian paused for a moment and looked back. From that height, the camp of the ten thousand was nothing more than a fading patch of light, flickering like an ember on the verge of dying out.
"It's already here, Adela," he said at last."It's just waiting for the world to grow still enough… to fully enter."
The group continued their ascent.
For a moment, Zarhama offered them its peace: the scent of ancient pine, the murmur of crystal water, and the protective presence of the Mother Tree waiting at the summit like a silent beacon.
They had won a battle.
But from the way Lusian clenched his fist, even Adela understood the truth:
The war had just become personal.Not between kingdoms—
But between Lusian…and the void that existed beyond them.
Lusian tightened his fist.
The darkness answered with a deep pulse, as if something—far away—had opened its eyes.
The world, meanwhile, continued.
Air returned to weigh upon his chest. Sounds came back one by one, and the pulse of his own body overpowered the impossible echo still trembling in his veins. Lusian exhaled slowly, letting the tension dissolve—not from victory, but from exhaustion.
Sleep claimed him without ceremony.
And when time began to move again—
Dawn atop the mountain did not bring light, but a bluish gray filtering through the leaves of the Mother Tree—muted, heavy, as if the day itself hesitated to be born.
At the center of Lusian's dream, the voice returned like a caress of black silk—soft and cruel, cold as the space between galaxies.
"Why hold together what is already broken, Lusian?" it whispered."Stars extinguish themselves. Gods devour one another.You are not this world's warrior… you are its conclusion.Let them fall. Open the door.Return to Me."
Lusian's eyes snapped open, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of a sword that was not there. Cold sweat traced the back of his neck, and the echo of that voice still vibrated in his bones like an unrelenting resonance.
But it was not the Void he found upon waking.
"He's awake! Lusian-sama is awake!"
Adela's shout—mere inches from his ear—shattered any lingering dark mysticism with brutal efficiency.
Lusian blinked, trying to focus.
He was not alone.
His room in the refuge—a hollow carved between the colossal roots of the Mother Tree—seemed to have transformed into the headquarters of every woman on the mountain.
Adela was practically on top of him, seated at the edge of the bed, holding a bowl of steaming broth, her expression teetering dangerously between manic joy and contained reproach. At her side, Selvryn, leader of the dark elves, watched him from a corner with a critical gaze, hands still trembling slightly, seated cross-legged.
Near the opening that served as a window, Emily and Isabella whispered intensely, analyzing Lusian's wounds and measuring the density of his mana as if he were a phenomenon beyond mortality.
Even Thunder—who, technically, should not have fit through the doorway—had his electric head poking inside, snorting sparks that lightly scorched the living-fiber rug.
Elizabeth, seated at the head of the bed, did not stop watching him. Her eyes still held tears that refused to fall.
And Kara, fists clenched, rage coiled through her shoulders, looked like an open wound that would not close. The gods had used her to find Lusian—no doubt why they had not withdrawn her divine blessing.
"What… what are you all doing here?" Lusian managed, his voice hoarse.
"Taking care of you, obviously!" Adela shot back, shoving a spoonful of broth into his mouth before he could protest. "You fainted like a tragic maiden, Lusian-sama. I nearly had a heart attack!"
Selvryn stepped closer and pressed a hand to his forehead.
"You're pale," she stated, not removing it. "Too pale."
Elizabeth said nothing.
She simply embraced Lusian, as though an eternity had passed since she had last seen him.
He returned the embrace carefully, still weak, leaning slightly to whisper against her ear:
"Easy."
"What happened to you? What was all that?" she asked, her cold fingers brushing his face. "What is happening to you? Tell me."
Lusian answered without looking away, overwhelmed.
"I don't know. There's something behind what Kheris left me."
The voice of the darkness had promised him eternal silence, rest, the end of all burden.
But here—surrounded by shouting, vegetable broth, intense stares, and the persistent scent of ozone from a Level 100 steed—the "end of the world" felt absurdly distant.
It was absolute chaos.It was loud.It was irritating.
And, to his misfortune… it was exactly what was keeping him alive.
"But whatever it is…" Lusian murmured,"I'll master it."
The women drew closer, almost at once, as if each claimed a piece of him—not with words, but with presence, in a way both silent and undeniable.
"You're not alone!" Adela insisted, pushing another spoonful to his lips. "We'll always be by your side, no matter what!"
Aureus, the tiger, lay stretched across the entrance, exhaling a cold breath that spilled into the room and calmed the air.
Lusian sighed and closed his eyes.
The whisper of darkness was still there—patient, waiting at the back of his mind.
But the sound of Adela arguing with Selvryn was, fortunately…
much louder.