The tremor from the night before had changed the rules of the Great Emerald Forest.
At dawn, the trail of destruction was undeniable. They advanced through a trench of splintered ancient trees and churned earth. Whatever awaited in the distance wasn't just immense; it was displacing the most lethal predators from their territory, pushing them toward the group.
The tense silence of the forest broke with a dry crack.
Varkas raised a fist, stopping the group instantly. From among the dark bushes, the shadows seemed to come alive. They were Blood Wolves. Imposing beasts a meter and a half tall and almost three meters long. Their fur was jet black that absorbed the little light of the forest, and their muzzles stood out with an intense crimson color, as if permanently stained with fresh blood. Their eyes shone like rubies in the twilight.
There were five, moving with chilling coordination, surrounding them in absolute silence.
"Formation," said Aria. The air around her began to swirl slightly as she slid an arrow onto her bowstring.
Suddenly, the undergrowth parted before them. The Alpha Wolf emerged. It was a monstrosity two meters tall and four meters long. It planted itself on a rock, raised its crimson muzzle, and unleashed a deafening howl that made the tree leaves vibrate.
The howl wasn't just a call to kill; it was an amplifier. The eyes of the five wolves blazed with more intensity, their muscles swelled beneath the black fur, and the forest exploded.
For Darian, the combat instantly became a blurry whirlwind. The noise was a solid wall of growls, cracking wood, and tearing flesh. From the corner of his eye, he barely managed to catch how earth climbed up Varkas's arm, turning it into a battering ram of living rock that intercepted crimson jaws and shattered a skull against the ground. On the opposite side, a green and silver blur told him Aria was leaping propelled by wind, firing projectiles that whistled before piercing flesh.
But Darian's peripheral vision was abruptly interrupted. A wolf was lunging straight at his chest.
The victory from the night before had blinded him. Instead of drawing his steel, Darian raised his bare hand, trying to force open his node gates in the middle of the panic to summon wind. But the magic didn't respond. The pressure of the moment blocked him completely.
The burning jaws closed centimeters from his face, stopping dead when an arrow pierced the animal's throat, splashing Darian's face with warm blood and throwing the body to the side.
"Use the damn sword, Darian!" the archer shouted at him from somewhere to his right.
He barely had time to react. A second black mass charged him from the undergrowth, hitting him with such force that it knocked the air from his lungs and threw him onto his back. The animal tried to bite his face, but a boot covered in solid rock drove into the beast's flank, sending it flying against a trunk.
The last of the common wolves, seeing the opening, leaped straight for the young man's throat.
Darian grabbed his hilt. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, searching for the flow within.
Flow Perception.
Absolute chaos froze. The wolf's roar distorted into a deep, heavy echo. Darian saw the line of force and the animal's trajectory floating above him. He took a clean, precise lateral step and drew in a flash of silver. The blade cut deep, splitting the beast's ribs and piercing its heart before the world accelerated again and the corpse collapsed.
The Alpha, covered in the blood of its shattered pack, halted its advance. Its muzzle wrinkled in a growl loaded with hatred. It saw Varkas and Aria ready to finish it off, but fixed its ruby eyes on Darian, recognizing him as the weak link. With a desperate impulse, the gigantic beast lunged at the young man in a suicidal attempt to take a life with it.
Varkas's heavy sword descended like a lightning bolt, cutting the air centimeters from the Alpha and opening a furrow in the earth that broke the monster's balance. The wolf skidded, let out a howl of impotent fury, spun on its hind legs, and fled toward the darkness of the thickets at vertiginous speed.
Darian let out a breath, his eyes irritated and a sharp ringing drilling through his ears from the use of his power.
Aria lowered her bow, but without relaxing her stance.
"If we let it escape," she said with a tense voice, "it will seek out lone wolves, form an even larger pack, and come back for us. We have to kill it."
Varkas nodded, shaking the blood from his blade as the rock on his arm crumbled to dust.
"It won't go far." The warrior raised his muzzle, sniffing the humid air. "I smell the trail of its fear. Its footsteps are heavy and break branches. I'll go by land. Aria, to the trees."
The hunt lasted almost an hour, penetrating deeper into the thickets, until the dense forest ended abruptly against the base of a steep natural rock wall.
The Alpha Wolf had reached a dead end, cornered and panting. Upon seeing them, its muscles swelled and its eyes blazed with homicidal desperation. It chose the largest enemy and launched itself straight at Varkas.
The giant didn't flinch. He planted his feet firmly on the stone and, with a guttural grunt, made the earth around him rise, anchoring his heavy boots to the ground like roots of living rock. The impact of the enormous beast crashing against him sounded like the brutal blow of a battering ram against a castle wall. Varkas grunted with effort, but held the charge like an immovable wall.
That containment was all they needed. From an upper branch, Aria channeled her magic. An emerald wind spiral surrounded the tip of her arrow. She fired. The projectile cut the air with a sharp whistle and embedded itself deep in the Alpha's shoulder, making it howl in pain and loosen its push.
That was Darian's moment.
With an explosion of speed, the young man slid along the wolf's unprotected flank. He gripped his sword with both hands and plunged it to the hilt into the enormous beast's thick neck. The Alpha let out one last bloody gurgle, its legs gave way, and it collapsed heavy and lifeless upon the rock.
Silence returned at once, broken only by the ragged breathing of the three. Darian yanked his sword free, letting the dark blood stain the stone. Varkas approached, dissolving the rock binding from his legs, and kicked the monster's muzzle to confirm the kill.
"Good cut, pup," the giant growled, pulling a curved skinning knife from his belt. "Now, to work before the smell calls the scavengers. Help me flip it over."
There was no time to rest or celebrate. The reality of survival took over. Skinning a four-meter beast was dirty, exhausting work, plunging hands into warm flesh to separate the hide without damaging it. The jet black fur of that creature was an extremely rare material, rich in magical particles that granted it the capacity to absorb heavy impacts and enormous magical resistance. When they returned to the city, it would be perfect for crafting a cloak and forging some parts of a high-level light armor for Aria.
After packing the heavy, bloodied hide, they moved away from the slaughter site and stopped for a few minutes beside a stream to clean their steel and wash the sweat from their faces.
Darian sat on a flat rock, away from the group. His blood boiled, but not from the fight, from his own clumsiness. He clenched his fists until his nails dug into his palms.
Why is it so hard for me? he thought, feeling a knot of pure rage in his throat. Why can't I fight properly? Why is it so difficult to wield the sword and use magic at the same time? What am I missing, damn it? I'm not just putting myself at risk, I'm forcing Aria and Varkas to defend me because I'm too weak. Is this what I wanted to be an adventurer for? This can't happen again. I have to control my magic no matter what.
He needed to redeem himself. He needed to prove that his progress from the night before hadn't been a stroke of luck.
He extended his hand over the stream. He channeled his mana with a single intention: to summon the cold current of wind, clean and controlled, exactly as he had done before.
But his mind was too murky, intoxicated by frustration. Perfect control fractured. Without his command, in the midst of the chaos of his nodes, the scorching heat of fire broke loose and slipped into the same channel as the wind. Both elements collided violently just before leaving his body.
FWOOM!
The bluish flash was blinding, but the physical impact was devastating. A brutal shockwave burst outward from his hand. Darian was thrown through the air like a ragdoll, flying several meters before slamming his back against a solid rock.
The world fell into sepulchral silence, replaced by a piercing ringing that drilled through his eardrums. The acrid smell of scorched earth and burned hair flooded his nostrils. Darian opened his eyes, coughing ash. He felt an agonizing pressure in his chest, as if invisible claws had ripped all the mana from him at once, leaving his internal channels scraped and hollow.
Aria dropped the water skin instantly. In two seconds she was on her knees beside him, grabbing him by the straps of his leather breastplate.
"Look at me!" she demanded, her voice trembling with a mix of rage and genuine fear. "You almost blew your own arm off. If you force a clash like that in your nodes again, you'll bleed out from the inside and no potion will save you. Don't make me carry you back dead. Do you hear me?"
Darian nodded slowly, jaw clenched, still processing the painful void inside him and the smoking crater he had left on the stream bank.
Without wasting more time, they repacked their gear and resumed the march with urgency. Barely two hours later, the density of the trees began to thin.
The Great Emerald Forest ended, giving way to a vast expanse of gray stone and dry earth. They had reached their destination. Less than a kilometer away stood Amber Refuge.
The outer walls of the settlement were cracked, hastily patched with thick logs. The typical murmur of a trading town was absent; the air was heavy, laden with a silent panic. On the palisades, the guards weren't watching the forest. They were paralyzed, their faces pale as wax, gripping their spears while staring in terror toward the eastern horizon.
Darian understood why the moment he looked up.
Behind the town, a colossal wound split the earth: Telesto Canyon. A crack kilometers wide that seemed to have no bottom, from which a dense reddish mist emanated.
Before they could take a step toward the town gates, the entire sky darkened.
It wasn't clouds. It was a massive shadow that devoured the sunlight.
A roar that made Darian's bones vibrate swept the plain. From inside the immense canyon, a claw the size of a watchtower gripped the edge of the crack. The stone gave way and crumbled under its astronomical weight.
Slowly, the Rock Dragon dragged itself out of the abyss. It was a living mountain. Its body was covered in irregular tectonic plates that gleamed with veins of burning magma in the cracks. Every time it exhaled, a cloud of volcanic ash scorched the air around it.
Varkas took a step back by pure instinct, his eyes wide. Aria slowly lowered her bow; one arrow was less than a needle against something of that magnitude.
But the stone beast wasn't looking at the insignificant town of Amber Refuge. It was looking up.
The clouds above them began to spin in a violent whirlpool. A second roar, sharp and cutting like a hurricane of blades, split the sky in two.
The guardian had arrived.
The Wind Dragon dove in a steep descent. It was more slender than its earthly enemy, covered in white and emerald scales, with membranous wings so immense that each beat generated gusts capable of uprooting trees.
The frontal clash of the two titans made Darian fall to his knees from the shockwave alone.
The Wind Dragon enveloped the rock beast in a tornado of pressurized air, trying to shear through its armor. The Rock Dragon responded by spewing a torrent of pure magma that lit the sky orange and melted the stone around it.
They locked together in a divine-scale carnage. Their colossal bodies rolled, crushing the plain, dangerously close to the edge of Telesto Canyon. In a desperate move, the Rock Dragon managed to catch its opponent's left wing between its scorching jaws, but the combined weight threw off the balance.
With a crack that seemed to break the world itself, the edge of the precipice gave way.
Both titans fell entangled into the abyss, disappearing into the thick reddish mist. Seconds later, a titanic impact shook the earth from the depths, confirming that the sky beast and the earth beast were still tearing each other apart down below.
Darian swallowed and rose slowly to his feet, feeling his own heartbeat hammering in his ears. He approached the edge of the plain, looking toward the immense smoking crack.
Two forces of nature were waging an apocalyptic war.
But as the ground beneath his boots trembled again with a new and terrifying roar rising from the darkness of the mist, Darian gripped his sword's hilt. The immense abyss opened before his feet like hungry jaws, and the crushing pressure of the place froze his blood.
They were going to have to descend into hell itself.