A thousand meters beneath the Magma Forge, the song went on, a silver thread weaving through a sea of furnace-dark.

Here, that saintly voice—soft as wind-bells—floated beside a sight from hell, a painting done in ash and fire. Rock walls, bleached gray by sulfur and unending heat, loomed like bones of a dead mountain. A magma lake spread like a blood-red ocean. Its half-cooled black skin cracked with dry-ice snaps. Viscous lava, orange within dark crimson, broke the crust, bubbled up, and geysered. Each spray cooled midair like tears of obsidian—lightless, cold to the eye, and still deadly hot enough to kill on touch.

Oppressive. Rabid. Lethal. Silent, yet never dead. Crushed beneath the Echo of Souls domain, the volcano that powered Lama City and the Nacha Tribe whimpered day after day, year after year, like a chained beast gnawing its own shackle.

Until today. A blonde, blue-eyed trespasser stepped into its nightmare, and her song cut the chain like dawn breaking fog.

Menglan drifted down and touched the magma’s skin. Her clothes had turned to ash before she neared this hell, yet her bare feet kissed the black surface like a dragonfly tapping still water. Heat of thousands of degrees rose like a wall of suns, yet not a hair on her jade skin burned. Ripples slid from her toes, a gentle hand smoothing chaos, and for one breath the molten sea paused.

“The nightmare is gone. She has returned…”

So—rise as you swore, and once more be the strength of Isylia’s people.

Her voice, soft as falling snow, rang in the dark heat. Queen Dreamlan lifted her arm, tilted her wrist, and a drop of blood slid free, bright as a garnet in flame.

Awaken. The instant the drop touched the lake, Menglan closed her eyes. Magic surged from that blood like a storm from a seed, circling outward and raking away the Echo of Souls’ shadow.

As the World Tree’s seed incarnate, an Elf was less flesh than shaped mana, a river wearing a human shape. Unlike humans or the Nacha Tribe, their blood and body were compressed magic, slow-gathered over long ages like resin thickening in pine.

This one drop held a century of her sleep, a lake hidden in a bead. Its total mana outmatched what she could command at once, and her fingers clenched as if gripping a thunderhead.

And still she wasn’t done.

Blood burst again amid the lava’s syrup, red flowers in a black sea. A second drop. A third. Each drop fell like a bell-mallet, and each sent a matching storm of magic across the lake. Menglan’s voice climbed, a skylark riding a gale. Her gold hair whipped like firegrass. Her song tugged every ember in the air, and the magma beneath her rose to a rolling boil.

In the lake’s depths, a power once buried by chaos began to stir, like a giant waking under stone.

At the fifth drop, the ground heaved. Lama City shook like a drum under a hammer. A threshold broke with a crack like splitting ice. Soul Devourer Sormaidon’s domain could no longer smother the rage under the magma. The half-solid crust shattered. Nature’s effortless scythe swept through. The imprisoned power ripped the Echo of Souls above like cloth and surged upward.

In that instant, Menglan’s song and the volcano’s roar braided into one voice, a mountain singing. In Sormaidon’s dragon eyes, for the first time, a flicker of retreat showed like shadow on steel.

It rumbled, a bubbling growl from a deep well. “Futile struggle. You can’t control this force. I—”

Another impact cut it off, a hammer-beat through stone. This time the tremor didn’t come only from the quickened volcano. The Magma Forge itself began to shake, like a sleeping city taking its first breath.

Ancient gears along the walls turned with a groan, like glaciers grinding. Hydraulic pistons coughed steam after a thousand-year winter. Labyrinthine pipes and chambers split from each other, like a puzzle cube taking itself apart. Mechanical arms as vast as Sormaidon’s true body moved with calm grace, lifting, fitting, and reweaving the city’s bones.

At the same time, a voice stuttered through the air, belonging to no soul present, as cold as rain on iron.

[Fuel intake detected—system reboot—Warning: Energy Line #4 damaged. Running self-check… Planning energy routes. Facility layout requires reconfiguration. Please wait—]

Hearing the machine’s steady announcements, Tela staggered. Her gold-rimmed glasses slid down her nose like a fallen leaf, and she didn’t even lift a finger. Her face twitched. Then she grabbed Hos, who was staring just as blankly.

“I told you the Magma Forge could run another hundred thousand years—!”

Yes. Menglan had woken more than a sleeping volcano. She had roused the underground city that slumbered beside it, a twin heart beating again.

Realization struck like lightning. For once, Hos didn’t argue with his childhood friend. Heat stung both their eyes like smoke. They hugged and howled, their joy like wolves at moonrise. Their wails snapped their teammates out of shock. Hope bloomed on every face like firelight. Questions followed like shadows. What was Queen Dreamlan’s aim?

Varie was the first to see it, her mind cooling like quenched steel.

Her gaze traced the red glow leaking through a crack in the floor. It climbed to the ceiling. There, a circular bulge, more than a hundred meters across, sat like a coin set in stone. Steam jetted around its rim like winter breath. Composite metal flushed the same red as the glow that lit it—heating, pressurizing, bracing for a thunderstrike.

Varie had no memory for its schematics, yet she knew it at once, the way a hawk knows the wind.

The Magma Forge’s core. The Nacha Tribe’s ultimate masterpiece. A human-made wonder that humbled steel like rain carves canyon—the Forging Hammer.

It was pride hammered into every Nacha heart. Countless rare materials had yielded under its ten-thousand-ton weight, becoming world-famous relics. But Varie’s wide eyes weren’t for glory. They were for something brutally simple.

As Menglan said, a single-point strike couldn’t break Sormaidon. But—what if they crushed that dead lizard from snout to tail in one sweep?

The answer gleamed like a blade. Mira, Adelaide, and the others followed Varie’s look and reached the same conclusion. Adelaide met Varie’s eyes. They moved together. Their strikes didn’t seek to breach the scales. They blasted beside Sormaidon, planting explosions like mines to blind and deafen.

Dust and thunder swallowed its sight and hearing, a sandstorm in a canyon. Mira flashed to Tela’s side in the next heartbeat and seized her shoulders like an anchor.

“Do you know how to operate the Forging Hammer?!”

Her voice was low, urgent as a storm warning. She shook Tela out of her rapture. Tela blinked, then understood, understanding flaring like a pilot light—and her jaw dropped.

“Right! That’ll work!” Joy sprang up like a spring, then she smacked her forehead with a yelp. “Wait—starting it needs a Firestone.”

She spoke fast, words clattering like tools. Once lava reached the Magma Forge’s fuel intake, the engines would spin and make power. But Firestone charging had been designed as the final stage. With lines broken, every drop of energy was being pulled into structural reassembly.

“If we wait for it to finish and start feeding the Firestone, the flowers at Grand Mart’ll be wilted by then!” Tela’s panic crackled like sparks. “We’ve got to charge it by hand—by… hand? Wait…”

Her voice trailed as realization dawned like sunrise. Mira felt it too. Before either could speak, a gale shoved Mira back two steps, a hurricane in a hallway.

Sormaidon burst from the smoke with wings unfurled, a night storm breaking. It roared midair. The draconic shout blasted the haze aside like chaff. It snapped its head. Dragonfire lanced for Mira, a river of suns.

Mira was already set to dodge, but then the thought hit like ice. Tela behind her might be the only one who could work the Forging Hammer. To shield her, Mira would have to take the blast.

A blood-red barrier bloomed before them like a rose of glass. It caught the fire and held. Mira saw the white-haired back bracing that shield, and calm washed through her like cool rain. She stepped and caught that wrist.

“Sis, I can charge the Firestone. Let’s—”

Adelaide shook her head, a willow in wind.

“No. I have to stay. The Lioness can’t pin Sormaidon under the drop zone alone.”

Mira’s eyes flew wide, rejection flaring like a struck match.

“Then I’m staying too—”

Adelaide turned and pulled her in, a tide pulling shoreward.

“It’s okay, Mira.”

Her voice was gentle as dusk. She pressed her forehead to Mira’s, eyes closing like petals.

“I haven’t seen my sister smile nearly enough… So neither of us stays here today. Not you. Not me.”

Mira froze like a deer in snow. Adelaide let go, then pushed lightly at her chest. Mira stumbled back into the room behind. Their teammates were already in place, a net of resolve.

“Wait—”

The word died. Adelaide’s last glance cut like sunlight through leaves. The walls shifted and sealed, iron rearranging like living rock. The city reformed and barred the way, ending any chance of staying to hold the line beside her.