The Sealing Array tore in utter silence, like silk ripped in a windless night.

There was no boom, no shock that knocked you to your knees; yet every living thing shivered, like winter water pouring down the spine.

Across races and minds, that chill seized all alike, like leaves quaking before an unseen storm.

The false heaven that once veiled the past split clean in two, like a curtain slashed down the middle.

It had been built to cover sorrow and despair; now both lay naked, like old scars under harsh light, waking the primal fear carved into every creature.

Chaos—the ultimate threat this world had tried to forget—rose like a buried volcano breaking its crust.

Sightings of Chaos Spawn had become routine as the seals loosened, weeds sprouting through cracked stone, no longer headline news.

But unlike those small leaks, easy prey for Elf or Nacha squads, the thing coiled on the World Tree told a different truth.

At the first glance, a serpent winding the world’s trunk, a sky-length silhouette like a giant python.

At the second, no snake at all—no known life could fit it—only a theft of traits mashed together like a butcher’s offal stew.

Its body was dense and twisted like a battle-scarred white tiger, yet its muscle grain crossed at random, ropes knotted by a mad tide, not the clean engine of a born predator.

Part of its skin shone smooth and white like dolphin hide; another part broke into reptile scales, a mosaic of grit and gleam.

Near the head, crooked feathers and a lion’s mane overlapped, a ragged cloak that couldn’t cut water or catch wind, neither swimmer nor flyer.

On it, contradictions bloomed everywhere, stolen features pressed together like mismatched tiles.

Even those features wouldn’t stay fixed—the feathers of a heartbeat ago melted into warped, rainbow human arms, grasping at nothing, a kaleidoscope that fit its void-born nature.

And its head—if that crown of countless mouths and as many eyes could be called a head—shifted with intent.

Herbivore molars slid into rows of razored shark teeth, while the brow and jaw stretched and darkened, hardening into monstrous pincers like a meat-eating insect.

Those pincers locked onto the World Tree’s olivine crown, green crystal under a hunter’s clamp, and snapped shut.

The spell of silence broke; a vast shockwave punched past the Sealing Array, a storm and a quake rolling over the Sumerland Continent.

Each bite made the World Tree shudder, a forest-giant shivering in a hailstorm, its olivine transparency suddenly fragile under those serrated jaws.

Inside, mana circuits bucked and surged, turbulent rivers gone whitewater, and that disorder raced down to the Array woven into its roots.

The colossal Array that spanned Elf and Nacha borders hung there like a tattered web, one gust away from tearing.

Every creature who saw it felt the same thought rise, one drumbeat shared across countless hearts.

This looked like a replay of the Chaos Uprising.

“Report! Haksir Pass is lost. The second temporary line has lost three quarters of key nodes. Only Titital Path still holds, but…”

“Pull the Fifth Legion back to the third temporary line.” The voice across the table was tired, yet crisp as a drawn blade. “Casualties? What combat strength can we still field?”

On the second day after the Flower Dancer rite, there was no afterglow of a festival in the Elven Realm, no lingering incense, just the cold air of crisis.

With Chaos surging back, even the nosiest gossips fell silent; survival became the only useful song.

And the Elves, who call themselves the children of a god, had to admit a bitter truth—they weren’t ready for this hour.

It wasn’t complacency. With dragon-tier affinity for magic, they stood tall; their elite numbers far exceeded the Human race, and their armies were many times the shrunken Nacha Tribe.

They had the strength to lock down the Nacha settlements twice, a show of hard iron.

But the trait that made them shine—magic itself—dimmed under the nature of Chaos, like a lantern guttering in poison wind.

Chaos is pure malice from a higher plane, and its most ruinous trait isn’t numbers or raw strength, but a power called deconstruction.

Not mere wordplay—true erosion of the world’s base weave, a rot that chews both concept and body.

In practice, the more complex the rule, the more it suffers; magic is the finest lattice here, so it warps when Chaos draws near, the extent tied to the rank of the Chaos source.

The Chaos Spawn Adelaide’s team fought in the Magma Forge were only affiliates of the Soul Devourer Sormaidon; that wicked dragon was no generous master, granting them little Chaos power, so their anti-magic was weak enough to ignore.

But when the sharing comes from the first source, the original Void Rift, the scale flips like a river bursting a dam.

Right now, the front is grim because the Elves’ best weapons—spells—have been blunted; basic elements like fireballs and wind blades fizzle, and even high-tier, legion-tier sorceries hit like dulled arrows.

A spell that once covered a radius of hundreds of meters now lands with less than a tenth of its reach, like rain shrinking to stray drops.

If range suffers, melee is suicide; Elven close combat depends on spellwork at breath’s length, and that breath would be their last.

So, though returns are poor, they’re forced to keep throwing the largest spells they can, to stem the endless spill of Chaos Spawn—but that tactic exposes a fatal gap.

The ones with the deepest reserves and the knack for legion-tier barrages—the old titans, the First Generation like Bingxia—were cut down before the war even began.

Picking the Savia Rose was, at heart, a repair rite for the Sealing Array; if the presiding Elf misstepped, the fallout would be grave.

As insurance, almost every named First Generation was summoned to the capital, to aid the host and watch the Array in real time through the Flower Dancer ceremony.

From the safety margin, it was sound; yet that soundness led to a mortal outcome—an annihilation of the First Generation.

When the Void Rift tore open, they were too close to the World Tree, ground zero under their feet; there was no time to react, no time to run.

Now they are all, like Queen Dreamlan, missing without a trace—that’s the gentle phrasing; truth is harsher.

Swallowed whole by high-density Chaos, their chances of survival are almost none, a candle pinched out in a storm.

In short, the Elves’ magic strikes are heavily weakened, and their high-end pillars among the First Generation have fallen; everything leans toward despair.

Yet, objectively, this isn’t the worst case; the tide could have turned ten times darker.

“As for casualties—thanks to your doctrine to fall back the moment the enemy breaks a warning line—our losses are actually… not large!”

The subordinate’s voice rose, hope and respect threading through, like dawn color spreading over a black sea.

Most injuries come from casting fatigue during constant interdiction, not head-on clashes with Chaos, so it’s not the slaughterhouse we feared—a repeat of the Chaos Uprising.

In fact, if you set aside the First Generation’s special tragedy, and ignore the land we’ve lost, counting only bodies and blood, the Elves have taken… very little real damage.

Because Adelaide insisted on a live broadcast, an indiscriminate Flower Dancer rite, only she and the First Generation stood at the site.

When the Void Rift reopened, no ordinary Elven citizen was pulled into the blast’s first ring, preserving the realm’s fighting strength beyond the First Generation.

And not every First Generation was devoured.

“I know it’s only my view, but I believe your order to ban close combat was absolutely right, Silan!”

She hadn’t mistaken the name.

The woman hearing the report—commanding the lines—was Silan.

In this storm, that was one of the very few strokes of luck.

Before the Flower Dancer began, Silan was caught in scandal; as a First Generation, her qualification to assist the rites had been suspended for special investigation.

By that twist, she missed the moment Chaos swallowed the capital.

Now, with urgency burning the maps, those investigations were scrapped; the front needed a commander who’d lived through the Chaos Uprising.

Not just any First Generation, but the Carne Family’s long-time holder of military power—Silan—was the best choice on the board.

There was another near-disaster that didn’t happen, tied to the broadcast lines Adelaide fought to build.

More precisely, it was that live channel itself—laid outside the Sealing Array—that the front now uses for communications.

Before the Void Rift truly tore, the Array had already crashed under mana overload, its network function dead, a severed web in the rain.

Without that broadcast line, the Elven Realm would’ve fallen into a communications blackout.

To fight Chaos with runners and shouted words would end in ruin; no matter Silan’s experience or skill, the war wouldn’t be this strained stalemate—it would be a rout.

So yes, it could have been worse; this present is a kind of luck.

Relative luck.

Even so, with those two boons, the front can only pull and hold, a tug-of-war over a cliff.

“Closing with those Chaos filth is just suicide. I won’t send the kids to die for nothing.”

Silan’s voice carried a deep fatigue, heavy as rain-soaked armor.

Part of it came from the grind of command and choices; part from the tremors left by the election and the truths dragged into light.

It wasn’t only Bingxia’s unknown fate—though the thought of that name made her grip bleed, red crescents in her palm.

What truly wore her down was the unrest boiling in her chest, a black tide bearing cold stars, always rising.

Silan drew her gaze off the map bristling with pins, its ink lines like veins tracing layered campaigns.

She lifted her head and looked toward the distant, undeniable Void Rift.

In front of it, the World Tree lay coiled and gnawed by a serpent-shaped monster.

…Chaos Beast…

A name she thought she’d never speak again.

In the final battle of the Chaos Uprising, the Three-Race Alliance paid in blood and ash.

In the end, the Human King, the Lionheart Hero, and Queen Dreamlan together crushed the ultimate Chaos Spawn.

Yet now it had returned to the world.

Even that nightmare, buried deep, wasn’t the true source of her unrest.

Her focus sharpened.

Sight-amplifying magic swirled in her pupils like storm eddies.

It locked onto the presence hovering above the Chaos Beast’s head.

A blood-red human male.

Who… is he?

It was the least important question now.

Compared to him, the beast below was danger piled like mountains.

His identity hardly ranked on her list.

Yet when Silan’s stare met those scarlet eyes, the air tilted.

He seemed to sense her, like a wolf catching a distant scent.

His mouth split, and across a thousand miles he offered her… a smile?

Silan trembled; cold climbed her nape like icy fingers.

This one was likely the hand behind everything she’d hunted for years.

No proof, yet a nameless certainty sparked in her chest.

He hadn’t acted yet, but…

He was a threat no less than the Chaos Beast itself.