Under a sky heavy with every stacked disadvantage, the army under Silan held for four days, a candle cupped against a storm.

When the first panic tide ebbed, the Elves steadied and rose back to the apex of the three great races, like quenched steel.

That third temporary line bought more time than the first two combined, plus half a day, like sand piled high in a dying hourglass.

Even so, the air at the front grew darker by the hour, like dusk creeping inch by inch.

They had no road left, only cliff behind and black sea ahead.

Behind the third line sat a final line, and past the fourth lay undefended city blocks, like sleeping courtyards under moonlight.

If that broke, civilians still here would be butchered, and worse, the Elves’ ring of defense would stretch thin like wet parchment.

Once power scatters, no single node can muster the long-range fire to suppress the Chaos Spawn, and the whole front tears like rotted cloth.

Then the unchained Chaos Spawn would seep toward the Sealing Array and into the continent’s corners, like spilled ink, and the Chaos Uprising would truly return.

So even though closing with Chaos Spawn is death for Elves, Silan shortened the gap between picket and line, like drawing a shield tight.

She delayed the order to fall back, squeezing time like water from stone, until a legion almost got encircled when the third line cracked.

When the Spawn slammed into the fourth temporary line, most Elven soldiers chose a fight with no ferries behind them, bridges burned like ash.

They no longer expected the retreat horn to sing after this line fell, like it had for the first three.

After all, when Silan herself stood where the pressure burned hottest and cast legion-tier spells, her banner in the storm said everything.

With that stolen time, the fourth gathered near all Elven might and a fire-aspected First Generation, like a volcano yoked to a wall.

With ultra-dense long-range bombardment, they beat back three waves of Chaos Spawn, like breakers shattered on black reef.

It was a feat to be proud of, a mountain raised by bare hands; the Sarman Empire wouldn’t hold one wave, not even in legend.

But it still wasn’t enough, like a dam one stone short.

The Elves bled the nation dry to hold, yet even dragon-tier affinity has a cup’s limit; short bursts of mana run out like rain.

Continuous casting at that pitch pushed every legion to its redline, while the Void Rift showed no mercy and birthed Spawn like an endless tide.

Tireless and fearless, they crashed against a line made brittle by fatigue, like wolves testing a frost-bitten fence.

After they barely pushed back the third wave, there wasn’t time to rotate the front; the fourth surged stronger and thicker, like locusts blotting sun.

This time, even straining everything, they couldn’t stop those corpse-patched chimeras from advancing, a butcher’s quilt marching.

They watched them use their comrades’ bodies as shields to punch through the fire net, insectile feet ticking past the picket like needles.

And the retreat horn didn’t sound, a silence heavier than iron.

“Lady Silan... they’ve crossed the picket...!!”

The report cut against the high chant like a snap of wire, and Silan flung a fire wall that ran for miles like a sunrise.

It burned uncounted Chaos Spawn to cinders, a field of coals, yet her face stayed chalk-pale, like frost on porcelain.

Overusing mana dyed her golden hair a deep red, like embers licking wheat, and fire-aspected power wreathed her like a kiln.

The silk she prized buckled in the heat, reshaped like wax in a lantern.

Seeing it, her aide’s eyes went red like wet berries; she saluted to her heart and shouted into that blaze.

“Lady Silan! Please give the order! The spellblade divisions of the Third and Fifth Legions, and the First Legion’s shield-knight division, are ready for close quarters!

“We... can’t fall back anymore!”

Silan heard and didn’t answer; she clenched both hands, and her eyes churned like storm water.

Send in the melee divisions to buy time, and maybe this wave breaks... but...

Grief bit first, a winter knife in her chest, before the thought moved: after this wave comes the next, and the next after that.

Even if the new-blood children trade lives for breath, what would it mean in the stream of waves, like pebbles cast into sea?

While she hung on that thorn, the Chaos Spawn pushed dozens of meters, like a bruise spreading.

Through the smoke of their own barrages, many Elves could see fresh maws yawning at them, lamprey-wide and hungry as night.

The order to retreat still didn’t come, and the spellblades and knights raised shields before the mage ranks, a wall of iron leaves.

As if to sneer at their last-ditch stand, the sea of monsters swelled, then split like a wound, and something huge crawled out.

It looked like a rhino crossed with a jackal, yet it stamped on six pairs of elephantine belly-feet, a hill with hearts, and it charged straight for the Elves’ core node—where Silan stood—as if a boulder rolled downhill.

Heh. Not even time to grieve.

Silan bit down and gathered what little mana remained, each overload like a thousand ice thorns running her veins.

If I hadn’t chosen secrecy then, if I’d trusted the kingdom and roused every bell for this day, would the road be different?

The regret rose like cold rain; the answer no longer mattered like smoke blown away.

She had no path left; if this ends, then let it end with a First Generation’s pride, like a banner unburned.

“I will not—”

Her vow snapped in half as a vast power surged from behind, like thunder shouldering through cloud.

A flare of gold swept her peripheral vision like a comet, and then fireworks filled her sightline, sudden and blinding.

Boom, and then gold—nothing but blazing gold; she broke her casting and shielded her eyes like a swimmer from sun.

When she lowered her arm, the giant Chaos Spawn charging her had lost its upper half, clean as a scythe cut.

Silan’s eyes flew wide; a blur crossed her pupils like dream-fog, as if something long-lost stepped from sleep.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that gold.

The last time lay a thousand years behind, like mountains in haze.

“Lionheart Hero...”

She breathed the name, watching a golden meteor stitch spark-trails across the sky like fireflies.

It speared straight into the serpentine trunk of the Chaos Beast chewing the World Tree, a sun-lance into a coil of night.

The light arrived first; the Beast’s flesh around the trunk rippled like water balloons meeting a stone, trying to swallow the force.

It failed; its skin tore open like wet paper.

The crash reached the Elven lines, a drum across a valley, and with it came the Beast’s low wail, a foghorn from the abyss.

Its endless mouths trembled, and the massive twisted python-body convulsed; it loosened from the World Tree and tore off the gold-stained parts like rot.

Half-transparent hunks of Chaos flesh fell and slapped the earth with a nauseating wetness, like offal in a bucket.

Another sound rolled over it.

“Ahhhhh—!”

The furious roar came from afar, and in the next heartbeat its owner vaulted past the Elven line like a sun-chariot.

Varie’s bright-gold hair flashed over the soldiers’ heads like a banner, chasing that ancient foe straight on.

“I’m going to kill you!”

The Chaos Beast still didn’t release the mouths locked on the World Tree, but every eye buried in its flesh turned to the incoming gold at once.

Each eye burst, deflating like a punctured bladder and belching spore-thick mist that wrapped its serpentine mass in a breath.

Even so, even with inhuman speed, it couldn’t hide fast enough from that gold, like shadow from noon.

“Die—!”

Louder than the rabid shout, the sonic-boom of a fist met Chaos flesh, and the impact wave rang like a bell.

Varie held nothing back; fangs bared, she drove a full-force punch, and the pressure blew the spore fog clear, a hollow torn in sky.

The Chaos Beast screamed; the hit ripped its body to tatters, and the serpent broke, shedding like a gecko to live.

Die, die, die—! Varie wouldn’t let it pull away; she hurled a rain of heavy punches without art, only fury, like hail on tin.

Every strike carved wide wounds that burned with gold, and the Beast staggered back; the mouths on the World Tree began to loosen.

Before they let go, a hand brushed its rough hide, a gentle pat like soothing a horse.

“Be at ease, Lord of Chaos. The original three have not reunited, and she is no longer that Lionheart Hero. She can’t wound you as then.”

The strange voice froze Varie’s barrage; her gaze locked on the blood-red man upon the Beast’s head, a wound-colored idol.

“You... you rotten-ass thing!”

She spat the curse through clenched teeth like sparks; on the road home with Mira, she’d learned of a hidden hand.

Even without seeing him before, she was sure this human was that one, the knife in the fog.

From head to heel his blood-red matched Anta’s report, and the Beast calming under his touch nailed his name like a seal.

In Varie’s brief pause, the torn body knit in an instant and coiled the World Tree again, a strangler vine reborn.

As the man said, its panic was less her wounds and more the memory of being sealed by the three leaders in the last Chaos Uprising, like old scars itching.

Told that only Varie had come, it changed shape; its wounds smoothed at once like clay, and it ignored her to gnaw the World Tree again.

Varie saw it, and gold flared at her tips again; her assault returned like a storm, but this time her aim was the blood-red man.

“Like hell!”

Boom!

The blast drowned out Elf and Spawn clashing far away; the shockwave made the Sealing Array ripple like a pond.

Such spectacle wasn’t good; her strike should’ve been a spear through a point, but it spread as a ring like a pebble’s wake.

“You really do look like a rabid dog now, Lady Lionheart.”

The blood-red man still floated where he was, bony fingers stroking the Beast’s skin like a prayer, his voice unhurried as falling ash.

A pane like glass hung between him and Varie, thin as a pinky and clear as still water. It looked brittle as frost, yet it drank in Varie’s heavy blow like dry earth swallowing rain. She couldn’t get even half a foot closer, and his voice flowed on like a lazy stream.

“What makes you so vicious? Let me guess…” He stroked his chin, a thinking mask settling like a passing cloud. Then dawn broke across his face and he laughed bright as bells. “Ha! I know! It’s because of Her Majesty the Elven Queen, isn’t it?”

At that, red veins flooded Varie’s eyes like streaking rivers, and the gold at her hair’s tips flared, blazing like straw set alight.

“So it was your damned plot! You made her, you—” Her voice scraped like steel on stone, then snagged.

He watched her with the leisure of a cat studying a trapped bird, and when she couldn’t force out the obvious end, his smile curved like a knife. “You mean I got her killed?”

“Shut your filthy mouth!!” Her roar cracked like thunder over a black lake.

Crack— Her fist slammed the invisible pane again, and power surged past her old limit like a flood over a levee. Spiderweb fractures raced across the clear barrier, thin as winter ice.

He let out a small oh, a leaf-fall sigh. “Oh, forgive me, Lady Lionheart Hero. I forgot to consider your feelings.” He shook his head, rueful as rain. “Of course you were close to her, deep as roots in old earth. Asking you to swallow something this cruel in a breath is inhuman.”

“You must still be nursing a sliver of hope,” he went on, voice smooth as oil on water. “Like when you fought that dumb lizard—she leaped into a volcano, but it was part of the plan. You think she’s still alive, hiding in some safe nook, sharpening the blade for a counterstrike. I suppose that belief, after you saw the Void Rift swallow her, is what drove you here like wind at your back. To that, I can only say—”

—Shut up, bastard. Don’t… don’t say another word! Her heart wailed like a wounded beast, even as her fist drew back and light climbed her arm like a rising sun. He had named the one thread holding her together, the last rope over a collapsing gorge.

“—I can only say, bingo! Congratulations! You guessed exactly right!”

“Huh?” Her raised fist stopped mid-air, and she froze like a statue in stormlight. He clapped, laughing, as if truly offering his blessings.

“Just as you believe, Her Majesty the Elven Queen is alive and well.”

“But—”

“But the Void Rift swallowed her whole? That’s what you want to say.” He waved lightly, casual as a breeze through reeds. “Turns out she laid full protections before the Flower Dancer rite. She carved herself into a diamond, hard and bright, and now she’s strolling in the Rift’s belly like a walker in a moonlit garden.”

Varie still looked like a deer caught in torchlight, so he added, gentle as a knife’s edge. “Don’t trust me if you don’t want to. But look—the World Tree still stands tall like a mountain. Isn’t that the best proof she lives?”

Varie turned, and the world shifted like a curtain pulled aside. From afar, the Chaos Beast seemed to ravage the World Tree without hindrance, a storm chewing an ancient tower. Up close, its huge, serrated mouthparts tore at branches, and each bite sent mana inside the trunk roiling like a churned sea. Yet those branches, green as peridot leaves, still stood proud, bending like reeds but not breaking. Like the Sealing Array itself right now—shaky as a lantern in wind, yet holding the line like a wall of spears.

“See these beautiful green striations?” He ran his palm over the World Tree’s crystalline bark, and his skin sizzled on the array lines like a demon touching holy water. “All of them are Her Majesty’s power made visible. She’s still sheltering the World Tree, like a canopy against hail, and as long as she lives, even the Lord of Chaos can only wait. He waits until her strength runs dry and melts into nothing like snow into the sea.”

Varie’s throat worked, a swallow rough as gravel. From the patterns veiling the World Tree, she felt Menglan’s aura rise like warm wind.

After a beat of silence, she lifted her head and locked onto his scarlet pupils like a hawk pinning prey. “How much time does she have?”

“A few more hours, give or take,” he said, shrugging like a branch shaking off rain. “But it mostly depends on your next choice. If you enter the Void Rift and aid her, she might not only get out whole. She might do more than merely survive.”

Varie’s gaze flickered like a blade catching sun. “Why tell me this?”

He rolled a shoulder, unbothered as drifting ash, and patted the Chaos Beast beneath him like a rider calming a warhorse. “Because the Lord of Chaos only just slipped the seal, and the contract with His gift is still fusing into me like fire into iron. How could I dare go head-to-head while I’m incomplete, against the Lionheart Hero who has sealed a Void Rift once before?”

“Of course, you can call it all a lie,” he added, voice light as dust, “and say I’m sweet-talking you into suicide. But if you don’t believe me, I’ll have to embarrass myself and duel you like this, which hardly suits the honor of the Nacha Tribe. Not that I’m against trading blows with you.” He smiled, thin as a crescent moon. “More importantly, the Queen in the Void Rift might be disappointed. I can feel it—she’s eager to see you again. Ah. She’s gone.”

Before he finished, Varie turned into a gold afterimage, a meteor ripping the sky, and dove headfirst into the nearby Void Rift without a breath of hesitation.

“Should I call her as impatient as a stray hound, or as decisive as the legends?” He shrugged again, a touch of regret like a fading ember. “A bout with her would’ve made a fine appetizer before the bride’s grand entrance. Without any challenge, where do we find the drama?”

We were supposed to throw the noisiest, grandest wedding under the heavens, he murmured, his voice drifting like smoke. This dullness doesn’t do justice to years of careful staging. The melancholy lasted only a heartbeat. He snapped his head up toward the front where living beings clashed with Chaos Spawn, and his eyes lit like lanterns at dusk. He pointed toward a mechanical colossus that had appeared, and slapped the Chaos Beast’s crown like a drum.

“Hey now, look at that. Speak of the devil, and our fun just walked in!”