“Hey, hear the wind? Word is the Beastkin set up camp just beyond the walls, a shadow pressing at our gate.”
“Huh? That’s a blade at the throat, right? Why’s there no word from upstairs, a well sealed tight?”
“Who knows—maybe the elders and the Empress are still weighing the scales, clouds stalled before rain.”
“Hope that’s it; they’re coming like a storm front, so may the Empress choose with a steady hand.”
“Sigh. Hope flickers like a candle in a draft.”
The two patrolling soldiers traded sighs like passing clouds, then drifted off this patch of earth.
Silence lay over the ground like frost, and suddenly a hand thrust up from the soil, a root clawing for light.
That hand braced the earth, and a mud-caked figure hauled himself free, a man born from clay.
He glanced around, eyes quick as sparrows, picked an unguarded angle, and with a few blink-steps left the Elven City.
Not far outside, a small pond rested like a polished mirror, clear enough to show stones sleeping on its bed.
Splash! A whole mass plunged headfirst into the pond, a meteor falling into glass.
Filth bled from his skin into the water, ink clouding a once-clear scroll.
In the end, the pristine pond turned murky, a bowl of stormed sky.
He cupped water in both hands, scrubbing hard, a washerman beating stains under moonlight.
Only after a long while did he strip off every smear, like rain rinsing dust from leaves.
He crawled out bedraggled, dragged his tired body, and collapsed on the bank like driftwood.
“Damn. Came in too fast—hit like a falling star—and I’m aching all over,” Eli muttered, pain needling before breath.
“Still not used to this,” he said, a grimace rippling like wind over grass.
After a good rest, Eli rose slowly, and pure white energy steamed the water from his skin, breath turning to mist.
He let out a sigh. “Alright. Next, find a place for intel, then get familiar with this Transcender body,” resolve settling like a stone.
He tidied up and started to leave, but after two steps he halted, a snag catching in thought, and looked back at the Elven City floating like a pale moon.
He rubbed his smooth chin, jade-slick under his fingers. “Feels like I forgot something, a missing page in the book.”
He wrestled with it for a while, thoughts circling like swallows, then let go.
If it won’t surface, let it flow like water.
He held his head like a weary traveler and walked off.
Soon, this place would turn into a battlefield, grass waiting to drink iron.
Not far away, the Beastkin’s killing intent and anger thickened like smoke, a wildfire feeding on wind.
He felt it with a Transcender’s senses, taut strings humming under a storm.
Slowly, a day slid by like a pale sun crossing a cold sky.
Eli wandered east and west through Nofir Forest, a fox threading shade, and reached the place he first met Raphael.
He arched a brow. Raphael was under punishment in the Elven City, law’s chill hand on his shoulder, so this spot sat empty like an abandoned nest.
Eli shrugged. “Then I’ll take it,” he said, opportunity opening like a door.
He pushed the door, and iron gleamed back—countless instruments of torment and prisoner beds set like altars in the central hall.
Eli frowned, a shadow settling between his brows, found Raphael’s rest room, and sat cross-legged on the bed like a stone Buddha.
From him as the center, the floor bloomed a pure white magic circle, a frost flower spanning thirty meters.
Eli blinked. “White energy? Does becoming a Transcender strip old stains and return you to the first state, like spring cleaning bone?”
“Transcender… Transcender.” Doubt pricked first, and he looked at his hands, lines crisp as river marks.
“I don’t even have a complete Divinity. How could I be a Transcender?”
“Is all this because of Birand?” He clicked his tongue. “Guess that’s the read—those memories sealed that guy’s Divinity, and now it fuses with me and releases.”
“The more I search, the closer the fusion?” The thought pressed like a lid.
“You’ve got twisted taste, Birand,” he said, a bitter smile slicing thin.
Boom!
From the Beastkin camp not far away, a massive rumble rolled out, thunder kicking dust.
Every lurking faction fixed their gaze on the Beastkin like iron drawn to a magnet, eyes sharp as arrows.
Eli opened his eyes and slanted a look that way, calm water hiding stone.
He arched a brow. “That’s not the Beastkin’s aura.”
