As the two fled like arrows, dusk bled red across the plain—then a bruise of black tore through it. Not cloud, not sky’s reflection. A wrongness intruding.

“Night already? Impossible… then…”

Her gut clenched before thought; Aphelia’s first instinct was simple: the enemy had caught the siblings’ scent and was hunting.

She raised her guard like a shield of breath. Yet the scene before her didn’t fit that fear, as if the world missed a beat.

On the horizon, a black storm moved like a hurricane with a heartbeat. It scythed like harvest, no—fed like a maw.

Corpses Aphelia had felled lay as offerings. The storm passed. Even bones were gone, the ground scrubbed clean like a plate licked bare.

The enemy? Wait…

Memory flashed. Jasmine and the others had warned her about a “creature.”

A Plague of Beasts, they called it—a living calamity, worse than weather, like thunder with teeth. The only advice: avoid it, as you would the sky’s wrath.

So run? Only run?

She traced its line. The storm’s path was a black arrow. If it didn’t fade within half a day, it would spear the siblings. Even for a Titleholder, the counsel was to retreat. For them…

Resolve settled like iron in water. Aphelia turned her weapon into a staff the color of young leaves. She began to chant, breath wrapping around words like ivy.

The Nature Elf sigil on the staff glowed bright and clean. It was unmistakably Lena’s craft, a leaf-stroke signed in light.

“The grip’s perfect. Valkyrie work, no doubt,” she murmured, like touching a friend’s warm hand through time.

The black storm roared close like a tide of crows, and her chanting fell into place. A huge green sigil bloomed underfoot, expanding like spring rain.

“Nature spell—”

Roots erupted from the earth like serpents, coiling and braiding. Under Aphelia’s full Arcane Power, they surged upward, becoming towering trees, a living wall against night.

“World Tree!”

Her voice struck like a bell. The titanic trunk finished forming. Arcane Power streamed in from the plain, drawn like iron to a lodestone.

Her will guided the flow into the branches. It formed a vast green barrier. Life swelled within it, so rich that scarred ground knit like healing skin, a bright wound against the storm’s ruin.

At the heart of the giant, Aphelia gasped, lungs burning like bellows. First time, since earning her title, she’d cast at a Titleholder’s height. The Nature spell—World Tree—was Lena’s legacy in her hands.

“I underestimated it… my Arcane Power’s almost dry,” she whispered, a bitter smile like salt on a wound.

Her armor dissolved with a sigh of light. She leaned on living bark to drink calm. The black storm slammed the barrier like a ram of night.

No burst of Arcane Power. No fireworks. Just a stop, like a blade lodged in a shield. The storm spun outside, battering the wall, grinding the earth into dust, yet no stone flew.

Not that debris didn’t exist. Everything the wind touched, outside its core, it swallowed whole. Edges vanished like snow in fire.

Aphelia sent a thread of Arcane Power through the barrier, a feeler like a moth toward flame. It died at once, like a stone into the deep sea.

But in that last heartbeat, she felt something inside the churn—emotion, raw and serrated. Maybe that’s why Nero and the others named it a living thing.

Hate. Anger and pain braided tight, a knot of night. No other hues. Rage for rage’s sake. Hate feeding hate.

How can such a twisted thing breathe in this world… It’s not far from that warped thing, is it?

Her mind flinched to the past—to that village bent out of shape, to the “creature” that was a will made wrong.

A chill crawled her spine like cold ink. If this storm and that twisted life shared a thread, then someone’s will sat at its core. It was made, not born.

What force can shape a nightmare into weather… Did I just tug a curtain I shouldn’t?

A sound like shattering glass rang by her ear, sharp as ice. She looked up by reflex, heart snapping tight.

A crack had crept across the green barrier, subtle as a spider line. Each impact—no, each swallow—made it spread like frost.

She poured Arcane Power from her staff, a green river meeting a black mouth. The crack refused to mend. It widened faster, as if her strength were feed.

“Tch. Dimensional magic… why?!” The oath tasted of iron.

She reached for her specialty. The void stayed mute, a lake with no ripples. The storm scrambled her sense like static across silk.

Don’t tell me…

She tried every spell she knew. Each fizzled like a snuffed spark, smoke without flame.

Her feel for elements vanished, a fog over eyes and ears. Worse than a commoner. Even a commoner could taste a thread of element, a whisper of Arcane Power. She felt nothing at all, like deafness in a world of bells.

“This really is… a big crisis.” Her laugh was thin as paper. She leaned into the World Tree and drew life like cool water, soothing ache and frayed thought.

She could draw, but she couldn’t release. That was the knot strangling her. Worse, her only usable Arcane Power was what clung to her bones and what lived in the World Tree.

Magic stands on three legs: Arcane Power, elements, the caster. Its height depends on how keenly you feel the first two. The strong wear different staves for different winds. The weak use a staff for one thing only—to sharpen their sense, like glasses for the blind.

A medium… right, a medium.

Her blood is the best medium.

When she became a Titleholder, an Arcane flood scoured her body. Flesh and blood soaked that tide. It built her anew. Her blood’s sensitivity now sang like a tuning fork struck by storm.

She eyed the growing crack and sighed, a leaf-fall sound. She tapped the green staff. The lower segment sprung a jade-bright Mana Crystal blade.

Lena’s addition. The Mageblade—a mage’s fist when foes come close, and a brush for etching fate.

Her array material would be… her own blood. Instinctive sense was jammed, but blood was herself, a seamless mirror for Arcane Power.

If so… this interference might not count for much.

She cut her wrist without a tremor. Blood slicked the blade like lacquer. She carved into earth, lines taking root like vines.

Without spoken words, the array grew thorny and complex. Time was a blade at her neck. She didn’t look up.

As the pattern neared completion, her face went pale as paper. A Titleholder bled more than most, true. But a two-person circle, carved with high-grade blood, gnawed at her like cold.

While Aphelia carved with all she had, the Hydra Temple cradled a ritual bent like a crooked spear.

A youth sat in a sacrificial pool filled with Hydra blood, red as wine in a broken bowl. Around him, Hydra clansmen painted sigils with their own veins.

Look close and you’d see it. A twisted mark burned into every neck, a brand sunk deep like a nail of fire.

A middle-aged man checked a blueprint in silence, eyes like knives. He watched their strokes. He also tossed drained Hydra corpses into the two great arrays flanking them, as if sweeping refuse into gutters.

“What a headache. Faster. I won’t stand over you forever. At this pace, we miss the lord’s timetable. Fail, and you and your families become part of the décor.”

He sighed, impatience a flick of ash. He rolled the plans and turned away, walking out over Hydra bodies like stepping stones.

Inside, the temple was marrow-cold. Bloodless bodies lay like dumped sacks. The ones not yet emptied slumped in stupor.

A Dark Dragon Soldier stood by with a blade, a vulture in armor, ready to open throats on a nod.

Outside, two Dark Dragon Soldiers waited, still as statues. The leader stepped forward and offered several parchments with both hands.

The man took them and read, gaze crawling like fire. No one made a sound. All knelt and held their breath, waiting for his word like grass waiting for rain.