As expected, Arcane Power fatigue erupted after long, grinding buildup, like winter ice cracking under a hidden river.

The runaway power slipped from Aphelia’s inner circuit, seeped into her limbs, and gnawed at her flesh like cold fire.

“Cough… ah!”

She spat a mouthful of blood like a burst of scarlet rain, yet it hit the ground and turned deep-blue, a shard-bright, mixed crystal that made the skin crawl.

“It’s come to this? No…”

Fear rose first, a dark tide in her chest. Her hands tried to steady, but her breath felt like ash.

She had seen this ruin before, more than once, memory like old scars catching the light.

Back when she first awakened her gift, she held Arcane Power with clumsy hands, striking lightning with a wooden blade.

She chased high-tier spells without understanding, believing sweat alone could bridge the heavens, driving power hard and fast with no clear aim.

Fatigue piled up like sand in a storm. It smothered without sound.

Back then, Lena was there—a steady lantern in a gale—and she intervened in time.

The power was just about to riot when Lena pressed it down, like a firm palm on a boiling lid.

Since then, Aphelia carried the lesson like iron at her back. Yet here it was again, cold and merciless.

Chaotic Arcane Power rampaged through her, a pack of wild waves inside a narrow channel.

Her blood’s warm river began to be replaced by that icy current. Even a Titleholder’s body wasn’t a bottomless vessel.

Worse, this power tried to take over the very circulation that kept flesh whole, like roots pushing through brick.

It got worse. Aphelia had always commanded an ocean, not a stream.

Unbound, the power leaned toward the world’s quiet law—it turned into Mana Crystal, like frost setting on water.

Her blood had already shown the pattern, blue facets blooming where red should live.

So she fought to seize the reins, fingers clawing at a slipping rope in a storm.

This surge caught her off guard. She hadn’t held back earlier, not with a ring of steel closing in.

Now she scraped together only a sliver of control, a frail flame in winter.

That thin power wandered her body, a pale wind seeking knots of crystal, trying to ease stone back to flesh.

The moment it touched those hardened sites, it froze into crystal, swallowed in an instant.

Aphelia cut the attempt like a warrior dropping dead weight. There were bones too hard to bite.

She turned that faint power toward heart and brain, the two lanterns that must not dim.

Before the corrosion reached those sanctuaries, she wrapped them tight, a last shield against the night.

Even if flesh rotted, as long as the mind came back, she could knit the body again. Hope was a quiet ember.

At the start, the invasion was a storm of knives. Pain lit up every nerve, drums pounding in her bones.

Her senses swelled like a bell struck too hard. Every inner spark became a bolt of lightning.

Then, after a while, the pain ebbed like a tide. Her senses grew dull, snow muffling the world.

Crystallization crept on, but she couldn’t feel the teeth anymore. Numbness was an empty sea.

The moment she understood that silence, her thoughts snapped like a string.

Color fled her pupils. She fell like a cut marionette, life’s signs slipping away one by one.

At that exact moment, a massive portal yawned open beside her, like a black iris blooming in stone.

It felt timed, patient as a hunter, opening only when she hit the ground.

No person stepped through. Only black smoke rolled out, rich with eerie omen, like grave-cold fog.

The smoke moved like it had a mind. It brushed her gently, a chill hand on a fevered brow.

Then it spread outward from her, a ripple in ink, thickening as it ran.

Wherever it flowed, the fog congealed into ink-black trees, stark as silhouettes stabbed into the plain.

No sap, no birdsong—yet a forest rose, a night garden growing from nothing.

The black grove widened, roots pushing through loam, its treeline gnawing outward like slow fire.

It made a boundary, a dark ring holding Aphelia within, a wall of shadow against the world.

But “protect” wasn’t the right word. The trees stretched roots toward her, eager vines weaving a cocoon.

They wrapped her tight, like the forest meant to turn her into its feed, a sacrifice at a mute altar.

Who sent this smoke? What purpose rode its breath? Questions pooled like rain in a cracked bowl.

On another stretch of the plain, the same hunger woke.

A bunker of the Hydra Clan stood there, cold stone under a gray sky.

Countless Hydra clansmen had lost Arcane Power and any whisper of elemental flow, their lights snuffed.

They were penned in the central hall, a herd bound for silence, sealed by a power with iron hands.

Chains bit their wrists, iron tasting of rust and fear.

Outside the bunker, several Dark Dragon Soldiers held long halberds, watching like black statues under stormlight.

“Sir, everything’s ready. We’re just waiting—”

The middle-aged man who had left earlier now stood on high ground, eyes like knives over the hall.

He glanced down and, now and then, cast healing spells through the air like pale rain on parched earth.

The reporting Dark Dragon Soldier blinked, surprise flickering like a moth at a lantern, but kept his doubts buried.

“I bet you’re wondering why I’m doing this.”

“Sir, I—”

Cold ran down the soldier’s spine like meltwater. He started to explain, and the man cut him off.

He shut his eyes, teeth clenched like a jaw on iron, waiting for the blade.

“What are you afraid of? You didn’t slip. Why would I kill you?”

The man laughed, careless as wind over reeds. He patted the soldier’s shoulder, a light tap before the storm.

“Those Hydra fools keep struggling. If they don’t settle, how do we run the next experiment?”

A fever flickered in his gaze, a fanatic flame under a smooth surface.

He hid it quickly, then drew a scroll that breathed twisted air, like cloth soaked in nightmares.

He ripped it cleanly in half and tossed both pieces into a dim corner of the bunker, like bones cast for fate.

Black smoke, almost the twin of Aphelia’s, rose from the torn scroll, the parchment a doorway for shadows.

It spread through the hall, not as a vast tide, but as countless fine threads, a web flung from darkness.

From that narrow corner, the threads rushed toward the Hydra clansmen, a swarm of night moths seeking flame.

Most of the Hydra Clan had already laid down resistance, faces carved with despair, lips moving in silent prayer.

Only a few youths still tried to stir their Arcane Power, sparks against a gale, tugging at their shackles.

They had lived through too much slaughter and torment. Numbness had become their winter coat.

Because of that, they only woke when the black smoke brushed their ankles, cold water rising at midnight.

This smoke wasn’t the same as the forest around Aphelia. It stank of savagery and frothing madness.

Even a breath of it carried distortion, a fever that chewed reason, rabid teeth on the mind.

“What… is that?”

One Hydra clansman spotted the creeping dark. He rubbed his eyes, hoping nerves had lied.

The smoke answered with blood, the kind that leaves no doubt.

It hit him like a battering ram. Bone and flesh burst like a water skin cut by a blade.

His death was so cruel that even the Dark Dragon Soldiers felt ice in their guts, a cold hand clenching.

The splashed meat became food for the smoke, a feast at a silent table.

It swelled from half a man’s size to a mass that could swallow several men, shadow fattened by red.

One after another, Hydra clansmen died mid-prayer, words severed like threads, bodies falling into black lakes.

The smoke coiled around them and fed, growing thicker, deeper, its hunger a marching drum.

Soon, a light brush stole life. It left not even crumbs, a clean scythe through wheat.

Crying, shouting, madness—voices broke like glass, then were swallowed by the fog.

Panic surged. The Hydra clansmen dropped prayer like a useless amulet, dragging chains and scrambling for any gap.

Blood painted the walls in wild strokes, their fate spelled in dark script.

A few who had hidden since the beginning somehow opened their shackles, a quiet click like hope’s seed.

They used the chaos, sprinted toward a hidden sector of the bunker, and slipped the smoke’s net for now.

“Elder! What do we do—”

A Hydra youth stared at the old man, eyes wet, breath like a hunted animal’s.

They crammed into a small room and threw the bolt, the door a thin shield against a raging sea.

Another youth ushered in two more clansmen, then locked the door tight, hands shaking like leaves.

He dropped to the floor and peered through the crack, watching for black tendrils, counting heartbeats with his eyes.

“Dean, the storeroom for Mana Crystals and scrolls is close,” the elder said, voice a dry reed.

“It’s down this corridor, at the far end. The smoke attacks what’s nearest, like a wolf chasing the closest lamb.”

“If someone draws away anything that might chase us—”

He stopped there. The meaning stood naked, a blade on the table.

Someone had to stake a life, a bright spark thrown to lure a night tide.

Only five were in the room. Two shook like children in winter; they would break if sent to storm.

Dean wrestled himself, a storm inside a ribcage. He was about to step forward.

The youth at the door spoke first, voice steady as a nailed plank.

“I’ll draw those things off. Dean, the rest is on you. Remember—live.”

He didn’t wait for reply. He shoved the door wide and sprinted back the way they’d come, a torch running into wind.

“Elder… let’s go!”

Dean wiped his eyes, tears like warm rain on iron, then set his jaw.

At the elder’s nod, they bolted for the storeroom, feet drumming a path through shadow.