Back at the entrance of the crater, chaos brewed—
Tensions were rising.
"Without my connections, you would never have been accepted into the Dark Fate at the first place! Rember that, Kael’thus!"
Lannic’s voice cracked like thunder, his pale eyes flashing with fury. Blue veins pulsed at his temples, and the aquamancer’s crooked staff trembled with residual magic, still steaming from his last spell.
Kael’thus clenched his jaw, his robes torn and stained, a bloodied hand clutching his side. He snapped back without hesitation, his voice laced with venom. "So what!? I devised this plan. I’m the one who mapped out Runewood’s interior. I led us here without triggering the Velzar Trees! Without , you wouldn’t have made it past the outskirts, much less the Hollow. That elven queen would’ve put a golden spear through your skull the mont you took one step into this ’sacred land.’"
"Sacred land, my ass!" Lannic spat, dismissing the term like poison. "With enough ti and resources, I could’ve replicated that stealth spell tenfold! You think you’re irreplaceable? " His brows furrowed deeper. "And unlike you, I’m not sentintal. If it cos to it, I’d let my entire bloodline burn if it ans getting the job done."
"That’s because you’re a lunatic!" Kael’thus snarled, stepping forward.
Lannic’s eyes narrowed, and his staff lit with cursed frost. "Say that again."
"I will—"
"That’s enough."
The tension shattered as Raijen—the quietest among them—finally moved. His boots sparked with arcs of pure voltage. Blue lightning hissed along his gauntlets as he took a slow step between the two bickering n. His presence was enough. The air sizzled.
"Raijen?" Kael’thus asked, tone shifting from aggressive to wary. "What are you—"
Raijen’s response was simple. Calm. Final.
"Finishing what we started."
And in the blink of an eye, his form vanished in a crackle of light.
"Raijen, wait!" Kael’thus reached for him instinctively—but then stopped. His hand froze mid-air. Sothing in him hesitated. A whisper of doubt. Then he pulled back.
It was too late anyway. He had long gone past the point of no return.
Raijen had already beco a streak of living lightning, zipping across the scorched battlefield. His figure streaked toward the center of the crater where Queen Elarya lay collapsed—barely conscious, breathing in slow, pained gasps.
A single, clean hit would end her.
The greatest threat to their mission—the guardian of Runewood, the Verdant Sovereign—would be gone forever.
The rest of the Dark Fate watched in eerie silence, anticipation etched across their twisted grins. This was it. The final blow. With Elarya gone, Vulkris would be unsealed.
The girl atop the volcano was nearly finished with the ritual. Once the beast was unleashed, they would let it raze Runewood to ashes. And as the elves burned, they would sweep in to claim their prize: the ruined kingdom and its unclaid divine power.
It was all according to plan.
Until sothing... appeared.
Just as Raijen raised his fist—charged with enough power to pulverize a mountain—a tiny green blur flashed between him and the queen.
A rabbit.
A stupid, furry, wide-eyed rabbit.
"What the—?" Raijen blinked, mid-attack. "A Punto?"
The small creature had erged through a shimring, circular wormhole in the air, which sealed up behind it as fast as it appeared. The Punto looked up at him, blinking its big round eyes as if judging him.
Then... Raijen felt it.
Sothing ancient. Sothing wrong.
His soul shuddered.
His instincts scread.
His vision blurred. His blood turned to ice. Every muscle in his body clenched in primal terror. His heartbeat faltered. His very bowels betrayed him.
"What... is that?" he gasped, a tremor breaking through his usual silence.
To his eyes, it was just a tiny Punto—small, green, fluffy, absurdly harmless.
But to his soul?
It was sothing else entirely.
His instincts scread of danger—pure, ancient, bottomless danger.
In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t a punto anymore. It was a colossal, coiled dragon, its scales like blackened erald, its eyes older than ti, its breath heavy with extinction. It didn’t move, didn’t growl, didn’t even blink.
But it didn’t have to.
The re presence of the creature felt like the mont before a planet collapsed. One wrong move and he was certain he would be devoured—not just in body, but in spirit, erased from existence.
He could feel its breath down his neck even though it hadn’t moved. Feel its gaze behind its wide, beady eyes. That fuzzy, twitchy nose was a lie.
This wasn’t just a Punto.
This was death, ancient and disguised.
And without finishing his punch, Raijen veered hard and launched himself backward. He used every ounce of his movent art—dodging nothing, escaping everything. The sa Raijen who had moved through blades and fire without a word or hesitation... was now sweating, panicked, and pale as death.
He landed far from Elarya, gasping like a drowning man. Lightning fizzled from his limbs as his breath caught.
"What... the actual hell was that!?" he whispered.
The others stared.
"What happened?" Lannic demanded, eyes narrowing. "You looked like you saw a primordial dragon."
He was right, but Raijen didn’t respond.
Instead, his trembling finger pointed.
Toward the queen.
No—toward the small, fuzzy punto sitting beside her, as if guarding her unconscious form.
"What is that thing?" Dakulo asked, squinting his eyes and finally seeing the tiny creature.
"I’ve seen it before," Raijen whispered. "Or sothing like it... in my dreams. No—my nightmares."
Lannic, suspicious now, activated his observation skill. His pupils dilated as he zeroed in on the green Punto, seemingly harmless, still sitting perfectly still.
Then it t his gaze, and his body shook instinctively.
Then his face paled. A drop of sweat rolled down his cheek.
"No... impossible."
He activated another layer of magical detection. Then another. Each one ca back with strange feedback—too dense, too layered, too old.
That aura.
That pressure.
It couldn’t be.
"That... that’s the sa presence I felt when I t Lord Thugnaka," Lannic whispered, his voice cracked with disbelief. "Back in the southern continent..."
The silence deepened.
It was the sa suffocating dread—the sa paralyzing pressure that could only belong to one kind of being.
Not a rabbit.
A mask.
A vessel.
For sothing else.
It was the presence of a Primordial Beast.
And then—right before their eyes—another wormhole shimred open... straight from the Punto’s wide mouth.
Three figures burst out like spirits returning from exile.
First ca a dark elf with twin daggers shimring with crimson enchantnts.
Then a light-skinned elf riding a majestic, glowing stag with antlers crowned in magical runes.
And lastly, a boy.
A young human boy. He has dark red hair and small diamond shaped face. He wore a unique green adventurer outfit just perfect for his young size.
He held a jagged dagger in one hand and a strange, rune-marked magical gun in the other. His face was bruised, his body scraped—but his eyes glowed with golden light.
All three figures landed gracefully around Queen Elarya, forming a protective triangle. Their auras crackled with fresh anger and resolve.
And all of them were staring up—at the five stunned mbers of the Dark Fate.
At the ones who had brought the queen to the brink of death.
Rhiki and Kardel looked down upon Elarya’s broken form—and in an instant, sothing inside them snapped.
Their auras ignited.
Golden-green and silver-blue light erupted from the crater like a twin shockwave—wild, raw, volcanic. The very air scread.
"WHO DARES HARM OUR QUEEN!?"
Their voices collided in perfect unison, thunderous with wrath and soaked in grief. The magic in their words wasn’t just sound—it was fury turned physical, emotion turned elental.
The ground convulsed. Jagged cracks split the stone. The nearby walls of Eterna Hollow trembled like they rembered fear. Distant embers flickered out. The vines—long wilted and forgotten—shivered awake, as if the forest itself had stirred from mourning.
For the first ti that day, the mbers of the Dark Fate didn’t tremble before Queen Elarya.
They trembled before those who loved her.
And before the tiny green beast beside her... whose real form hadn’t even begun to awaken.
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