Fenclade Grand Duchy, Grand Library
After receiving the news about the foreign fleets from another continent, Leonhart could feel excitent and dread twisting together in his blood like two serpents fighting for dominance. Part of him, the warrior, the alpha, the battle-honed beast, thrilled at the thought of facing an unknown enemy, of asuring his strength against sothing powerful enough to terrify other civilizations.
But the other part, the newly forged king of Kaelindor, felt a cold and creeping fear. If he failed, it would not be his life alone he lost. It would be his people, his land, and his bloodline. So he dove into research at the grand library in his citadel.
Most of the Fenclade’s scholars and adventurers had written extensively about Aerthysia, the only other continent they considered worth docunting. A land mirroring Kaelindor in beauty and richness, blessed with long rivers, moonlit forests, fertile plains, and mountains etched with starlight.
But unlike Kaelindor, Aerthysia is ho only to two races: humans and elves. And for all their centuries of conflict, the two shared one sacred miracle: the Tree of Life.
Leonhart read more carefully about it, his fingertips brushing the ink illustration of the sacred tree, towering, radiant, and sohow exquisite. Because the Tree of Life isn’t just a symbol. It’s a living conduit between Aerthysia and the Spirit Realm.
It was said that when the world was young and the land was still soft beneath the feet of the first mortals, the five Spirit Kings planted the first roots. The tree grew where all leylines converged, drinking in magic from the deepest layers of the earth. Its branches stretched high enough to brush the veil between realms.
From this connection, life was shaped.
The spirits, unable to manifest fully in the material world, poured their essence into the roots, leaves, and fruit. Thus, the Tree beca a great bridge, a breathing artery carrying spirit-energy into a world that desperately needed balance.
"The spirits can’t manifest fully in the material world? " Leonhart’s brows furrowed as he looked up from the ancient to.
The statent contradicted everything he knew, everything he had seen. In their own continent, spirits road freely. They danced with the wind, stirred the tides, and lit the forests with their presence. Though only a few chosen individuals could see or hear them clearly, their influence was undeniable, woven into the land itself.
So why were the spirits of Aerthysia different? He flipped to the next page, tracing the faded ink where an adventurer from Fenclade had t a human in Aerthysia and had carefully recorded their cosmology.
For the elves of Aerthysia, the Tree of Life isn’t just a sacred symbol, it’s the reason their long-lived bodies endured. Its vast roots channeled pure, ancient magic into the world, ensuring the survival of a race born from mana itself. Every heartbeat they possessed was a gift from that divine tree.
For humans, the Tree of Life served another purpose entirely. Aerthysia is a land so saturated with raw magic that, without the tree’s balancing presence, human bodies, frail, delicate, and unadapted, would crumble under the pressure.
The tree acted as a shield, diffusing the overwhelming mana into gentler streams that the human body could withstand. It’s the silent guardian that allowed their civilization to exist at all.
But the spirits, Leonhart slowed his reading. His pulse matched the rhythm of the words.
For spirits, the Tree of Life functioned as an anchor, a tether that bound their essence to the physical plane. It’s the bridge between the ethereal and the material, allowing them to project their voices, their will, and fragnts of their form. Without it, their presence drifted like mist: faint, inconsistent, and unable to take shape.
"They could speak only through dreams... or signs," Leonhart murmured, rembering the passage. "Not like here. Not like our spirit kings."
In their own land, the spirits are ancient, powerful, and fully present, capable of manifesting completely in the material world whenever they wish. Kaelindor’s mana flowed differently: wild, unrestrained, and unbound by any great anchoring tree. The spirits had grown alongside that untad abundance, adapting to its raw force until full manifestation beca as natural as breathing.
"Then that ans the mana condensed in our land is far greater than the mana in Aerthysia," Leonhart murmured, eyes widening as the realization clicked into place. "Those elves and humans could’ve died the mont they set foot here."
It made perfect sense now.
Aerthysia needed the Tree of Life because their world lacked the overwhelming density of magic Kaelindor was born with. The tree’s roots threaded through their continent like veins of light, filtering and producing mana at a gentler concentration, one that spirits could use as an anchor without overwhelming the living races.
It sustained the elves’ lifespans, shielded the fragile bodies of humans, and allowed the spirits to maintain a presence in a world that otherwise had too little mana for them to manifest freely. Without the Tree of Life, Aerthysia’s land would wither, its spirits fading into re echoes.
But with it, the spirits could descend into form and exert influence, though never fully, never with the sa absolute presence they enjoyed in Kaelindor. Leonhart exhaled slowly, the weight of the truth settling like a stone in his chest.
"I have to stop them before they dock," Leonhart muttered, urgency sharpening the edges of his voice as he snatched the communication orb from his desk.
Because Kaelindor’s mana is a thunderstorm compared to Aerthysia’s rain, it’s beautiful, lethal, and impossibly dense. It isn’t just ambient energy; it’s a presence, a force with temper and intent, coiling along the ground and humming through the air in restless currents.
-
Erevalis Grand Library,
Ashkareth stood in front of the old tos, the musty scent of aged paper swirling around him like the mories of forgotten lore. Beside him, his wife, Morwenna, leaned closer, her fingers brushing over the spines of the books as she assisted him in the search for knowledge about distant continents.
The spirits had whispered secrets to her about a cursed land, yet they had also hinted that the true story resided within the wisdom of their kings. And Ashkareth already heard it from the spirit kings, because their empress is the one who can bear the power of the spirit kings.
Desiring to understand more, Ashkareth had sought this library, eager to uncover the truth behind the tales he had heard from the spirit kings.
Finally, his fingers traced the brittle cover of a ti-worn book, its pages yellowed with age.
It had been penned by an old demon who had once glimpsed the dark inhabitants of the Calonia continent. As he opened it, a hush enveloped the room, and the scratchy handwriting revealed hasty, fragnted thoughts: "Huge, scary, strong."
An accompanying illustration depicted creatures that sent a cold tremor crawling up his spine, monstrous beings towering over the page itself, their grotesque silhouettes rendered with such ticulous dread that even ink seed insufficient to contain their presence.
They bore no fur like the beastn; instead, their bodies were sheathed in a pallid, ashen grey skin stretched taut over powerful fras, their eyes glowing a deep crimson reminiscent of demonkind yet far more feral.
The notes beside the drawing suggested they are comparable in size to the beastn alphas, the great carnivores such as lions, tigers, or bears, and even the colossal bulls among the herbivores whose bulk alone could demolish a city wall if provoked. These creatures, however, carried an additional terror: a powerful jaw structure tightened around long, curved tusks, built for tearing rather than simply killing.
There’s disappointingly little information beyond this, for the following pages shifted abruptly to recorded accounts of Aerthysia, the elder demon, whose strength was noted to wane severely within the lands of Aerthysia itself.
And from this, the elder demon pieced together a conclusion that unsettled Ashkareth further the more he read it, that the mana saturating their continent was far purer, far more potent, than anything found in Aerthysia, while in Calonia, there existed no ambient mana at all.
"I had to call Roxanne." He said.
-
Roxanne opened her private communication orb, a magic tool bound only to six signatures in the entire continent, and imdiately felt the surge of Leonhart’s and Ashkareth’s mana, both sharp with urgency. Her voice ca out hoarse as she shifted upright, still tangled in sheets and her wife’s warmth.
With a quick flick of her fingers, she erected a barrier, buying herself a mont to cover her wife properly before pulling a robe across her shoulders and moving toward the sitting area. She sank onto the sofa just as the projection stabilized, the orb casting the overlapping silhouettes of two very agitated alphas.
Leonhart spoke first, his tone clipped, explaining that under no circumstances could Aerthysia’s fleets be allowed to dock; the density of Kaelindor’s mana would overwhelm their bodies before they even set foot on shore.
Ashkareth followed imdiately, raising the ancient to before the orb, the pages revealing the grotesque Calonian creatures and the disturbing note about the elder demon’s rapid weakening once in Aerthysia, clear proof of a vast disparity in continental mana quality.
Ashkareth’s words supported Leonhart’s warning about how they have to stop the fleets from docking in their land, or most of them are going to die because of mana poisoning.
Roxanne exhaled sharply. "A mana-dead wasteland, a mana-created continent, and ours, the purest source of all. Fine. I’ll have Mara hold Aerthysia’s fleet at a safe periter before they kill themselves."
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