Chapter 88: Exildra’s First Vision
While Bahamut was going through his evolution to beco sothing the world had yet to see, two other changes were taking place. The first was Ren, who wasn’t even aware of what was happening as he was deep inside his own world, going through the technique to form his core.
The next person was Exildra. If people weren’t so focused on the phenonon, they would have realized that the elven girl was frozen with wide golden eyes and a blank expression. Her hair fluttered and floated slightly.
While everyone else witnessed only a faint projection of a colossal being and heard the distant cries of Bahamut, she was dragged sowhere else entirely.
She stood in the middle of a village that had already died.
Houses were smoldered rather than burned, and their roofs collapsed inward. The air was thick with ash and the sour bite of smoke, clinging to her throat with every breath. Fields that should have been green lay trampled and blackened, crops shredded into the dirt as if the land itself had been punished.
Roads were split open, with long cracks running through them like old scars that had finally torn apart
Bodies were everywhere.
They lay sprawled in the streets, inside doorways, beside broken carts... so were even frozen mid-flight. All of them had sothing in common, too. Claws, horns, tails, and fur. They were beastkin.
So looked like they had tried to protect others. So hadn’t even made it out of their hos yet. There was no sound of battle.
Just the quiet aftermath of sothing powerful enough to erase a village and leave nothing behind but smoke and ruin.
She couldn’t understand this and even wondered how she suddenly appeared here when she was in the sect, witnessing Bahamut’s agonizing screams, which tore her heart.
Just thinking about him caused another phenonon.
All of a sudden, she fell to her knees, and her head was forcefully moved upwards. Her eyes automatically moved to look, and she saw sothing that almost made her foam and piss her pants, if not for the strange fact that it didn’t seem hostile to her, but rather showed a gentle light, which cald her down.
What she saw were three pairs of eyes, each glowing with deep red light. They were all bestial, with black sclera and slits so large, they looked like spatial rifts in a red background.
They were horrifying in every sense, and she felt like she was being judged. The eyes pierced into her soul, deciphering her very being to the last particle.
Exildra’s soul shook, blood flowed down from her mouth and nostrils, and her right eye burned.
But just as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared, leaving her shaking and gasping for air. She didn’t even realize she was holding her breath.
She was still in the destroyed village, but this ti, a young black calf with black horns and hollow-like black eyes stared up at her with a sad face.
Then it ended.
She found herself back in the sect, just when the phenonon stopped, and soone caught Bahamut in the air. Sothing flowed freely down her right cheek as she stared at the sky.
She unconsciously touched it and felt it. It was sticky and a bit thicker than water. Looking at her fingers, she saw blood. But she didn’t know how it ca there. She couldn’t rember anything that could cause her to bleed from her eye.
"Bahamut..." she muttered in a quiet voice while her eye bled.
...
Elder Silvia stared at the unconscious boy whose body was releasing smoke, while black matter oozed from his pores in concerning proportions. He was inside a kind of tub with blue liquid that seed to be healing him while getting rid of all the impurities coming out of him.
"Just what kind of evolution could cause such a phenonon, and such pain?" she wondered out loud as her eyes road his body for any little clarification to her dilemma, but she couldn’t find any. It was like whatever had happened had been a lie.
She could also feel various presences close to her place, trying to feel what was going on. They had all seen the phenonon and were keen to see the person who caused that.
Such a reaction was normal, but their probings were going too far, and Elder Silvia was getting angrier by the second.
"These assholes... Have they forgotten who I am?"
Elder Silvia turned to the elven boy beside her in the room.
"Watch over your friend. I have to make so people rember who I am," she said to Sel, making him nod in confusion.
With that, she left.
...
Elder Silvia appeared outside her residence on her balcony. There she saw Elder Derek, Elder Sylna, and Elder Karesh, standing there with smiles on their faces.
"What do you want here? It’s too late in the evening for such a visit," she spoke with a smile of her own, her hands placed in front of her. Her robes flowed as she walked towards them, her wings folded beautifully on her back.
"Can’t we visit you as a fellow elder?" Elder Derek asked back, his golden hair swaying in the wind.
"Of course you can. My doors are always open," Elder Silvia said calmly, her eyes glinting.
With that answer, a sudden silence fell.
The air itself seed to stiffen, the gentle night breeze dying as if it had realized it was no longer welco. The smiles on the other elders’ faces stayed in place, but they stopped reaching their eyes.
Elder Silvia halted a few steps away from them.
"You’re probing too deeply," she said lightly, her tone almost conversational. "Curiosity is one thing. Digging around my residence like starving hounds is another."
Elder Sylna let out a soft laugh, her fingers brushing a strand of hair from her face. "Now, now. You saw it too... You were closer to him than us. That phenonon wasn’t ordinary. It stirred the planes themselves."
"And it happened here," Elder Karesh added, his gaze sharp despite his relaxed posture. "Naturally, we wanted to see who was responsible."
Elder Silvia’s smile thinned.
"What happened here is none of your concern. If sothing happened in my part of the Citadel, then it is related to . And do you want to say, you are all blind that you didn’t see who caused the phenonon of the First Awakening?"
For the first ti, the pressure in the air beca unmistakable. It wasn’t violent, yet it carried weight, ancient and heavy, pressing against their senses. The probing threads they had extended toward the building snapped back abruptly, surprising them.
Elder Derek’s expression finally shifted, his brows lifting slightly. "You’re keeping him away,"
"I am. And I am being generous by explaining this much. He is my disciple, and I have every authority over him," Elder Silvia answered, raising her eyebrows in confusion at what they were saying.
’Are they senile or what?’
Another pause happened, longer this ti.
Elder Karesh exhaled slowly. "You’re asking us to walk away from sothing that shook more than half of the Citadel."
Elder Silvia’s wings stirred, just enough to remind them they were there. "No. I’m telling you to."
Her tone was now cold, showing how angry she had beco.
’Just what in the na of the Pharaoh is happening here?’
She didn’t understand where this was coming from and how they got the audacity to be doing sothing like this. It wasn’t against the rules, but all elders knew that anything that happens in one elder’s area stays there, no matter what it is. Unless the elder chooses to share.
This was so different from that.
For a brief mont, the balcony felt like the edge of a cliff. Power humd beneath the stone, restrained but impatient. The elders weighed their options in silence, each of them well aware of what crossing her truly ant.
At last, Elder Sylna raised her hands in a placating gesture. "Very well. No need for hostility. We were only... concerned."
Elder Silvia’s eyes softened just a fraction. "Be concerned sowhere else."
One by one, the pressure eased. Elder Derek inclined his head, his smile returning, but asured this ti. "Another evening, then."
Elder Silvia only nodded as they all turned to move away, but just like earlier, they had really forgotten who Elder Silvia was.
As they descended the residence and reached the ground, they suddenly faltered in step at the sa ti.
That was when they felt it. A pressure like no other. Although it wasn’t as heavy as Bahamut’s own, it tingled their instincts. Bahamut’s own was expected since it was a phenonon. It was a one-ti thing. But this one was real and not one ti. And for the first ti since they got here, they knew that just one movent from the person, whom they all knew was Elder Silvia, would end them.
’She’s powerful!’
That was what was ringing in their minds. They were all Tier 3 and above, but feeling that presence and aura, they realized that they were ants who were trying to challenge soone they shouldn’t have.
But just as they felt the aura, it disappeared entirely, as if it had never been there. In fact, they’d been teleported to their various places without their knowledge.
Bahamut’s first awakening had started causing ripples in the sect. Ripples that would make hidden monsters co out of hiding, soon.
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