[POV Liselotte]
The explosion of the Corruption Crystal did not bring the imdiate peace we had all hoped for. Instead, the silence that followed was that of a structure that had lost its central axis. The violet do covering the Valley of Lants began to vibrate at an erratic frequency, and the sky—once still—started to fracture like a mirror struck by a hamr.
“The valley is collapsing!” Elliot roared, slinging his father’s arm over his shoulder. “Lotte, Leah, we have to get out of here right now!”
I forced myself to stand. My hands still released faint trails of icy vapor, and a sharp emptiness pulsed in my mana core, but there was no ti for exhaustion. The ground beneath us tilted; the ruins of the Twilight Guardians were being sucked into cracks of pure nothingness opening across the terrain.
“This way!” Chloé shouted, already in her most imposing wolf form, clearing a path through the falling debris.
We broke into a desperate run toward the southern exit. The Valley of Lost Echoes was living up to its na: as the Shadow’s magic collapsed, fragnts of the anomaly turned into projectiles. Residual black lightning struck the ground chaotically, sending up pillars of rock and dust.
“Watch out!” Leah cried, raising her hand.
A massive stone arch—once the entrance to the fortress—collapsed toward us. Leah reacted with a burst of light that slowed its fall just enough for Julian to step in with his shield. The crash was deafening, but he held firm, allowing the King and the civilians to pass beneath the makeshift cover.
“Don’t stop!” I ordered, launching bursts of ice into the cracks opening in our path to create temporary bridges.
The escape had beco a magical minefield. In its dying throes within the valley, the Shadow began manifesting “inverted gravity” attacks. Chunks of mountain rose into the sky while the ground seed to vanish beneath our feet.
“They’re firing from the shadows!” Mizuki warned, spinning her spear to deflect dark energy projectiles erging from fractures in the air.
They were remnants of the Shadow’s will—automatic attacks from an intelligence unwilling to let us leave with the Lion of Whirikal. A volley of dark spikes whistled past Elliot’s head. I turned and raised a wall of crystalline ice that intercepted the next barrage, but it disintegrated almost instantly due to the instability of the surrounding reality.
“Lotte, the exit is closing!” Arthur shouted, pointing toward the edge of the do.
The boundary of the anomaly, once translucent, was turning black and opaque, contracting toward the center like a diaphragm. If we didn’t reach it within the next sixty seconds, we would be trapped in a pocket dinsion with no escape.
“Chloé, take Leah and run!” I ordered. “Julian, Arthur, help Elliot with the King! I’ll cover the rear!”
“We won’t leave you behind, Lotte!” Leah protested, looking back with fear in her eyes.
“This isn’t a discussion—it’s an order! Go!” I roared, releasing a blast of cold that pushed the group forward, giving them the montum needed to leap over a widening chasm.
I remained alone before the tide of chaos. A column of deford shadows—the last remnants of the ritual—rose to block the path. They had no faces, only claws made of void. I channeled what little energy I had left, feeling the cold burn through my own mana channels.
“Absolute Zero: End Wall.”
A colossal iceberg erupted from the ground, completely blocking the shadows and montarily halting the valley’s collapse behind . The effort drove to my knees, my vision blurring.
“LOTTE!”
I felt strong yet careful teeth close around the neck of my armor. Chloé had returned at the last second. She flung onto her back with a rough motion and leapt toward the closing breach.
We crossed the edge of the do just as it shrank into an infinitesimal point and vanished with a sharp snap that sucked the air from around us.
We tumbled down the mountainside, outside the anomaly, back into the cold, natural night air of Whirikal. The silence that followed was absolute. Looking back, the Valley of Lants was once again just a valley of dead stone under the moonlight; the violet nightmare had vanished.
Panting, I slid off Chloé’s back. Leah ran to and hugged so tightly it nearly stole my breath. A few ters away, Elliot and the heroes helped King William sit against a tree. The Lion was weak, his armor shattered, but his eyes were fixed on his children. We had escaped the jaws of the beast.
“We’re out,” Leah whispered against my shoulder. “We’re all out.”
I looked toward the capital on the horizon. The violet mist was still there, reminding us that although we had saved the King, the kingdom remained in the Shadow’s grasp. The escape was over—but the true war for the crown had only just begun.
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