Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ataneya finally stepped into the main fight on the ground.

Five fox tails shot out toward Seraphina first.

They slipped around scattered bones and broken stone, bracing her head, chest, and wings from different angles. Ataneya guided the tails into a slow coil, lifting the injured dragon out of the collapsed crater and sending her toward Feylora.

Feylora was already running in.

Green healing power rose from her palm and spread across Seraphina’s chest, stabilizing the damaged dragon heart.

The moment Ataneya confirmed Seraphina was supported, her five tails released at once.

The tips snapped around, carrying all that pent-up force straight up at Lopsy in the sky.

At the same time, the golden array beneath Andona finally completed.

The final rune sealed shut.

Space around Lopsy lit up with four golden walls—one on every side. They extended up, down, left, and right, edges connecting into a square prison that trapped Lopsy and all the scissor shards orbiting her.

And on the flank, Queen Elowen was dealing with the skeleton horde that kept growing.

In one hand she casually held the shrunken juvenile sea snake, letting the little thing coil around her wrist and shoulder. With the other, she lifted her palm slightly.

Her deep-blue eyes cut through the chaos and settled on each Skeleton Soldier.

Her cold didn’t go for bone first.

It touched the soul-fire hiding inside them.

The foremost giant skeleton barely got its weapon up before the ghostflame in its sockets stopped flickering. Frost spread outward from that core, racing along ribs, spine, and limbs.

An ice statue appeared in the middle of the battlefield.

Then a second.

A third.

Deep-blue chill expanded in sheets along the formation. More and more skeletons froze mid-charge, rusted swords, shields, and frames sealed inside clear ice.

In moments, the skeleton army became a dense field of ice sculptures.

Emerald Castle’s soldiers stopped attacking, blowing into their stiff hands and rubbing hard to get feeling back.

Queen Elowen, meanwhile, looked perfectly calm.

She lowered her gaze to tease the little sea snake around her wrist, like she’d only frozen a bunch of decorations.

Up in the sky, the square golden prison had fully sealed.

Lopsy stood at the center. The deep-green shield made of scissor shards still clung around her, but it couldn’t pass through the golden walls.

Andona didn’t pause after trapping her.

She spread her twenty pairs of wings again.

A massive angel phantom rose behind her, towering above treetops and skeletal giants, hovering over the prison like a judge over a dock.

Andona flew to the top of the cage.

Judgment power poured from her wings into her hands. Mysterious runes lit around her in strings, while the angel phantom lifted its arms, focusing every strand of holy light into a point directly above the prison.

A beam of sacred radiance began to take shape.

"Judgment—" Andona’s voice rolled through the forest.

"Right now..."

Crack.

A sound—sharper than any before—rang out from inside the prison.

Ataneya’s five tails, about to strike the golden wall, froze in midair.

The angel’s descending light halted only a few meters from the cage.

Flames stopped rolling.

Dead leaves hung suspended.

Even Andona’s wings held their previous beat.

Time had been cut.

The scissor shards orbiting Lopsy were both shield and curtain. With the golden prison sealing everything so tightly, no one outside could see when she made the cut.

Inside the stillness, cracks spread across the golden walls.

The first wall split down the center.

Then the second.

Chunks of golden light peeled away, and Lopsy stepped out of the collapsing cage, unhurried.

The red glow in her eyes was gone.

In its place was a deep green that hit like a warning siren.

Countless metal fragments spun around her. With a lift of her hand, they reassembled into a giant pair of scissors that floated silently behind her back.

Lopsy looked over the frozen battlefield.

No shouting.

No impacts.

Even the wind had been snipped off.

"So quiet," she said softly.

"This place needs a little sound... to fill the silence."

She walked over the broken remains of the golden prison and approached Andona.

Calm. Elegant.

She reached back, took hold of the giant scissors, opened the blades slowly, and aligned them with Andona’s head.

The blades began to close.

On the ground, Ataneya hadn’t completely lost her ability to move.

The five tails she’d already thrown were locked in place midair—but the other nineteen forced themselves open as she pushed her power past the strain.

They swept above the forest and stabbed in from every direction toward Lopsy.

Sensing that pressure racing up from below, Lopsy paused.

In the end, she abandoned the "quiet execution."

The giant scissors split down the middle, turning into two long blades that dropped into her hands.

Lopsy lowered her gaze to the nineteen fox tails tearing toward her.

The twin blades spun in her grip.

The remaining scissor shards formed a shield ring around her body, leaving only her head uncovered.

The first tail cracked in from the front.

Lopsy lifted her right-hand blade at an angle to block. The edge collided with the tail’s energy shell, releasing a heavy boom.

The second and third followed immediately.

Her twin blades rotated in a tight rhythm, building a dense wheel of light that knocked tails away again and again from different angles.

But the nineteen tails kept stacking force.

Each block pushed Lopsy’s arms back another inch. Space under her feet compressed continuously. Deep-green aura throbbed around her blades like something angry and alive.

She was struggling.

Then, suspended in midair, Andona’s body erupted with a fierce desire.

Not greed for power.

The will to finish the judgment.

The angel phantom behind her recovered first.

It twisted, re-aiming the holy beam that had been meant for the cage—now locking onto Lopsy.

The column fell.

It skimmed past Andona first, shattering the stillness binding her with raw sacred force, then drove on toward the target.

Andona swayed.

Her twenty pairs of wings began beating again, stabilizing her in the air.

Two golden blades condensed in her hands.

She leveled both sword points at Lopsy below.

Above, the angel phantom concentrated harder, the beam brightening until it hurt to look at.

"Fall."

At Andona’s command, the golden column fully erupted.

Holy light speared down through the forest. A tide of gold like flame rolled outward, and the "cut" time snapped back into motion.

Dead leaves resumed their fall.

Ataneya’s five halted tails lunged forward again.

Lopsy looked up—

and what she saw wasn’t Andona newly freed.

It was the sacred light already on top of her.

She immediately abandoned the clash with the nineteen tails.

Both long blades shattered into fragments, joining the metal around her body. Deep-green force sealed through the gaps, forming a complete defensive shell.

Ataneya’s tails hit first.

Bang!

The deep-green layer dented violently.

Then Andona’s judgment light struck the same point from above.

A golden fire-tide poured down the shield’s surface, hammering Lopsy lower and lower. For several seconds, the two forces kept pounding in tandem, and the scissor-fragment defense began to show signs of failing.

Some metal edges started to melt.

Deep-green lines snapped at the seams.

But Lopsy had already prepared spatial power.

A thin裂 opened inside the shield.

The next instant, she vanished from the center of every attack.

Ataneya’s tails and Andona’s beam lost their target and collided head-on in midair. The resulting shock flattened nearby treetops in a wide sweep, but nobody had time to care.

Where did Lopsy go?

By the time anyone searched for her presence, she was already behind Andona.

The fragments reassembled into two long blades again.

One blade slid sideways to seal Andona’s retreat.

The other lifted high—then chopped straight down for her head.

On the ground and in the air, everyone’s expression changed at once.