Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan led the group past the fallen Stone Golem, not wasting time finishing it off.

But after they moved on, the purple aura still trapped inside the golem didn’t dissipate.

Smoke seeped out through the cracks in the stone.

It didn’t chase after them.

It sank quietly into the ground.

A portal appeared ahead not long after.

There was no clear scene inside it—only darkness... threaded with something strange. The color was close to purplish-red, but the way it flowed was nothing like normal energy.

Phoenix Queen Ignara stepped up to the doorway.

She rubbed her fingertips together, forming a fireball.

Layer after layer of scarlet energy fed into it, the sphere swelling larger and larger. Once the flame stabilized, Ignara lifted her hand and tossed it into the portal.

The fireball passed through.

The red light vanished instantly.

A few seconds later, a muffled thud came from inside the darkness.

A jet-black stone shot out of the portal and landed at their feet.

Ethan was about to step closer and check it, when a burst of purple mist suddenly puffed up from a crack in the ground beside it—

the same force that had seeped underground from the Stone Golem.

The purple mist went straight into the black stone first.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface.

Then the mist reached into nearby fissures, prying loose more fragments of rock and dragging them in, piece by piece, toward the center.

Feet.

Legs.

A torso.

Arms.

A brand-new Stone Golem assembled itself right in front of them.

Its chest still had a circular hollow in the middle, perfectly sized for that purple aura.

The smoke poured into the cavity.

But once it entered, it didn’t stay smoke.

It compressed into a burning violet flame.

The Stone Golem’s eyes lit again.

Queen Elowen already had her hand raised.

Ice crystals spilled from her fingertips, spinning around a sphere of frigid energy like tiny satellites.

The orb shot from her palm and stopped in front of the violet flame in the golem’s chest.

Cold spread first.

White frost crawled over the stones around the flame, then tightened inward.

The golem had just lifted a hand to strike back when the violet fire was sealed completely inside a thick block of ice.

The glow struggled behind the clear frozen shell.

Its brightness dimmed... and dimmed...

until it went out.

Without a core to hold it together, the Stone Golem’s body couldn’t maintain its form. The stones that made up its frame collapsed, slamming down onto the ice that imprisoned the flame.

Crack!

The ice shattered.

A small wisp of violet fire slipped out through the fracture, skimming the ground toward the teleport array and diving into it.

Idra sprang forward.

In midair she shifted into her Dragon God form.

Scales flowed across her body, and a massive dragon claw slammed down from above onto the rolling heap of stones.

Bang!

All the fragments pulverized under her strike.

Solid rock compressed into fine sand, spreading quietly across the floor—no chance of reassembling again.

With the rubble gone, the teleport array hidden behind it was fully exposed.

Ethan walked up, curiosity tugging him closer.

Purplish-red energy kept steaming out of the engraved lines.

Each line rotated slowly, linking the space inside to some unknown place beyond.

White lightning gathered in Ethan’s palm.

A circular arc formed around the outside of the array.

Then a second.

More rings of lightning closed from different angles until the entire teleport array was boxed in.

Ethan kept pouring in power.

But behind him, Auri got an idea—one she clearly found hilarious.

She rose on her toes and crept up behind Ethan.

Feylora spotted the movement first.

"Auri, don’t—"

Too late.

Auri threw both hands into Ethan’s back and shoved as hard as she could.

Ethan pitched forward and fell straight into the teleport array.

Purplish-red light surged up from under his feet.

He vanished right in front of them.

Feylora’s hand froze in midair. She could only look at Auri with a helpless expression.

No one else could tell what was happening inside the array either.

So they stayed put and waited.

During the transfer, Ethan forced the energy sphere he hadn’t had time to release back into his body.

White lightning spread through his limbs.

His body broke down into black particles.

By the time the purplish-red glow faded, he’d arrived in a different space.

Ancient caves dotted the area in every direction.

Each entrance looked almost the same—dark within, with streaks of purple slime still clinging to the stone walls.

Before long, a few bizarre crawlers wandered out of one of the caves.

Their anatomy was hard to make sense of. Their number of legs didn’t even match from one to the next. Some parts of their bodies were armored with shell, while other areas were covered in soft tentacles.

Ethan guided his black particles around them, circling the area once.

All the caves looked basically identical.

He didn’t enter any of them.

Not because he thought there was some terrifying power waiting inside—

but because he didn’t want to find out what kinds of creatures lived deeper in a place that already produced those.

In particle form, Ethan felt out the structure of the space and quickly found the point that corresponded to the original array.

He condensed his white lightning into a single spot.

A breach tore open in the spatial barrier.

Black particles slipped through the crack and returned to the area near the teleport array.

Outside, everyone was still waiting anxiously.

They’d gathered in a circle around a flame Phoenix Queen Ignara had raised. Somehow, in an attempt to "calm their nerves," they’d started taking turns telling ghost stories.

Ignara sat closest to the brightest part of the fire, listening with an unusually serious expression.

Ataneya’s two extended tails kept sweeping the perimeter.

Everyone kept insisting they were worried.

Yet whenever the story reached the scary part, they were all more invested than anyone wanted to admit.

Ethan stood nearby and listened quietly for a while.

No one noticed he was back.

Not until the story got to the part where a face suddenly appears in the dark—when Auri nervously lifted her head.

Ethan’s face was hanging right above her.

Auri flinched so hard her whole body jolted. Then she recognized him and immediately threw her arms around him.

"Dad!"

She buried her face in his chest.

"I’m scared!"

Ethan looked down at the little culprit—the same one who’d personally shoved him into the teleport array, and was now clinging to him and claiming she was terrified.

He stayed silent for a long moment.

In the end... he didn’t press the issue.