Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Seraphina climbed back into the sky.

On her back, Ethan grabbed Auri and plopped her right onto his head. With her pursuer gone, Elira finally let out a breath, panting as she leaned against Feylora to recover.

Auri, perched on Ethan’s head, still wasn’t satisfied.

She pointed at Elira, putting on an outrageously angry face.

"Daddy!"

"I still want to hit her with snowballs—put me down!"

Ethan’s temples started throbbing.

He reached up, lifted Auri off his head, and stuffed her straight back into his body. Her muffled protests were cut off immediately, and the dragon’s back finally went quiet again.

Idra stood to the side, not participating in the snowball war at all.

She stared into the distance, silent.

The ice-and-snow landmass had already fallen behind them. Ahead was an endless ocean.

Sunlight spilled across the water. Broken glitter of light rose and fell with the waves. Every so often, a few flying fish burst from the surface, their transparent fins opening midair as they glided for a short stretch before dropping back into the sea.

Clear weather.

A gentle sea breeze.

It looked, honestly, like the perfect day for a vacation.

Ethan scanned the horizon, searching for a small island where they could stop and rest.

They’d been on the move—fighting and sprinting and scrambling—for way too long.

It was time to breathe.

Before long, an island outline surfaced on the distant sea.

Ethan was just about to have Seraphina head toward it when a slab of pitch-black storm cloud drifted in from even farther away, rolling straight along the island’s direction—closing on them.

The cloud layer thickened.

The island was swallowed by shadow.

Ethan stared for a few seconds.

...Yeah.

There went the vacation fantasy.

Just looking at that place screamed trouble.

He patted Seraphina’s back and pointed toward the island.

Seraphina adjusted her wings, about to accelerate—

when the storm cloud had already pressed down from above, swallowing them whole.

The bright sky vanished.

Forked lightning strobed again and again inside the clouds. Dull thunder rumbled from different directions, and fine rain began to fall, cold drops tapping against them.

Andona spread her ten pairs of wings on instinct.

A pale golden barrier unfurled, wrapping everyone on Seraphina’s back—and Seraphina herself—inside it.

Once the defense was set, Andona flew to the edge of the shield.

She raised her head and looked forward.

That was where the lightning was thickest—bolt after bolt linking between black clouds until it practically formed a minefield you couldn’t go around.

Andona’s golden wings lifted higher.

"Lightning’s coming."

The moment Seraphina’s huge body entered that zone, she became the most obvious target on the planet.

The first bolt struck from the side, smashing directly into the golden barrier.

Boom!

Electric light spread across the shield’s surface, briefly illuminating everyone’s faces in harsh white.

Then more lightning hit—coming from every direction.

They didn’t have Ethan’s invasive control, but they made up for it with sheer volume.

One strike after another.

A relentless barrage, all focused on Seraphina’s position.

The golden barrier trembled under the pounding, ripples blooming across its surface. If Andona hadn’t been maintaining it, Seraphina would’ve been taking a whole lot of ugly damage again.

Several thick bolts slammed down at once.

At the impact point, the gold light was torn open, blasting a small hole through the shield. Residual arcs wormed in through the crack—only to be crushed the instant Andona’s Light Force re-knit the gap.

At last, they passed through the lightning zone.

The black cloud stayed behind them.

Ahead, they could already see a sandy shore—their landing point.

But this island had nothing to do with vacation.

The beach was a dead, ashy gray. The tide pushed up and retreated without leaving any sign of life behind. Nearby trees had long since withered, brittle branches swaying slowly in the wind like they might snap and vanish at any moment.

In the distance stood a single lonely mountain.

The peak had a clear, unnatural gap.

Ethan narrowed his eyes, looking harder—until he finally made out what sat there.

An empty throne.

Beyond that, the island had no striking buildings at all.

The truly abnormal thing was the fog that clung to everything.

It slid along the dead forest and the mountain’s base, never dispersing no matter how the sea wind blew. In some places it was so thick you couldn’t see anything inside. In others it was thin, only a gray-white film—yet still plastered tight to the ground.

Ethan forced himself to recall what he knew about this place.

It used to be lively.

Not as prosperous as many parts of the continent, sure—but it had never been this dead.

The before-and-after didn’t even feel like the same world.

Seraphina hovered over the beach, folded her wings, and shifted back into human form.

Andona guided everyone down on a bed of golden light, lowering them from the air until their boots touched the gray sand.

The instant she landed, Auri buried her face in Ethan’s arms.

Even Elira, for once, didn’t start trouble.

She shrank behind Ethan, only half her face peeking out as she watched the surroundings.

It was too quiet.

No birds.

No insects.

Even the sound of waves hitting the shore felt muffled by the fog, reduced to a low, repetitive scrape.

Then the sand under their feet... moved.

Just a little.

At first it felt like the tide loosening the ground.

But a few seconds later, the entire stretch of sand shifted sideways again—another small slide.

Ethan looked down.

Curious, he crouched and pressed his palm to the surface.

White lightning slipped from his fingertips into the sand.

The arcs didn’t scatter or tear things up. They followed the outline of something huge beneath them, stretching farther and farther away. As the lightning sank deeper, Ethan felt it—an awareness, young and panicked.

And then the beach came alive.

Rumble!

The whole gray sandfield shook violently.

Farther out, seawater was pushed aside by the rising ground. Dead trees tilted in the tremor. Everyone adjusted their stance to keep balance, looking toward Ethan with confusion.

Ethan, meanwhile, stared at the white energy in his hand—bright-eyed.

He had a feeling he’d just "tamed" something ridiculous.

The ground kept lifting.

Something massive was raising them up, sand sliding off both sides in sheets, exposing scaled skin underneath.

Everyone turned to look at Ethan at the same time.

Ethan stood up without a word, lifted one finger crackling with white lightning, and pointed behind them.

A gigantic head pushed out from the sand.

It blinked round, innocent eyes. A little forked tongue flicked from its mouth, and it stared at the people standing on it with a dazed, almost adorable expression.

A colossal snake.

But one look at its face and those eyes made it obvious—

it wasn’t an adult yet.

Not even grown, and it was already this big.

So how huge would it be once it matured?

Instinctively, everyone looked toward the distance.

The snake’s body covered most of the beach, but you could still see the tail at a glance. The enormous tail swished happily left and right, each swing pushing aside whole sheets of sand and gravel.

Then, deep in the forest, the fog surged thicker.

It poured past the dead trees and rushed toward the beach.

The moment the giant snake saw it, the dumb-cute look in its eyes turned into pure fear.

It lowered its head. Its massive body started drilling back down into the sand—then it nudged Ethan with its head, almost affectionate, urging him and the others to hide underground with it.

Ethan looked at the "minor" who’d been forced to come out and perform, and pressed a hand down on its head.

"You go down first."

White lightning carried the order cleanly through its scales.

"Without my permission, you’re not allowed to come back up."

The giant snake obediently flicked its tongue.

Ethan pushed its little head back into the sand. The massive body sank quickly below, leaving only churned, overturned sand behind.

Once he was sure the young sea snake was hidden, Ethan lifted his gaze to Seraphina, questioning in his eyes.

From the snake’s reaction, the fog probably didn’t directly harm creatures underground.

But with prolonged exposure, it might quietly—slowly—change a creature’s body.

The young sea snake was the clearest example.

She wasn’t native to this island.

She was a juvenile sea snake.

She might’ve wandered in by accident from the open ocean, brushed against part of the fog, and her body had changed because of it. After that, her original kind likely wouldn’t accept her, so she ended up living on this lonely island instead.

And over time, she’d learned to burrow into the sand and hide whenever the fog rolled in.