Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan dissolved into black particles and drifted upward through the frigid air.

The higher he rose, the more of the desert spread out beneath him. But when he looked down toward where the pyramid complex had been...

It was gone.

The pyramids hadn’t collapsed. There weren’t even scattered stones.

All that remained on the sand were long, sweeping tracks—marks left by something massive being moved. The trails converged from multiple directions toward a central point, proof the pyramids had existed... and then been hauled away as a whole after completing some task.

Including the largest pyramid.

Including the one his team had been inside.

The ground was empty.

His companions were gone.

Ethan’s particles halted midair. His chest sank hard.

"Seriously... how’d they know I’d leave?"

He scanned the desert fast, hunting for any familiar energy signature. But aside from the fading mechanical residue, there was nothing—no trace of where the others had been taken.

"No..."

Panic hit.

He wasn’t worried about them getting hurt in a normal fight. This wasn’t a normal fight. The enemy could copy bodies, shift space, and swap Elira out without anyone noticing.

Where was the real Elira now? What state was she in?

Unknown. All of it.

Inside him, Lily felt his anger rising higher and higher.

Soft white light spread from deep in his consciousness and reached for his power on its own. Lily didn’t ask. She didn’t wait for permission. She started merging directly.

Ethan sensed it and instinctively wanted to refuse.

Lily had only just awakened, and she’d already helped them cross spatial boundaries back-to-back. Forcing more power out of her now could easily knock her back into sleep.

But there wasn’t time.

Ethan exhaled through his nose, resigned, and accepted the fusion.

White energy surged through the black particles. Every speck lit up, their connections snapping tighter and steadier. The frantic, trembling fluctuations in his aura drew inward, compressed—until they hardened into a pressure so cold the surrounding air seemed to stop moving.

Ethan re-formed his body.

He hovered above the desert, eyes sweeping the horizon with a glacial calm.

"I know you’re watching me."

His voice, pushed by energy, carried far.

No one answered.

But Ethan could still feel it—hidden observation devices continuing to record every twitch of his fingers, every breath.

"Fine," he said softly. "Then watch."

He raised his left hand.

"Watch how I control this power."

A mass of white energy gathered upward from his palm.

At first it was only the size of a fist. As Ethan kept pouring strength into it, the edges expanded rapidly. Blinding white washed over the sky, bleaching the yellow sand below until it lost its color.

At the same time, he aimed his right hand at the ground.

White lightning sprayed from his fingertips, swelling into a thick pillar of thunder that slammed straight down into the sand.

Boom!

The desert split down the middle under the light.

The lightning punched through the surface and kept drilling—shattering metal pipelines, mechanical corridors, and buried devices. Every time it tore through another layer, the ground bulged upward... then collapsed in an explosion.

Cracks raced outward from the lightning pillar like a spiderweb.

Underground structures detonated one after another. Black smoke, machine oil, and metal shrapnel geysered up through the sand.

"You machines love hiding that much?" Ethan muttered.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He drew both hands together.

The massive energy sphere above his left hand began to descend, while the lightning from his right hand tore free of the earth and flowed back up his arm like a returning tide.

The two forces met in front of his chest.

Arcs of lightning dove into the white sphere and skittered across its surface at insane speed. Every arc that passed compressed the sphere another layer inward—and each compression made it brighter.

Until a white energy orb, bright as a sun, hovered between Ethan’s palms.

The temperature around it didn’t rise.

But air, light, and even space itself were dragged slightly toward the center, pulled by the sphere’s presence. Bowed arcs of lightning crisscrossed inside the glow, and any stray leak of power was enough to carve a bottomless trench into the sand below.

Ethan was just about to throw it—

When a scepter knocked the space in front of him.

Thump.

A ring of transparent ripples spread through midair.

A second knock landed, and a vertical crack split open in the center of the air.

An old man stepped out.

His right eye was mechanical, a pale-blue point pulsing in the center of a metal eyeball. His left eye was human, wrinkled at the corner.

He carried a scepter.

Its tip tapped space at a fixed rhythm, and with each tap, a transparent plane appeared at his feet—just solid enough to support his weight.

"Young man."

The old man stopped in front of Ethan, voice steady.

"I advise you not to act on impulse."

He glanced at the blinding white sphere, then lifted his gaze toward the higher sky.

"My country’s people live in the air. If you have grievances, we can talk."

Ethan stared at him, confused for half a second.

Talk?

Now he wanted to talk?

Did this old man seriously think Ethan still had the patience for whatever stupid speech was coming next?

The energy sphere in Ethan’s hands was practically begging for a target.

And someone had just volunteered.

A notice of death appeared above the old man’s head.

A dark mark formed from death-aspected power flared within the white glare, locking onto his body with perfect accuracy.

The old man raised his mechanical right eye—sensing the change.

The next instant, space shuddered violently.

A huge circular portal tore open above the desert. Yellow-sand-colored metal extended out from within, layer after layer, until it assembled into a massive desert disk.

The disk blotted out a wide stretch of sky.

Gears rotated inside it in different directions. The rim bristled with mechanical structures and spatial interfaces. As the device fully manifested, the desert below was pressed into a circular depression by the weight of its pressure alone.

Ethan glanced up once.

"Again?"

He shoved the energy sphere forward.

"Perfect. I’ll bury you here."

The old man didn’t panic.

He clasped his hands behind his back and turned toward the desert disk. A passage opened at the rim automatically, letting him walk into the center.

He stood inside the device and looked back at the oncoming white sphere.

His mechanical right eye ran rapid analysis on the power inside it.

But in his human left eye, there was only endless bitterness and resignation.

Another rare human to kill.

What a waste.

The energy sphere was almost on top of the disk.

The old man lifted his scepter, ready to activate the internal power—

But when he looked for Ethan again, the spot where Ethan had been was empty.

Ethan was gone.

No flight path.

No lingering particles.

In the next instant, Ethan appeared inside a massive laboratory’s containment vat.

A transparent container rose from beneath his feet to far above his head. There was no liquid inside—only layer upon layer of sealing energy. The barrier overhead released a downward pressure, trying to pin him in the center.

That level of restraint couldn’t hold Ethan.

He didn’t shatter the vat immediately. Instead, he turned his head and looked around.

Through the transparent wall, he saw rows upon rows of identical vats stretching across the lab.

One row.

Then another.

Dense containers ran all the way to the edge of his vision—and inside each one was a familiar figure.

His companions.

Some were still in defensive stances. Some were scanning the surroundings. They’d clearly just been dumped in here too, not yet fully sure what kind of place they’d been dragged into.