Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Seraphina rose into the air, slow and controlled.

Holy radiance bloomed from her body.

The first ring of sacred light washed over the beach.

The second ring swept past the dead forest and met the onrushing gray fog.

The fog reacted like it had found a natural predator. Instead of slowing, it surged harder—layer after layer of gray-white mist piling forward, charging straight for Seraphina.

Seraphina lifted both hands.

A shield spanning tens of thousands of feet unfolded from the sky, covering the entire island.

A colossal wall of light formed around the island’s perimeter.

Where they stood, a separate, deep-gold barrier wrapped around the group like a smaller inner dome.

Once the isolation was complete, Seraphina closed her eyes and carefully felt the fog pressing toward her.

The fog slammed into the shield.

It wasn’t erased by the holy light.

Gray gas spread along the golden surface, then slowly climbed upward, trying to crawl over the top and escape toward the open sea beyond.

Seraphina opened her eyes.

"Death," she said, watching the fog climb.

"This island is saturated with the power of death."

She paused, a faint crease of confusion forming between her brows.

"But it isn’t... quite right."

"Mixed into it is an impure intent."

Seraphina looked at Ethan.

A holy orb formed in her palm.

She drew a thread of fog from outside the barrier and sealed it inside the orb’s center. The moment the gray mist entered, it began battering the inner wall, struggling to break out.

Seraphina layered several more sacred seals around the orb.

Only after confirming nothing could leak did she guide the orb toward Ethan.

Ethan accepted it with care.

The gray-white fog strand inside was separated from the main tide, but it didn’t calm down. Thin wisps kept slamming into the Light Force wall, failing, immediately changing angles, trying again.

No eyes.

No body.

And yet its behavior had a clear purpose.

Get out.

Return to the fog covering the island.

Ethan rotated his wrist, studying how it reacted to light. White lightning slid from the fingertips of his other hand, compressing into a needle-thin spike as it approached the orb.

If he pierced it, he could trace the internal structure of the fog’s power.

Just as the needle tip was about to touch the orb—

a metallic whistle tore through the island’s silence.

A longsword shot out from deep in the trees.

It wasn’t especially fast, and it didn’t radiate any dramatic energy, but when its tip touched Seraphina’s deep-gold shield, it punched straight in.

Crack.

A tiny hole split open on the shield’s surface.

Ethan snapped his head around.

The first sword was still lodged in the barrier—when the sky darkened with a dense scatter of black dots.

Thousands upon thousands of arrows rose over the dead forest in a single clean arc... then rained down toward the group.

The arrowstorm blotted out what little light remained. Arrowheads screamed through the air in one long, unified shriek.

From the other side, a thick chain whipped out of the fog.

A giant fishhook was attached to the end.

The hook spun over the beach and slammed into the shield’s裂—right into the opening. Metal bit into the gold light. The chain went taut, like it meant to rip the entire layer of defense off the ground.

Seraphina raised her right hand.

A power completely different from her usual holy radiance rose from her palm.

True Primordial Death Energy.

Deep red flowed up along her wrist, slipped past her sleeve, then began circling her body in a slow, ominous orbit. At the same time, the enormous sacred shield that had been covering the whole island—tens of thousands of feet wide—vanished.

With the outer barrier gone, the forest fog surged immediately.

Andona was already in front of everyone.

Twelve pairs of golden wings flared behind her, each pair radiating Light Force outward. Gold lines first formed a ring at their feet, then sealed upward in a tight curve, shaping into a smaller, denser shield.

The arrows hit.

Clangclangkclang—impacts piled up in an endless rattle.

Arrowheads snapped on the golden barrier, shards ricocheting away. The giant fishhook slammed down again, the shock rippling through the surface hard enough to make Andona’s outermost wings tremble.

Catheryn stood behind them, slowly spreading her fingers.

Darkness flowed from her palm to the outside of the shield, condensing in the roiling fog into a tall silhouette.

An Umbral Servitor stepped into the gray-white tide.

It didn’t retreat. It let the mist scour its body. Every time the fog tore a section of shadow loose, Catheryn’s power fed in again from behind, keeping it planted between the group and the forest.

Seraphina, meanwhile, walked out of Andona’s protection on purpose.

Gray-white fog wrapped around her from all sides.

It clung to her robes, crept up her arms, and tried to slip into her body. Seraphina didn’t dodge. She closed her eyes and listened to that force—the thing masquerading as death.

A few breaths later, she opened her eyes again.

The confusion was gone.

"You’re not true death."

Her gaze cut into the fog’s depths, voice turning sharp.

"Get out."

The last word landed, and Primordial Death Energy spread outward from her.

No explosion.

The deep red simply passed through everyone’s awareness and flesh, then laid itself across the island’s ground like an ancient tide. A crushing heaviness settled in everyone’s chest for an instant, so dense it briefly pressed their breathing flat.

The gray-white fog touched Primordial Death Energy and immediately lost its shape.

The fog wall collapsed from the front.

Huge masses of gray were shoved backward, then peeled off the island like they’d been caught in a violent gale. The layers smothering the beach, the forest, and the mountain’s base vanished one after another, and the dim world snapped into focus.

Only a little residue remained—hiding in gaps between the trees up ahead, leaking out in thin, broken threads.

And the orb in Ethan’s hand.

Ethan looked down.

The gray mist inside was gone.

Only pure, sacred Light Force remained.

Whatever had been sealed in there had clearly been "cleaned up" in passing when Seraphina released Primordial Death Energy.

The deep red in Seraphina’s eyes faded.

Primordial Death Energy withdrew back into her. Gentle holy radiance replaced the earlier pressure, spreading from her toward the group.

"Are you all okay?"

She turned, checking everyone with open worry.

They all shook their heads.

Aside from that brief, suffocating discomfort under the death power, no one was actually hurt.

Ethan put away the now-empty orb and walked to Seraphina’s side.

"Who were you talking to just now?" he asked, looking in the direction she’d been staring.

"I’m curious."

Seraphina smiled softly.

She raised her hand and pointed at the lone peak in the distance.

At the summit, the empty throne still sat in its missing notch, silent and waiting.

"The ruler here," Seraphina said, eyes settling on the throne.

"Someone who insults death."

She looked back at Ethan, and a thread of death power began gathering in her palm again.

"What—do you want to meet him?"

If Ethan nodded, she looked like she’d drag the island’s "king" over in the next second.

Ethan slowly shook his head.

"No need."

He looked into the dead forest ahead, now partly visible.

"This place didn’t used to be like this."

"I want to see for myself why it became... this."

Ethan bent down and patted the beach sand.

The juvenile sea snake hiding underneath immediately poked its head out, round eyes blinking up at him.

"Let’s go."

The young sea snake pushed its body up through the sand again, lifting everyone onto its head and back.

Seraphina stood to the side. For once she didn’t have to be the group’s transportation, and her shoulders visibly loosened.

Carrying them, the sea snake left the beach and entered the dead forest.

A ribbon of leftover fog surged between the trees.

Before it could reach the snake, the sacred power Seraphina had left around the group flared on its own. Gold light swept across the mist, and it dispersed on the spot, exposing a patch of dried grassland behind it.

With the fog cleared, something ahead finally moved.

A small figure darted through the dead grass.

Blades bent and popped back up, forming a thin line pointing deeper into the forest. Before anyone could make out what it was, the sea snake beneath them stopped dead.

More accurately—

it was forced to stop.

Her head slipped cleanly between two dead trees, but her body wedged tight between the trunks.

The sea snake pushed forward again.

The two trees screeched as bark and dry wood ground against scales, but they still clamped her in place.

Sometimes being huge wasn’t a blessing.

The sea snake flicked its tongue in agitation, tail slapping the ground behind her.