Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Catheryn turned her face slightly, looking at Ethan—who still had his hand raised.

"Well?"

Her tone was easy, like she’d just handed over a carefully wrapped present.

"A little surprise for you. You like it?"

Ethan looked at her.

The pitch-black long coat hid her figure, and somehow made the ruthlessness under that calm face even harder to read.

He stayed quiet for a beat, then silently lifted a thumbs-up. After that, he turned to look outside the cage.

"You’re still the badass one."

Ethan admitted it seriously.

"I was being shallow."

Catheryn flicked her dark sleeve and didn’t bother responding. She simply returned her gaze beyond the bars, contempt still sitting on her face like she wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Phoenix Queen Ignara descended from the air.

As the towering phoenix dropped, flames wrapped around her body. By the time she landed next to Ethan, she’d already returned to human form. She shot Catheryn a helpless look, then looked over the battlefield that had been completely wiped clean by darkness, and in the end, said nothing.

Seraphina also came to a stop and folded her dragon wings.

Her massive dragon body shrank fast—scales and horns fading away. When the last of the light dispersed, she was standing in human form on Ethan’s other side.

The remaining little scraps that hadn’t been swallowed by the darkness weren’t worth their personal attention anymore.

Emerald Castle’s army could handle that.

Across the battlefield, fragments from Maelor’s dragon form were scattered over the ground.

Those black scales were slowly disappearing.

First the edges turned transparent. Then the entire shard faded out. The same change spread through the other dark gray enemies as well—severed limbs, weapons, shattered bodies, all vanishing from the cage.

Before long, the only ones left in the dim cage were them and Emerald Castle’s troops.

Even the mountain of bones beneath their feet began to fade in patches after the darkness swept through.

The bones didn’t crumble into dust.

They simply ceased to exist, leaving no trace behind.

Andona lifted her head, staring toward the space above the cage.

She spread her golden wings, ready to take off and check what was left after Vhalrath’s disappearance. Ten pairs of wings beat at once, Light Force rippling outward along the feathers and pushing back a small pocket of darkness nearby.

The moment she left the ground, an invisible force pressed down from above.

Bang!

Andona got slammed straight back into the floor.

Her boots hit the bottom of the cage hard enough to kick up the remaining bone fragments around her. And when her golden wings brushed that force, they changed—shattered out of their uniform sheen, individual feathers staining different colors.

Red, purple, blue, and green tangled together in a messy weave.

The whole pair of wings looked like someone had taken a marker to them.

Feylora rushed to Andona’s side immediately.

She raised both hands. A thin green shield spread from in front of her palms, wrapping Andona and everyone nearby. Life energy flowed slowly across the shield’s surface, then split into fine threads that sank into their bodies, repairing the damage left over from the fight.

Ethan stood at the edge of the shield and looked out.

The gray space had sunk into the kind of darkness where you couldn’t see your own hand.

They used to be able to make out the distant outline of the cage bars—now even the nearest one was smothered. Farther out, the environment was still changing. The gray retreated inch by inch, replaced by an even purer black.

No wind.

No sound.

The world felt hollow, like the only thing left was their little green shield.

Then the darkness above their heads shifted.

A bright point appeared high overhead.

Then a second. A third.

A wide field of starlight blinked on across the black, as if a brilliant night sky had suddenly dropped into the cage. The stars brightened and dimmed in different rhythms—pretty, from a distance. Almost peaceful.

Ethan spotted what was wrong almost immediately.

Those stars were getting bigger.

Not brighter.

Bigger—and falling, visibly, toward them.

He stared up for another second, and his expression sank.

Around each "star," space itself caved inward. Deep blue energy kept compressing inside the spheres, and the flowing patterns on their surfaces were identical to the energy bodies that had been orbiting around Vhalrath earlier.

Stellar Core.

And not just one.

"Move!"

Ethan whirled and shouted at everyone.

"Raise the shield together—now!"

The four little ones stopped whatever they’d been doing instantly.

Auri, Idra, Nysera, and Anya ran in from different directions toward Ethan, then jumped one after another. Their bodies transformed midair into different colors of energy, slipping into Ethan with a bright, almost playful urgency.

The moment all four powers returned, the white lightning around Ethan surged. Blue, green, red-white, and specks of darkness rode along the arcs, quickly filling the energy he’d burned through earlier.

Seraphina was the first into the air.

She lifted both hands upward, and a golden barrier formed above her palms. At first it was only a few yards wide, but as deep-gold energy poured in, the edges expanded fast—until it covered everyone’s heads.

The first wave of fragments shedding off the Stellar Cores was already dropping.

Deep blue chunks dragged tails of light as they slammed into the golden barrier.

Thud!

The impact didn’t punch through, but it sent a massive ripple racing across the shield’s surface. The wave spread out from the point of contact, and the entire barrier bowed downward.

Seraphina was forced down toward the ground with it.

She clenched her teeth, both hands braced hard against the shield, but she couldn’t fully stop the descent. More fragments fell in rapid succession, and each hit forced the golden barrier to sink another notch.

Behind her, Ataneya unfurled eleven fox tails.

The huge tails reached from different angles—some pressing against Seraphina’s back, some wrapping her arms, and several bracing directly under the golden barrier itself.

Ataneya drove power through her legs. The twelfth tail—the last one, still not fully spread—remained drawn behind her. With eleven tails, she charged into position around Seraphina and used her whole body and tails to shoulder the falling weight.

The shield’s descent finally slowed.

Seraphina felt the support at her back.

Slowly, she released her hands from the barrier.

The golden defense didn’t vanish. It held, sustained by Ataneya’s tails and the leftover strength Seraphina had already poured in. Seraphina let her arms drop to her sides, and rings of golden light began to pulse outward from her body.

The first ring spread tight along her skin.

The second swept past Ataneya’s tails.

The third slammed into the surrounding space, forming a circular shockwave that knocked the next falling bits of debris off to either side.

Golden swords began to appear—one by one—inside those rings.

At first, their tips pointed toward the ground. As the number grew, they all pivoted at once, turning upward. They hovered in a slow orbit around Seraphina, each blade wrapped in deep-gold energy, waiting.