Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan lifted his head, ready to escape upward.

The instant he rose, the airflow above him cinched tight. A tornado formed ahead of time, sealing the route. He turned left—another spinning wind column was already taking shape. Right and below weren’t any better. Maelor had planted a tornado in every gap Ethan could’ve slipped through.

The winds looked like they were waiting for him to come closer.

And in Maelor’s direction, the tornadoes were even denser. Several wind pillars sat so close together that their rotational pull overlapped, locking down every direct line that might’ve reached him.

Ethan dissolved into particles again.

Black grains slid through the narrow gaps between wind columns, probing for a way in from different angles. But every time they neared Maelor, a new tornado appeared on the path first and blew the particles apart.

Once.

Then again.

Ethan kept changing direction, pushing his speed to the limit—and still couldn’t get close.

In the end, the black particles dropped onto a platform and gathered back together near the ground. Ethan re-formed, landing in a one-knee crouch with one hand braced against the stone, breathing hard.

He looked up at Maelor in the air.

"How is he seeing it?"

All those attempts had failed.

Ethan had driven his speed to its ceiling, yet Maelor dodged early every time. He wasn’t just avoiding the particle intrusion—he was also slipping past the white lightning spheres that chased him without ever letting one truly pin him down.

Maelor kept moving up there.

He wove through the attacks, tilting, dropping, sometimes turning into wind to slip past a sphere. White lightning kept cutting by him, but not a single shot actually stopped him.

His laughter even drowned out the tornado’s roar.

That was when a blinding light flared from another platform.

Maelor was still laughing when the light spread outward. Queen Seraphine stood at its center, a blade in her hand. More phantom blades appeared around her one after another, all their edges angled toward the sky, boxing in the entire region where Maelor hovered.

She didn’t speak.

Her eyes stayed cold, fixed on Maelor as he laughed and laughed.

Ataneya stepped out of the light.

Behind her, twelve enormous tails unfurled, their tips bracing against the platform—and the surrounding space itself—holding her steady. She passed Queen Seraphine and came straight to Ethan, who was still down on one knee.

Ethan rose, brushing the dust from his palm.

Before the crisp patter of it even faded, a fully condensed white lightning sphere was already floating above his left hand. Dense arcs crawled across the surface. Every clash of electricity burst into tiny flashes, throwing his face in and out of stark light.

Ataneya, standing in front of him, stopped suppressing her power.

The twelve tails she’d spread earlier split down the middle—

—doubling into twenty-four.

Those massive fox tails layered behind her, nearly filling the air over the platform. One tailtip after another slammed down onto the surrounding floating platforms. Dull booms rolled across stone and carried into the distance.

Cracks raced along platform edges.

Chunks of rock peeled free and dropped into the gray void. The footing under everyone began to sway left and right. The joints groaned with overloaded strain, sounding like they could shear loose at any second.

Feylora stood behind Ataneya, both hands pressed to her back, continuously feeding life energy into her.

The moment that power touched Ataneya, it was rapidly split through the twenty-four tails. Pale blue patterns lit along each tail, the glow running from root to tip, then flowing through the links between them, converging again at Ataneya’s chest.

Ethan looked at Ataneya—really looked.

Right now she felt like a nuke that was already ninety percent armed.

One last step, and she would go off.

He didn’t waste time. His left hand closed, and the white lightning sphere in his palm compressed inward. Dazzling electricity erupted from the center, linking with fresh lightning born in his hand. The two energies twisted together, spinning faster and faster until they stabilized into a blue-and-white, interlaced glow.

Ethan pushed his hand forward.

The fused energy sphere crossed the short distance between them and stopped in front of Ataneya.

No white lightning leaked out. Instead, it ran along the pale-blue energy inside, locked in place. Every arc stayed trapped within the orb—neither disrupting its structure nor weakening the power stored inside.

Ataneya lowered her head, eyes on her chest.

A pale-blue sphere was slowly forming there. The light at its center was compressed to the point it was hard to look at directly. A pale-blue ring expanded out of the sphere, passing through her body and tails, pushing outward in widening waves.

Where the ring passed, the wild wind currents stuttered into a brief stop.

Broken gravel on the platform was pressed flat, pinned tight to the stone. Even the tornadoes Maelor controlled in the distance visibly shifted once, as if something had shoved the air sideways.

Feylora felt her scalp go cold.

She could sense what was accumulating inside Ataneya. Every time that power strengthened by a fraction, the platform under Ataneya sank a fraction too—and the cracks around them widened in response.

But Feylora didn’t stop.

She clenched her teeth and forced even more life energy into Ataneya. Pale green light poured down her arms, and the pale-blue sphere at Ataneya’s chest rushed toward completion.

At the same time, the fight in the sky never paused.

Queen Seraphine hovered in the gray space, blade angled forward. Behind her, countless phantom blades had already spread out, packed tight inside golden light like a storm of steel.

She flicked her wrist.

The first wave launched.

Golden blades shot in every direction, cutting through nearby wind layers first, then sealing Maelor’s movement from different angles. Each blade dragged a thin golden trail, and in the dim space those trails wove into a tightening net.

Maelor turned to wind and tore through the gaps at high speed.

A few blades managed to catch his trajectory, slicing open the outer airflow and stabbing into his shoulder, his arm, his side. The moment they pierced him, the wind around the wounds lost control, rolling outward with torn flesh.

But none of the blades stayed lodged.

Maelor reached up to grab them, about to snap them—only for the golden edges to dissolve into light in his hand. A heartbeat later, they re-formed by Seraphine, spinning around her again.

More blades followed immediately.

At first Maelor still dodged on purpose. Later, he simply closed his eyes and sat on a drifting mass of wind, letting his body rise and fall with the current. Blades swept past his head, his sides, his feet. The ones that touched him were quickly bled off by the wind, their force peeled away.

The barrage lasted a long time.

At last, the golden halo that filled the sky began to fade—then vanished completely.

Only then did Maelor open his eyes.

He sat cross-legged on the wind, not tense from battle at all. He just looked like someone who’d been annoyed for too long. He lifted a hand, rubbed his eyes, and glared at Seraphine in the distance.

"You made it so bright—how am I supposed to see?"

He frowned as he complained.

"Seriously."

Seraphine didn’t answer.

She calmly raised her arm. A deep-gold ring immediately expanded from inside her. The first ring swept past the blades around her. The second followed. The third surged over the nearby platforms.

Ring after ring after ring.

The space that had just returned to gray lit up in gold again. Light poured down from above, piercing the remaining wind layers and exposing Maelor completely.

Maelor clicked his tongue and stood up on his wind.

The broken horn on his forehead had already loosened from the prolonged fight. Now, as the rings washed over him, it tilted to one side. A faint cracking sound came from the base. The horn wobbled a few times, on the verge of falling off by itself.

Maelor glanced up.

He didn’t look concerned in the slightest.

He grabbed the broken horn and tore it outward.

Crack.

He ripped it clean off his forehead.

No blood flowed from the break. Instead, a spinning gust surged from inside the wound, then curled inward. A new horn grew in the airflow, extending from a short spike to its original length in moments—smooth, complete, without a trace of damage.