Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

At the same time, a new figure took shape in the darkness.

A man.

His upper body was still human, but a teal tail dragged behind him, and his legs had the structure of a dragon. A broken horn jutted from his forehead at a slight angle, and wind spiraled around his body.

Maelor—controlled by Vhalrath—had returned to the battlefield.

Dragons were rare to begin with.

A dragon that had already died and could still be repurposed was rarer still.

Even if they weren’t of the same bloodline, as long as they belonged to the same race, Vhalrath only needed a little "processing" to make Maelor stand back up and fight again.

Staring at their own shadows, the group instead loosened their grip on restraint and let their power breathe.

They were just fake versions of themselves.

What was there to be afraid of?

Feylora stood at the very back of the circle, both hands spread outward.

A green barrier rose around her, expanding until it pulled every ally inside. Life energy flowed across the shield’s surface—one stream knitting wounds back together, another continuously topping off their drained reserves.

Healing and recovery at the same time.

In this chaotic brawl, she was the one stable backline they could count on.

Ataneya, on the other hand, was done being polite.

Twenty-four fox tails unfurled behind her in full—double the shadow’s twelve. Those massive tails slapped at the surrounding space, and every impact kicked out a rippling ring of force.

In her left hand, infernal flame bloomed.

Crimson energy ran up her arm, the temperature around her climbing with it. In her right, a refined blue energy sphere condensed—pale-blue light rotating in calm, steady loops, a perfect contrast to the violent fire on her left.

Ataneya stared at the shadow opposite her.

"You’ve got the nerve to copy me... and you make it look this cheap?"

Her tails slammed down again.

"You really think I’m that easy to bully?"

The moment the words left her mouth, all twenty-four tails shot forward.

Across from her, the shadow spread twelve tails and met the charge head-on.

Fox tails collided outside the circle.

Gray-black power and Ataneya’s energy blasted outward from every point of contact. Tail tips whipped, coiled, and crushed in rapid cycles—striking, binding, suppressing. The shadow’s twelve tails were reinforced by Vhalrath, far tougher than a normal copy. But Ataneya had numbers, and more importantly, control—she kept pinching in from new angles, never letting the shadow settle.

Twelve versus twenty-four.

Way too early to call it.

The others found their own shadows as well.

Queen Seraphine leveled her golden sword at a gray Seraphine. Andona’s Light Force slammed into a red-tainted version of itself. On another front, Ignara’s phoenix flames tore open a fresh sea of fire.

This was a chance to sharpen themselves.

And a perfect place to show exactly what they could do.

Only Ethan suddenly had nothing to do.

His shadow had already been absorbed inside Vhalrath—there was no matching enemy in front of him. And everyone else’s fights quickly settled into their own zones. If he jumped in carelessly, he’d just mess up their rhythm.

Ethan stood at the center of the circle and looked up, past the barrier.

Now that the infiltration inside his body was complete, he didn’t have an urgent target he had to deal with.

But those doors—and the figures endlessly replaying in the mirror—still gnawed at his curiosity.

He lifted a hand and pressed a black, particle-like orb of light into himself.

As the energy dispersed, the outline of his body broke apart again.

Ethan was going to slip around these shadows and continue searching for where Vhalrath truly was.

On the other side of the battlefield, Kaelira and Catheryn had it the worst.

Their copies had almost perfectly inherited the strength they’d shown when they’d been the ones charging at the front. Gray Kaelira repeatedly forced her raging energy sphere down toward the real Kaelira, while black Catheryn kept using devouring power to lock down every retreat.

Because the two of them had been the most aggressive earlier, Vhalrath’s replicas of them were the most "alive."

And now, they were the ones being pushed into a corner.

Ataneya was the first to finish her fight.

Her twenty-four tails snapped into different positions, pinning the shadow’s twelve tails from multiple directions. Six wrapped and bound. Six pressed down, choking off energy flow. The remaining twelve all surged at once, hurling the gray-black shadow’s body high into the air.

Ataneya twisted her waist.

All her tails smashed downward together.

Boom!

The shadow hit the ground head-on.

The shockwave shattered the surrounding gray-black barrier, and the twelve copied tails lost their shape under the overwhelming force, dissolving into a messy scatter of aura.

Ataneya didn’t pause to confirm the kill.

She flung the infernal flame in her left hand toward another front.

The fireball arced over everyone’s heads, curving straight for Kaelira’s position.

Kaelira was the most injured.

She should get help first.

The infernal flame dropped from above and struck gray Kaelira squarely. A pillar of fire erupted skyward, laced with a chilling aura of death, exploding outward from the copy’s shoulder and chest.

Gray Kaelira’s energy sphere didn’t even get the chance to finish its next attack before the flames swallowed it.

The fire column slammed up toward the top of the cage, dragging everyone’s eyes with it.

Blazing light dyed the darkness around them a brutal red.

And that single hit made one thing unmistakably clear—

The scale of victory was starting to tip their way.

The Green Dragon Lord hurried to join in too.

Its body looked almost tiny next to the massive energies flying around, but it still darted into the edge of the firelight and unleashed its power at gray Kaelira.

The help was limited, sure—but even a starving camel was still bigger than a horse.

Every bit of support shaved off a bit of pressure from Kaelira.

Meanwhile, Ethan kept moving lazily above the battlefield.

Lily had already awakened inside him, her consciousness sharp and steady. If Ethan needed it, she could merge with him at any moment and join the fight.

He was tracing the top edge of the gray-black barrier, hunting for spatial fluctuations, when Lily suddenly spoke.

"Ethan, look down!"

Ethan stopped mid-step.

His gaze had been fixed on the space above the cage, but at her warning he immediately looked toward the ground.

Black particles sank with his intent.

The closer he got to the bottom of the cage, the more he felt a resistance unlike anything a normal surface would give. There was no visible wall, no energy shield—yet it split the space above and below as if a solid divide had been welded into existence.

He slipped through the lingering shockwaves of battle and descended beneath the ground.

The world changed.

This place felt like the boundary between the Surface Layer and the Inverted Layer.

The cage above—the fighting, the gray-black barrier—was still clearly visible, like it was on the other side of a perfectly flat sheet of water. He could see every movement, and energy ripples still carried through... but the underlying structure of space had become something else entirely.

Ethan continued downward.

The instant his particleized body touched that boundary, a fierce resistance slammed into him. The black particles were pressed against the surface, unable to slip through the way they would through normal matter.

He was an outsider.

And this space was refusing to let him in.