Chapter 1297: When Frostreach Vanished
Auri edged out from Ethan’s side.
She crept up to the rag doll, reached out one finger, and gently poked it on the head.
No reaction.
Auri poked it again.
The doll still lay there.
Auri didn’t dare linger. She spun around and sprinted back to Ethan at top speed, hugging his leg and peeking out with only her eyes.
A wisp of gray fog suddenly seeped up from the ground.
Then more mist rose from cracks in the soil, spreading slowly across the forest floor around their feet.
It thickened fast.
In Seraphina’s palm, Primordial Death Energy immediately churned.
Deep red slipped through her fingers, and the temperature and light around them dropped along with it.
Still daring to come back?
This fog clearly hadn’t learned a thing.
Seraphina was about to strike again when Ethan coughed lightly.
"Ahem."
Not loud—just enough.
She stopped.
Ethan shook his head at her, a clear warning not to casually use Primordial Death Energy again.
Seraphina sighed and pulled the power back.
She turned and walked toward the rear of the group—into the unofficial "retirement zone"—and sat down beside Queen Elowen.
If she couldn’t deal with the fog, then fine.
She’d sit with Elowen, play with ice.
Or, if the mood struck, bully Seraphina a little.
The fog kept building.
Gray-white swallowed the dead grass and broken roots, shrinking visibility layer by layer.
The group still didn’t move.
But the rag doll that had been playing dead couldn’t hold out anymore.
Two pinpricks of red light lit up in its stitched eyes.
Its cloth body began to swell.
"I, Lopsy, will never be trapped in your hands!"
The voice was no longer a crying child’s. It rang with anger and stubborn pride.
Lopsy expanded rapidly.
Its patchwork body stretched upward, shooting past the nearby dead trees in a blink. Seams pulled tight across the gigantic surface, and its shadow covered the campfire and the whole group.
A rag doll as tall as a mountain stood inside the forest.
The scissors on its back grew with it.
Lopsy gripped the handles with both hands, aimed the blades at the spot where everyone stood, and snapped them shut.
Crack!
A huge gash was cut through the air itself.
Seraphina instantly returned to her dragon form.
Scales rolled across her body, wings unfurling wide. She rose, and her size quickly surpassed Lopsy’s, dragon eyes staring down at those reddening cloth "pupils."
The stitching across Lopsy’s chest suddenly bulged.
A seam split open, and deep green gas erupted from inside, skimming the ground as it rushed toward the group below.
Where it passed, dead grass darkened instantly, and blotchy stains spread across the bark of nearby trees.
Seraphina moved calmly in the air.
Holy Light Force surged from her, coating her scales and then expanding outward into a golden barrier that fully protected everyone below.
The deep green gas slammed into the shield.
The fog-like poison streamed along the gold surface, unable to pierce through.
At the same time, Andona’s wings kept multiplying.
Twenty pairs of golden wings spread fully in the sky, arranged into a perfect halo. Each feather released Light Force, rings of brilliant gold blooming behind her like a massive flower opening.
A sacred greatsword manifested in the air.
When the hilt dropped into Andona’s hand, holy light concentrated into the blade, and the edge extended rapidly.
Behind her, a colossal angel phantom appeared.
The angel gripped a golden spear in both hands, lowering the point toward Lopsy.
Andona passed through Seraphina’s shield.
Golden pupils beneath her mask locked onto Lopsy Blackstitch, who was trading blows with Seraphina.
The greatsword in Andona’s hands kept growing.
Its edge rose above the treetops, sacred pressure spilling across the battlefield. The lingering gray fog retreated wherever it touched the gold light, and even the deep green gas Lopsy had released was cut open with a blank corridor through the middle.
Andona raised the sword with both hands and brought it down.
At the same moment, the angel phantom released its spear.
Two attacks pressed in from different angles.
Lopsy sensed the power from the side—but didn’t turn immediately.
Its scissors were still colliding with Seraphina’s enormous claws.
Metal scraped across dragon scales, throwing bright sparks. Seraphina pinned one blade down with a claw, while Lopsy drove the other, trying to clamp and sever her forelimb outright.
When it realized it couldn’t win the power contest, Lopsy suddenly snapped the blades together.
The two long edges fused into a single massive spike, thrusting straight for Seraphina’s chest.
Seraphina knew she couldn’t stop it at that range.
She beat her wings and pulled back fast. The spike grazed the scales across her chest, carving a long scrape—but it didn’t truly pierce her.
After forcing Seraphina back, Lopsy didn’t chase.
It turned to face Andona’s incoming strike.
Deep green energy poured out from its stitched body and formed an oval shield around it.
Lopsy stabbed the giant scissors into the ground to brace its enormous frame.
Andona’s greatsword hit first.
The gold blade chopped straight into the deep green barrier.
Boom!
Blinding light burst at the contact point.
Gold and deep green repelled each other—one sacred, the other sickeningly wrong. The two forces crushed and ground on the shield’s surface, producing rapid shockwaves that spread outward in rings.
The ground shook repeatedly.
Nearby dead trees were ripped up by the blast wind, and stones and dirt were shoved away.
The greatsword didn’t split the barrier.
The blade met resistance and slid along the oval surface, slowly drifting to one side until it finally missed Lopsy’s body.
Rumble!
The gold greatsword slammed into the earth.
A deep trench ripped outward from beside Lopsy’s feet, every tree and stone along its line sliced apart by the sword’s lingering edge.
Only the angel’s spear was still locked in a direct contest with the barrier.
The spearpoint sank into the green light, fine cracks spiderwebbing outward.
Inside, Lopsy stopped maintaining the defense.
It grabbed the scissors embedded in the ground and yanked upward.
The giant shears rose, extending beyond the shield’s boundary. Outside the barrier, they opened and closed again and again.
Every snap compressed the air.
Torrents of wind blasted from between the blades, roaring toward the group.
Everyone was forced to shut their eyes, hair and clothing whipping hard backward. Even Andona had to retreat slightly, twenty pairs of wings folding forward together to brace against the pressure.
Her gaze never left that deep green barrier.
But in the brief moment everyone’s eyes were squeezed shut—
Lopsy vanished.
No movement trail.
Even the scissors anchored in the ground were gone with it.
With the power inside gone, the deep green barrier dimmed rapidly.
The angel’s spear punched through the last layer of defense, falling from the sky to stab heavily into the ground.
Gold light exploded—
and the space inside the barrier was empty.
At the same time, far beneath Frostreach, a surviving Orun artifact was still pulsing.
It was tiny, hidden inside a deep structure that had long since gone silent.
Each time the red light flared, the surrounding space contracted by a fraction.
This artifact was clearly different from other Orun creations.
But before anyone could react, its inner power finished one final pulse.
Frostreach vanished from where it had been.
Ice mountains, snowfields, villages, and every leftover pocket of space were erased by a force that ground them away.
No collapse.
No ruins.
That entire region—along with the space it occupied—turned into nothing.
And now, deep inside the island’s dead forest, a shrill scream suddenly tore out.
It traveled through trees and earth, spreading across the whole island.
The soil began to loosen.
From beneath roots, from cracks in rock, from under fallen trunks, bony hands slowly pushed up.
Skeletons climbed out of the ground by the thousands.
Some dragged broken longswords. Some hauled rusted shields. Dim fire burned in their hollow eye sockets, and as they moved, bone scraped bone in one long, grinding chorus.