Chapter 1269: The Lantern Between Worlds
Queen Elowen hadn’t fully recovered either.
Every time she breathed, ice crystals spilled from her lips—sometimes a few tiny snowflakes, sometimes chunks of ice the size of a fist. Even she couldn’t stabilize it.
While everyone sat there in a daze, the ground suddenly bulged.
A thin crack split open, and black particles wriggled out.
Ethan popped up from underground like some kind of local earth god, his face still bright with the relief of getting out alive.
"I’m back—"
He cut himself off the second he saw them.
Everyone’s eyes were unfocused. Their spirits looked drained, their bodies slack, sitting in the ruins with almost no reaction at all.
Ethan’s smile faded, inch by inch.
What the hell happened?
Could it be... kidneys—?
The thought had barely surfaced before Lily, unusually, flew out of his body on her own.
She rose above them.
White power spread from her small frame, forming a soft layer of shielding that wrapped around each person separately.
The shields didn’t cling tight to their bodies. Instead, they connected along the ground into a huge oval, covering everyone inside a single, continuous boundary.
Lily hovered at the center of that oval and gently blew out a breath.
A tender wind unfurled from her lips.
It didn’t tug at clothes or kick up dust. It simply drifted around their bodies, slow and careful, smoothing the trembling energy in their cores and easing the tension wound into their minds.
They’d still been forcing their eyes open, barely holding on.
After that wind touched them, the last thread of wakefulness slipped away fast.
Ataneya’s tails went limp.
The flames in Kaelira’s hair steadily weakened.
The ice crystals Elowen had been breathing out froze at her lips, then softened into tiny points of light.
One by one, they closed their eyes and fell into deep sleep.
After Lily confirmed their states were stable, she closed her own eyes as well.
She drifted down, turned into a strand of white light, and slipped back into Ethan’s body.
And then—she fell asleep again.
Ethan stood there, stunned, staring around.
The white shield Lily had made lay quietly over them, its oval wall pressed to the ground, protecting every sleeping companion within. Ataneya’s fox tails drooped softly. The last flicker at Kaelira’s ends had gone out. The ice crystals around Elowen had stopped moving.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Not even the sound of a normal breeze.
The silence was so complete it almost felt like the world was announcing that nothing awake existed nearby.
Ethan stood at the edge of the shield, about to check everyone’s condition, when a strange energy slid into his perception.
It approached from far away—unhurried, not obviously hostile, not even trying to hide. Ethan looked toward it and saw a dim, yellow glow bloom in the darkness.
A young man was walking toward him with an oil lantern.
The flame wavered softly inside a glass cover, lighting up only a tiny patch of ground at his feet. His steps were cautious. Every few seconds he stopped to look around, like someone who’d wandered into an unfamiliar place and was trying to find his way out.
But how could an ordinary person show up in a place like this?
Ethan didn’t speak. He just watched.
The young man came closer, finally noticed Ethan, and his previously lost eyes lit up. He quickened his pace and jogged over. After he caught his breath, he spoke politely.
"Excuse me—what is this place?"
He glanced back into the darkness behind him.
"I stumbled in by accident. It’s so dark I couldn’t see anything... and then this lantern just appeared in my hand."
He lifted it and gave it a little shake, genuine wonder on his face.
"It’s incredible."
Ethan hesitated, not answering.
Not because he didn’t know how to explain—
But because he’d seen what was following behind the young man.
A pink brain floated in the air.
It was only a little bigger than a normal human head. Its grooves and folds contracted slowly. It moved without making a sound, always staying half a step behind the young man, following him with the obedient closeness of a pet.
The young man noticed where Ethan was looking and misunderstood, thinking Ethan was scared. He hurriedly shifted sideways, putting his own body between Ethan and the pink brain.
He tried to smile in a friendly way, but his mouth was visibly stiff.
Ethan caught the awkwardness immediately.
He didn’t ask who the young man was.
He didn’t ask what the pink brain was, either.
He simply stepped aside, lifted a hand, and motioned for him to keep going.
The young man let out a relieved breath and nodded politely.
"Thank you."
He carried the lantern past Ethan.
The pink brain followed right behind. As it drifted past Ethan, it rotated slightly—as if it were studying him.
The young man walked a little farther, then remembered he hadn’t properly thanked Ethan. He stopped, turned with the lantern raised...
And found Ethan was gone.
Only empty darkness remained.
The young man shook his head with a bit of regret.
The pink brain floated closer to his shoulder and rubbed against it affectionately. The young man lifted a hand and patted it, and the two silhouettes continued forward in the lantern’s dull glow—until they disappeared into the deep dark.
And the moment Ethan stepped aside to let him pass, everything had already changed.
No spatial fluctuation.
No teleportation array.
Not even the sensation of falling or rising.
He blinked once—and the shattered floor of the cage became scorching sand under his feet.
His sleeping companions were all around him.
The oval shield Lily had formed was gone. Everyone was scattered across the sand in a rough sprawl, but none of them had new injuries, and their breathing was still steady.
Farther away, the Green Dragon army had been teleported out too.
Ethan looked down and ground his boot into the sand.
Fine grains slid off the leather. Overhead, harsh sunlight poured down in a straight line, and the heat around him was brutal.
"Random teleport?"
He lifted his gaze toward the endless desert.
"Honestly... that’s kind of interesting."
But figuring out how it worked wasn’t the urgent part.
Everyone except Ethan was still unconscious. The four little ones were awake, but they were inside him—and out here, there was no water in sight.
They needed water. Now.
After a stretch of waiting that didn’t feel easy at all, people began to wake one after another.
Having numbers helped. The four little ones took turns checking different companions’ conditions, while Auri took over as a backup healer, using life energy to help the ones who’d burned through the most recover.
Ataneya sat up first. Then Seraphine, Kaelira, and Elowen. By the time Feylora opened her eyes, Auri had already flown out of Ethan and been curled beside her, feeding her life energy for a good while.