Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

An energy sphere spun lazily between Ethan’s fingers.

He stared down at the huge dragon below, contempt undisguised in his voice.

"This thing’s body is already this hard to deal with."

"And it still needs mechanical reinforcement?"

"Seriously. I don’t get it."

Beside him, Seraphina dipped her dragon head in agreement.

The two dragons weren’t wildly different in size. Facing off in the abyss, the pressure they radiated crashed against each other in visible waves, making the air feel tight.

At the edge of the abyss, two pillars of fire flared to life.

Flames climbed upward, shaping themselves into the outlines of two Flame Drakes. Giant columns of fire speared into the sky, painting the nearby corridors a furious red.

And deep inside those openings, you could see them—dense swarms of little bugs.

They crammed along the edges, limbs waving, like spectators cheering from the stands.

Cindara watched the group on the bridge as well.

Every mechanical body around her was another set of eyes.

No matter what angle you tried, you couldn’t slip out of her sightline.

"Stunned?" she said, wings spreading wider.

"Then let me beat you awake!"

All the mechanical bodies charged the golden barrier at once.

Metal silhouettes closed in from above, below, left, and right—claw-blades, machine guns, and wing-edges slamming into the defense together.

Seraphina raised both hands.

Two energy spheres appeared in her palms, violently different in nature.

One flowed with Primordial Death Energy.

The other was pure light.

She met Ethan’s eyes for a beat.

Then brought her hands together.

Death and light collided.

The two opposing forces didn’t explode—under Seraphina’s control, they fused, twisting into a deep-gray shield that layered over the original golden defense.

Ethan raised his pale-white shield as well.

Lightning flowed across its surface, resisting that strange, hard-to-name force spreading out from the mechanical army.

The first wave of mechanical bodies hit the gray shield.

They didn’t die immediately.

But they began to lose their sheen. Their movements slowed, joints stiffening. The red glow in their eyes went out, and in the end they became something like walking dead—hanging outside the shield, helpless.

Ethan’s part in it was obvious.

The white-lightning barrier kept invading their mechanical structures. Even if these bodies were still "under" Cindara’s control, Ethan could keep pouring energy nonstop and forcibly steal the command away.

Control was control.

If she could do it, so could he.

More and more mechanical Cindaras froze beside the shield.

They stopped attacking—and then turned around, guarding the group instead, blocking the later waves of their own kind.

Down in the abyss, the real Cindara quickly noticed.

She spread her wings and shot upward.

Flame gathered along her wing edges into two tidal sheets and slapped straight into the shield.

BOOM!

Inside, everyone was thrown off-balance.

Even the steel bridge shuddered under the pressure of the firewave, shaking hard beneath their feet.

Cindara didn’t press closer. After the impact, she pulled back a short distance.

Ethan braced himself against the shield edge and steadied his footing.

He glanced at the mechanical Cindaras now stationed nearby—already stolen and repurposed—and finally let himself breathe a little.

He was about to talk strategy—

When something wrong rolled out from Cindara’s direction.

A shallow red ripple expanded outward from her body.

It passed through the mechanical army, crossed the deep-gray and white shields, and washed over everyone on the bridge.

Their bodies all felt lighter at once.

The warped sense of balance they’d been fighting—directions pulling against each other—snapped back to normal.

A few people almost relaxed, ready to drop the shields...

Then Cindara lifted her head.

Ethan met her eyes across the distance.

But looking closer, he realized her focus wasn’t actually on him.

Those fire-red eyes were looking past him.

At something behind him.

Ethan turned his head slightly, trying to see what she was watching—

And that was the moment Cindara moved.

She poured everything into the motion. Her eyes locked back onto Ethan, and a flicker of triumph rose in her expression.

Ethan barely had time to register the danger.

Cindara was already at the shield.

And she didn’t meet any resistance.

Her enormous body slid straight through the deep-gray and white barriers like they weren’t even there.

The next instant, she was behind them.

Cindara turned, like a victor who’d stepped past every defense, and looked at the group on the bridge with bright, excited satisfaction.

Ethan’s first instinct was to wonder if she’d targeted the wrong thing.

Then his body answered for him.

A nameless flame ignited in his chest.

Heat raced through his blood, spreading fast. His skin prickled with a scorching sensation from beneath, like his body wanted to combust on its own.

It wasn’t normal anger.

It was a self-immolation impulse.

Andona instantly unfurled two pairs of wings.

Golden light spilled over everyone’s faces.

A Blade of Judgment formed in her hand, its edge leveled at Cindara.

Fed by Divine Power, the rising urge to burn inside everyone was suppressed—pressed down—until it was snuffed out completely.

Seraphina was the first to leave the shield.

Now that the abyss’s restrictions on energy and physicality had vanished, staying tucked inside was pointless.

Cindara watched Seraphina step out and gave a small nod.

Then she beat her wings and charged the dragon head-on.

Only then did the group fully react.

Ataneya’s fox tails exploded outward.

All twenty-four streaked across the abyss, converging on Cindara from every direction. At the same time, Infernal Essence surged from Ataneya’s palm, flooding through the gaps between the tails to blanket the space around the target.

Andona lifted her Blade of Judgment.

A Sanctified Judgment Array began forming with Cindara at its center.

Mystic runes lit one by one—first across the steel bridge, then the cliff walls, then suspended in midair over the abyss.

The light kept expanding.

Soon, the entire Adilik Abyss was illuminated by the judgment pattern.

On both sides of the abyss, the two Blazing Vortices shifted.

The fire pillars that had been lancing upward abruptly collapsed inward—then erupted again as even fiercer yellow flame. The fire spun at high speed along the vortex edges, bleaching nearby stone walls bright and driving the air temperature sharply upward.

Cindara raised a dragon claw.

The same yellow flame gathered into her palm, compressing into a tight, rotating mass of power. She was just about to fire it at Seraphina—

When Ataneya’s twenty-four tails struck.

They crossed and wrapped around Cindara’s arms, waist, and mechanical wings, forcibly cutting off the casting motion.

Seraphina followed in the same breath.

Her huge dragon body crashed down from the front. She opened her jaws and bit into Cindara’s shoulder and neck. Both claws hooked in as well, talon tips grinding scale and mechanical armor, leaving several clear gouges.

Same play again.

Ataneya locked her down.

Seraphina did the damage.

Only this time, it wasn’t just the two of them.

Kaelira raised a hand, delighted.

Purple-red energy spun into a sphere in her palm, then flew toward one Blazing Vortex at the abyss edge.

The sphere didn’t explode on contact.

It sank slowly into the center of the vortex and fused with the yellow fire.

In the next instant, the entire Blazing Vortex expanded outward.

Purple-red firelight and yellow flame twisted together, the pressure surging to something insane. Heat waves baked the bridge until it glowed red, and fine cracks began crawling over nearby stone walls.

Cindara had been about to sneer.

But the moment that empowered vortex hit, the smile froze on her face.

It definitely wasn’t "cool" anymore.

Ethan watched the boosted Blazing Vortex with obvious satisfaction.

The white lightning lingering around his hand faded. For the moment, he didn’t jump back in—he studied the shift between the forces outside and whatever was changing inside Cindara, waiting for the next opening.

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