The first colossal guardian's foot struck the battlefield, and the ground split into molten fissures.
The air twisted, folding reality into chaotic fragments as death closed in on all sides.
Marcel planted his heels into the broken earth, teeth clenched against the shard's furious pull.
> [Warning: Shard Corruption Rising — 37%]
Tarin, Lira, Veyla, and the last battered warriors of Mireholt stood behind him, prepared for their final stand.
There was no escape.
Only death... or worse.
---
Then—
The sky fractured with a deafening crack.
From the bleeding wound of light, a figure descended.
An old man, clad in gray robes, his face partially hidden by a cowl of mist.
No one had seen him before.
But Veyla stiffened, a flicker of recognition crossing her face.
She had felt him before—in fleeting moments, when fate twisted violently out of her grasp.
The old man lifted a hand, and an invisible force rolled outward.
The battlefield froze.
The guardians halted mid-charge.
The mist recoiled.
The very rift itself shrieked in defiance.
Marcel felt his body wrench free from the ground as a powerful, unseen current seized him.
Everything dissolved into a blinding storm.
The teleportation had begun.
---
But it was not instantaneous.
The distance between domains was immense—
A journey across the very veins of existence itself.
Three days passed in a state of unconscious limbo.
Three days drifting through the broken arteries between worlds, souls and bodies strained by the unnatural travel.
---
Marcel awoke violently, his body slamming into rocky ground.
Pain exploded in every nerve.
He coughed, gagging on the heavy, coppery air.
When he tried to rise, he faltered—his limbs refused to obey.
The shard still pulsed against his palm, fighting him.
Not with strength, but with insidious whispers.
A mental battle raged within him, unseen.
Each thought was a battlefield.
Each breath was a war.
> [Alert: Shard Corruption Reducing — 34%]
[Mental Strain Critical — User advised to stabilize Willpower.]
He slammed his fists into the earth and gritted his teeth, forcing himself upright.
Slowly, stubbornly, he rose.
---
Nearby, Tarin groaned, staggering to his feet.
Lira rushed to Marcel's side, pulling his arm over her shoulder to steady him.
Veyla crouched beside Emberjaw, who whined lowly but was alive.
They were together.
The realization brought a surge of battered gratitude.
---
> [System Message: Emergency Displacement Complete.]
[New Location: 8th Domain — Uncharted Zone.]
[Status: Hostile Territory.]
[Allied Signatures Detected — Scattered Across 8th and 9th Domains.]
> [Alert: Shard Corruption Reducing — 31%]
The shard's pull weakened.
The madness faded to a low hum, as if the domain itself was suppressing it.
---
For a moment, silence reigned.
Then Marcel turned—and saw the old man standing atop a jagged stone nearby, watching them.
A gust of hot, dry wind pulled at the old man's cloak.
His expression was unreadable—calm, ancient, burdened.
Tarin raised his sword instinctively.
Veyla tensed, her hands tightening around Emberjaw's mane.
But the old man only lifted a single hand.
A gesture not of threat—
but of farewell.
His power briefly flared, a ripple of unimaginable might—
—and another figure stepped from the mist.
Seravos.
The chained sentinel from before.
Somehow, impossibly, he had followed.
A silent confrontation ignited between the two ancient forces.
No words spoken.
No spells unleashed.
Just raw presence clashing across the broken domain.
The earth beneath them cracked.
The sky howled.
The air grew so heavy that breathing was a labor.
But it ended swiftly.
With a final, disdainful glance, Seravos turned and vanished into the mist, dragging his chained guardians with him.
The old man exhaled slowly—and then he too disappeared.
---
Silence once again blanketed the group.
Marcel stumbled forward and dropped to one knee, still fighting the lingering effects of the shard.
The others gathered around him, breathing heavily, battered but alive.
"We owe him," Veyla whispered, voice hoarse with exhaustion.
They all nodded.
Grateful.
Confused.
Alive.
---
Meanwhile—
In Mireholt, two days had passed with no word from the battlefield.
The city was on highest alert.
Patrols doubled.
Gates sealed tight.
The streets buzzed with fear and rumor.
And far beyond Mireholt, the Imperial Capital grew restless.
The silence from the frontier had not gone unnoticed.
Council halls whispered of disaster.
Generals scowled over empty reports.
Nobles polished their blades, sensing the scent of opportunity—or doom.
The world knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
But they had no idea how deep the coming storm truly ran.
---
Back in the 8th Domain, Marcel clenched his fists.
They had survived.
But now they were trapped in a broken world.
Scattered from their allies.
Hunted by horrors beyond imagination.
And if they failed here—
------
The wind of the 8th Domain was dry and sharp, cutting against exposed skin like razors.
The air was heavy, almost oily, saturated with unfamiliar mana currents that pressed against every breath.
Marcel wiped blood from his mouth and staggered forward.
Beside him, Tarin and Lira struggled to stay upright, their eyes scanning the jagged, broken terrain for any sign of civilization.
Veyla kept Emberjaw close, the great beast's fur bristling, teeth bared at every shifting shadow.
They were in hostile territory. Alone. Surrounded.
And they weren't the only ones who had survived.
---
Elsewhere —
General Varek pressed his hand to the blackened soil, feeling the pulse of the dying world under his fingers.
Around him, a dozen battered survivors—once proud A-rank elites—struggled to catch their breath.
"It was like... standing before the end of all things," Varek thought grimly.
He had fought Demon Lords. He had battled calamity-class beasts or rather that's the name the were known for.
But never... never had he felt so small.
The moment that ancient battle erupted—the clash between unseen titans—he had known, with cold certainty, that they were mere insects beneath the gaze of gods.
Commander Halrix, his war armor cracked and scorched, muttered a curse.
"We should be dead. We should all be dead."
Beside him, Elder Vess eyes were filled with terror,
"The old world has awakened," He rasped. "We have been cast into its bones."
None spoke further.
Survival instincts dominated all else now.
They would regroup, or die trying.
---
Back to Marcel's team —
The wasteland around them was deceptive.
At first, only silence.
Then—
The ground trembled.
Beasts erupted from the broken hills—misshapen horrors of the domain.
Twisted hounds with too many eyes.
Scaled monstrosities with snapping mandibles.
"Incoming!" Tarin shouted, raising his battered blade.
Marcel surged forward, adrenaline burning away the last of his hesitation.
The shard inside him pulsed, but not with corruption this time—only raw, tempered power.
They fought savagely.
Tarin's sword sliced clean through a leaping beast, mana surging through his limbs sharper and faster than ever before.
Lira danced between the strikes, her daggers flashing with eerie precision.
Veyla commanded Emberjaw in a roaring assault, flames billowing across the battlefield.
Marcel's strikes broke through defenses that would have resisted him before.
There was new weight behind every blow, a surge of strength he barely understood.
---
> [System Notice: Mana Core Advancement Detected.] [User: Marcel Jekz — Rank Up: C → B] [User: Tarin Jekz — Rank Up: C → B] [User: Lira Jekz — Rank Up: D → C] [User: Veyla Ronne — Rank Up: B → A] [Companion Beast: Emberjaw — Rank Up: B → A]
---
They had changed.
The brutal clash at the rift, the overwhelming energies, the endless drain and forced regeneration during the siege...
It had shattered their limits.
They were no longer the same warriors who had marched out of Mireholt.
They were something more.
---
Yet for every beast they slew, two more emerged.
"We need shelter," Lira hissed, slashing another beast apart.
"We can't keep this up forever!"
Marcel gritted his teeth, eyes scanning the horizon.
There—a faint plume of smoke, far in the distance.
"A village!" he shouted. "Move!"
With no time to waste, they fought their way forward, carving a desperate path toward the hope of refuge.
---
Far across the domain—
Others had also survived.
The Hollow Rider — the black-armored enigma atop his skeletal steed — stalked the wastelands, silent as death.
The Breakmaw, a colossal beast with obsidian skin and six mountainous legs, thundered through shattered forests, an unstoppable force of destruction.
The Broodhorn Commander, its chitinous body constantly shifting and mimicking forms, gathered lost horrors to its banner.
And high above, circling like a vulture waiting for the final collapse, a Bleak Flame Wyvern loosed a cry that shook the clouds.
---
The 8th Domain was a graveyard of forgotten powers, a crucible of survival.
Chosen because it was the only domain close enough to the 9th to attempt an escape.
But it was no sanctuary, rather it didn't feel like one.
---
Marcel pressed on, ignoring the screaming protest of his battered body.
Tarin covered their flank, Lira led the way, and Veyla and Emberjaw unleashed fire and fury against their enemies.
The domain itself seemed to hate them.
The very land rebelled against their existence.
But still—they fought.
Still—they endured.
Still—they hoped.
Even if hope was the cruelest lie of all.