The heavy, suffocating air was thick with the copper stench of fresh blood and the bitter taste of burning ash.
Cyra's consciousness was violently yanked into the landscape, her spiritual gaze sweeping across a horizon of pure nightmare. The world she knew was gone. Queen Veronica stood in the epicenter of the desolate battlefield, her regal body brutally impaled by a jagged stone pillar—its sheer width so immense it had almost ripped the monarch cleanly in two. Above them, the sky literally roared in agony as a catastrophic hailstorm of blackened ice pelted the fractured earth, while vast, roiling lakes of molten lava carved fiery paths through the ruined crust.
Haki was dead. Her slender body lay crumpled in the dirt, both of her arms torn completely apart from the shoulders, her neck twisted in a horrific, unnatural direction.
High above the carnage, a massive floating landmass was cut cleanly in two, its levitating foundation cleaved by an impossible force. The tragic occupants of the aerial fortress were scattered into thousands of unidentifiable pieces, raining down onto the burning world below.
Cyra could feel her heart pounding violently against her ribs, a deafening drumbeat of pure terror.
*BOOM.*
A broken body struck the scorched earth mere inches from her. Instinctively, Cyra shielded her face with her hands, but the debris and the corpse passed harmlessly through her spectral form like smoke. She didn't exist here. Looking down into the smoking crater, her breath hitched. Antrea lay there, her beautiful eyes dull, glassy, and completely lifeless, as a steady torrent of dark crimson blood poured from her torn throat.
Horror, cold and absolute, gripped Cyra's soul. She tried to turn, tried to run, but her legs refused to move forward or backward. The invisible, cosmic current yanked her through space yet again, forcing her to bear witness to the end of all things.
Through the haze, she saw Thranduil—or rather, what was left of the proud elf mage. His torso had been slit roughly in two, a jagged, fatal divide across his waist, yet his mangled upper half was still desperately, faintly chanting a localized defensive spell, his voice a ghost of a whisper before he finally went still.
"Thranduil!!!" Cyra tried to scream his name, desperately lunging toward him, but her voice carried no weight in this timeline. She was a phantom watching history burn.
She was violently pulled again. Fire. Screaming. Tears. Guts. Endless bloodshed. The entire beast kingdom was in utter, irreversible ruin. But through the apocalyptic din, the sharp, supersonic clash of blades echoed, followed by the agonizing screams of a voice she knew far too well.
Areia stood in the center of the bleeding battlefield.
The legendary white-haired vanguard was unrecognizable. She wielded twin blue blades that hummed with a dying, erratic energy, her beautiful body entirely covered in deep, weeping wounds. Yet, she kept moving. One of her legs had been cleanly severed at the thigh, and she was forcing herself to balance, her left eye completely gouged out and bleeding down her pale cheek. Even in this mutilated state, her remaining purple eye burned with an unyielding, feral defiance. She didn't stop fighting for a single microsecond.
At first, the chaotic smoke made it unclear what monstrous entity she was desperately battling. But as the ash parted, Cyra's heart completely stopped. She held her breath in sheer, unadulterated terror, trying to make herself as small as possible to prevent the being from noticing her presence. She knew this suffocating, apocalyptic aura all too well. It was a presence that had once etched absolute fear into the deepest corners of her soul.
It was Dan.
His face was completely painted in blood, and etched deep within his eyes were hollow, pitch-black rings of complete madness. His expression carried absolutely no human emotion—no anger, no joy, no malice—just a blank, terrifying void. With a sudden, explosive burst of movement, Dan reached out and grabbed Areia forcefully by her white hair. With a sickening, effortless twist, he pulled her head completely away from her shoulders.
Cyra gasped in sheer horror. And in that exact split second of her gasp, Dan's hollow eyes violently snapped in her direction.
He *saw* her.
Like a phantom defying the laws of time and space, he disappeared and instantly materialized right in front of her spectral face, his blood-stained visage inches from her own. But before his hand could close around her soul, a cataclysmic pillar of blinding, absolute light struck the earth from the heavens, sending a colossal wave of pure, unfiltered energy rippling throughout the entire realm.
The vision violently shifted, fracturing like broken glass.
Suddenly, a future version of Cyra herself appeared in the center of the barren, ruined land. She was holding her massive broadblade, her head bowed and her eyes tightly closed. This future Cyra was utterly battered; a jagged blade strike had brutally slashed across her face, leaving her in a state of permanent, weeping blindness. Her silver canine tail had been violently ripped from her body, and one of her wolf ears was entirely gone, leaving a ragged, bloody wound.
Yet, she stood at the summit of the dying world. Her sightless, bleeding eyes stared directly toward the monstrous silhouette of Dan.
With a synchronized, earth-shattering roar, both of them charged head-on into one another—but before the blades could clash, the current violently pulled the viewing Cyra away yet again.
She was flung violently toward the sky, rocketing upward through the atmosphere at impossible speeds until she was cast into the vast, freezing expanse of outer space. She looked down at the planet below. The Earth was entirely engulfed in a raging inferno of cosmic flames and suffocating darkness. The battle below was so profoundly catastrophic, so dense with reality-warping power, that the literal stars in the surrounding galaxy were actively dying by the second, snuffing out like candles against the dark. The world was entirely gone.
The vision snapped back down to the desolate, cracked soil of the planet one final time.
The future Cyra who had boldly fought Dan was now brought to her knees. Her massive, dependable sword lay shattered into a dozen useless pieces across the dirt. Dan's bare hand had pierced cleanly through her sternum, his fingers protruding from her back in a gruesome display of absolute dominance.
With a casual, merciless flick of his wrist, he unleashed a localized burst of kinetic energy, and her head was blown cleanly off her body in a spray of crimson.
Cyra screamed.
This time, the sound didn't pass through the void. This time, the deafening, terror-fueled shriek echoed clearly in her own ears as her consciousness was violently snapped back to reality.
There was a chaotic noise echoing out in the hallway, followed by the frantic shuffling of heavy boots toward her door, but no one actually came in. Or rather, they couldn't.
High above, the full moon rode the sky, casting a stark, brilliant beam of silver light straight through the glass of her bedroom window. The pale light beautifully illuminated the familiar, pristine white hair of the girl perched on the sill. Her deep purple eyes blended perfectly with the vast darkness outside, glittering like gems. She sat perfectly still on the window frame, staring down at Cyra, her face mostly obscured by the heavy, dramatic shadow cast by the lunar glow.
"So... I take it you've had another revelation?" Areia said softly, her voice carrying an intense, subconscious frost that immediately cooled the humid room.
Cyra just stared at her for a long, breathless moment. Her eyes were streaming with thick, hot tears, and snot was dripping ungracefully down her nose. The raw, apocalyptic terror of the vision was still burning her mind, but seeing her friend whole and breathing was too much to bear.
"You're alive!!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
With a desperate, explosive movement, Cyra lunged forward and pulled Areia into a crushing, desperate bear hug. Areia didn't even resist. As if the lethal vanguard knight were made of nothing but lightweight feathers, Cyra forcefully yanked her off the window sill and lifted her straight into the air, squeezing her with all her might.
"It was all so vivid, Areia!" Cyra sobbed hysterically, burying her face deeply into the cold, familiar steel of Areia's shoulder armor. "It was absolutely terrible!"
"Did I... die again in one of your dreams?" Areia muttered, her tone a mix of mild annoyance and quiet sympathy.
Cyra couldn't even form words anymore; she just nodded her head violently against the metal armor.
Suddenly, a loud string of frustrated curses echoed from the other side of the bedroom door, accompanied by someone aggressively rattling the handle. Cyra's furry ears twitched, and she looked over at the wood curiously through her tear-blurred vision.
"There's no need to fret about them," Areia whispered near her ear, her body completely relaxed despite being held aloft. "I locked the door and heavily reinforced it with a sealing skill before you woke up. The absolute last thing you need right now is a crowded room full of panicked people."
Areia patted Cyra's back gently with a gloved hand. "Now... would you please let me go? You're actually starting to hurt my ribs."
"So, let me get this straight," Areia began, her voice cutting through the heavy, stale air of the bedroom as she walked over and took a seat on the edge of the mattress.
Cyra watched her silently from her place on the floor, her back pressed against the cold wooden panels of the wall. The moon outside had climbed higher, casting sharp, elongated silver rectangles across the dusty rug. The light caught the stray particles of ash still floating in the room, creating a hazy, dream-like atmosphere. On Cyra's lap, her massive broadblade rested heavily; its dark steel hummed with a vile, restless intensity that seemed to vibrate right through the floorboards.
"Dan killed us all? Because he just... went mad or something?" Areia asked, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion.
"Ye-Yes," Cyra nodded slowly, her fingers tightly gripping the worn leather hilt of her sword to stop her hands from shaking.
"I don't understand," Areia said.
Her voice was dropping into a dangerously flat, logical register—a subtle shift that sent a chill down Cyra's spine. Cyra knew this specific trait about Areia all too well, and so did everyone else in their circle. Areia had a deeply rooted tendency to get extremely worked up and volatile whenever Dan was involved. It was the absolute, single reason they had all collectively agreed to keep her in the dark about Dan being right here in the beast kingdom just a few days ago, before he left to climb the tower.
"Why would Dan suddenly turn around and try to kill us?" Areia asked, her purple eyes locking onto Cyra with an unblinking, analytical glare.
"I don't know," Cyra muttered, completely crestfallen as the horrific image of her own decapitation flashed behind her eyelids. The room suddenly felt incredibly suffocating. "I'd... I'd really like to see Thranduil right now," she whispered, desperate for the elf's grounding presence.
Areia let out a heavy, frustrated sigh. She leaned forward, sinking her slender fingers deep into her stark white hair, disrupting the neat strands. The shadow of the canopy bed fell over her face, masking her expression.
"Look, Cyra... are you seriously planning on keeping this revelation a secret just like you did last time?" Areia asked, her gaze snapping back up to lock onto the hero. "I mean, Thranduil and Dan practically had to force the information out of your mouth back when we were in Villia."
"No. I'm not," Cyra said, her voice finding a sudden, firm resolve.
She looked down at the dark, humming blade across her knees, taking a deep, shuddering breath to steady the erratic beating of her heart. On the floor behind her, her heavy silver tail brushed against the thick fabric of the rug with a slow, anxious sweep. She looked back up at the white-haired girl sitting on her bed, swallowing the lump of fear in her throat.
"Areia, listen. First of all... I want to truly apologize for keeping this from you. We only did it on Dan's explicit request," Cyra said, her tone wavering with deep uncertainty as she braced herself for how Areia would react to the news. "But I think this is rapidly spiraling far beyond just his problem. There is something critical I have to tell you."