The silence fell too heavy to be just silence.
The air felt thicker inside the tent — every breath was slow, contained, as if any movement could make everything collapse.
The fire in the corner cracked once, and even that sounded too loud.
No one spoke.
Brianna's sentence still hung over them all:
"I suggest we abandon this fight against the Eastern Kingdom."
Abandon.
The word spread like a slow poison, corroding any certainty.
Karna finally broke the silence.
"If you've already received the report…" he said, voice low, sharp. "Then you know we can't pull back."
Zeph lifted his eyes to him, but stayed quiet.
Brianna, at the center of the tent, held each of their gazes before she finally spoke — her voice firm, yet carrying something deeper.
"If my assumptions are correct…" she began, voice low, almost a rough whisper. "…those who rule the East are using civilians to escape the price the Abyss demands."
The word Abyss swept through the tent like a cold breath.
The sentence stayed suspended in the air — too heavy, too dangerous.
Karna tilted his head slightly, his eyes narrowing, more confused than disbelieving.
"What do you mean 'using civilians'?" he repeated, steadier. "What does that have to do with the price of the Abyss?"
Brianna drew a slow breath, like someone about to touch something they'd rather avoid.
"Do you know why people say that 'if you stare too long into an abyss, the abyss will stare back at you'?" she asked, voice almost grave. "It's not a philosophical warning… or superstition. There's truth behind those words. A truth no one should learn the wrong way."
Karna frowned.
"What truth?" he asked, without hardness. It was pure caution, almost unease.
Brianna looked away for just a moment — as if measuring the depth of her own memory.
"You've felt it, Karna," she said finally. "After Count Bharvan's attack."
The air seemed to pause.
"Isn't that why you almost don't use your divine abilities anymore?"
Silence settled again — dense, almost solid.
Brianna broke it, her voice firm but carrying something none of them could fully decipher.
"Kaelir should reach the outskirts of the Eastern Kingdom in four days," she stated. "I'll tell everything then. Until that moment… if you decide to continue, I suggest you don't let sentimentality interfere."
Her gaze landed directly on Karna.
"Especially you, Karna. After all… you saw the result with your own eyes."
The tent seemed to shrink around them.
Karna didn't answer immediately.
He simply held her gaze — hard, steady, but without hostility.
A single thought cut through his mind, quick and unwelcome:
"Telvaris."
Brianna caught the change in his eyes.
And then she began to speak.
Her voice dropped a tone — lower, more controlled — and the tent felt like it tightened around them.
Zeph leaned forward, Skýra frowned slightly, Rynne held her breath.Even Karna straightened, attentive.
The fire cracked again, as if marking the beginning of the explanation.
The shadows inside the tent shifted slowly, following each gesture, each word no one dared interrupt.
And as Brianna revealed what needed to be said—
…on the other side of the Empire, Éreon advanced.
The march was silent for such a large group — five hundred soldiers, six hundred civilians, and nine hundred agójies moving as a single shadow.
The wind carried the scent of wet earth and ancient leaves.
Sunlight filtered through the trees as Éreon rode ahead, his dark cloak trailing behind him.
When they passed the last line of trees, the structure emerged.
Éreon raised his hand, and the march halted.
Ahead of him, across the slope, an old military base took shape — now just a skeleton swallowed by time.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, studying the ruins with a gaze that mixed calculation and caution.
Collapsed towers, broken walls, pillars overtaken by moss.
Leaves piled where corridors once stood; roots splitting stone blocks that had supported entire battalions.
The walls were so eroded they looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
Tall grass swallowed almost everything, as if the earth itself were trying to bury the past.
Everything looked dead.
But that wasn't what made Éreon stop.
It was the movement.
Subtle. Precise.
Human.
Shapes shifting through the rubble, too quick for wanderers… too silent for looters.
And then came the detail that froze even the last agójie:
weapons.
Automatic rifles.
Compact carbines.
Lookouts posted on fallen towers, aiming improvised scopes over broken concrete.
Patrols communicating through hand signs — efficient, disciplined, nothing like civilians.
And above all, the thin trail of gray smoke rising from the most destroyed sector of the base… where no life should exist.
Éreon narrowed his eyes.
That base had been abandoned for decades.
But not now.
The soldiers behind him exchanged tense glances.
The civilians stepped back instinctively.
The agójies growled low, their hair rising, as if they'd smelled something profoundly wrong.
The wind blew — light and cold — carrying the scent of burnt oil and gunpowder.
Éreon inhaled and spoke — voice so low it sounded like a command given to the world itself:
"No one moves."
Because that abandoned base… was not empty.
It was occupied by armed people.
And prepared.
Too prepared.
Marcus appeared at Éreon's side, still analyzing the armed shadows between the ruins.
"How… how do they have that many weapons?" he murmured, low, eyes locked on the base.
Éreon didn't look at Marcus — he kept his gaze fixed on the ruins, as if seeing something no one else could.
"You're asking the wrong question, Marcus."
Marcus frowned, confused.
Éreon continued, voice almost a rough whisper:
"The question isn't how many weapons they have. It's how they're killing divinities with them."
Marcus lost his breath for a second — the shock hit fast, burning from the inside.His breathing faltered.
Before he could respond, Sèsinmè approached, her white cloak rippling in the wind.
"The barrier is already raised," she reported, serious. "The children are protected."
Then she lifted her eyes to Éreon.
"How do you intend to advance?"
Éreon drew a breath like someone sealing an unbreakable decision.
He dismounted with a single, firm motion.
The ground seemed to tremble just slightly when his boots touched the earth.
"I'm going to knock on the door," he said — simple, direct, as if stating a law of nature.
Then he turned half his face toward Marcus:
"Reorganize the formation. And prepare for the worst."
Marcus nodded immediately, swallowing tension as he turned to shout orders.
Sèsinmè placed a hand over her chest in a gesture of respect — or perhaps concern.
"I'll take care of the children," she said, voice low but steady.
Éreon closed his eyes.
When he opened them… they were no longer the same.
A slash of violet light cut across his irises, deep, electric, feral — as if something ancient had awakened inside.
The filaments appeared instantly, alive, spasmodic, spreading from his forearm to his hands.
Threads of energy writhed beneath his skin, tracing every tendon with a pulsing glow, like overloaded circuits ready to burst.
The air around him sank.
It didn't vibrate — it sank.
As if a gravitational field had been compressed around him.
The dust didn't tremble:
it was pulled, dragged to his feet like iron filings to a magnet.
The nearby leaves curled inward, bending at their edges, yielding to a force they shouldn't feel.
Sèsinmè stepped back.
Without thinking.
Instinct screamed before reason.
Marcus reached for his sword — and only realized afterward that his hand was shaking.
Éreon merely bent his knees.
A gesture so small it should have been insignificant.
It wasn't.
The world seemed to stop.
The air held its breath.
And then he leapt.
The ground sank half a centimeter beneath his feet as the impulse detonated — a dry crack, like the terrain had lost structure for an instant.
His body rose like a projectile, not in an arc but a direct ascent, tearing through gravity like wet paper.
Behind him, a violet trail spiraled upward, warping the air like extreme heat.
At the peak of the leap, he hovered for an instant.
An impossible instant.
Filaments spilled from his fingertips like magnetic threads, pulling particles, distorting shadows, twisting the air.
And then he fell.
He didn't descend.
He fell.
Too fast.
Too hard.
Too heavy.
The impact inside the dead military base was dry — brutal — and so silent it became even more threatening.
The ground gave three centimeters.
The shockwave spread dust outward in all directions, clearing a perfect circle around him, sweeping leaves, fragments, gravel.
Éreon emerged from the haze lifted by the impact like a figure torn from a forgotten divine war.
Violet filaments snaked through his hands, alive, aggressive, ready.
The armed lookouts turned at the same time — eyes wide, weapons raised, fingers tense around triggers.
They didn't know who he was.
But they knew, instinctively, that pointing those weapons at himmight be the last thing they ever did.
Then a shout echoed from inside the ruined buildings:
"FIRE!"
The rifles choked out bursts.
Shots came from every direction — broken windows, collapsed balconies, dark gaps between fractured walls.
Éreon simply raised his hand.
And the world around him gave way.
A violet field formed with a sharp crack —
not like a rigid shield,
but like a living surface, rippling, breathing raw energy.
The first bullet hit the barrier and made:
CRA—KSHH
And, unlike normal,
the impact scratched the surface of energy.
The field trembled.
Cracked.
A line of violet light opened like a fissure in hot glass.
The bullet was crushed — folded and swallowed — but left a scorched streak of unstable energy that took a second longer than it should to close.
Another burst struck.
The bullets warped the field and began infecting the membrane with black stains, marks that closed too quickly, like divine flesh healing under fire.
Each impact left the barrier vibrating, uneven, almost pained — as if the bullets were made to bite into Chaos.
A hole opened.
The field closed over it.
Another opened.
Closed again.
Fast.
Violent.
Desperate.
The edges of the shield regenerated like a living tissue tearing and stitching itself at the same time, pulsing with surges of energy that shook the air.
Leaves on the ground began to orbit,
pulled by the force emanating from him.
Stone fragments vibrated in the air.
Dust spiraled as if it had found a new center of gravity.
When the last bullet clattered back to the ground, smoking,
Éreon lowered his arm.
The barrier recoiled in a spiral, dissolving into violet threads that climbed his forearm like electric serpents trying to reassemble themselves.
He smiled.
Not with amusement.
But with genuine fascination.
"Truly… humans are intriguing."
The echo of his words mixed with the lingering gunpowder and suspended dust.
And before anyone could even consider reloading —Éreon advanced.