Morning arrived in Astralyn as merchants flung open the stalls and children played in the streets to get to essence-training schools. Immense ward-barriers of protection thrummed their old song, silent shields which had guarded the kingdom more than two thousand years.
Within Zenkai Dojo's morning training facility, Kairo teleported into an intricate obstacle course and Takumi's fire raged around the practice dummies...Three weeks now since Itsuki disappeared...Three weeks of searching for nothing.
Sayaka watched from the instructor's platform with keen eyes.
"Kairo, your exit points are too predictable...Takumi, you're being led by emotion, not purpose. Again."
Kairo came to a halt halfway through a step and took a deep breath. Waiting was tiring in a manner combat never had been. Looking for a lost friend who had disappeared without notice, preparing to fight a battle that never materialized.
He closed his eyes and started void-stepping the course again.
The sound came first...
A shaking that felt as though it came from very far down below the ground. Kairo's eyes snapped open, and he observed the others all standing still, each of them feeling the same wrongness.
The wards around them clanged like ringing bells. Once...Twice...At the third vibration, they broke...
Light flashed outward across the morning horizon, and was seen from all corners of the capital. Millennia-strapped compressed ancient magic flashed outward in waves...The walls of the training hall shook. Kairo staggered as dimensional space under his control quivered wildly.
Takumi's flames raged out of control...
"What in the—" Sayaka started.
The bellow rang out over the city...Low and animal, full of intelligence that was completely alien...it was replied to by a second bellow, and a third, until the air began to hum.
Kairo had heard rumors of the creatures that lived outside Astralyn's walls, in the untamed lands beyond the wards. Rumors of creatures that consumed essence and human flesh. He'd never have imagined he would hear them inside the capital.
"Arm yourselves all!" The voice of a teacher broke through the surging tide of panic. "This is not a drill!"
The training hall was thrown into chaos. Students were struggling over weapons. Teachers shouted orders.
Kairo picked up the first practice sword he could find.
"Kairo! Takumi!" Sayaka appeared at their side, already heading for the door. "You're with me. District Seven. The non-combatant civilians are all there."
"What about the others?" Takumi barked.
"Scattered deployments. Hina and Maya to the harbor. Toma and Ryuji to the academy. Wherever we are needed."
They dashed through hallways lined with streaming students, down stairs, out onto streets that were becoming something out of nightmares.
Creatures streamed through breaches in the air where the wards had fallen. Some crawled on too many legs. Others flew with wings of dark material. Kairo watched a merchant yanked from his stall by something composed primarily of teeth and darkness. Saw a mother protecting her children as a creature the length of a carriage crept towards them.
"Run!" Sayaka's shout jerked him back into himself.
He void-stepped. The elegant slide across spaces was awkward, heavy and clumsy. Instability of dimensions made it difficult to punch back with each jump.
District Seven had already been encircled when they got there.
A team of Tier 2 beasts had boxed in a group of civilians in the center square. An old baker held his wife's hand as their granddaughter cried behind them. The beasts closed in, moving forward.
"Scorch Dash!"
Takumi hurled himself into a wall of fire, his own body a living bullet that crashed the biggest monster. The blow sent it crashing across the square, but it regained its footing in almost an instant.
Kairo stood with the civilians.
"Move for the shelter. Three blocks north. The building with blue essence-crystals. Run. Now."
"But you're only kids-" the baker started.
"We're warriors," Sayaka cut him off. "And you're wasting time we can't afford."
The family scattered...The beasts charged.
Kairo had brawled his whole life. Sparring with trainers. Brawling in regulated fights. None of it had readied him for this.
These beasts did not respect rules or mercy. They improvised in the fight, adapting from every blow, becoming more resilient with every impact.
His Void Step remained fluid, staying in motion, so he could strike at unpredictable angles. But every teleport in this essence-chaos area was like trying to swim through tar. He'd attempt to target a spot and find himself three feet off to the left. Targeting behind an animal and reappear right in front of its claws.
Takumi hit with anger, his flame hot enough to incinerate his hair. But the monsters retained heat as well as damage.
Sayaka's Veillock slowed their advance, making openings. But openings were opening too rapidly. For each monster they repelled, two took its place.
"We can't last!" she bellowed as claws ripped down her shoulder. Blood steamed in the morning air.
"There are too many!"
Kairo sensed the pressure before he even realized what it was. Crushing and crashing, like air squished beneath impossible mass. The monsters sensed it too. They froze mid-pounce, heads cocked at something far away.
"A Tier 5," Kairo panted, the aura-pressure that creaked his bones. "A Tier 5 monster is within the city."
There were the same fights all over Astralyn. At Royal Academy, Hayashi protected a room of students from a Tier 3 monster, his skill in which his skin had near metal hardness. With every strike that sounded like a bell, he maintained the facade.
At the harbor quarter, Morisaki twisted vines into shields and Maya conjured ghostly noise that disoriented the attack. Warriors struggled desperately to defend their homes wherever.
They were going to lose...
In District Seven, Kairo saw his power waning...Every void-step drained more and more power from him. His sight was failing through loss of essence. Takumi's fire was fading even as he was furious. Sayaka's Veinlock was failing.
They'd liberated dozens of innocents, but at what price was inscribed in blood and weariness.
A Tier 3 monster loomed over them. A half-spider, half-storm cloud monstrosity, its body crackling with corrupted lightning. Several eyes locked onto Sayaka.
Kairo attempted to void-step towards her. His skill didn't work at all, and he was forced to stumble in regular space. Takumi ran towards the monster with the remaining fire he had. The monster's lightning hit him halfway there, blasting him into rubble.
The beast made its charge. Lightning coalescing between jaws.
The heavens rent asunder...
She fell like a dream taken flesh. Rinako, Third Trueborn of Astralyn...
Her being caused the beasts to halt...This was something they could not fathom.
"Poor little nightmares," she said, her voice full of impossible harmonies. "You believed that you could eat my children and not pay any price?"
She extended a hand...
The Tier 3 monster was gone. obliterated from being so thoroughly that Kairo's recollection of it began to slip immediately.
Throughout the district, dozens of monsters experienced the same erasure. Rinako's ability swept through them like wind through wheat, leaving nothing but empty space.
But while she protected them, her gaze was elsewhere. A force ravaging the capital with strength and speed to match her own.
"Well, well," she panted, her evil grin widening into a death's smile.
Far off, a bellow shook the foundations of the capital. Not ravenous emptiness...the concentrated challenge of something that had noticed her as an equal danger.
"Take cover," she ordered, her voice one of raw command. "What is to follow is not for the eyes of mortals."
She floated upwards as the world about her grew warped...
Kairo saw her disappear, sensing the touch of two titanic powers moving to clash. He turned to his friends. Takumi was struggling out of the wreckage. Sayaka was bandaging a wounded shoulder with fabric torn from their clothes.