The space above the central courtyard of Milim's primary palace fractured with a sound like shattering glass. Loki stepped through the rift, floating down onto the polished flagstones with his coat tails fluttering in the mountain breeze. In his hand, he casually hefted the obsidian cube containing Gaia's soul.
"Hey, Milim! I brought you a present—"
Loki's cheerful shout cut short as the sealed cube in his palm suddenly shuddered violently.
The moment Loki crossed into Milim's domain, the ancient spiritual bond between the Dragonoid and the spirit dragon resonated through the air. Inside the containment matrix, Gaia's suppressed, corrupted magicules reacted to Milim's proximity like fuel thrown onto a spark. Dark, jagged cracks flared across the obsidian surface of the container as chaotic energy surged from within, unable to contain its frantic, agony-laden violent impulses.
The black containment runes flashed translucent, exposing for one horrible instant the scarred outline of Gaia's soul beneath the seals. Spiritual scars, black, spiderwebbing fractures of raw malice erupted across the dragon soul, illuminating the container with a sick, violent violet glare.
Milim, who had been sitting on the balcony railing eating sweet fruit, froze. Her clear eyes widened, tracking the dark, thrashing aura bleeding from the box in Loki's hand. The sweet fruit slipped from her fingers, splitting open on the stone floor.
"Gaia...?" Milim whispered, her voice trembling with an ancient, raw grief.
She leaped from the balcony, landing heavily on the flagstones in front of Loki. Her gaze remained locked on the writhing, scarred shadow inside the translucent cube. A nightmare image of her beloved friend bound in cold, heavy obsidian, thrashing in visible torment.
"What... what did you do to Gaia?" Milim's voice was unnaturally quiet, stripped of all its usual playful bounce.
Loki, missing the terrifying shift in her demeanor, flashed a lighthearted, reassuring grin. "Relax, relax! It looks worse than it is. The dragon just got a little excited after smelling your magicules. I had to keep everything wrapped up in this box so Jistav wouldn't catch fire."
To Loki, he was simply offering a quick, colorful summary of the containment. But to Milim, every word was a nightmare.
Wrapped up in a box. So Jistav wouldn't catch fire.
Her mind flashed back to the dark centuries after Gaia's death. The rage, the loss, the agonizing helplessness of watching her dragon turned into an unthinking beast of destruction, and the ultimate heartbreak of having to seal the Chaos Dragon away herself. Seeing the dragon now, locked in a dark cage, thrashing in pain, carried by a god who laughed off the agony, shattered something deep inside her.
"You... you locked Gaia in a box?" Milim raised her face. The natural blue of her irises was rapidly drowning under a crimson bleed of dragonoid rage. "You found Gaia... and you kept my friend bound like a captive? You've been experimenting on its soul?!"
"Whoa, hold on! Experimenting?" Loki chuckled, waving a dismissive hand as if brushing off a harmless joke. "No way! I ran one diagnostic to see whether Gaia was still in there. Good news: the core identity survived. Bad news? Everything around it is a complete mess."
"Loki-san, stop talking"
Frey landed sharply between them, her wings flaring as she held her hands out in a desperate bid for peace. Her sharp eyes darted from Loki's casual posture to the terrifying, suffocating pressure bleeding off Milim.
From the edge of the courtyard, Carrion shifted into a low combat stance, his hand resting on the hilt of his weapon, his expression grave. "This is bad... He's treating her deepest wound like a joke."
"Frey, step aside," Milim commanded. Her voice vibrated with a heavy, terrifying frequency that cracked the flagstones beneath her feet.
"Milim, listen to me—he brought the dragon to you!" Frey urged, turning toward her Lord. "He brought Gaia here! His execution is foolish, but his intent—"
"Intent?!" Milim roared, her aura exploding in a pillar of blinding crimson light that shattered the surrounding stone columns. "Look at Gaia! The dragon is screaming! In pain! And Loki is standing there smiling about mapping the soul like it's a toy!"
Loki's smile faltered slightly, his eyebrows knitting together in mild frustration. "Hey, come on, Milim, don't be like that. I brought the cube here so we could figure out the restoration together! You're completely overreacting—"
The courtyard went deathly still.
Before Loki could finish his sentence, Milim vanished.
Loki's instincts flared, forcing him to slide sideways as Milim's fist split the air where his head had been a millisecond prior. The atmospheric shockwave tore a fifty-yard trench through the palace courtyard, pulverizing the rear wall into fine dust.
Loki tumbled back, instantly shifting the obsidian cube behind his back, wrapping it in layers of spatial distortion to shield it from the shockwave. "Milim! Stop! If you swing like that, you're going to break it!"
"Give Gaia to me!" Milim screamed, turning on him with terrifying speed.
She lunged again, her claws laced with pure, destructive Draconic aura. Loki backed away, weaving through a flurry of lethal strikes while desperately keeping his body positioned as a human shield between Milim's furious blows and the fragile cube in his shadow.
"Listen to me for five seconds!" Loki yelled, deflecting a sweeping kick with a dense barrier of spatial force. The impact vibrated through his arms, rattling his bones. "I didn't hurt Gaia! Clayman and Mariabell corrupted the dragon. I kept the damage contained so the surviving soul wouldn't collapse!"
"Then why didn't you tell me?!" Milim's voice cracked, tears finally bursting from her crimson-flashed blue eyes, burning away in the heat of her own aura. "Why did you keep Gaia hidden in Jistav?! You knew what Gaia meant to me!"
Loki dodged an overhead strike, his breath catching in his throat. Loki's grin finally slipped. This wasn't the explosive tantrum he'd expected; Milim was genuinely devastated.
"Milim, that's not what happened," Loki insisted, still attempting to push past her anger with quick logic. "I brought Gaia here because I thought surprising you would make you happy—"
Milim stopped her assault ten feet away, floating an inch above the ruined floor. Her head was bowed, platinum-pink hair casting a dark shadow over her face. Her aura didn't fade; instead, it condensed, pulling inward until it formed a tight, shimmering outline of lethal, concentrated power around her small frame.
When she raised her head, her eyes were cold, hollow, and terrifyingly sharp.
"Surprise me?" Milim whispered, her voice dangerously flat. "My dragon was murdered. Turned into a monster. Sealed away in darkness for hundreds of years... and you turned that suffering into a surprise party?"
She raised her hand, a red-hot sphere of pure, concentrated Draconic energy forming at her fingertips.
"You really are a god, aren't you, Loki?" Milim spat, the utter betrayal in her voice cutting deeper than any physical blade. "You treat everything like it's just another game for you to play."
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