CHAPTER 69: BETWEEN FIRE AND SHADOW

As if the storm had passed, the world around Marissa lay in ruin—scorched earth, splintered trees, and blood smeared across the rocks like forgotten warnings.

Smoke curled from the shattered remains of what once was. Yet, none of it came close to the devastation within her. The silence outside only mirrored the hollowness inside.

She stood trembling, barely able to breathe. Her body still radiated power, yet her soul felt fractured. Magnus once had warned her that this identity- this rebirth- was temporary. A mask to serve a greater purpose. And yet...

Why did it feel so real?

Why did it hurt so much?

Her vision blurred as blood pooled at the corners of her eyes, leaking like crimson tears. She whispered with a voice barely above the wind, "Darn it..."

And with that, she turned her back on the battlefield.

Her steps were slow, hesitant, but she followed the towering figure of Magnus without looking back. Together, their silhouettes faded into the rising mist of Runewood’s edge, vanishing into the fog and into their next deeper objective for the quest of the Dark Fate.

Far downstream, a river carried another broken soul. His sword barely hanging on his hand, just like his sanity.

Robert’s body floated with the current, his blood blending into the water, dyeing it a faint red trail behind him.

Whether it was luck or divine providence, he had landed in the river instead of the jagged cliffs. But as he drifted, he couldn’t tell if survival was a gift or a punishment.

His body screamed with pain-ribs cracked, gashes lining his arms and legs—but none of it compared to the agony in his chest.

He clutched his heart, gasping.

"Marissa..." he whispered, staring blankly at the setting sun above.

His thoughts weren’t on the wounds or the danger. Only her. That moment. Her tears.

"I know you’re still there... I don’t care if you’re with Dark Fate... I don’t care if your memories are gone."

His fingers clenched into a fist, shaking with emotion while staring at the parting clouds above.

"It was real. Everything we had... I know it was real."

He tilted his gaze upward. The twin moons- Hayag and Lagum- hovered in the deep blue sky. One a glowing white pearl, the other a haunting shadow.

Two opposites. Two identities and two sides of a story. Just like Marissa.

Just like them... he knew Marissa still had light within her.

"I promise before these moons... I will find you," he swore. "And I will restore you..."

He floated silently for a moment longer, letting fate take him along before muttering...

"...Even if I have to face Dark Fate myself."

While Robert floated down the river, barely conscious and bloodied, something ancient stirred beneath the surface.

Far below, in the murky depths, a shadow slithered through the water with deliberate grace.

It was a Tamayon.

A ten-meter-long, eel-like monstrosity with a serpentine body wrapped in ruby-red scales. Its slit-pupiled, yellow eyes opened like twin lanterns of death, locking onto the drifting man as a serpent would on dying prey.

Its maw creaked open, revealing rows of dagger-like fangs, each dripping withkilling intent. The water churned with malevolent hunger as its muscles coiled-

Then, it struck.

SWOOSH~

A flash of motion charged towards the floating Robert.

But just as the beast’s massive jaws burst from the water, aiming to swallow him whole, Robert’s eyes snapped open- sharp, alert, burning. His survival instinct kicking to the maximum while his aura erupted.

"Not today."

In a single motion, his fingers clutched the hilt of his sword. Mana surged through his battered limbs, lighting his blade with radiant power. With a fierce twist of his body, he dodged and kicked against the wide opened jaw of the charging beast, launching himself out of the Tamayon’s strike path.

SPLASH!

He landed waist-deep in the river, breath ragged, eyes ablaze. Water cascaded off his frame, steam rising from the heat of his ignited aura.

"BUT FIRST—!" he roared, voice ripping through the forest, "I MUST GET STRONGER!"

The Tamayon let out a screech, undeterred, and lunged again, this time with more lethal speed.

Robert dodged left, rolled across a flat boulder, and grabbed the Tamayon’s snout mid-charge. With one hand, he held it back. With the other, he drove his blade down in a shining arc.

"AND I’LL START WITH YOU!"

SLASH!

SLASH!

SLASH!

The water churned red as roars echoed through the gorge.

Moments later, Robert limped onto the riverbank, soaked in blood-not all of it his own. Behind him, the Tamayon’s carcass floated in several chopped segments, drifting with the current like discarded logs.

His chest heaved. His body ached. But his eyes blazed with fire. His frustrations and anger finally loosen.

"I survived," he muttered. "Good."

Then he froze.

KATHUD!

A sudden shockwave slammed into him like a wall of stone, sending him staggering backward into a tree nearby. The earth shook beneath his boots. Birds scattered from the trees. The air smelled of smoke and brimstone.

"What in the flaming abyss was that?!"

Without hesitation, he scanned the area for height and spotted a towering Velzar Tree nearby. With his remaining strength, he scaled it- gripping roots and leaping between limbs- until he broke through the canopy.

What Robert saw made his heart stop.

Far off on the horizon, beneath a sky choked with smoke and ash, two colossal titans were locked in battle.

Vulkris- the flaming King Beast- towered with molten fury, his body a living furnace of magma and flame. Rivers of fire coursed through the cracks in his hide, and his massive wings spread wide, casting a burning glow across the forest canopy.

Every movement radiated heat and wrath while his eyes glued to another towering figure.

Before him stood his challenger-

The Nighthral.

Twisted. Primeval. Cloaked in shadows and armored in obsidian-like hide, its sinewy limbs moved with unnatural precision.

From its back slithered barbed tendrils, and its tail ended in a jagged, curved blade—like the scythe of death itself. It was not born of the earth or sky, but from the void between- where killing was carved into instinct.

Then they collided.

KABOOOOM!

Their impact sent a shockwave across the Runewood, shaking treetops and cracking distant stones- two forces of nature crashing like collapsing mountains.

KROOOOOAAAR!~

GRAAAAAAOOOR!~

Their roars reverberated across Runewood like thunder strikes. Even from the southern border, which is around ten kilometers away, Robert could feel the tremors beneath his feet.

"Runewood is MINE, mutt!" Vulkris bellowed, rearing back.

With a roar, he unleashed a rain of fireballs, each the size of a small wagon. They slammed into the Nighthral, exploding in blossoms of flame. Trees ignited and the earth melted surrounding it.

But the Nighthral didn’t yield.

It retaliated with crescent-shaped blades of compressed dark mana, slicing through mountains like they were cloth. Just like the wind blades of the White Alpha, except this time its element is that of sizzling darkness.

One carved a scar into the side of a nearby cliff. Another nearly severed Vulkris’s right wing.

"Runewood does not need an old, dying dog!" the Nighthral snarled. "Why don’t you crawl back to where you were sealed?!"

KABOOOM!

The shockwaves of their battle shattered trees and sent clouds spiraling. Though larger, higher in level and more evolved, Vulkris was slowly being forced back. His molten armor cracked where the dark mana hit, oozing fiery blood.

"YOU’RE LUCKY I’M NOT IN MY BEST FORM!" Vulkris barked. "OR I WOULD HAVE BURNED THAT COCKY FACE OFF THE KALIBU!"

He growled and tried to regenerate his wounds, drawing mana from the flames around him- but it was too slow.

Darkness- one of fire’s greatest elemental weaknesses- was eating away at his vitality.

"YOU’RE JUST WEAK!" the Nighthral howled back.

Then it vanished into black mist, enveloping Vulkris completely. Within that fog, phantom claws slashed in a hundred directions, striking from every angle like a phantom assassin.

"AND THIS-" it screamed, "IS FOR MY KIN THAT YOU SLAUGHTERED HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO!"

ROOOAAAR!!

But Vulkris wasn’t finished. No, it had just started.

He roared again, a sound that cracked trees for miles, and with a thunderous stomp and a violent flap of his molten wings, the darkness around him dispersed like smoke blown from a forge.

The Nighthral was exposed- snarling, but surprised.

Vulkris glared at his opponent, lava dripping from his fangs.

"THEN COME! THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT WHO DESERVES TO RULE!"

"What... in all the Realms... are those things?" he whispered.

The pain in his body—his wounds, his exhaustion—vanished beneath a rising dread.

Because now, the real war had begun.

The titanic battle unfolding before him wasn’t just a clash of monsters. It was a reckoning. A battle that would scar the land, devour the forest, and decide the fate of everything within it.

And in that moment, Robert understood a terrible truth:

Everything he’d endured—every wound, every loss, every drop of blood—

was only the beginning.