Outside, Orion's army, which had arrived with such confidence a few hours earlier, was being pressed from two angles simultaneously by forces that didn't outnumber it but exceeded it in something harder to calculate and harder to compensate for: they knew what they were fighting for.
That kind of consistency didn't replicate the way money and crystals replicated power. It had a different texture entirely, and it showed in the way positions held that shouldn't have held and in the way people moved when they were told to move.
There was new hope.
but now that the dust had settled…
Orion was standing.
Inside a barrier.
Not the same barrier.
The one Ren had broken with everything he had was white, and it belonged to the crystal that was now in Luna's hands as she sat beside him trying to repair his body as much as she could with her water mana, slowly, with what remained.
