The streets were ruined.
Stone and dust cracked under my boots as the elders pressed down on me from every direction.
Their strikes came sharp and endless, weapons and fists tearing through the air like lightning.
I barely blocked the next one, my hands trembling under the weight of their combined mana.
Each breath I took burned like fire.
I couldn't even think anymore. The voice inside my head, the one that didn't belong to me...kept gnawing at the edges of my mind, whispering things I couldn't understand, things I didn't want to understand.
Every time I tried to focus on it, another attack came, forcing me back.
There was no time to think.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
Pixie.
Kneeling on the broken street, horns jagged and bleeding, her body shivering as though she was being torn apart from the inside.
And standing right beside her…was him.
Grandpa Venus.
