Thranduil hopped over the babbling stream, his boot catching on a slick stone. He lurched forward, but before he could taste the moss, Cyra's hand clamped onto his arm like a vice, steadying him instantly.
"Thanks," he muttered, adjusting his balance.
Cyra didn't offer a "you're welcome." Instead, her gaze remained fixed on the dense treeline ahead. "So, when are you planning on joining us properly? Also, do you even know the way?" she asked, her voice airy as if she were talking to the wind.
Inside Cyra's mind, a familiar, cool resonance vibrated. "If you're planning on visiting your mother in the Beast Kingdom, I'll be able to get there eventually," Areia's voice echoed through the link, calm and detached. "But it'll take me a while."
"Alright. If you find yourself in a bind, use the link," Cyra muttered under her breath, her tail giving a low, rhythmic wag. "I know you hate having people in your head, but it's weird having to be the one checking up on you all the time."
"Sure," Areia responded. "I'll be off—something just came up." The connection snapped shut with the finality of a closing vault.
"So, how's Areia?" Thranduil asked, carefully balancing himself. Antrea was currently perched on his shoulders like a tiny, regal passenger, focused intently on a handheld game. Her long, black hair cascaded down, stopping right at Thranduil's waist like a dark silk curtain.
"She sounds fine, though I bet she's out of shape," Cyra sighed, her large brown tail wagging with a hint of worry. "I could hear it in her voice. All that drinking definitely did a number on her."
"I see," Thranduil said, his blue eyes scanning the emerald depths of the forest. Without Dan around, he felt a bit like an odd man out in a sea of girls. "So... how long until we actually reach the Beast Kingdom?"
"How big do you think our world is?" Cyra countered, overtaking him to take the lead. Her shorts fluttered with her brisk pace, her knee-high boots crunching softly over the leaves. On her back, her massive sword—a slab of metal easily a meter wide and three meters long—loomed over her. It looked heavy enough to crush a house, yet she moved as if it were made of feathers, the blade only truly "existing" to the world when she gripped the hilt.
Thranduil pondered the scale of their journey for a moment. "I'm not big on astrology and that stuff... but I'd say roughly 2 million kilometers in width? It's outside my expertise, so I might be way off."
"No, you're actually close—only off by a bit," Cyra said, her voice thoughtful. "It's 2.5 million kilometers in width with a radius of about a million. So, judging by that logic and the pace we're making... I'd say we've got about a month of walking ahead of us."
"The kingdom must not be far then," Thranduil said with a nod of finality, picking up his pace. He was just starting to get into a rhythm when he walked right into Cyra's back. It was like hitting a reinforced stone wall; he bounced off, stumbling back a few steps.
"What is it? Why did you just halt?" Thranduil groaned, rubbing his smarting nose and squinting at her. "Also, are you made of actual rock?"
Cyra didn't move an inch. Her large brown ears were bolt upright, twitching and swiveling as they searched the thick air. "Did you hear screaming?" she asked, her voice dropping into a deadly serious register.
Thranduil perked up his own pointed elven ears, closing his eyes to filter out the rustle of the leaves. "Nope. Antrea, did you hear anything?"
"No clue," Antrea shrugged, but the playful atmosphere was gone. She had clicked her game off and shoved it into a pocket, her eyes widening as she scanned the shadows.
Cyra's nose wrinkled, her nostrils flaring. "I smell blood," she muttered, her gaze darting through the undergrowth.
Before Thranduil or Antrea could even blink, the ground beneath Cyra's boots exploded as she bolted. She didn't just run; she vanished into a blur of brown and steel, heading in a sharp diagonal away from their intended path. The heavy forest mist, which had been creeping in like a silent ghost, swallowed her whole in seconds.
"Cursed!" Thranduil hissed, breaking into a desperate sprint. Antrea gripped his shoulders tight as he tried to keep up, but it was like trying to race a rocket on foot. The forest was thick, the mist was blinding, and Cyra was already miles ahead of his sightline.
Trees blurred into a green-and-grey streak as Cyra tore through the undergrowth, her speed turning the forest into a tunnel of rushing wind. Then, the carnage hit her.
A man, his armor shredded into jagged scraps of steel, stood trembling in the center of the clearing. One arm was gone—bitten clean off at the shoulder—and he was pale with the finality of death. Huddled behind him were two children, a boy and a girl no older than ten, their terrified sobs lost in the macabre silence of the wreckage. Their carriage had been gutted, reduced to splinters, and the ground was a nightmare of torn bodies and cooling blood.
A monstrous creature, eye-less with a gaping, toothy maw and four spindly arms, lunged for the dying man.
Cyra didn't slow down. She assessed the battlefield in a heartbeat. Like a lethal pinball, she slammed into the forest floor, redirected her momentum, and snapped the first creature's neck with a sickening crack. She flipped over the cooling corpse before it even hit the ground, her eyes scanning for the rest.
The pack stopped their grisly feast, heads snapping toward the new intruder. With a collective, guttural hiss, they charged. Cyra met the first one head-on, her hands moving like lightning as she literally ripped its head from its shoulders. She launched herself off the falling torso, her fist connecting with the next monster with such concussive force that its body simply atomized into a spray of dark ichor.
A third beast struck with terrifying accuracy, its four clawed arms weaving a web of death. Cyra flowed around the strikes like water, dropping into a low, predatory crouch. She swept its legs out from under it, and as it fell, her punch caught it mid-air, taking its head and carving a jagged crater into the forest floor.
But they were endless. As she parried one, another lunged from the shadows, sinking its teeth into her shoulder and grabbing her tail. The fangs ground against her skin but failed to pierce her hide; Cyra snarled, grabbing the beast by its throat and slamming it into the earth with bone-breaking force.
The mist coiled around them, thick and suffocating, as more eyeless shapes emerged from the gloom. They were completely surrounded, the air heavy with the smell of wet fur and iron.
Cyra glanced back at the wounded man and the sobbing children, her expression softening for a fraction of a second. "Stay here and don't move," she commanded, her voice a calm anchor in the chaos. "My friends will be here in a giffy. I've erected a barrier; they won't be able to touch you as long as you stay within the circle."
She didn't wait for a reply. With a sharp grit of her teeth, she bit into her own palm. As the crimson droplets hit the forest floor, the monsters let out a collective, ravenous growl, their eyeless heads swiveling toward the scent of fresh blood. Cyra stepped beyond the shimmering edge of her protection and bolted.
The man watched in paralyzed horror as the swarm zoomed after her. Cyra moved with a velocity that would put the fastest stallions to shame, a blur of motion leading a tide of nightmares away. He couldn't even count them—the sheer number of four-armed shadows was staggering, a living carpet of teeth and claws.
Cyra tore through the undergrowth, her heart hammering a steady rhythm. A monster lunged from the mist, its claws missing her face by a hair's breadth as she slid beneath it. Like a squirrel on overdrive, she scrambled up the trunk of an ancient oak, leaping into the canopy. She glanced down and felt a chill; the entire forest floor had turned into a sea of writhing, dark bodies. They were everywhere.
"How dare you kill my children!"
A piercing cry shattered the air, vibrating through Cyra's very bones. The forest floor rumbled as something massive began to plow through the trees. Cyra didn't slow down, leaping from branch to branch with desperate grace.
"Damn, I wish Thranduil would want a piece of me like you guys do," Cyra joked breathlessly, though the humor didn't reach her eyes.
Suddenly, a gargantuan, grey hand erupted from the foliage, reaching for her with crushing intent. She threw herself into a frantic somersault, clearing the fingers, but her foot slipped on a mossy limb. She plummeted, falling straight into the center of the hungry swarm below.
"Eat her! Feast on her flesh, and then we shall storm the world!"
The source of the voice emerged from the gloom. It was a 12-meter-tall nightmare, a single, pulsing eye centered in its forehead. Eight muscular arms protruded from its torso, and a cluster of writhing tentacles, each ending in a toothy, drooling maw, sprouted from its back.
"Get your claws off me," Cyra growled. The sound wasn't a shout, but a low, vibrating threat that seemed to ripple through the air. For a split second, the sea of monsters recoiled, physically blown back by the sheer pressure of her presence. Despite the fall, she stood tall and unscathed, her expression chillingly calm.
"Thank goodness you're a monster," she whispered, her voice carrying a terrifying softness as she stepped toward the eight-armed colossus. "I can actually blow off some steam without feeling guilty."
As the horde surged forward again, their toothy maws wide with hunger, Cyra's hand clamped onto the hilt of her massive blade. The air began to hum, a high-pitched, crystalline frequency that made the very atoms of the forest tremble. The atmosphere curdled; the monsters felt it instantly—a shift from predator to prey.
"Kill her now!" the giant roared, its eight arms thrashing as it dove into the fray.
Cyra drew. The moment the steel left the sheath, her eyes snapped shut—the mandatory seal for her blade's true awakening. As she held the hilt, her brown hair began to bleed into a void-like black. The monsters slammed into her, piling their bodies by the dozens until she was buried under a writhing mountain of flesh and claws.
Then, the world turned white.
A pillar of pure, incandescent light erupted from the center of the pile, disintegrating the monsters into ash in a heartbeat. Cyra stood in the center of the clearing, her arm raised high, holding the massive blade toward the heavens. The beam breached the clouds, tearing a hole in the sky and uprooting ancient trees like they were blades of grass. The sky bruised into a deep, sickly violet as jagged lightning scarred the earth.
The wind around her became a physical wall, a hurricane of magical pressure that kept the remaining monsters at bay. Cyra looked like a mere speck of dust beneath the mountain of energy she was summoning, but she held it all with a single, steady hand.
"Impossible!" the one-eyed titan bellowed, shielding its eye from the radiance. "No creature can possess this much energy! It's an illusion!" It had no way of knowing the truth: it wasn't fighting a girl; it was fighting the world's current Hero.
Cyra's lips moved in a silent, forgotten tongue. She lowered the blade.
The sky cracked. The earth split. The world itself seemed to groan in agony as the beam connected with the soil. It was an act of divine vengeance—an obliteration so total that every living thing in the vicinity ceased to exist in a microsecond. The air turned toxic with the scent of ozone and scorched mana.
As the light subsided, the landscape was gone. The mountain was a leveled ruin, the forest was a scorched crater, and the river had been boiled into vapor. Cyra stood in the center of the desolation, her eyes still sealed. Without a moment's pause, she raised the blade again.
A second beam, even more gargantuan than the first, began to coalesce. It hummed with a terrifying, world-ending resonance.
Suddenly, a hand clamped firmly around her wrist.
"They're dead, Cyra! Dispel the energy!" Thranduil shouted over the roar of the mana. His blue hair was literally singeing at the tips from the heat of the pillar, his face etched with desperation. "It's over! Let it go!"
The energy hummed with a final, bone-shaking vibration before vanishing into the thin, scorched air as if it had never been there at all. Cyra gave her massive blade a practiced, fluid spin—making the air whistle—and clicked it back into its sheath. Slowly, her brown eyes fluttered open, the darkness fading from her hair as she returned to her usual self.
"To be honest, I didn't think the first attack would kill all of them," Cyra said, her voice thoughtful as she scanned the smoking wasteland that used to be a mountain range. "They seemed extremely large in numbers. I thought I'd need at least three or four more swings."
Thranduil just stood there, his jaw practically hitting the charred ground. He looked at her, then at the empty space where a forest used to be. "Are you... okay? I mean, you just channeled enough power to rewrite the geography of this continent. Aren't you fatigued? At all?"
"Unlike most people, or the Heroes before me, my power doesn't have a drawback," Cyra explained, tilting her head as if she were explaining the weather. "As long as I'm in shape and not battered or beaten, I'm good. Even then, I can use that attack over and over—it doesn't actually consume my energy. It's just one of the basic moves for the blade."
Thranduil rubbed his temples, a long, weary sigh escaping his lips. "You and Dan are actual cheat codes," he muttered in disbelief.
"What's a 'cheat code'?" Cyra asked, her brown ears twitching in genuine confusion.
"Don't worry about it," Thranduil responded, waving a hand dismissively. "It's just something Antrea taught me. Let's just find the kids and get out of this crater before the atmosphere starts glowing."
"You know, next time you try something like that, I won't interfere," Antrea said, her voice flat and her eyes glued to her game.
"Sorry," Cyra muttered, her large brown ears drooping in a rare display of genuine sheepishness.
"At least put up a proper barrier first. There's no way in hell the shabby thing you set up was going to shield these people against that attack," Antrea huffed. She sat on the only surviving patch of green grass in a six-mile radius, looking like a tiny, grumpy island in a sea of ash. She paused to brush some dust and gray soot from the sleeves of her hoodie.
"Are they okay?" Cyra asked, peering behind the gamer.
The man and the two children were sprawled out on the grass, their breathing deep and rhythmic. They looked more peaceful than anyone had a right to be in the middle of a fresh crater.
"I put them to sleep," Antrea said absentmindedly. "Seeing a display of power like that after everything else they went through would traumatize them for life. Let them have a good rest. When they wake up, the man will actually be able to talk and make logical decisions instead of just screaming."
Thranduil and Cyra shared a long, stunned look before turning back to the girl in the hoodie.
"Judging by the way you act, no one would ever guess you'd be so thoughtful," Cyra said, a genuine smile tugging at her lips.
Antrea was notoriously weak against compliments. A deep flush instantly crept up her neck, and she started twirling a lock of her long black hair around her finger, suddenly very interested in the dirt. "Well, I'm not stupid, you know! Besides... Dan said I shouldn't interfere with this world too much."
"Uh? Since when do you and Dan have deep heart-to-hearts like that?" Thranduil asked, his blue eyes wide with surprise.
"That's none of your business!" Antrea snapped, her defense mechanism kicking in at full speed as she buried her face further into her hoodie.
Antrea got up after a while and stared walking across the scorched earth. Her sneakers crunching on the burnt hot soil.
"Where are you going? Thranduil asked.
"Don't worry I'll be back by the time they wake up, Antrea said briefly then she vanished.
.............
Dan processed the heavy silence that followed, his hands still rhythmically smoothing Veronica's silver ears. The history of Croc's people was darker than he'd imagined—a cycle of violence that ended in them becoming the very prey they once hunted.
"So they were hunted for medicine and leather?" Dan asked, his voice low. "That's... brutal."
"Exactly," Veronica chipped in, leaning back comfortably against him. She looked entirely too cozy for a Queen discussing genocide. "They were warriors, but they were outnumbered by the greed of the world. If your friend thinks she was 'taken' from her tribe, she's likely holding onto a ghost."
She tilted her head, her expression sharpening into something more regal. "My theories are simple: either a tiny splinter cell survived in the shadows, she's living under a massive illusion, or—the most likely and cruelest option—she was bred as livestock. Raised just to be harvested when she was 'ripe' enough."
Dan went quiet, the weight of those possibilities pressing down on him. "If that's the case... she might be the only one left. She'll never find home."
"No need to be so crestfallen," Haki added, her blindfolded gaze fixed in their direction. "If she's as strong as you say, we could take her under our wing. This kingdom is for all Beastkins, even the ones who were once banished. As long as she doesn't try to eat the furniture, she's welcome."
"Yeah... that might be the only way," Dan murmured, his mind already spinning with how he'd eventually break the news to Croc.
"Hey, Dan! I've got a question for you!"
The air practically shimmered as a small, sharp voice cut through the heavy mood. Antrea appeared in their midst as if she'd glitched through the walls, her hoodie pulled up and her eyes boring straight into Dan's.
"Oh, come on!" Dan yelled, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated irritation. He threw his hands up, nearly dislodging a very comfy Queen from his lap. "How is everyone seeing through this? I have white hair! I have red eyes! I look completely different! How do you all keep recognizing me?!"
Antrea just shrugged, a genuine, mischievous smile playing on her lips—the kind of smile she usually reserved for a high-score screen. "Dan, you look exactly the same, just palette-swapped. Anyone who actually knows you can see those eyes and that handsome face from a mile away."
"Also, I specifically told you not to seek me out," Dan added, trying to regain some shred of mystery.
"Relax, I won't tell the others where you're hiding," she laughed, leaning back with her hands behind her head.
"Who is she?" Veronica asked, her eyes still blissfully closed as she soaked up the last of the head-pats. Her tail gave a sharp, curious twitch.
"She's a friend," Dan sighed, looking down at the gamer. "And apparently, she's the only one who won't leave me alone and has the uncanny ability to find me whenever she feels like it."
"What can I say? My powers don't follow the rules of this world," Antrea gloated, her eyes sparkling. "Besides, we're fundamentally similar, Dan. Tracking you across the globe is like finding a bright light in a dark room."
"Yeah, yeah, you're a genius," Dan huffed, crossing his arms. "So what's the big question? We're actually in the middle of some kingdom-level business here."
Antrea's smile didn't fade, but her tone shifted, becoming uncharacteristically serious. "Are you really going to leave Areia as she is? She's headed back to her old hideout, Dan. I wanted to ask if—"
"Areia and I have already discussed this," Dan interrupted, a heavy sigh escaping him. He looked away, his expression darkening for a moment. "It's a decision she made long before we ever met any of you. Leave her be. She's strong enough to handle whatever complications come her way."