The gentle hush of night had barely settled when, from the depths of a dream, not of peace but of her young master's tranquil image, a violent foreboding slammed into her. It was a cold, certain sense of death, an icy claw seizing her spirit, potent enough to yank her from sleep's fragile embrace. Driven by an instinct more ancient than fear, she moved like a blur, a whirlwind of desperation, storming into the Duke's startled presence. Her voice, usually calm with pride, was sharp with a desperate clarity as she reported the dire premonition, demanding he mobilize the Elites and dispatch them with all possible speed to the imperiled village. Before the echo of her words could fade, she vaulted from the castle's tenth floor, a silhouette against the rising moon, her nightgown dissolving mid-air into the sleek, protective lines of her battle suit as she plummeted into the darkness.
After a grueling forty-five minutes of relentless flight, something shifted. A terrifying surge of power ignited within her, forcing a choked cry from her lips as searing tears streamed down her face—a testament to something vital, something profound, breaking inside. Yet, with this newfound, agonizing strength, she pushed even harder, clinging to the fragile, desperate hope that her mistress, Mary, could still hold on. But it was already too late. At daybreak, as she burst into the chilling stillness of the Forest of Beasts, her world crumbled into irreparable fragments. At its borders lay a familiar, lifeless corpse, stark against the burgeoning dawn, and not far beyond, shrouded by the mist of slaughtered beasts, was the mangled, unmistakable form of her beloved mistress. In that devastating moment, the last vestiges of Anna's control shattered like brittle glass.
Falling to her knees, the vibrant world around her blurred into a meaningless haze, colors bleeding into a swirling grey. She slumped into a desperate denial, her mind screaming against the monstrous, undeniable truth before her. It can't be. Not her. Not Mary. But as her arms, trembling uncontrollably, finally cradled the cold, mangled, soulless body, the raw, undeniable reality crashed over her like an avalanche. This was her mistress. This was Mary. At that shattering realization, the floodgates of her grief burst open. She didn't merely weep; she howled. A primal, guttural cry of utter despair ripped from her very soul, echoing with terrifying force throughout the ancient Forest of Beasts, silencing every rustle, every chirp, every living thing in its devastating, profound wake. The very fabric of the forest and its ancient, winding rivers began to resonate with her profound sorrow, stirring deep, forgotten memories within the land itself.
Like a shattered mirror reassembling, the horrifying events of the previous night were gathered from the ether and projected before her eyes, an undeniable, agonizing vision. She saw her mistress's assailant, a creature of pure, refined malice, toying with his victim, savoring each moment as he casually severed ligaments and tendons. She witnessed her mistress being dragged, agonizing minute after agonizing minute, across the jagged, unforgiving terrain of the Forest of Canyan for a grueling fifteen minutes straight. And then, in a chilling replay of her own demise, she saw her own head brutally severed, the assailant callously burning that grotesque image into her mistress's memories before she, too, fell into the dark river. The visions continued, a relentless assault on her sanity: the fate of the Beast Kings and Emperors, their colossal forms twisted in agonizing defeat. The insidious magic he had cast upon her infant young master, her mistress, and the very Beast Kings themselves. A glimpse into a fractured timeline, and his chilling true reason for attacking the village. The nightmare intensified as distorted scenes of unutterable torture, inflicted upon both her mistress and the infant young master within a dimensional pocket, tore at her soul, ripping it to shreds. These revelations left her utterly devastated, suspended in a terrible, impossible dilemma. But it was the very last scene that changed everything. Stepping out of the dimensional pocket, he began to laugh, an insidious, chilling sound that burrowed into her bones, and then spoke words meant only for himself. The moment those words were uttered, Anna was no longer merely a being mourning a profound loss, but one consumed by pure, unadulterated hatred, a burning, unquenchable thirst for bitter revenge.
Anna Ruth McKellen unleashed another guttural roar, a raw outpouring of her anguish and shattered frustration that mingled with the silent cries of the desecrated forest. She pulled Mary's soulless body close, clinging to the cold, stiff form as if to anchor herself. Yet, even as hatred and a thirst for vengeance surged through her veins, a deeper, more insidious current of self-loathing festered within her. She was a Drakosylvan, a hybrid of the Dragon race, considered a direct child of God, a being of immense inherent power. But now, looking at the horrifying reality of her own severed corpse revealed through memory, and cradling her beloved mistress's defiled form, her pride and arrogance lay in irreparable fragments, shattered beyond recognition.
Blindly, she crossed the river, the demarcation between the Forest of Beasts and the Canyan Forest, and continued her relentless, somnambulant march. She moved as if possessed, unknowingly traversing the length of the perilous Canyan Forest until, without truly registering the passage of time or distance, she found herself in Sith, the fabled land of warriors. But the sight that met her eyes was utterly confounding, surreal beyond belief.
In her long-lived existence, Anna had witnessed countless aftermaths of raids and plunders, but never had a village been left in such a state. Sith had not merely been attacked; it had been transformed into an immense, solemn graveyard, with countless tombstones meticulously erected for every single individual who had once called this land home. Each stone bore a name, a date, and intricate stories inscribed upon its surface, a silent, chilling testament to lives brutally extinguished. Anna stared, her mind struggling to process this inexplicable, macabre act of reverence amidst such devastation.
From the hundreds of tombstones that blanketed the landscape, two stood prominently on a desolate cliff overlooking the solemn expanse, with hundreds more clustered at their base. Anna, drawn by an unseen, magnetic force, approached them. There, carved into the first, was the grave of the Village Chief, known by titles that echoed through legend: The Heavenly General, The Prince of War, Ling Roseblade. His life story, meticulously inscribed, painted a portrait of a man who was a son, a student, a teacher, a soldier, a warrior, a general, a husband, and a father. But it was the tombstone beside it that froze her breath, stopping her heart: Mariannette Roseblade. Unlike her husband's dignified memorial, and starkly different from every other grave in this sorrowful landscape, Mary's grave was nothing but an empty, open casket, a gaping, mocking void. Anna's gaze dropped to the mangled, soulless body of Mary still clutched in her arms, then lifted back to the desolate emptiness of the open grave. A chilling, new form of anger, colder and more potent than anything she had felt before, began to bubble insidiously within her, hardening into an unforgiving resolve.
As if responding to her silent fury, the very air shimmered, and the ground beneath Anna's feet, along with the ancient trees and distant rivers, commanded a projection to play. The scene that unfolded was a nightmare made terrifyingly real. In the dead of night, the sleeping village of Sith erupted in blood and screams. Flames, like hungry serpents, rose into the sky, casting grotesque shadows as two figures, clad in black, descended upon the unsuspecting villagers. Their blades glistened, soaked with the lifeblood of over a hundred innocents; not even newborns were spared, nor the frailest elders. Then, one of the assailants departed, leaving the other to his grim task. The one who remained had his eyes closed, as if unwilling to witness his own atrocity, yet he continued to massacre the entire population of the village, each life extinguished with a single, precise strike. But what truly shocked Anna, freezing her blood in her veins, was his horrifying act after the slaughter. He began methodically digging graves for every single person, burying them in opulent, royal caskets. He then meticulously erected tombstones, inscribing each with the full life story of the deceased. After laying the Village Chief to rest, he straightened and with chilling precision, turned his head. His gaze, in that vision of the past, seemed to pierce through the veil of time, directly into Anna's own eyes. This immediately jolted her, a cold dread seizing her heart, mingling with the dawning, terrifying recognition. Then, he spoke, his voice carrying clearly across the temporal divide, as if Anna were standing right in front of him in that moment of slaughter and macabre tribute.
"So, you finally came, Anna, no, you're now Annabeth," he said, his eyes seeming to hold ancient, weary knowledge. "Know this: the path ahead is a choice, not a destiny. You seek vengeance, but revenge is a hollow echo in a shattered world. Choose carefully what you become in its pursuit."
As his voice echoed, each word a cold, calculated judgment, Anna found herself adrift in a maelstrom of memories, frantically sifting through her long life, desperately searching for the man whose voice and visage were so achingly familiar. The moment of agonizing recognition struck her like a physical blow, and what had already fractured within her from grief and fury now splintered into a thousand more irreparable cracks. With Mary's soulless body still clutched tightly in her arms, Anna dropped to her knees, her head thrown back in a raw, defiant roar to the heavens. A colossal wave of mana, vibrant with her pain and rage, erupted from her, tearing through the very air, vibrating with untold power. But before the echo of her scream could fully fade, a hand, shockingly substantial, shot up from the earth of the grave beside her—Ling Roseblade's grave—throwing her completely off balance and shattering her moment of primal despair.
The earth beside her churned, and from the open maw of the grave, the solemn, powerful figure of the Heavenly General, the Prince of War, Ling Roseblade, emerged, his very being vibrant with returned life, perfectly whole, like he had simply woken from a long slumber. Anna's devastating mana wave, a byproduct of her absolute despair, had acted as a shockwave, an unforeseen catalyst, abruptly stirring his consciousness back to full, unequivocal existence, hours after his death. Yet, the resurrection was not singular. In the unsettling quiet of the morning, other movements rippled through the vast graveyard. A handful of Heavenly Commanders and a small group of soldiers—around sixteen souls in total—all sharing the General's precise color lineage, began to pull themselves from their meticulously prepared tombs. They were not hazy specters, but fully corporeal, breathing individuals, stepping back into the world exactly as they had been before the massacre, their eyes confused but alive.
"How, how?" Anna demanded, skidding to a halt, her grip on Mary's body unyielding as she struggled to comprehend this impossible reality. Ling Roseblade, the resurrected General, turned his attention fully to her, his new life-filled eyes holding a sorrow that mirrored her own. He approached calmly, kneeling beside her as she trembled, not in terror of him, but from the profound unreality and overwhelming shock of their situation. He wrapped his arms around her, a silent, powerful embrace that allowed her shattered composure to utterly break. The floodgates burst forth once more. Together, Anna, Ling, and the handful of commanders and soldiers who had returned wept openly for their cherished loved ones, for the lost village, and for the bitter, searing pain of their perceived weakness and incompetence in the face of such overwhelming evil.
Anna's agonizing cries eventually quieted, replaced by a searing emptiness and a burgeoning hunger for answers. She looked to Ling, her expression pleading for clarity, but he silenced her with a look of shared pain and an almost imperceptible gesture towards the devastated village. "We will speak," Ling said, his voice low and heavy, thick with unspoken grief and dire meaning, "but not here. Not now." Indeed, even as the words left his lips, the vanguard of the Duke and the Elites crested the hill, their worried faces a mirror to the utter devastation they beheld. A three-day period of deep mourning followed, a time of hushed rites and shared sorrow within the now-sacred graveyard of Sith, a somber sanctuary amidst the ruins. On the morning of the fourth day, a silent, purposeful procession departed for the Roseblade Duchy. The journey itself was steeped in a palpable intensity; the weight of their collective trauma and the unspeakable events of Sith created a profound quietude, ensuring that for the entire duration of their travel, not a single word was uttered.