Aurevails reeled from their words, for they were the most brutally honest thing anyone had ever said about his dominion. The plane was, in fact, an abomination. A Dominion is a permanent plane of existence, a living portrait of the one who created it. This was no ordinary primordial, but a negative aspect of the Veracious Dragon. This version of Aurevails was utterly repulsive, and his dominion was the perfect, disgusting representation of him. The recent humiliation, combined with his seething anger, broken dignity, and sheer frustration, was actively corrupting the plane, making it more grotesque by the moment and causing the unstable dimensional rifts that had drawn the siblings in.
A sudden, primal instinct caused Aurevails to stop short of attacking. He sensed the presence of two dragons among the four intruders. One carried the lineage of his sworn brother, the Red Veracious Dragon, while the other, the hybrid Anna, was a part of his own family lineage. The four of them should have instinctively sensed the primal draconic aura emanating from the plane, an aura similar to Anna's own Silvery-White power. But the repulsive nature of the dominion had so overwhelmed their senses that their subconscious minds had completely rejected any familiarity, blinding them to the truth.
For two straight hours, Aurevails stood there, enduring their stabbing remarks and insults. He hoped against hope that they would recognize his aura from the plane, but their continued arrogance only fueled his anger, which in turn caused the dominion to continually degrade. For this particular version of Aurevails, that kind of patience was unheard of, yet he felt he needed to stay patient in this moment. As an elder or a primordial, he couldn't just rush in and attack children. The sense he desperately wanted was to regain a semblance of the pride, honor, and, most importantly, the dignity he had just lost. But their words didn't make him feel any better, and the plane's continuous degrading was a physical manifestation of his failing self-control.
The two-hour-long wait had felt like an eternity to Aurevails. His thread of patience, stretched beyond any limit he had known, finally snapped at a comment from Ashen. It was, in a twisted way, commendable that he had endured this long. During their protracted exploration, the McKellen siblings began to realize they weren't in a simple pocket dimension, but a Dominion—a self-contained plane of existence owned and ruled by a single individual. This realization brought a faint, malicious smile to Aurevails's face; he was about to step out and reveal himself, anticipating the awe and terror that would surely follow. But their next words were like a sword driven straight through his heart. After the realization, the disgust and utter repulsion they felt grew even stronger.
The realization that they were in a Dominion was an assault on Rowan and Ashen's dryad instincts, pushing them past the point of endurance. Before Rowan could say a word, Ashen let out a furious, disgusted tirade.
"How is this a dominion?! A dominion is a reflection of its owner's will, but this place... this is a cesspit! A garbage dump is too kind a comparison! A planet of pure filth would be a priceless jewel next to this repulsive waste! What kind of being could possibly have a personality so utterly corrupted, so sickening, so fundamentally rotten, all the way down to their core and essence?!"
This was the line that broke the camel's back. Ashen's final words were the trigger. Aurevails succumbed to a berserk fury, his mind and body consumed by rage. His murderous intent washed over the McKellen siblings, an overwhelming force that coincided with his mana and aura flooding the entire dominion, causing the plane to groan and collapse in on itself. For the first time, the four siblings understood what true dread felt like, a fear so profound it was paralyzing, a terror that felt like death was already upon them. The continuous, agonizing damage from Aurevails's festering mana and aura was an unbearable torment. In a last-ditch, subconscious effort to cope, Anna transferred a portion of the suffering to her dormant twin. This psychic shockwave jolted Beth awake from her Domain of Dreams and Desires, ripping her out of her peaceful oblivion and back into a world of pain. The siblings knew, as they stood there in agony, that Aurevails hadn't even begun his attack yet, and that the coming assault would be a brutal, one-sided slaughter.
Before any of them could react, Aurevails's tail swept through them in a violent arc, sending the four siblings flying and crashing. The siblings, already in immense pain from the corrosive mana and aura, were now wracked with an ungodly agony. Rowan, Ashen, and Anna were fortunate; their potent dryad powers instantly began to heal and regenerate their battered bodies. But Selene, a dragon of the Red Veracious lineage and a "Switch," found no such relief. Her sadomasochistic nature, a reflection of her lineage's negative aspect, had granted her a remarkable pain tolerance but left her with a low healing factor. While she had managed to endure the initial continuous damage, Aurevails's single brutal sweep was too much. Her body, now a canvas of blood and bruises, could not even support her. She staggered, unable to stand properly, and found she couldn't lift her arms to put up a simple defense.
Desperately, the dryad siblings pooled their mana to heal Selene, hoping her reinforced pain tolerance could shield them all from the coming storm. But Aurevails was relentless. The continuous damage from his rotten mana, coupled with the escalating brutality of his attacks, made their efforts a fool's errand. Selene's body became a bruised and bloody canvas, her wounds healing only to be reopened moments later, and she remained unable to stand or fight. As their own mana reserves plummeted, the siblings tried desperately to find an escape route, but the primordial's suffocating presence left them with nowhere to run and no time to recover.
Back in her cocoon of Dreams and Desires, Beth, who had been jolted awake by the initial psychic shockwave from Anna, writhed in agony from the escalating torment. Her thrashing caused the dryad vines encasing her to erupt with violent force, tearing through the castle walls and causing the entire structure to groan and tremble. The true devastation, however, was felt by her parents. Phera and Helen, interrupted mid-evolution by the emotional and physical anguish of their children through their Three Way Parental Link, suffered a catastrophic backlash. Their bodies, minds, and essences violently rejected the evolution, forcing them to devolve by three entire evolution realms.
Aurevails, in his berserk state, completely abandoned his former identity. He became a sadist, a true reflection of the Red Veracious Dragon's negative aspect. The beatdown was a cycle of despair: he would beat them mercilessly, then fully heal their bloody bodies and broken mana reserves, only to start the process all over again. He continued this brutal ritual for what felt like an eternity, hoping to break their wills before the final kill. The siblings endured this torture thanks to a mind fortification spell that Luke Timothy John had deliberately cast on them since they were infants.
Aurevails, growing weary of their unyielding mental fortitude, decided this last healing would be their final one before he put them out of their misery. But just as he was about to deliver the killing blow, a foreign presence entered his dominion. He sensed the new aura and mana, and instantly, his berserk rage was replaced with the same dread, fear, and sense of death he had inflicted on the siblings.
Seizing the opportunity, the McKellen siblings fled. They burst out of the dominion without a single backward glance, flying past the people they had traveled with for years as if they were strangers. Selene and Anna transformed into their dragon forms for the first time in their lives, with Rowan and Ashen clinging to their scales. They flew across the entire Demon Continent, not stopping until they reached the Tensen Continent and the safety of the Roseblade Duchy.
Thirty years would pass before anyone on the planet Azure heard anything more about the four McKellen siblings.