The ground vanished beneath my boots.
In a single heartbeat, the glow of Sillys' village was swallowed by the endless sea of dark canopies behind us. We didn't run. We rode the gale.
The century-old trunks blurred into streaks of brown and green, and the sound of our bodies tearing through the atmosphere was a continuous, high-pitched whistle—like a pair of drawn swords slicing the sky.
Sillys moved with a terrifying, ghost-like grace.
She didn't just step on the branches; she used the atmospheric pressure to dance across the void. Every time her thin steel boots tapped the bark, miniature, highly compressed cyclones bloomed beneath her soles, launching her forward without snapping a single twig.
"You know..." I yelled over the cutting wind, ducking under a massive, moss-covered branch to keep up with her. "There's one thing you never explained to me."
"What?" Sillys replied, without taking her pale eyes off the dark horizon.
"Why the hell are you, your sister Sallys, and your mother killing each other?" I panted, channeling a burst of air to violently kick off another trunk. "I believe a divine empire doesn't just split into three out of nowhere. What was the spark?"
The ghostly lightness of Sillys' movements faltered for a fraction of a second. The laughter vanished. The wind around her silver armor grew suddenly dense, razor-sharp.
"Paranoia, Suki," her voice sounded cold, but it carried an ancient, bitter weight. "Everything fell apart in a single night, four years ago. After my mother demanded an audience with the Oracle, Sallys and I were forced to escort her."
The sound of the wind whipping against my ears seemed to muffle, and Sillys' voice pulled me down into her dark memories.
*[Four Years Ago – The Crystal Caves of Lavinsk]*
The smell of burnt sap and black lotus suffocated the damp air of the underground cavern.
Sillys, wearing her full escort uniform, remained kneeling on the cold stone floor to the right. To her left, also kneeling, was Sallys, her sister. Unlike Sillys' heavy armor, Sallys wore emerald silk tunics, and her aura radiated a calm, diplomatic energy.
Ahead of them both, the imposing figure of Elfhing, the Queen of the Elves, rose like a mountain of marble, her presence illuminating the cavern's darkness.
In the center of the black-water lake before them, the Oracle rested.
It wasn't a person, but an ancient creature fused to the very living wood of that tree. When the Oracle finally spoke, the dozens of overlapping whispers made the cavern's crystals vibrate violently.
*"The golden age rots, Queen Elfhing,"* the Oracle hissed. *"The wind of your reign has stopped, and the single-pointed crown will shatter into three."*
Elfhing narrowed her eyes. Divine fury made the lake's black water boil and bubble violently.
"I am the goddess who unified this empire! I am the one who drowned the primordial beasts in their own blood and dictated the borders of the world!" the queen's voice cracked like a whip of hyper-compressed air. "My walls are impenetrable. No army, human or divine, would dare breathe against my castle. Speak clearly, senile log! Who dares threaten my throne?"
The Oracle did not back down. The dozens of overlapping voices hummed, cold and indifferent to the goddess's fury.
*"The threat does not march with banners from the outside, Majesty. It already breathes the same air as you."*
Elfhing took a threatening step forward. The crushing pressure of her aura made the large crystals near the lake begin to crack and splinter.
"Insolence," the Queen snarled, her pale face contorted. "My external enemies have been decimated, and there is no rebellion among my people. You dare insinuate that my own house would turn against me? My daughters are pure extensions of my will. They would never turn on the hand that gave them life."
*"The will of a god does not shackle destiny, and destiny does not mince words,"* the Oracle echoed, relentless, the living wood of its face creaking as if weeping sap.
The Queen's breath hitched for a fraction of a second. The unshakable arrogance in her eyes shattered, instantly giving way to a cold, calculating, and sickening paranoia.
*"The wind does not ask permission to change direction,"* the Oracle whispered one last time. The creature turned its blind face, pointing its pale chin directly to where Sillys and Sallys knelt. *"And the crown you wear is already too heavy for a blind neck."*
The cavern plunged into an absolute, terrifying silence.
Sillys felt the blood freeze in her veins. She didn't want the crown; she only wanted to lead her troops and protect her people. But looking at her mother, she saw pure horror.
The Queen slowly turned her face. She didn't look at her daughters with maternal love, but with the lethal coldness of a predator evaluating an imminent death threat.
"The bloodline must remain untouchable, and the throne is unquestionably mine," Elfhing murmured, her crushing aura pressing the two sisters against the floor. The queen pointed a long, pale finger at the five elite guards who had escorted them. "These soldiers heard an unforgivable heresy. Kill them. Both of you. Prove that your loyalty lies with your queen, and not with a lunatic prophecy."
Sillys froze, her stomach churning. They were her soldiers. Men and women who had bled under her command.
But the sickening sound of flesh being torn echoed before she could open her mouth.
A jet of hot blood sprayed, staining Sillys' pale cheek.
She turned her head, paralyzed by shock.
Sallys was standing.
An arrow was driven deep into the neck of the captain of the guard, who collapsed onto the stone floor, choking on his own blood. The calm, diplomatic sister Sillys knew was gone, replaced by a woman with a sadistic smile and eyes overflowing with ambition.
"Sallys!" Sillys screamed, disbelief tearing at her throat. "What are you doing?!"
Sallys didn't even look at her. She stepped on the dead guard's chest, yanked out the bloody arrow, and raised her cold eyes directly to their mother.
"I kill them, Majesty," Sallys hissed, her voice dripping with venom and arrogance. "But do not confuse this with obedience. The Oracle is right. You are weak, mother. Your time is over, your crown is already falling... and it's only a matter of time until I crush your head and take it for myself. That is all I've ever wanted."
Elfhing didn't blink. A microscopic, sickly smile curved her lips. She didn't see daughters there; she only saw snakes slithering around her throne.
Sallys laughed, a high, maniacal laugh, and raised her hand to conjure another wind blade toward the next kneeling, terrified guard.
"No!"
Sillys exploded from the ground. Her wind spear cut the air, violently clashing against Sallys' arrow. The shockwave shattered the cavern's crystals, raining sparkling glass over the black waters of the lake. The boom was deafening.
The cavern turned into a chaos of wind and light. Sillys attacked with blind fury, blocking her own sister's deadly strikes to protect the remaining guards.
Through the dust and blood, Sillys looked desperately to the back of the cavern.
Elfhing stood there, watching the carnage with pure boredom. For the queen, the scenario was perfect: the two greatest threats to her throne were killing each other right there.
And right behind the goddess, immovable as a mountain of lead and black armor, was Lucas.
The elven champion.
"Lucas!" Sillys pleaded, deflecting a spinning arrow from Sallys that nearly ripped her arm off. "You are a warrior of honor! This path... my mother's madness... this isn't for you! Help me stop her!"
The half-breed's eyes, marked by the deep scar that tore across his face, met Sillys' for a second. But there was no conflict in them. There was only an empty abyss and the discipline of a hunting hound.
"My ears and my blade belong only to the Queen," Lucas replied, his voice perfectly monotonous, devoid of any emotion.
Elfhing turned her back.
"Let's go, Lucas. Let the traitors drown in their own mud," the goddess ordered, walking toward the exit without looking back a single time.
Lucas followed her in absolute silence, abandoning them to the darkness.
Sillys snarled, turning all her strength and indignation against her sister. She spun her spear, ready to break Sallys' legs and end this madness once and for all.
But Sallys was a coward.
Realizing she couldn't overcome her sister's brute strength and technique in direct combat, Sallys quickly retreated. She fired a massive shockwave at the crystal pillars on the cavern ceiling, bringing gigantic rocks crashing down between the two of them.
When the dust settled, Sallys was gone, fleeing like a rat into the underground shadows.
*[Present Day]*
"And that was how the empire imploded," Sillys murmured, her bitter voice dragging me back to the present as we leaped over a chasm between two giant trees in the Black Forest. "That night divided our people."
I looked at her, feeling my stomach drop. A cowardly, psychopathic sister, and a mother willing to let her daughters kill each other.
"And what happened to the rest of the army?" I panted, kicking off a piece of bark to maintain our frantic pace.
"Sallys took the brutes," Sillys spat the words with pure disgust. "Sadistic warriors, corrupted elves who wanted the twisted 'freedom' she promised them. The right to pillage, kill, and rule by sheer force. She fled and formed an army of selfish savages in the Eastern Plains."
Sillys landed hard on a branch, her silver armor reflecting the pale morning gleam as she glanced at me.
"My side, Suki, attracted those who sought justice. The true infantry. The warriors with honor, who wanted to do what was right and seek peace for the kingdom, even if the price for following their general was exile in this damn monster-infested forest."
"And the queen..." I finished, already seeing the full picture.
"She kept the passive ones," Sillys smirked, a cold, cutting smile. "The cowards. The ones who were too terrified of Elfhing's aura and Lucas' spear to even think about opposing the crown. They stayed in the castle with Elfhing, locked themselves behind marble walls, and kept their heads down, pretending the world outside wasn't burning."
She leaned her body forward, breaking the wind resistance to gain an absurd burst of speed.
And then, she jumped.
A violent explosion of wind launched her straight up, tearing through the dense canopy.
"Until I rip that crown off her head and bring peace back," Sillys' voice echoed like thunder falling from the sky, "I prefer these forests! They teach lessons the throne tends to forget!"
She rose so high that the blinding glare of the sun caught the edges of her armor. The sonic boom of compressed air beneath her boots echoed through the forest like a cannon shot.
I laughed to myself in the middle of the dark woods, feeling the weight and my respect for her hit the ceiling of my mind.
"Alright... my turn."
I focused the roaring wind strictly onto the soles of my combat boots. A translucent, highly pressurized circle of air spun rapidly beneath my feet.
With a deafening *crack*, I was launched upward like a missile, tearing through the sky alongside my warrior queen.
The giant trees shrank beneath me.
The sky opened up.
The wind was now my absolute ally, and for a fleeting second, crossing the heavens didn't seem impossible at all.
I crossed paths with Sillys mid-air. The clash of our auras colliding at the absolute apex of the jump created a beautiful, violent spiral of leaves around us.
But the beauty of the moment died as gravity pulled us back down.
"I felt something..." I muttered.
I dropped heavily onto a lower branch, my boots cracking the wood slightly as I stared into the suffocating darkness of the woods ahead.
"There's something wrong with the forest."
"Me too," Sillys replied, landing flawlessly beside me. The light, playful energy had completely vanished from her face. Her pale eyes were dead serious.
We descended to the surface of the swamp below. She touched the ground with the lightness of a falling leaf; I landed hard, almost shattering the stone beneath my boots. I still had to practice my open-air flight.
The exact moment our feet touched the soil, the wind died.
The forest grew absolutely, unnervingly silent. We stood in an open, rotting field at the bottom of a deep valley.
The air didn't just smell bad—it was thick, acidic, and reeked of iron. It wasn't just the smell of carrion; it was a dense, metallic stench of dried blood and fresh slaughter that instantly coated the back of my throat and turned my stomach.
The grass beneath our boots was blackened and diseased. The thick tree roots protruding from the mud seemed to pulse abnormally, bloated like infected, black veins.
"This smell..." I pulled the collar of my tunic up over my nose, feeling the bile rise.
"I've never smelled anything like this."
"The corruption is concentrated here," Sillys whispered, her eyes slowly sweeping the impenetrable shadows.
"This isn't the smell of dead prey... it's the heart of something alive."
The temperature didn't just plummet; the air around us seemed to freeze.
My heavy breaths condensed instantly, forming a thick white cloud in front of my face.
In that exact moment, my primal instincts took over. Every nerve in my body flared like a fire alarm.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the wind aura beneath my skin began to vibrate in a sharp, defensive frequency, scratching my muscles from the inside out.
We were completely surrounded.
A cold, primal shiver tore down my spine. The blackened mud of the swamp began to snap and give way around us, crushed under the weight of colossal footsteps closing the perimeter in three hundred and sixty degrees.
They were massive.
Heavy enough to make the stones beneath our boots tremble, yet, in some bizarre way, they moved through the shadows with near-silent speed.
But the worst part—the thing that truly made my blood run cold and my stomach drop—wasn't their size or the darkness.
It was the sound.
Dozens, maybe hundreds of monstrous lungs were drawing in and exhaling the toxic oxygen of the swamp at the exact same time.
A rhythmic, absolute, and sickening synchrony hidden in the shadows.
It didn't sound like a pack; it sounded like the breath of a single, gigantic predator, panting in the dark, playing with its prey before the slaughter.
Sillys raised her hand, and her massive greatbow materialized out of thin air.
The space around her instantly glowed with a lethal, icy energy.
"No matter how perfectly they hide in the darkness..." she drew back the bowstring, a blinding arrow of pure light forming between her fingers, "...they still need to breathe. They are looking at us."
I reached over my shoulder and drew my spear with a quick, firm spin.
The black metal hummed, reflecting the dying light of the valley.
"I know," I replied, my voice coming out cold, hollow, and dead.
*I've felt this exact same murderous intent before,* I thought, the memory of the monsters on the training planet flashing through my mind.
Our bodies aligned in pure survival instinct.
We stood perfectly back-to-back.
The sound of her calm, rhythmic breathing mixed with mine. The wind began to tremble between us, spinning the corrupted dust and dead leaves into a small, aggressive vortex around our boots.
Silence.
No birds. No crickets.
Only the low, wet, irregular sound of razor-sharp claws clicking against the bark of the surrounding trunks.
And suddenly—the first strike.
A Taranpus exploded from the absolute darkness of our blind spot.
A monstrous, mutated beast with matted white fur, unnaturally elongated arms, and a gaping, unhinged jaw.
It moved so fast that the air literally screamed before its body even hit the light.
I didn't think. My brain shut off, and my body took control.
I lunged directly at the beast, spinning the spear in my hands.
When its colossal jaws, filled with rows of crooked, sword-like teeth, snapped open to rip my head off, I drove the tip of the spear straight into the back of the monster's throat.
*CRACK.*
The absolute impact of the collision shook the muddy ground. The wind-infused steel pierced effortlessly through flesh and bone, and thick, boiling black blood sprayed like a pressure valve over my chest and face.
The beast writhed violently in mid-air, letting out a wet, choked grunt.
With a sadistic, brutal sideways yank, I channeled a razor-thin gust of wind through the blade and tore the monster's chest and neck open from the inside out, splitting its upper half in two.
The mutilated corpse fell with a wet thud onto the diseased grass.
"They're coming!!" Sillys yelled, her voice cutting through the heavy air as she released the bowstring.
A streak of blinding light pierced the darkness, followed by a sickening screech.
Then, the world exploded.
The noise erupted from all sides simultaneously. The thunderous thud of heavy footsteps.
Deafening, bloodcurdling roars. Giant tree trunks snapping in half like toothpicks under the massive weight.
The wind around us grew incredibly dense and suffocating.
Dozens—if not hundreds—of pairs of glowing red eyes began to snap open, blinking frantically in the deep, blackened abyss of the forest.
"So this is it..." I muttered. I wiped the black blood from my cheek, gritted my teeth, and sank into my combat stance, feeling the adrenaline ignite my blood like gasoline.
"The hunt has begun."