The glass dust still stung his lungs as Hayjin stared at the prohibitive distance between their position and the clock tower. He scratched his chin, then looked at Zhilian, who was already mentally calculating the number of calories she would burn trekking through the rubble.
"Listen, 'Your Highness'," Hayjin began, pointing with his thumb at the mana wings she had evoked earlier to fight. "Not to be a killjoy, but you literally have the power to manipulate light. Why should we walk like mere mortals when you could just... I don't know, carry us up there with some of that sparkle of yours?"
Zhilian froze. Her ears suddenly turned the same shade as the red crystals of Doeken's dungeon. She blinked a couple of times, looking first at her boots and then at the tower.
"I... I wanted to save mana in case we had to face the wyvern in a hypothetical clash," she murmured, avoiding his gaze. "And besides... I hadn't thought of it. I was too focused on not letting the wolves eat us."
Hayjin burst out laughing, a dry laugh that echoed among the silent palaces. "Oh, fantastic. We have the most powerful mage in the kingdom and she decides to take a hike at the most inopportune moment. Congratulations, Princess, your practicality is moving."
"Stop making fun of me, you could have thought of it too, eh!" she retorted, giving him a playful shove on the shoulder. "Hold on tight, then. and see that you don't complain if you suffer from vertigo."
With a fluid gesture, Zhilian wrapped both of them in a golden aura of light. In an instant, gravity seemed to lose its grip. With a thrust that took Hayjin's breath away, they flew upward, landing with precision on the mana flow channels. These were not physical bridges, but streams of semi-transparent energy connecting the spires like telegraph wires made of pure blue electricity.
While Zhilian glided over them with the grace of a skater, Hayjin felt like a cat on a wet floor. His legs shook violently. Beneath his feet was only a void of hundreds of meters, and that vibrating strip of light seemed terribly thin.
The freezing twilight air whipped the faces of Hayjin and Zhilian as they slid along the mana channel, a strip of blue energy suspended in the void that vibrated under their feet like a violin string stretched to the breaking point. Below them, the abyss of the abandoned city looked like a gaping mouth, ready to swallow their remains.
"Breathe, Hayjin," Zhilian said softly. Noting his pallor, she grabbed his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. Her grip was warm, steady, charged with a security that was not just magical, but human. "I won't let you fall. Look at me, don't look down. We're making it, don't worry."
Hayjin returned the grip, feeling his heart slow down. "Yeah... easy to say for someone who can float. If I slip, I become a meat patty on the marble down there."
"Hayjin, keep the rhythm! If your steps aren't synchronized with the frequency of the flow, the mana will reject you!" Zhilian shouted, her voice almost carried away by the wind. She proceeded with an unnatural grace, her feet brushing the light as if she were dancing, but Hayjin looked like a novice tightrope walker on an oil-slicked wire.
"Easy... for... you!" he panted, arms outstretched to maintain a precarious balance. Every time he looked over the edge of that luminous trail, he felt his stomach rise into his throat. "I am absolutely not made for skating on electricity, Zhilian!"
Slowly, they began the crossing. Everything seemed to be going well until a sound like cracking glass tore through the silence. The mana channel beneath them began to flicker. It emitted a sinister crackle, a dry snap like ice breaking under excessive weight. The blue light began to flicker, becoming grayish and transparent.
"Zhilian! Look!" Hayjin yelled. "The cables... they're vanishing!" he shouted, pointing to a spot a few meters ahead where the channel had literally pulverized, leaving a gap of meters and meters.
Indeed, the ends of the channel were evaporating into blue sparks. The magical connection of the city was giving way under the weight of time or the dungeon itself.
"Get on my back! Now!" Zhilian ordered in a tone that admitted no reply.
Hayjin clung to her like a shipwreck survivor to a wreck. Zhilian didn't waste a second: she activated a propulsion of pure light from her feet, transforming into a golden comet darting through the void, parallel to the vanishing remains of the channels.
Their luminous flight, however, acted as a beacon in the darkness of the twilight. From the cracks of the surrounding black towers, gray creatures emerged, similar to small griffins but with leathery skin and large red crystals embedded in their chests and heads. They emitted metallic screeches reminiscent of the sound of a circular saw. They were grotesque beings: membranous wings, beaks sharp as shears, and those red crystals pulsing with malevolent light.
"Uhm, I wouldn't want to... alarm you, but we have company!" Hayjin shouted, seeing the flock converge on them.
Zhilian veered sharply to the left, performing a rotation that almost made Hayjin lose his grip. A griffin passed so close that the boy smelled the ozone and sulfur emanating from its crystals.
"Use that damn sword, Hayjin! I can't just run, they're too fast!" she shouted, as ten more creatures detached from the spires to surround them.
A griffin pulled level with them, stretching out silica claws to grab Hayjin's leg. The boy, with a twisted movement, delivered a side slash. It wasn't a simple physical blow: the wind channeled into the blade created a compressed air wave that severed the creature's wing. The griffin plummeted, emitting a harrowing cry, crashing against a crystal statue below.
"SEE THAT?! HOW DO YOU LIKE THE WIND FROM MY SWORD, ASSHOLE?!" Hayjin roared, with an exhilaration charged with adrenaline and pure stress-induced madness. "YOU'RE NOT SO TOUGH WHEN YOU'RE MISSING A PIECE!"
Another griffin dived. Hayjin, despite his precarious position on Zhilian's back, drew the resonance sword. He channeled what little wind magic he had left, creating a compressed air slash that hit the creature in the neck. The griffin exploded in a rain of red shards.
"YES! TAKE THAT, OVERGROWN CHICKEN!" Hayjin yelled, waving his fist in the air like a fan at a stadium.
"HAYJIN! STOP CHEERING LIKE AN IDIOT AND CONCENTRATE!" Zhilian yelled at him, narrowly dodging the claw of another beast. "We're about to crash and you're rooting for yourself?!"
"It's not easy to concentrate when you're flying with a princess as rude as you!" he retorted, spinning around. Three griffins were charging in unison. They positioned themselves above them, opening their beaks. They began to spit volleys of red crystal shards, magical bullets tracing luminous trails in the twilight.
"Zhilian, turn right! Now!" Hayjin commanded.
She obeyed without question. As they spun, Hayjin used his wind magic not to attack, but to create a sort of "vortex shield" around them. The shards hit the air barrier and were deflected, hitting each other or shattering against the walls of the buildings.
Hayjin activated the frequency function of his sword, mixing it with a rotation of the wind. "Let's try the technique I learned!" With a circular movement, he unleashed a shockwave that not only tore through the first two griffins but created a pressure vacuum that stunned the entire surrounding flock, causing them to plummet into the void like stones. "And that's three! Who's the idiot now, eh?"
"You, it's always you!!" she replied, though a small smile of admiration escaped her. But the smile vanished when she saw the tower still too far away and her mana tank dropping dangerously below the warning threshold. "Hayjin, the maneuver is draining me. If we don't reach that tower in thirty seconds, we'll start a very scenic freefall."
The situation, however, worsened. The remaining griffins began to spit red crystal fragments from their mouths, magical projectiles whistling through the air like bullets.
"Hayjin, send them back with your wind!" Zhilian shouted, while trying to maintain the trajectory toward the tower.
"I'm trying, but I'm not exactly a tornado!" Hayjin waved his hand, managing to deflect some, but he lacked precision. A crystal grazed his cheek, making him bleed.
The surviving flock, enraged, began a suicidal charge. They were no longer trying to hit them from a distance; they wanted to crash into them.
"We won't make it as a pair, the air resistance is too much!" Zhilian made a sudden decision. She straightened up in flight, grabbing Hayjin by the arms and bringing him in front of her. She looked him straight in the eyes, her face lit by the glow of her own mana. "Listen to me carefully. I'm going to throw you. I'll use all the mana I have left to give you a kinetic boost. You have to at least land in front of the tower."
Zhilian understood they wouldn't both arrive intact if they continued like this. She took a drastic decision. She detached from the mana channels, floating free in total void. She grabbed Hayjin by the hand, looking into his eyes with fierce determination.
"Trust me, Hayjin. I'll see you up there!"
"What?! Zhilian, wait..."
With a cry of effort, Zhilian channeled a massive amount of mana into her arm and launched Hayjin toward the tower with the force of a catapult. Without waiting for an answer, Zhilian began to spin, accumulating luminous energy around her body like a top. Hayjin felt his bones creak from the centrifugal force.
The boy flew through the air, screaming at the top of his lungs, hurtling like a human projectile. While he sped toward the tower, Zhilian turned toward the flock.
Remaining suspended in the void, the princess created hundreds of spheres of solid light around her. "Now... vanish!" With a gesture of her hands, the spheres exploded outward, piercing the griffins in a riot of dark blood and crystalline fragments. The sky was stained a macabre red for an instant. The shards flew in every direction, impaling the flying creatures in a massacre of feathers and crystal. The dark blood of the monsters rained down on the city like toxic rain.
Exhausted, Zhilian used the last glimmer of energy to give herself a propulsive boost. She flew toward Hayjin, who was still tumbling awkwardly on the stone platform of the tower. She reached him mid-air a few meters before impact, catching him in a desperate embrace.
They impacted against the stone balcony, rolling for several meters and stopping just inches from the inner edge. They were dazed, aching, but alive.
They landed together, rolling on the frozen floor of the spire. Silence suddenly returned to reign. The few surviving griffins, seeing the bulk of the Wyvern just above them, fled in terror, preferring death in the void rather than disturbing the guardian.
Hayjin and Zhilian remained lying there, heart against heart, panting heavily as the adrenaline left their bodies. They had arrived. The Wyvern was there, a few meters away, wrapped in its millennial sleep.
The cold wind whistled between the obsidian spires, bringing with it the metallic smell of the griffins' blood and the mana dust that still shimmered in the air like glowing ash. Hayjin and Zhilian lay on the stone floor of the balcony for what seemed like centuries, chests rising and falling in a syncopated rhythm of pure exhaustion.
Finally, Hayjin propped himself up on his arms, emitting a groan that was half-lament and half-hysterical laugh. He stood up staggering, feeling every muscle in his body protest, and looked at the tower looming over them. It was a monolith of black crystal, so perfect it looked like a blade driven into the heart of the sky.
"Yes! Take that, stupid dungeon!" Hayjin exulted, waving a trembling fist toward the void. "We're alive! Hear that? Alive and well!"
Zhilian stood up with much more effort, leaning on her scepter which now emitted only a pale, intermittent glimmer. Her hair was messy and there was a scratch on her cheek, but her eyes were fixed on the remains of the mana channels still flickering in the void.
"It doesn't make sense, Hayjin..." she murmured, her voice hoarse. "Those channels... they shouldn't just vanish. They are millennial magical structures. Something or someone interrupted the flow of energy from the outside, or maybe the dungeon is collapsing faster than expected because of our presence. How did they break right when we were on them?"
Hayjin turned to her, shrugging and trying to clean the blue dust off his jacket. "Look, Princess, we just took a flight from I don't know how many meters, fought hellish creatures, and landed in the backyard of a giant sleeping wyvern. Let's not analyze why the cables snapped. The important thing is that we're here. We'll leave the 'how' for later."
Zhilian sighed, a bitter smile appearing on her face. "You're right. Thinking too much will only give us a headache, and we have enough of those." She turned toward the top of the spire, where the bulk of the Wyvern of Two Lights dominated the scene. "Look closely up there, near the creature's front legs. Do your eyes see something?"
Hayjin put a hand over his eyes, squinting to focus against the purplish reflection of the sky. "Let's see... scales, claws, a pointed tail... wait. There, right in the middle of that nest of blue crystals. There's something flat and square. It looks like... a book?"
"A book?" Zhilian repeated, and for an instant, the weariness seemed to vanish from her face, replaced by a feverish excitement. "Hayjin, if it's what I think, it's an Association Grimoire. It's an object of inestimable value. Many say the Association Masters hide original spells in these books, mana manipulation techniques created by the founders themselves. If we take it back, not only will we win the exam, but we'll have power in our hands that could change the fate of Opes."
Hayjin stood agape, staring at the small dark rectangle next to the wyvern's head. "Let me get this straight. The Mages' Association, people who are supposed to be wise and prudent, decided that the best place to keep an incredibly powerful and unique book in the world was next to the head of a lizard at least fifteen meters tall that could sneeze and pulverize us? Who are these Association members? Sociopaths?"
"The trial must be extreme on purpose, Hayjin," Zhilian replied, turning serious again. "We need to find a way to climb those last few meters without waking it. If that translucent veil on its eyes opens, we're dead before we can even say 'sorry'."
"Climb?" Hayjin pointed to his own legs, which were still shaking like jelly. "Zhilian, we're out of strength. Your mana is basically at its limit, I used every scrap of energy just to keep from fainting during the flight. Reaching that summit now is suicide. If we wake it while we're halfway, we won't even have the strength to run, let alone fight."
Zhilian approached him, placing a hand on his shoulder. She looked at him with a determination that admitted no reply. "I will take care of protecting you, Hayjin. I still have enough energy for one last defensive burst. I won't let that monster touch you."
"Yeah, and then who will protect you?" he retorted, but before he could continue, a sharp noise froze them in place.
From the other side of the terrace, right where an intricate covered passage ended looking like a labyrinth of red crystals grown like vines the boom of heavy footsteps and the metallic clang of armor could be heard.
"Get ready," Zhilian whispered, evoking a tiny, flickering bolt of light between her fingers.
"I'm not ready! Not at all!" Hayjin replied in a low voice, gripping the resonance sword with both hands, even though he knew he didn't have enough strength to slice through butter.
From the red shadows of the labyrinth emerged a massive figure in a white tunic, followed by a girl with purple hair walking with an unsettling calm.
Atlas Altavilla and Evelyn.
They were covered in red dust; Atlas's tunic was scratched and dented in several places, and Evelyn's breath was short, but they were there. The red palace and the blue city had fused at that focal point of the dungeon.
Atlas stopped dead, staring at Hayjin and Zhilian with a mix of anger and disbelief. "You... how the hell are you already here? We went through a crystal hell to get to this tower!"
The astonishment of Hayjin and Zhilian was so genuine that it brought an almost absurd silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of the four. Hayjin blinked several times, convinced that fatigue was making him project hallucinations based on his recent traumas.
"What... is it really you?" Hayjin exclaimed, lowering the tip of his sword more out of confusion than trust. "No, wait. Zhilian, tell me you see what I see. I can't be the only one having such specific mirages."
Zhilian was motionless, her mouth slightly agape. She looked at Evelyn, then at the labyrinth of red crystals they had come out of, and finally at the blue rubble behind her. "It's not possible... Adeline was clear. Two portals, two separate mirror dimensions. We should have been miles apart, or even in different astral planes!"
"Evidently your idea of 'distance' doesn't coincide with the Association's," Evelyn replied, brushing a pinch of red dust off her sleeve with a huffy gesture. She looked exhausted, but her dignity remained intact. "We traveled miles in a corridor that seemed to never end, only to find ourselves in this... roof garden of terrible taste."
"Yes, and we had to break down a metal door as heavy as a mountain to get out of that palace!" Atlas snapped, momentarily sheathing his greatsword but keeping his gaze fixed on Hayjin. "And now we get here and find you two, covered in blue dust and looking like you've just had a bad day. How is it possible that the two dungeons end at the same point?"
Hayjin ran a hand through his hair, breaking into a nervous laugh. "Oh, fantastic. It's an experiment then. Adeline locked us in a box to see if we'd slaughter each other before the big lizard up there decides to have breakfast. The two paths were just two different entrances to the same place."
Hayjin, despite the surprise, couldn't help himself and decided to tease the two from Doeken a bit. A crooked smile appeared on his face. "Oh, by the way, Atlas, as to your question about how we got here first... we took a much faster shortcut than yours, losers."
"Really... wait to celebrate too soon, presumptuous one," Atlas countered with a mocking smile.
Evelyn took a step forward, ignoring Hayjin's sarcasm and pointing her icy eyes toward the top of the tower where the Wyvern slept, and then toward the book. "So the coincidence of the paths was intentional. Two different dungeons converging toward the same guardian. The Association wants us to clash here, in front of the prey."
Zhilian looked at Evelyn with a new realization. "The convergence. They weren't two separate trials... it was a speed race to see who reached the bottleneck first. And now we're all here, in front of the objective."
"And with a desperate urge to figure out which of us has to step aside," Atlas added, taking a menacing step forward, while the metal of his armor screeched under the tension.
"Then let there be a clash; if this was the goal, let's do it," Atlas roared, unsheathing his greatsword which emitted a white glow. "I won't let a second-rate analyst and a fallen princess steal our prize."
"Atlas, stop!" Evelyn ordered, but it was too late. The tension in the air had become a spark ready to ignite the powder keg, right under the nose of the millennial guardian.