Allison was gone.

  Luke stood frozen in place, tracking every one of her footsteps as she walked toward the massive wooden ship hovering above the ground. The floating vessel had lowered its thick ropes, swaying as they touched the snow. Allison gripped one tightly and began to climb, never once looking back. Since her last “goodbye,” she hadn’t spoken another word.

  And he hadn’t managed to say anything either. Anything he did now would only make things worse for her.

  The ship began to rise, slowly at first, inches lifting into the air before it ascended by entire meters. The old wood groaned softly, almost alive as it cut through the cold sky. Luke watched his friend grow smaller and smaller, swallowed by the heavy clouds drifting over the forest.

  It was a farewell, a bitter one, harsh in its inevitability, cruel in how it unfolded. He knew the chances of seeing her again were… minimal. Not impossible, but close.

  Allison hadn’t died. He repeated that to himself over and over. But the feeling inside him didn’t care what the truth was. It settled in his chest like a loss. Watching her leave tightened his throat until breathing felt difficult.

  His gaze drifted to his left arm. A thin silver bracelet rested against his skin, cold to the touch. The runes etched along its surface lay dormant, as if asleep. Allison’s gift. The final thread tying them together.

  [Left Bracelet of Eternal Friendship (Rare)

  Description: The second half of a pair forged as a symbol of an unbreakable bond. Linked by ancient magic, each piece senses the presence and fate of the other. When one bearer falls, the other feels the loss; when they draw near, the bracelets glow, guiding them back together.

  Enchantments:

  [Ruptured Vitality (Rare)]: If the bearer of one bracelet dies, the other shatters instantly, dissolving into luminous dust.

  [Union’s Glow (Uncommon)]: When the wearers are close, the runes emit a soft light, signaling their proximity and leading them toward one another.

  Requirement: Soulbound.]

  Luke ran his fingers along the cold metal, almost as if trying to memorize it. Allison wore the matching bracelet, the piece that completed the bond. She knew him well. She knew Luke wouldn’t be able to rest if he thought something serious might happen to her, whether because of her family or because she might try to take her own life. With this bracelet, he would know she was alive, and one day, if he ever came close to her again, he would know it.

  The ship vanished into the clouds, and as it did, the storm finally began to quiet. Snow thinned. Wind softened. The unnatural winter dissolved as quickly as it had arrived. Yet one figure remained in the clearing, unmoving, untouched by the shifting air, the only constant left after all the chaos. Rowena. Queen Rhiannon.

  She stood exactly where she had been, staring at the sky. And even though Luke hadn’t heard a single word, he understood. It was her will alone that unraveled the storm.

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  The snow melted slowly, evaporating into thin waves of steam that rose from the ground. The biting cold retreated, replaced by a gentle warmth. The sky, once smothered by the storm she had summoned, finally cleared. Slivers of sunlight pierced through the cracks in the clouds, cutting across the clearing like golden blades.

  The white landscape receded, color returning to the forest leaves. The silence broke with a nearly unified sound: the people who had been frozen into statues began to move. Fingers twitched first, then hands, legs, and finally whole bodies. Some collapsed, staggering, terrified. Others touched their faces and torsos, searching for wounds that weren’t there.

  Most dropped to their knees, gasping for air. They were alive, but the look they cast toward Queen Rhiannon was pure disbelief. She remained where she was, serene, her fingers drifting through the air as she restored the region’s climate.

  Luke understood now, with perfect clarity: this wasn’t simple magic. It wasn’t an iceball, nor some common spell. It was power that shaped the natural world itself, twisting weather, temperature, even the clouds overhead. An abyss lay between her power and that of anyone else present.

  The queen, alone, could have conjured the same storm from the final battle of the tutorial. Alone, without effort. Just by moving her hands. Just by wanting it.

  A sharp sound behind him made Luke turn.

  Evangeline, Jack, and Eleanor were on the ground, struggling desperately for breath. Luke ran toward them. He knew that feeling, he’d been turned into stone once before. The lungs simply stopped. It wasn’t possible to die from lack of air in that state, but the moment the body returned… the need for oxygen was ravenous, overwhelming. Like a desert trying to swallow an ocean.

  “You’re all right?” he asked, crouching to help them stand.

  Jack had conjured a healing spell around the group with his wand, but it did nothing. There were no wounds to heal. The body was simply restarting, reawakening its natural functions.

  “That,” Evangeline coughed hard, trying to steady her breathing. “That was just as bad as turning into a statue.”

  Eleanor got to her feet still wheezing, her voice thin. “Allison is gone.”

  Luke raised his eyes to the now-clear sky. Without the storm, he could see the ship far in the distance, reduced to a tiny dot on the horizon, heading away from Camlann.

  “She’s going to the Rhiannon kingdom,” he said quietly.

  Evangeline leaned on her spear, still breathless. “We couldn’t even do anything. It happened so fast… one second I was walking and the next I was frozen.”

  “I know. Don’t worry,” Luke said with a tired sigh. “But the truth is, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway.”

  “But she’s our friend,” Jack murmured. “After everything we went through in the tutorial… ending like this feels wrong.”

  Luke watched the dragon queen as she turned her back and began walking into the forest. Her power carried a weight that was hard to even conceptualize, like gravity bending around a star.

  “But she was right,” Eleanor murmured. “There was nothing we could’ve done. There are forces in this world we simply can’t fight. Not even if every single one of us stood together.”

  Luke kept his eyes on the queen’s silhouette slipping between the trees.

  “I just… didn’t think the princess’s relationship with her family was that bad,” Evangeline said quietly.

  Farther down the path, a group sprinted toward Queen Rhiannon, the main squad from Haven, with Eugene at the front. The moment she glanced their way, they stopped. Not because they wanted to, but because the sheer pressure rolling off her froze them in place.

  “Queen Rhiannon,” Eugene said, letting his spear fall before dropping to one knee.

  He wasn’t the only one. One by one, every member of Haven kneeled before her.

  “We swear our blades to Princess Allison Rhiannon,” Eugene declared. “We wish to protect her, to serve in her army.”

  The others echoed him without hesitation.

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