Rako recovered faster than expected.

  By dawn he could already sit upright.

  Though spirit corrosion still gnawed at his veins, it spread no further.

  Three drops of Soul-Jade Elixir had dragged him back from the brink.

  ?

  The valley floor drowned in twilight.

  Here began the threshold of Greenleaf’s depths.

  Cliffs pressed tight on either side, blotting out the sky.

  Until near midday, no sunlight would pierce the gorge.

  The squad re-formed.

  YiChen and ChengYu moved to the forward line.

  Behind them followed Gerold, the Brighton brothers, and the core blades.

  Every step measured.

  Every breath taut.

  Craen’s voice was a thread at their backs:

  “Keep rhythm. Strike only when you must. Ahead… there may be no second chance.”

  And the descent began.

  ?

  Stone steps sank into the gorge.

  Fungal light seeped from cracks, scattering motes like drifting fragments of dream with each bootfall.

  The ravine gaped like the forsaken throat of a god.

  Knives of cliff carved the sky into a narrow band of ink-blue.

  Mist—corpse-pale—clung to roots and rock.

  Everything lay dim, entombed, waiting for the single lance of noon sun.

  YiChen raised his hand.

  The squad froze.

  From the fog ahead, a rift stirred open—

  a breath, slow, like the exhale of some slumbering leviathan.

  The valley revealed its face.

  ?

  Forest turned wasteland.

  Hundreds of Light-Devouring Firs lay toppled, trunks thick as temple columns.

  Some burned to black husks, reeking of sulfur.

  Others torn whole from the earth, roots tangled with shattered scales.

  Smoke bled from fissures, acrid with demonic taint.

  Gerold muttered, voice low, heavy:

  “Beast-war scars… Horn’s squad came through here?”

  Craen’s expression did not shift.

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  “A month ago. Recon only. They lost five.”

  His command was grim, final:

  “Silent advance. Mantles on. Secure the lines.”

  They moved like phantoms across wreckage—

  each step pressing onto the memory of corpses.

  ?

  Then they saw it.

  The colossus.

  Coiled among toppled trunks, unmoving—

  yet its presence filled every sense.

  The world bent around it.

  Air thickened, heavy as molten lead.

  Each breath scraped the throat raw, tasting of grit and ash.

  Insects fell silent.

  Even the wind swerved wide, leaving behind a hollow ring of vacuum.

  Branches bowed downward in reverse, like a thousand blades genuflecting in worship.

  At its chest—

  a crystal. Hexagonal. Gold.

  With every pulse, veins of light rippled outward, webbing across the valley, pinning all in place.

  Beetles hung mid-air, frozen in flight.

  Dragonflies turned to glass.

  Even sunlight fractured into prisms, suspended like diamonds.

  From fifty meters away, the hunters stood—

  hearts swallowed by silence.

  The Gilded Flamefang Sovereign.

  None spoke.

  Even thought felt like trespass.

  Craen lifted a hand—signal for retreat.

  They withdrew soundlessly to a recessed hollow near the gorge mouth:

  stone-ribbed, low ground, veiled by roots.

  A place made for hiding.

  Craen wove the defenses himself.

  Threads of the Gossamer Cicada burrowed into rock, knotting into layered webs.

  Fifteen minutes of relentless craft—four barriers nested one atop another.

  Only when Elena summoned the Lyriquill Heron—its radiance folding like gauze across the wards—did the camp seal shut.

  ?

  Night fell.

  The squad gathered around the spirit-fire brazier.

  Its flame smoked none—only mist-light rising like breath.

  “Judging from its size,” Gerold muttered first, “the Sovereign’s grown near a third since last month.”

  “Too much feeding,” David Nann bit out. “Every scale swollen. That thing’s no beast—it’s a catastrophe breeding itself.”

  Craen’s gaze swept the circle.

  “I won’t lie. Horn’s squad touched the artifact. You all know the cost.”

  Herlan Bruce’s voice cracked sharp:

  “…So the Bishop sent us here to die?”

  “Herlan.” Craen’s rebuke struck like iron.

  He rose, palm pressed to the tactical scroll.

  His voice steady, hard as forged steel:

  “I am not Horn. My formation will hold it fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds—enough to cross the abyss.”

  “You know as well as I—if I call my formation second-best, no one dares call theirs first.”

  His eyes cut across them all.

  “I’ve spent a month preparing this plan. Dozens of outcomes modeled. We are not gamblers throwing dice in the dark.”

  The brazier’s glow carved his face into stone.

  Silence held.

  At last Ian Brighton whispered:

  “…Then when do we strike?”

  “Two o’clock,” Craen said evenly.

  “Tomorrow. When the Sovereign’s spirit-flux wanes. Our one chance.”

  ?

  The night deepened.

  Phantoms drifted the forest, whispers swelling like a tide.

  Then—every exorcist felt it. The tremor.

  Gerold’s head turned northwest, jaw hard.

  “…Something’s stirring.”

  The black mist there pulsed like veins, tugging at every spirit in range.

  An unseen summoning dragged the valley’s breath toward it.

  “Brother…” ChengYu’s voice quivered. “What is that?”

  YiChen gave no answer.

  He only gripped Shadowfang tighter, eyes locked on the swelling dark.

  Far across the valley, a faint red glow beat once.

  Then again.

  A heart not of this world—

  was beginning to wake.