Suta POV

His vision distorted while shadows changed shape and bloomed into countless burning green fires. One by one, he saw these luminous emerald flames conjuring themselves into the dark, void-less space like intrepid emerald stars above him. Suta was still reeling in the afterglow of those visions. He remembered that girl on the throne...it was her.

'Princess? Dragons?'

But most important of all,

'The Ninth Shinjin?'

He could still remember the dark tale about them: the Goddess, Mortal Queen Lunara, and her 8 Demi-God offspring. After briefly sitting in his ponderous thoughts, a wave of anger quickly bloomed in his heart.

' Ergh! What the hell! What does all of this have to do with me?' He tried to study the twisting thoughts swirling around his mind. But none of this made any sense. And the very uncomfortable distortions surrounding him were hard to ignore. He could feel the world around him changing again. The sparkling green fires slowly faded, and a ghostly howl shook the dark space.

"Wait. I'm back here again." Suta found himself floating within that cloud of darkness. Judging by the feeling returning to his bones, he had returned to the realm of fog and shadows again. Only this time around...

'Why does it feel like I'm being pulled?' He quickly noticed a firm pull against his arm to one side. After passing through the wave of grogginess, he slightly regained complete control and twisted his neck to one side to meet the problem. Instinctively, his brows lifted, dutifully surprised to find that same little girl from before.

She was balancing against her little black heels, pulling his arm desperately towards her with her entire might, to the point her round face had turned cherry red from all the gathered tension in her little frail body. Suta heckled a warm smile in response; her sudden appearance had startled him at first, but he couldn't hide his delight at seeing the strange, mysterious girl again.

"Heh-heh, so you were here, little one," he spoke warmly, her little face suddenly relaxed upon hearing his voice. Strangely enough, those scintillating scarlet eyes opened to the shock of seeing him.

"M-m-mister, you're awake!"

'Hm? That's a weird reaction. Wait... come to think of it, was I dreaming all that? If so, then that means that girl chained to that throne was...'

"Hey, S-sel. Where are we, and did you see a quiet- frail girl chained to a throne by any chance?" He asked her,

Suta saw a look of sheer horror pale against her childish face. He arched one of his brows in response.

"Wh-what's with that surprised look? Did you not see her?" he mouthed slowly, still not entirely understanding why she was looking at him that way.

That frozen mask of horror was hard to ignore. Only now, as he started paying close attention to her facial expressions, did he realize her gaze of anguish focused on something behind him. He curiously began twisting around on his heels. Subtly, he felt a need to implore great caution with his movements, sensing something intriguing behind him. His head finally twisted around.

The moment his helm finally swivelled around, he met an outstretched pale hand desperately bearing inches away from his eyes. Suta almost felt his heart jump out of his mouth, forced into swiftly drawing himself back with haste. He stumbled over his feet in the process, tripping and falling just beside the little girl dressed in a gothic black dress. She sidestepped out of the way before his bottom landed against the firm ground.

Suta's heart was racing; he scrambled to his feet in haste, eyes gapingly wide out of shock and fear. The pale hand, still outstretched, seemed to beckon to him, its long and slender fingers clawing at the space between them both. Her unblemished skin glimmered, almost translucent beneath the eerie light of the shadowy realm.

"Wh-what the hell?" he stammered, his voice cracking with panic. "Who... who are you?"

To his question, the figure slowly raised her lowered head.

"Th-th-that's the girl from earlier?" Those bright, blood-red eyes were unmistakable. Stunned into silent horror, Suta watched her desperately attempting to break free from the series of golden chains. Thankfully, it didn't look like she could break free alone. He was still lost, unsure when or why that serene and beautiful face from before was now marred with a crazed expression, her pearly white teeth grinding together to only encapsulate her furious mask.

"So... grr... close... grrrr-urgh-Almost... I almost..." She growled.

Suta could only stare in absentminded silence, truly at a loss as to what was happening. The cogs within his mind started to move again, trying to make sense of the situation in any way possible.

'My goodness! What the hell is going on?' He thought, harrowed, still trying to create enough distance between them both whilst refusing to take his eyes away from her. The chains grappled against her forcefully; she growled and hissed, but it looked as though she wasn't breaking her bond anytime soon.

"Wh-why is she..." he posed that question to the little girl standing beside him. Sel cradled her dainty hands together; her large eyes trembled with deep sorrow glazed against them. "She's... she's not feeling too well right now," her gentle voice said sheepishly.

'Not feeling too well?' Suta thought to himself, trailing his gaze back towards the crazed girl. He carefully observed that enraged expression of hers. She wasn't relenting by the looks of it and looked quite pissed off for one reason or another.

'Feeling unwell? Heh, that's one way to put it.'

"You... grrr-you're part of them, aren't you! They sent you, didn't they? To take my power...I won't allow it... come closer... come closer if you dare."

Dusting the illusionary dust away from his backside, he rose steadily and stretched his limbs. 'There's zero chance of me doing that, but why is she so angry? And what's all this talk about stealing her power?'

To that moment of internal thought, a memory surfaced within Suta's mind again. He remembered those vividly surreal visions about that beautiful girl with glowing scarlet eyes, those robed figures, and that unusual talk of dragon hearts. Suddenly, a swath of clarity filled his senses. The broken fragments started to piece themselves together, painting a somewhat more evident background for the erratically enraged girl.

Now that Suta beheld her with a more precise thought, despite her unkempt and dishevelled outward appearance, there was no mistaking the apparent likeness she shared with the girl he saw in those visions.

"It's you... you're Seleste?"

His words seemed to pierce through the veil of madness that had engulfed the girl, and for a moment, her struggles ceased. She stared at him, her blood-red eyes glowing within the darkness but now bearing wide with a mixture of shock and disbelief before her lips steadily parted into a silent gasp.

"How... how do you know my name?" she whispered, her voice hoarse and raw, as if she hadn't spoken in years.

Suta swallowed hard, his mind racing to discover the right words. He knew he had to tread carefully here, one wrong move could send the girl spiraling back into the depths of her rage.

"I... I saw you," he said at last. He heard his voice trembling slightly, forcing him to clear his throat. Seeing her reaction or lack thereof, he hurriedly continued.

"Ahem, In a vision, a dream. I-I... saw what they did to you, what they took from you."

Seleste's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Suta thought he saw a flicker of something else in their crimson depths. Something likened to hope, longing, like a desperate, aching need for someone to understand.

"You saw..." she breathed, her voice barely audible over the clanking of her chains. "So you know..."

Suta wasn't sure why he felt this subtle, growing empathy. It wasn't anywhere near enough to drop his guard. While he was still trying to work out whether or not she had honestly stopped behaving so crazy, he felt something tug at his sleeves again.

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"Mister," he heard little Sel whisper. "We should... er-we should run."

"Run?" Suta narrowed his brow, " and why would we need to do tha-"

"Trespasser!"

A booming voice suddenly erupted across the foggy expanse.

Suta cursed his rotten luck, drawing a grimace into the dark, void-less air above him. There was always trouble on every corner, waiting for him to believe he found a tiny slither of peace before striking again.

"Damn it-What's happening now?" he hissed with growing frustration. He searched the air but found no one. The fog surrounding him was beginning to distort and ripple. Gave off the feeling that they were trapped inside a rigorous storm.

"Vile, treacherous creature," it snarled.

"How dare you disturb our sleep? One must've forgotten that I, the one who conquered tyranny,

And only I who sits unrivalled.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow."

The skies would suddenly bloom with emerald fires, stitching across the expanse. The surge of lights was slowly penetrating the dark air and shedding away the eerie shadows, cloaking away the things around him. The first thing to catch his eye was the black and white tiles layered beneath his feet, spread across the entire ground as far as his eyes could see. Covering the actual skies above him was a blanket of nightingale, reminiscent of space where the stars and planets lived.

Suta stared into the dazzling airs above him, trying to make sense of the chaos. He could still feel that little girl clung to his arm, her tiny body practically trembling with fear. Even Seleste seemed momentarily distracted from her rage. Her scarlet eyes scanned the brighter expanse, vast with surprise and apprehension.

"Who... who are you?" Suta called forth

But once his gaze lowered again, he almost flinched in fright. Beneath his feet, those black and white tiles were practically see-through. He noticed strange gigantic creatures swimming within what he imagined was a pool of darkness dwelling beneath him. Clarity almost snapped him awake.

'Yeah it's time to go.'

He searched the now slightly luminous hall, his eyes darting from side to side. Then his gaze flashed open upon seeing the bright door he had exited from. He readied himself and gently squeezed the little dainty hand cradled in his fist.

The girl in chains had crumbled onto the ground, with those golden chains wrapped around her shivering, frail limbs. She was almost cradled into her own body. Suta could hear hiccups and sniffling, with inaudible mutterings followed by deep gasps. Seeing this, he drew a complex glare in return. He couldn't stop glancing at the door in the near distance while wrestling with whether he should help her.

"Tsk! Damn it all! What the heck am I doing?"

He released Sel's little hand and moved with haste toward the girl called Seleste. Suta focused on those golden chains, first trying to see if he could somehow pry them apart. It took him a few seconds to realize it was a fool's errand. These things were almost as heavy as slabs of iron.

He twisted around towards little Sel for help.

"Hey, how do we get her out of these?"

The little girl's face looked confused as she pondered the question, placing a single finger against her round cheeks.

"Er-well-M-mister... Sel doesn't think Mi-mister is strong enough. Y-you're too weak, M-mister."

'Okay, ouch. It's not like she's lying though.'

"But that's beside the point! We must try, so tell me what I need to do."

"M-mister has to... gulp ... break the seal. She's been trapped, a-and her powers..."

"And how do I go about doing that?"

The little girl's eyes widened; she looked terrified but softly parted her mouth before raising a shaking finger towards the area behind Suta and the crouched girl in distress beside him.

Suta followed her line of sight, and he, too, finally arrived at the reality of the situation.

"No-no way!" he mouthed aloud.

A bluish haze, dazzling in its sight with pale particles condensing around it, gradually took shape and formed into an 8-foot-tall figure.

A being with two wings unfurling out behind its graceful figure. One sharp tusk horn grew away from its head, one shorter than the other. Even though the figure was made entirely out of this bluish-pale form, Suta could see the outline of a beautiful face. The figure held its hand, and a tall staff materialized, fashioned with pale feathers circling the orb on its end.

"If one continues to trample over this most holy site, then I, the wisp of the most fearsome Tyrant, shall lay waste upon your soul and grind your bones into dust."

That soft voice that surrounded the entire hall was enough to set Suta's heart ablaze. He dropped the cold chains in his hand and swiftly made a decision. But before he hurried up to his feet, he reluctantly placed his palm cautiously against the shivering girl who hadn't moved from her prone state.

"Listen, I don't know how, but I'll return for you. I-I promise! I'll come back, and I'll free you from this position. Seleste."

Suta couldn't understand why he said that, but he felt it needed to be said. This body carried secrets, a lot of secrets by the looks of it. And somehow, he had transmigrated into this world and this life. Things never happened just out of luck. He believed in fate, karma, and the thread of destiny woven for every one existing.

Because of this, he knew he was somehow supposed to be here.

The air around him suddenly felt cold; Suta had gotten used to this sensation. It was a reaction from his body, sensing a terrible foe approaching. Since the mana storm disaster, he had felt this twice before; the fishbowl head was the first person, and Anak was the second.

"Sel, we gotta get out of here." Before the little girl could object, he shot up to his feet, grabbed hold of her, and made a run for it.

A single look at that ethereal figure told him everything he needed to know; he stood no chance against something like that at this stage in his development. At best, he would merely become food for whatever dangerous power festered inside of it. This place was strange, he was weird, this new body of his and all these obscure things taking place was terrifying, and there was still that subtle reminder that he held no real idea of where his family were at this moment.

But Suta understood nothing was ever final. One day, he would hone enough power to confront these strange, imposing beings. One day, he would be powerful enough to regain what he lost. Those feelings fueled the courage within his heart.

In the meantime, survival was the most important thing.

Suta ran with his entire might, spearheading towards the square-shaped light carved into the foggy expanse before him. The air was filled with the whipping echoes of particles and that enigmatic voice heralding behind him. Turning around wasn't an option, nor was he curious and stupid enough to desire to discover how far ahead he was. Reaching the door was his only focus.

Thankfully, he managed to achieve this relatively untroubled. Upon reaching the final few steps before entering the light, he almost performed a runner's finish, dashing in head first as he and the little girl crossed over.

'First, I need to figure out where the hell I am. And then I need to find...' Suta suddenly felt something strange shuffling against his thigh. His gaze trailed down, noticing a peculiar bulge. As one would expect, he lightly tapped it but immediately recoiled away, seeing the thing moving.

His instincts almost told him to smack the thing until it stopped moving. Luckily, he heard a very delicate voice—the faintest of yawns filtered into his ears. Suta suddenly recalled a particular tiny bunch of fellows. Shocked initially, his heart quickly relaxed once he deduced who it was.

He watched closely while the little figure slowly crawled out of his pocket, legs first. After it managed to get its wings out, its tiny head followed. It shook its tiny head to free itself of the daze before its tuft of sparkling green hair relaxed against its head. It groggily looked around, deeply lost, before lifting its round head and meeting Suta's gaze.

Suta watched its large eyes sparkle with joy as it opened its mouth. But, like always, trouble seemed to be in wait behind every corner.

Suta felt a tremor beneath him, followed closely by an echoing roar that visibly shook the sandy floor. He frantically tossed his gaze towards the large forest-dwelling not too far away from where he was. The trees in the nearby distance rustled and swayed as though threatening to collapse at any given moment. He peered forward with rattling eyes, nervously capturing the distinctive sound of a significant presence announcing itself. The last thing Suta wanted was to deal with something troublesome off the back.

A shadow appeared, a foot? Almost twice the size he was. Then, he saw a long ivory tusk advancing away from the bushes. A massive leonine helm covered in grey skin was followed closely behind and adorned with a long, pale, forked beard. The creature carried three eyes with a terrifyingly sizeable muscular build that swept aside anything.

Suta sat against his knees, breathless at the size of the almost 10-foot-tall creature with such an obscenely overwhelming build. The creature swivelled its large helm from side to side before its maw opened gapingly wide, and a terrible-sounding roar quaked forth, shaking the very foundations of the earth.

"What in the name of the gods is that thing?" he whispered, his voice trembling, lost within a mixture of awe and terror.