“YESSSSS!”

Talyndra falls to the ground, her head lifted to the sky and an exalted smile covering her lips. Soon, her summons dissipate into a whirlwind of sparks and tears of joy trickle from her eyes.

“I can’t believe it… We slayed an [illuminated]!!” She gasps, almost to herself.

‘I can’t believe it either…’

All of the muscles in my arms are sore, and I’m too tired to even stand. I can feel my legs giving out from under me and my breathing is rugged, uneven. I examine myself. My body is littered with wounds, but none require immediate attention. I wish I could just rest, but there is still more to do. My head rapidly turns to Sophia, who has already freed herself from the creature’s claws.

A pool of blood rests below her, and she staggers as she raises her head to meet my gaze. Before I can reach her, she collapses face first onto the surface of the lake.

“Sophia!!” I shout, my voice cracking and drawing the concern of others.

It doesn’t take long for everyone to react. We all run to her side, even Talyndra, who forces herself to stand, and Feyrin, who never seems to care, rush to her. I am the first to arrive.

‘She’s not moving!’

I lean next to her. “Sophia!!” I say, ready to flip her over.

A low grumble escapes from her mouth before my hands reach her. “You’re so loud…”

Painstakingly, she turns over by herself, and looks at me, and the others who have just arrived, with a grin. As I look down to her abdomen, where the damage had been caused, I see that she had taken precautions. Crimson ice protrudes from it. When the beast attacked her, she used her own blood as defenses, simultaneously preventing it from flowing out any further.

“See? Just a scratch…” She manages to say with a pained voice.

Ivana sighs, exasperated. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Yeah, well… better crazy than dead.” Sophia quips

Sylvia’s voice rings sharp. “You could have been both if we had failed…”

Ugo is the last to arrive, stumbling with every step, and holding onto his head. “Save the banter for later. We need to get out of here.”

He’s right. I force myself to move, even though every fiber of my being screams for me to lie down, to rest. “Let’s start by moving those who can’t walk… Ray, Camille, Zora… they need somewhere safe.”

I slowly begin dragging my body across the lake, first toward Zora. I don’t even take two steps before Feyrin’s voice resonates from behind me.

He points to the bushes, where Zora moved Camille and Ray earlier. “Ray doesn’t need to be moved somewhere safe” He corrects. “He’s already-“

My blood begins to boil. I’d like to believe his intention isn’t to be cruel, that to him, it is just a fact that needs to be mentioned.

But even if I believe it, hearing him say something like that so plainly lights something within me. What he said just now makes sense and yet, I cannot control my anger. Before I realize what I’m doing, my fist slams into his face.

Under the weight of my blow, he crashes into the ground. With a pained groan, he sits up, blood leaking from his nose. “This is why I…tsk… You’re all so emotional…” He whispers, rubbing his reddened cheek.

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I don’t plan on hitting him again. He’s not worth the energy. I simply turn my head away and make my way to the injured once more.

Talyndra is the next to interrupt my stride. “Now that I think about it. The little one with the purple hair said there was an invisible barrier enveloping the lake, right? What should we do about that?”

Sylvia prevents me from answering. “We can cross that bridge when we reach it.” She replies. “For now, I agree with Alden. We should see to our comrade’s well-being.”

Before I, or anyone else can take another step, however, a voice resonates from everywhere, yet nowhere at once.

“Congratulations on slaying my creature… Truly impressive…but what will you do about the other nine?”

My heart tightens, and my blood flow quickens. I desperately look around me, hoping that this is just a bad joke from one of the others. Unfortunately, when my gaze lands on them, their shock only mirrors my own. We all have the same questions. What was that voice, and what is it talking about?

‘The other nine?!’

The forest around the lake moves. Trees fall, the ground ruptures, and the leaves rustle. With every passing moment, my terror grows, I’m frightened. Nine more? There’s no way we can win against that. If what the voice spoke is true, death is the only thing that awaits us.

Every passing moment is agony. The wait is torture. Not a single one of us is even able to utter a word, frozen in anticipation. At last, after what seems to be an eternity, nine towering figures emerge from the forest, all stepping foot onto the lake. I waste no time, and immediately peer into their souls.

‘Im…possible…’

It’s… so bright. Their level of power is not any lower than the creature we faced moments prior, some even surpassing it. It took everything we had just to take down a single one, and it put almost half of us out of commission. There’s… there’s no way we can win this.

A metallic ring echoes beside me. Talyndra has let go of her instrument, allowing it to clatter against the frozen ground.

She drops to her knees, a dry laugh bursting out. “Me and my big mouth...” She mutters bitterly. “It’s over…”

She isn’t the only one. I find myself instinctively taking a step back, trembling, struggling to even hold my grip onto the handle of my sharpsong. Feyrin has dropped his melo-string, his face not expressing fear, but his entire being exuding a sense of utter defeat. Even Ivana is frightened, her lips quaking and her legs shaking, and Ugo cannot stand properly anymore. It looks like we’ve all used up the rest of our courage, we’ve reached our limit.

Sylvia is the only one who hasn’t given up hope. Her hands are trembling, but she does not let it show. “S.. Stand strong! We know of their weakness now! We can still win!!” She exclaims, raising her warchord high into the air. “This isn’t the end for us!” She shouts.

Sophia sits up, filling the hole in her abdomen with more ice. The look in her eyes betrays her words, but she rises nonetheless. “If we did it once… We can do it again…nine more times even!”

I’m not fooled by Sylvia’s words, I doubt anyone is, and yet, I clench my palm around my instrument. My fingers are numb, I cannot feel my arms, and I’m barely conscious, but still, I adopt my battle stance. “Right…! We can’t stop here…!”

–

Reality is cruel.

Both of my arms are broken, hanging uselessly at my side. I can feel my ribs stabbing into my lungs. Every breath I take burns and every cough is accompanied by a handful of blood. My shield has just been broken for the last time, and I do not even have enough flow to summon it again. As for my sharpsong, even if I could hold it right now, it's useless. It’s been snapped in half, thrown across the lake.

I glance around the battlefield, my vision blurry.

I don’t see Ugo. Haven’t seen him since he flew into the sky, holding onto one of the creatures.

Zora’s motionless body is still laying a bit farther away from here, they seem uninterested in her, maybe she’s already dead.

Talyndra’s agonizing screams echo across the lake as one of the creatures tears into her leg.

Ivana was evading well for a while, until they attacked her together. Right now, she’s panting, holding onto a hole in her arm from which blood pours out, not too far from here.

Sophia…she was able to drag one of them down with her. After being impaled through the chest, she’s managed to trap both herself and one of the beasts into an ice chrysalis. It's stuck for now, but I do not know how long it’ll stay that way.

Feyrin wears a deep gash in his chest. It seems he’s holding back the bleeding for now, but one of the beasts has already launched an attack. He’ll be dead in a moment.

Alex, well Alex collapsed from exhaustion after helping Feyrin with that finishing move earlier, I don’t know what happened to him after that. Same for Camille.

As for Sylvia, she held on, she really did, but even she isn’t perfect. She made a mistake, and it cost her dearly. My gaze lingers on her lifeless, broken body, lying limp beneath a tree. Her head is slumped down and her hair is covering her bloodied face.

Dragging me out of my thoughts, a large shadow is cast over me. The beast is approaching to finish me off, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It raises its arm in the air, ready to end it all. A thought crosses my mind as I witness the scene.

‘What even was the point of [enlightenment]... I still can’t protect a damn thing…’

I used to think of the [enlightened] as all powerful, invincible. I believed that if I had power like theirs, what happened to my mother would never have to happen again. Yet, here I am, after all this time. I gained the power I yearned for, but what has it done for me?

Time has passed, and the circumstances may have changed, but it’s still all the same in the end. I’m just as helpless now as I was then. Powerless to stop anyone from dying in front of me.

‘What a joke..’

The air before me is split, giving way to the beast’s claws. I close my eyes, bracing for impact.

“Stop.”

Every single creature freezes, compelled by the order. Somehow, however, I don’t feel relieved at all. Beside me, the bushes rustle once again. A young man with handsome features, and short brown hair emerges. He wears a cold, unfamiliar expression on his face, and my gaze lingers on him as he approaches.

I cough, blood spurting from my mouth as I manage a weak smile. “...You’ve finally decided to show yourself… Adam.”