Inside the fractured landscape of Virelle’s mind, the chaos and screams vanished abruptly, swallowed by a white light.

  The air was suddenly sweet, smelling of sea salt and blooming jasmine. She saw airships—massive, elegant vessels of wood and brass—docking at a port made of white marble. Children were playing in the streets, and merchants were opening colorful awnings. It was a vision of a world that felt ancient and whole.

  Through the crowd, a girl with honey-blonde hair and a brown scarf waved enthusiastically toward a man whose silhouette felt achingly familiar to Virelle. The girl’s laughter was a sound of pure, unfiltered sunshine.

  Then, the world bled white.

  The serenity shattered into a jagged mosaic of terror. People were running, their screams muffled by a roar that sounded like the earth itself was cracking open. The girl with the scarf was running too, her face streaked with tears but her eyes burning with a fierce, desperate determination. She was heading toward the docks, toward the last remaining ships, as the horizon behind her disappeared into a blinding, absolute wall of light.

  A massive white explosion consumed everything.

  Back in the ruins of Oakwood, Virelle’s eyes were wide, staring into a distance that didn't exist, her pupils vibrating. Still on her knees, her body was racked with mild, rhythmic spasms. She gasped and panted, her breath hitching in her throat as Sylphaine’s red, wiggling thread of blood-magic burrowed deep into her ear.

  "You see, brother?" Sylphaine purred, her finger-thread pulsing with a sickly light. "This is a much faster method. The memories are the lock, and my blood is the pick. The 'Key' will be back in our hands in no time."

  Valerion turned his face away, his expression one of profound, aristocratic disgust. "Your method of inserting your anatomy into someone’s brain is far from noble, Sylphaine. It is messy. Indelicate."

  Sylphaine giggled, a sound like glass breaking. "Nobles value results and efficiency, dear brother. Concepts you seem to lack in your pursuit of diplomacy."

  Valerion opened his mouth to retort, but he never finished the sentence.

  BOOM.

  A high-pitched whine echoed through the square as a bolt of brilliant white mana slammed into Valerion’s chest, throwing him backward through the charred remains of a hut.

  "VIRELLE!"

  Aiven was dashing forward through the smoke, his face twisted in a mask of panicked rage. The Armvil Mark 3 was screaming, the white stone at its center glowing so brightly it left tracers in the air.

  Sylphaine hissed, her red thread snapping back out of Virelle’s ear and reforming into a slender finger. She began to raise her hand, her eyes flashing with a gravity spell meant to crush Aiven into the dirt, but a roar of heat intercepted her.

  "GET AWAY FROM HER!"

  A massive fireball, thick with orange-red flames, slammed into Sylphaine. She didn't have time to phase-shift; the impact sent her tumbling across the glassed earth, her dark coat smoking.

  Rysa blurred past Aiven, her bandaged knuckles wreathed in a skin-tight layer of fire. She didn't go for a second strike; instead, she slammed both palms into the ground.

  "IGNIS VALLUM!" Rysa chanted.

  A towering curtain of fire, twenty feet high, erupted between the group and the vampire siblings, the heat so intense it pushed back the lingering smoke of the village.

  Aiven reached Virelle just as she began to limp toward the ground. He caught her with his right arm, her weight light and fragile against him. She was unconscious, her lavender hair draped over her face, her breathing shallow and ragged.

  "Rysa! We're leaving!" Aiven yelled.

  He scooped Virelle up, holding her securely against his chest. Her weight felt almost nothing against the mechanical power of the Mark 3, but his heart was racing with purely human terror.

  Rysa didn't hesitate, falling into step beside him as they turned their backs on the wall of fire. Aiven pushed his legs to their limit, his boots thudding against the scorched earth as he ran back into the dark sanctuary of the forest as fast as he could. Rysa kept pace, her flames flickering behind them to mask their trail.

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  Aiven clutched Virelle tighter; she was light, even for a former clerk like him. As the shadows of the canopy swallowed them, he looked down at her pale, pained face and felt a sharp, hollow ache in his chest. It was clear she was shouldering a massive burden in that light frame of hers—one that reached back into a history he couldn't see—and he refused to be just another one of those burdens.

  The adrenaline was finally beginning to ebb, leaving Aiven’s legs feeling like lead and his lungs burning from the cold forest air. He didn't stop, however, his boots crunching over fallen needles and rotted logs. He held Virelle close to his chest; as if loosening his grip would cause her to disappear.

  "Aiven," Rysa panted, her green eyes scanning the dense treeline behind them. "What exactly happened to her back there? One minute she’s leveling the village, the next she’s having a seizure in the dirt."

  Aiven swallowed hard, his throat dry. "I don't know the specifics. But when I reached her... that vampire girl… She had her finger in Virelle's ear. Only it wasn't a finger anymore. It was like a long, wiggling red thread of blood."

  Rysa made a sharp, disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "Eww. Blood-weaving through the ear canal? That sounds like the kind of forbidden dark arts the high-rankers talk about in hushed voices. If they were poking around in her head, they were looking for something more than just a fight."

  Aiven looked down at Virelle. Her pale skin was colder than usual, and her breathing was rhythmic but shallow. The usual smug, theatrical aura that surrounded her was gone, replaced by a vulnerability that terrified him. Please be okay, he thought.

  "Hey," Rysa said, her voice snapping him back to reality. "Do you remember the route back to those two village women?"

  Aiven froze, his foot hovering over a root. He looked at Rysa, his heart sinking. "I... no. I thought you had marked the route.”

  Rysa groaned, rubbing her temples with her bandaged knuckles. "Dammit. I thought you were the one keeping track. I’ve got very little forest navigation experience, Aiven. I’m a city-sector brawler. I follow paths; I don't forge them."

  "Well, we can’t stop running," Aiven said, looking at the distant, orange glow of the village reflecting off the clouds. "The vampires are way faster than us. We have to keep moving."

  Aiven and Rysa had left the two village women behind as they headed back to rescue Virelle. They had promised to return soon, but their lack of experience with backtracking quickly became a problem. They were forced to keep running—and in doing so, they might have left the two defenseless villagers in danger, alone in the depths of the forest.

  They continued their frantic trek, pushing through dense thickets and over jagged rock formations. But as they ran, the forest began to change. The familiar dark greens and browns of the Oakwood outskirts started to bleed into impossible hues.

  Aiven slowed to a halt, his jaw dropping. The trees surrounding them were no longer oaks or pines. Their trunks were a deep, sapphire blue, and the leaves above hummed with vibrant shades of neon orange and blood-red. The grass beneath their feet glowed with a soft, bioluminescent teal.

  "Rysa..." Aiven whispered, his voice trembling. "Do you know where we are?"

  Rysa stopped beside him, her hands on her hips as she stared at a tree that looked like it was made of translucent coral. "How should I know? Stop treating me like an adventurer’s guidebook. I’m a D-rank, not an A-rank with a geography degree. We’ve obviously crossed some kind of boundary."

  "It's like we entered a different realm," Aiven muttered, clutching Virelle tighter.

  A faint, tinkling sound—like bells ringing in a breeze—caught their attention. A small pixie, no larger than a dragonfly and dressed in a shimmering pink petal dress, fluttered out from behind a glowing blue trunk. She hovered in front of Aiven’s face, her tiny, glittering eyes darting between him and the unconscious elf in his arms.

  She let out a soft chirp and began to fly away, pausing every few feet to gesture with her tiny hands for them to follow.

  "Should we follow her?" Aiven asked, looking at Rysa for any sign of certainty.

  Rysa let out an exhausted huff, kicking at a tuft of glowing teal moss. "I just told you not to ask me for everything! Although, my intuition says standing still in a neon forest is a great way to get eaten by something pretty. She’s the only guide we’ve got. We follow the bug."

  Aiven nodded, steadied his hold on Virelle, and stepped onto the glowing path. Together with Rysa, he followed the pink light of the pixie deeper into the heart of the painted woods.

  As they navigated through the shifting colors, a clearing opened up ahead. Nestled between two massive sapphire-barked trees was a house made of dark, polished wood. The roof wasn't made of shingles, but of thick, vibrant green leaves that seemed to grow directly from the beams. A stone chimney rose from the side, puffing out soft, fluffy clouds of white smoke that whirled into the orange sky above.

  Standing outside the house was an elf.

  She had soft, moss-green eyes and long, pale blonde hair that fell loosely down her back, interwoven with delicate forest flowers and vibrant leaves of different colors. Her features were calm and elegant, her ears long and sweeping. Dressed in simple forest garb of muted greens and browns, she looked like a natural extension of the woods themselves. A majestic deer stood beside her, a small green frog perched comfortably on her shoulder, and a few bright-eyed birds watched from nearby branches.

  "Oh, welcome, adventurers," she said, her voice a soothing melody that seemed to quiet the hum of the forest. "I have been waiting."

  Aiven blinked, the weight of the day and the unconscious mage in his arms making his head swim. He leaned toward Rysa. "Do you...know who she is?"

  Rysa stared at the woman, then at the deer, then back at Aiven with a look of pure, unadulterated exasperation. "Did you really just ask me something I have no answer for again?"

  The elf ignored the bickering, her moss-green eyes settling on the pale face of Virelle. "Please, bring her inside. The threads of her soul are tangled, and the forest is cold for one so far from home."