The Ashenway mansion had a tense quietude that the employees failed to hide.

Lin found herself in the training courtyard with Liora and Luna, all three of them sweating after a particularly intense session. Lin had been channeling her slight frustration, perhaps at having to miss the main action, into training the two girls to exhaustion.

“One more,” Lin declared, though the girls were clearly at their limit. “The coordination between your jumps could be better.”

“Lin,” Liora murmured, wiping sweat from her forehead, “we’ve been at this for three hours. We need a break.”

“Enemies won’t give you breaks,” Lin responded automatically, but her heart wasn’t really in the reprimand.

♢♢♢♢

Lin was looking for Liora and Luna throughout the mansion, frustrated after they had managed to escape from her training session using spatial jumps.

“Where did those two go?” Lin muttered, checking the gardens and training areas. Her enhanced senses could detect traces of their mana signatures, but the girls’ now longer spatial jumps had made tracking them difficult.

The girls were hidden in Selphira’s study. Liora knew that Lin respected her grandmother so much that she would hardly search here first.

Luna, who had been mostly silent, sighed and approached the table. But when she leaned against it tiredly, she knocked over some documents, where she found an envelope with Larissa’s exquisite handwriting as she was picking them up.

“There’s a letter,” she observed. “For Liora.”

“A letter?” Liora immediately approached, also recognizing Larissa’s seal. “When did this arrive?”

Liora frowned, examining the date.

“This can’t be, it’s three days old!” she shouted, crumpling the letter in her fists. “Grandmother must have blocked it before it could arrive!”

“What does it say?” Luna asked, moving closer to read over Liora’s shoulder.

Liora opened the crumpled letter with fingers that trembled slightly, whether from fatigue or resentment. As she read, her expression changed gradually from curiosity to confusion, then to incredulity, and finally to fury.

“It’s too late,” Luna murmured after processing the content. “Things have already advanced without us.”

“Exactly!” Liora stomped, her fury at being deliberately excluded overwhelming her exhaustion. “Grandmother kept us in the dark while everyone else is fighting for the kingdom!”

She jumped three times in succession, furious.

In her tantrum, she crashed roughly against the door of the adjacent study and it opened from the impact.

She got up and was about to close it and apologize to Luna for scaring her but…

Instead, she stopped dead.

Leonel’s study was in complete disarray. It wasn’t the casual disorder of someone working; it was the chaos of someone who had been desperately experimenting with things they didn’t understand.

All types of potions were scattered across the surfaces: broken flasks with contents that still smoked, half-finished mixtures that had changed color, and crystallized residues.

Strange runes covered the walls and floor. Some runes glowed weakly, others were half-erased as if they had failed during their activation.

“What happened here?” Liora whispered, entering carefully into the devastated study.

Luna followed her, her shadow wolf manifesting instinctively in response to the strange energy that permeated the place.

♢♢♢♢

Meanwhile, Ren noticed that something was wrong. Han was getting worse, his breathing labored and sweating profusely despite the cold air.

He seemed to be resisting something internal, a battle being fought within his own system. The symptoms were getting more severe with each passing minute.

“Han,” Ren approached with concern, “you need to go back. I can clearly see your secondary beast is reacting to that purple energy here.”

His enhanced perception could see the conflict happening within Han’s mana system. The corrupt beast was becoming agitated.

“I can still resist,” Han insisted, though his voice trembled with effort. “I have a feeling my sister might be nearby.”

His eyes fixed on Yino’s castle with an intensity that worried Ren. There was something beyond mere hope in that gaze.

“Looking at this place… I can feel her. She’s here, somewhere in this castle. I can’t leave now.”

The conviction in his voice was absolute.

Ren hesitated, seeing the desperate determination in Han’s eyes.

Finally he nodded.

“A little more then. But if you get worse…”

“I leave immediately,” Han promised.

At Yino’s castle, Ren’s group converged with the King just as Zhao landed with Dragarion.

The reunion was so well timed it seemed fated.

When Dragarion reached the ground, Ren immediately approached with a prepared diamond potion.

“Your Majesty, this should help with the fatigue of using…”

But Dragarion raised his hand, refusing the offer.

“I already drank one,” he murmured, his voice more hoarse than normal.

The response was concerning. If a diamond-rank healing potion wasn’t sufficient to restore him, then the damage was more severe than any of them had anticipated.

Ren frowned and, without asking permission, touched the King’s arm so his fungus could analyze his system.

What he found horrified him.

The fungus whispered urgently: ’The diamond-level energy overload crystallized parts of his system. The potion can’t heal that… on the contrary.’

The diagnosis was worse than they had feared.

“Your Majesty,” Ren said with growing alarm, “we need to discuss this. Your system is…”

“Crystallized like Zhao’s was?” Dragarion smiled bitterly. “Yes, I can feel it…”

The admission was casual, as if discussing a minor inconvenience rather than a potentially fatal condition. But Ren could see the pain behind the king’s stoic facade.

’We would need a procedure similar to the absorption we used with Zhao,’ the fungus continued, ’but with very high-level tentacles due to the density of the crystallization being diamond level.’

Ren realized with horror that giving the King more energy as they had planned would surely end very badly.

They had overestimated his resistance and underestimated the power of the seven dragons.

“Your Majesty, you can’t receive more draconic energy,” Ren declared firmly. “Your system can no longer handle it. We have to treat you first or it could kill you.”

But at that moment, Dragarion felt the energies pulsing from the castle’s depths.

The corruption moving underground, reorganizing, fortifying itself.

Without heeding anything Ren might say about safety, he launched himself toward the castle’s interior.

His enhanced speed, despite the damage to his system, still carried him faster than any normal human could follow. Pain was irrelevant when the kingdom’s survival hung in the balance.

“Your Majesty!” Ren shouted, but Dragarion had already disappeared into the depths.

“Damn!” Julius cursed, understanding the impossible situation they now faced. “Everyone, follow him!”

The group rushed toward the castle’s interior, each member carrying fragments of draconic power that they now knew might be more dangerous than useful to the man they had come to save.

And somewhere in the castle’s depths, Han felt his sister’s presence growing stronger with each step.