Chapter 608 - 604 – BACK TO ELDRIDGE, THE PURPLE MIST OVER THE MINING CITY, AND THE SEAL THAT BEGINS TO CRACK

Dawn in Nocture always came in a subtle way.

The sky above the night capital never truly turned bright. The faint red sunlight only touched the peaks of the black steel towers, then crept down slowly like ink dissolving in water, while the crystal lamps on the streets below dimmed one by one as if reluctant to end their party. In the palace’s back courtyard, on the wide crystal floor usually used for military ceremonies, Sol already stood in his fifty-meter golden dragon form, his scales gleaming warmly in the first light of dawn.

Sylvia wore a compact black traveling dress with a long hooded cloak, a gift from Sofia sewn overnight with silver thread along the edges. The Chains of the Abyss coiled quietly around her right wrist. Beside her, Alicia floated in spirit form with a black staff topped with a blue lantern in her hand, and Qilin stood on his slender four legs, his single crystal horn glowing softly, his breathing slightly uneven from nervousness.

"Are you sure you don’t want to bring an army?" Sofia asked for the third time that morning. She stood at the foot of the courtyard stairs in a thin robe over her nightgown, her golden hair still loose and messy and her eyes slightly puffy.

"An army would only make that city’s ruler more paranoid," Sylvia answered. "And if there’s something bigger than we expect, I’d rather bring someone who can heal than someone who can blow things up."

"Stacia will be angry when she finds out she missed this."

"Stacia is busy writing reactor operating instructions for forty mages who understand nothing. Let her enjoy her suffering." Sylvia smiled faintly. "She sent a message last night through the bracelet, didn’t she?"

Sofia nodded and raised her holographic bracelet. Blue light lit up, showing a short blinking text. "She says the disguise seal she planted at the mouth of the Eldridge rift must have weakened by now. She installed it in a hurry back then, and she’s worried the western side isn’t as strong as it should be. She asks you to be careful. And she asks for a souvenir."

"A souvenir from a paranoid, misty mining city?"

"She didn’t specify."

Sylvia laughed softly. She stepped forward and kissed Sofia’s forehead gently, briefly, but long enough to make Qilin suddenly very busy studying the floor tiles. Sofia held the sleeve of Sylvia’s cloak for a moment, then let go.

"Come home in one piece," she whispered.

"That’s the agreement."

Sylvia leapt onto Sol’s back and sat at the base of his neck between two large golden scales. Alicia floated down and sat behind her, while Qilin carefully hopped up and stood upright in the middle of the dragon’s back with all four hooves gripping the scales. Noir had already melted into Sylvia’s shadow some time ago, leaving only a cold whisper that said, ’Wake me when there’s something worth killing.’

’Ready?’ Sol asked.

"Fly."

The giant golden wings spread, and Nocture shrank beneath them at a speed that made Qilin’s breath catch. In a few breaths, the millions of city lights turned into an inverted field of stars, then even that was left behind, replaced by the dark plains of the Chimera Continent and the mist-layered mountains to the north. Sol’s air-manipulation shield worked perfectly. No sonic boom, no wind striking their faces, only the pre-dawn sky shifting at an absurd speed.

After a few quiet minutes, Alicia broke the silence.

"Sylvia. I want to confirm something." Her voice was gentle but serious. "Back then, when the Golden Dragon near Silvermist was healed, and the Earth Avatar appeared, it said that the siblings of the sacred beasts were still sealed. It meant the Azure Dragon and the others?"

"I remember it now, too," Sylvia answered. "The Earth Avatar said so itself, and the Azure Dragon suspected the Earth Avatar sealed it. Perhaps the Avatar sealed some, while the rest vanished in other ways."

’Baihu wasn’t sealed by an Avatar,’ Sol cut in, his voice audible in everyone’s telepathy. ’It was chained by a human emperor. So maybe not every locked sacred beast is because of an Avatar.’

’Then who locked Zhuque?’ Qilin murmured anxiously. ’This servant... knows nothing about the one in the south.’

Sylvia did not answer. She only looked straight north, where black mountains towered with peaks covered in thin purple mist too distant to make out, yet clear enough to make her chest feel heavier.

Eldridge.

The mining city in the heart of the stone mountains, which she had once entered as three merchant girls with zombie horses and whispers of fear all along the road. The paranoid ruler who forced miners into the dimensional rift for the sake of wealth. The diversionary explosion she and her sisters had created that night. And Stacia’s disguise seal, now cracking.

’You three never came back after that, did you?’ Sol asked in the middle of the flight, his voice lower. ’I don’t remember that place. When Alicia healed me, all I remember is darkness, and faces that suddenly became too clear.’

"You don’t need to remember it," Alicia answered gently. "It’s just a nightmare that’s already over."

’But if the Azure Dragon knew the Golden Dragons, perhaps it knows what happened to my old body before that corruption.’

Sylvia rubbed the scales on Sol’s neck with her palm. "If it knows, we’ll find out."

Beneath them, the landscape changed from plains to rocky valleys, and from valleys to black mountain ridges rolling without end. The purple mist appeared more clearly on the northern horizon, thin at first and thicker at its end. And in the middle of that mist, a faint line of light pulsed irregularly, as if something behind that curtain of darkness were breathing very heavily.

Eldridge emerged from the mist toward mid-morning, and Sylvia hardly recognized it.

The mining city once looked like a small fortress among rocky ridges, with sturdy gray walls, tightly spaced watchtowers, and thin chimney smoke curling neatly into the sky. Now the whole scene was blanketed in blue-violet mist creeping down from the mountain slopes in the north, rolling between the rooftops like giant tongues licking the stone streets. Some watchtowers were half lost in the mist. And from behind the rocky hill on the city’s west side, where the mouth of the dimensional rift lay, a vortex of silver-purple light turned slowly in the air with an irregular pulse, like the heart of a giant creature in a fever.

"It’s worse than the scouts reported," Alicia whispered.

’The vortex has already doubled from before,’ Noir added coldly from Sylvia’s shadow. He had finally woken, and his voice was clearly no longer sleepy. ’Stacia’s disguise seal is no longer visible at all. Only fragments of its runes still hang around the rift’s mouth like the remains of a spiderweb.’

Sylvia narrowed her eyes. Her True Sight began to move, piercing the purple mist and tracing the energy flows beneath the ground. Thin, dull-black threads marked the lives of thousands of townspeople. Many had darkened and weakened. Some were nearly severed.

"The mist is poisonous," she murmured. "Not ordinary poison. It’s draining their vitality bit by bit."

"Sol," Alicia said quickly. "Descend. Now."

The golden dragon flapped his wings and glided down toward the rocky field outside the city’s south gate. His air shield pushed aside the mist around their bodies like a curtain drawn back. As they neared the ground, Sylvia heard something that made her brow furrow. Not a monster’s roar. Not the clang of weapons. The sound was gentler, sadder. Crying, coughing, and pleading mixed into one long chorus.

Outside Eldridge’s south gate, hundreds of people crowded along the city wall.

They were refugees. Men, women, children, miners in ragged clothes, merchants dragging broken carts, mothers carrying pale-faced babies wrapped in cloth. Many coughed without stopping, their faces bluish-gray as if wrapped in ash. Some lay on the ground on thin blankets, eyes half closed, breath shallow. The city gate before them was shut tight. On the wall above, a row of armored guards stood with bows and ballistae aimed downward.

Only when Sol’s giant shadow fell over the field did every sound suddenly stop.

Hundreds of faces looked up. A small child screamed. A mother dropped the bundle in her arms and knelt, trembling. Some guards on the wall shouted in panic and swung the ballistae toward the golden dragon, while the hoarse, broken ringing of an alarm bell began to sound from the watchtower.

"DO NOT ATTACK!"

Sylvia’s voice burst out from atop Sol’s back, amplified by death magic that pressed on the minds of all who heard it until they froze in place. She leapt down and landed lightly on the rocky ground, lowering the hood of her silver-edged cloak. Her black hair fell over her shoulders, her eyes glowing red, and a controlled aura of death radiated from her body like a cold wind cutting through the mist.

Sol shrank into a golden cat and leapt onto her shoulder. Alicia and Qilin descended after her, and the silence among the refugees grew even thicker.

On the wall, a gray-bearded guard captain in dented armor slowly raised a hand. The archers lowered their bows with pale faces.

"Who... who are you?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

"I’m not your enemy," Sylvia answered. Her tone was calm, clear, and left no room for doubt. "I came to deal with the rift west of the city. But first, I want to know why hundreds of sick people are being left to wait outside the gate while the mist eats them."

The captain gritted his teeth. He glanced back toward the city’s interior with uneasy eyes, like someone afraid of listening ears.

"The ruler’s order," he finally answered, almost whispering. "He said the mist is an enemy attack. He said everyone who comes out of the city must be treated as infiltrators carrying plague. The gates have been shut for five days. Some residents inside aren’t even allowed to leave their homes. The forced miners who went into the rift... no one has come out in three days."

Alicia covered her mouth with her hand.

"And the city’s ruler?" Sylvia asked.

"Locked himself inside his palace." The captain swallowed. "He won’t see anyone. He only sends orders through his guards, and the orders make less and less sense."

Sylvia nodded slowly, as if she had just heard something she’d suspected all along. She turned to Alicia. "Can you?"

"I need a few hours, but yes." Alicia was already floating forward, her black staff raised high and the blue lantern at its tip beginning to glow softly. "This poison attacks the soul before the body. I can draw it out and heal them one by one. Qilin, help me."

’This servant is ready, Your Highness Alicia.’

Qilin’s crystal horn glowed with holy light, and golden light met Alicia’s blue light in the air, flowing down as a rain of fine light grains that fell slowly over the hundreds of refugees. The hoarse coughs stopped one by one. The gray faces began to flush. Babies who had been limp opened their eyes and cried loudly, living cries that made the mothers cover their mouths and sob.

Sylvia turned back to the captain on the wall.

"Open the gate," she said.

"But the ruler..."

"I’m not asking." Sylvia raised one hand, and a thin black chain slid out of her shadow, crawling up the wall with a soft rustle. The chain attacked no one. It merely wrapped around the nearest ballista and slowly pulled it free of its mount, dropping it to the ground with a loud clang. "I’ll deal with your ruler myself. But you, Captain, must decide whom you protect: the order of someone cowering in his palace, or the city dying beneath your feet."

The captain looked at Sylvia for a long moment. Then he glanced at the hundreds of refugees now beginning to rise with faces full of gratitude. His jaw hardened.

"OPEN THE GATE!" he finally shouted to the guards. "Open it all! Prepare stretchers, clean water, and every healer we have! Now!"

The gate chains creaked loudly. The giant ironwood doors opened slowly, and beyond them, Eldridge’s stone road stretched through a veil of purple mist that swirled slowly like the breath of a sleeping creature.

Alicia decided to stay at the gate.

"There are too many sick," she said, looking at the rows of stretchers beginning to arrive from inside the city. "The mist will keep seeping into the streets as long as the rift isn’t stable. I’ll make a soul antidote for the residents inside while you deal with the source." She turned to Qilin. "You go with Sylvia. You have a stronger reason than I do."

’Thank you, Your Highness Alicia.’ Qilin bowed deeply, then followed Sylvia with small, anxious steps.

Sylvia walked through the gate without looking back, while Noir popped out of her shadow in black-cat form and walked beside her with his tail curved.

’The city’s ruler has locked himself in his palace,’ Noir said flatly. ’Should I pay him a visit?’

"Don’t kill him," Sylvia answered briefly. "Just make sure he stops being a problem."

’Understood.’

The black cat melted into the shadow of a stone house, then vanished without a sound. Sylvia and Qilin continued along Eldridge’s mist-shrouded streets.

The city felt like a graveyard that had forgotten to bury its residents. Along the road, house doors were shut tight, windows covered with makeshift planks, and in some corners people could be seen huddled under thin blankets with gray faces. A skinny dog followed them from a distance, then stopped in the middle of the road, looking at Sylvia with hollow, hopeful eyes before finally vanishing into a small alley. The alarm bell had long since stopped. All that could be heard was the echo of their footsteps and a faint pulse from the west, like a giant heartbeat echoing through the ground.

Half an hour later, just as they reached the foot of the rocky hill that served as the rift’s entrance, Noir reappeared from the shadow of a dead tree with the most satisfied face a black cat could have.

’Done.’

"You didn’t kill him?"

’No. I merely wrapped his palace in total darkness for ten minutes and whispered the names of a few hundred miners he sent into the rift. He is now curled up under his desk, crying and swearing he will open the city’s granaries.’ Noir licked his paw. ’And he wet himself.’

"A common habit among officials these days," Sylvia murmured. Qilin held back laughter beside her with an awkward face.

They climbed the rocky hill together. The view at its summit stopped Sylvia in her tracks.

The mouth of the dimensional rift yawned wide before them, far larger than she remembered. Once, the rift had been only a purple crack two adults tall, hidden inside a small stone cave. Now the opening had widened into a spiral vortex fifteen meters across, turning slowly in the air, spewing thick purple mist from its center like smoke blown from a giant furnace. Around its edges, the remains of Stacia’s disguise runes floated fragile as shattered glass, glowing dimly and then going out one by one.

On the ground nearby, several forced miners lay dead in tattered clothes, faces gray, eyes open and staring at the sky. Not monster victims. Their bodies were unwounded. They simply lay there like puppets that had run out of strength.

"The mist drained them dry," Qilin whispered in a trembling voice. "This servant feels traces of vitality being sucked into the rift. As if something inside were... hungry."

"Not something hungry," Sylvia corrected quietly. Her eyes narrowed at the vortex. True Sight pierced the mist and saw streams of thin vitality threads flowing from the whole city toward that hole, gathering in the depths, then channeled to a point far at the bottom of the darkness. "Someone or something is using that vitality as power to open something. Like Baihu’s chains draining its energy for the capital, only this time the direction is reversed."

’Reversed direction?’ Sol asked from her shoulder.

"Before, the seal here held from the outside. Now someone is pulling on it from the inside." Sylvia stepped forward. "Let’s go."

They crossed the vortex’s threshold together. A thin membrane of mist touched their skin with a piercing cold, and in an instant the world changed.

The purple stone corridors she remembered were now quieter and more pulsing. The walls beat faster than before, and the purple mist hung so thick that Sylvia had to ignite a little War Sun Flame at her fingertip to see three steps ahead. No monsters greeted them. No heavy footsteps echoed. Only silence, and occasionally a faint sound from the depths, the long clinking of chains shifting slowly, as if something very large were breathing in the distance.

They walked for a long time, past corridors they had once cleared, past chambers now empty of monsters but full of new cracks in the walls. At one point, Qilin stopped and pressed his horn against the stone wall. Golden light pulsed at the horn’s tip, then dimmed with a small tremor.

’This servant feels it,’ he whispered. ’A holy energy, very old and very powerful. It is... near here.’

"Me too," Sylvia answered.

Before long they arrived at an invisible threshold, and Sylvia stopped. She remembered this place. The thin membrane separating the purple mist from the empty obsidian chamber. She reached out a hand and felt the gentle vibration that had once refused her touch, now like a labored breath.

"This is the place," she said. "Stay close to me. Sound disappears inside. Only telepathy works."

They stepped through the membrane.

Perfect darkness swallowed everything. No light, no sound, even their own breathing vanished. Sylvia raised her right palm, and a great holy white War Sun Flame ignited, slowly pushing the darkness back from the center of the chamber.

The same obsidian chamber appeared before them. Glossy black walls, no patterns, no ceiling. And in its center, the giant blue-black dragon still lay coiled, its hundreds-of-meters-long body wrapped in black chains piercing its flesh.

But something was different.

The chains no longer pulsed steadily with dark red runes. Some of them were cracked. In three places, at the neck, the belly, and near the tail, the thick chains had snapped and hung limp, exposing old black wounds beneath fading scales.

And the great golden eyes were open.

The Azure Dragon looked at them for a long time. Its gaze was no longer that of a living statue. It was fully conscious, and within it lay a deep weariness mixed with something more urgent than mere relief.

’You have returned, little girl,’ that ancient, commanding voice echoed directly in their minds. ’And you bring a golden dragon whose scent I know, and a single-horned being from the lineage of an old friend.’

Qilin fell to his knees with his whole body trembling. Sol, on Sylvia’s shoulder, froze completely.

’I have been waiting for you,’ the Azure Dragon continued, and the chains on its body rattled loudly, CLANK... CLANK..., as it lifted its great head slightly. ’The seal behind me is being opened from within. And if we do not act quickly, what sleeps beyond it will emerge before sunset.’