NOVPUBLightning prowled beneath Sylvanna's skin, restless and hot, like a storm-born adder denied a strike. From the narrow spur of root she'd climbed, the chamber sprawled beneath her in broken geometry—shattered pylons jutting at drunken angles, vines hanging like ruptured veins, pools of oozing sap reflecting the chaos in slick amber mirrors. But one thorn remained untouched: the final pylon, half hidden behind a knot of writhing timber. It must have once been a proud heart-root, carved from living oak; now it was a cancerous spike, its bark split and weeping thick resin that pulsed to some dark rhythm. Each throb sent liquid fire into the guardian below, igniting its veins with molten fury.
Raëdrithar's claws raked the monster's flank, scoring trenches that glowed for a heartbeat before sealing over in clotted sap. The great storm-beast's breaths came ragged, flanks hitching beneath singed fur. Static danced across his shoulders in erratic bursts—more sparks of distress than power. Their bond vibrated with fatigue, each pulse echoing inside Sylvanna's own ribs until her heart beat double time to compensate. 𝖓𝖔𝖛𝔭𝖚𝖇.𝔠𝖔𝔪
She squeezed her bow until the wood groaned. Sweat stung her eyes, and her vision shimmered with ghostly lines of blue lightning. Yet in the fringes of that brilliance, a dirty ember flared—red at first, then darkening to smoldering coals. It licked the edges of her consciousness like hungry flame.
"Raëdrithar!" Her voice cracked with urgency. The guardian glanced her way, lightning flickering in his silver irises, but she felt the tremor of exhaustion travel the bond like a bad chord through harp strings.
Draven's command sliced through the din. "Sylvanna! The final pylon. Now." No time to protest, no room for doubt—only a clenched handful of syllables, cold enough to chafe, sharp enough to cut away hesitation. Ahead of him, another corrupted dryad lunged. He pivoted, twin blades crossing in a curt X, severing its torso as though it were brittle paper. Sap hissed on steel; he was already turning for the next threat, eyes calculating trajectories, weight shifts, breath patterns—an abacus made flesh and motion.
"Vanguard, form up!" Vaelira's steel-bright voice ricocheted off root walls. Shields locked, the elves pressed forward, a living rampart bristling with spears. Where dryads smashed, shields absorbed. Where vines stabbed, spears answered with cruel precision. Yet every clash sent tremors through their line, and every tremor was a second the guardian fed on corruption.
Sylvanna swallowed brine-tasting fear. The pylon felt miles distant, hidden behind clawing roots thick as her torso. She nocked an arrow—fletchings trembling with stolen stormlight—and tried to sight a clear path, but the roots shifted, writhing like dying eels, shielding the spike from any direct shot. Her rune flared bright azure… and underneath, ember-red bled into the glow, spreading thin veins of heat through her vision.
A voice curled in her thoughts, smooth as oil across water. "Still struggling?" Virellionn's mockery was a snowfall of ash—soft, suffocating. "You cling to the storm's edge but fear the descent. Embrace it. Break the chains."
Sylvanna's jaw clenched so hard her molars ground. "No." The word hissed between teeth. She shook her head, as though she could fling the voice loose like droplets from soaked hair. But the embers persisted, pulsing in time with her heart, aching to bloom.
Below, Raëdrithar roared, pain threading the sound. The guardian's molten forearm slammed him into an outcrop of calcified root. Wincing, Sylvanna felt the impact echo through their bond: a dull thunder in her sternum. Sparks stuttered across his fur in uneven bursts.
"I won't let you win." Her voice left her lips as a promise and a curse. She bent her knees and vaulted from the ledge. Air rushed in her ears, mist stinging like nettles. She hit a slick root, boots skidding, gravity dragging her into a crunching slide. Her shoulder struck a jag of bark hard enough to numb her arm, but she rolled with the blow, trading skin for momentum. By the time she found her feet, lightning hissed around her like breaking glass.
A corrupted dryad lunged from the haze—bark flesh cratered with glowing blisters. She pivoted, loosing an arrow at breath's length. The shaft punched through its chest in a burst of searing arcs, shredding it to smoking splinters. Two more clambered forward, vines snapping like whips.
Draven materialized, blades singing. One hooked, one thrust; limbs flew, vines fell limp. His eyes, cold and bright, locked onto hers. "Focus, Sylvanna. Or die."
"I know!" She panted, throat raw. She loosed another shot. Lightning hurled the arrow forward, drilling through a dryad's skull. Yet each crackling release siphoned her mana in greedy gulps. The red ember swelled, feeding on spent power.
"Your hesitation is a leash," Virellionn whispered, voice silked with menace. "Break it. Burn them all."
Sylvanna's rune ignited again, brighter than any forge-brand, but the glow was no longer a single, clean flame. Blue brilliance radiated outward in jagged tongues while ember-red veins crawled through the light like cracks in tempering steel. The two hues warred along her forearms, snapping and snarling for dominion. Every heartbeat sent a new ripple of color swirling under her skin, and each ripple hurt—an itch deep in the marrow that begged to be scratched until the bone split.
She clenched her teeth, forcing her focus down the length of her next arrow. The fletching trembled in the updrafts of heat rolling off the battlefield. Somewhere to her left, resin hissed as it met standing pools of water. To her right, a Vanguard shield rang like a funeral bell under the hammer-blow of a corrupted claw. All those sounds blurred into a single, throbbing hum that rose and fell with the beating of her pulse.
The moment she released, the shaft detonated mid-flight—splitting into a trident of raw electricity. Three forks of white-hot power snaked outward, tracing sizzling paths through the air before burying themselves in separate clusters of vines. In an instant the tangle that had been crawling toward her combusted into swirling ash, petals of flame spiraling upward like black snowflakes.
But the recoil hit harder than a war-hammer. The blast slammed into her senses, rattling her skull like a temple bell. Stars burst behind her eyes. Her right knee gave, and the ground bucked under her boots, tilting the chamber on its side. For a breath she stood inside a kaleidoscope: blue, red, blue—no, red—everything spinning.
A hand clamped, iron-hard, on her shoulder. Through the haze she smelled steel oil and crisp mountain mint—Draven's scent, calm and severe. Fingers dug into leather and muscle, yanking her upright. His breath ghosted across her ear, colder than the cave air. "If you let it consume you," he warned, syllables clipped and precise, "I will put you down myself. Do you understand?"
His threat sliced through the dizziness like icewater down a fevered throat. Anger shot up her spine, a spark that burned crimson and indigo in equal measure. She jerked free, lips peeling back in a snarl. "Try," she hissed. The single word carried a promise: lightning for lightning, if it came to that.
Draven's eyes, grey as sword-steel, flicked once to her rune, gauging the swirl of colors, then he pivoted away—already capturing the next variable in his endless mental ledger. A dryad lunged for him, but one blade lashed out, finding the precise knot of corruption at its core; the creature collapsed, more puppet than corpse. "Hold the line," he barked over his shoulder—not to Sylvanna, but to the struggling Vanguard—before vanishing into the melee.
Raëdrithar's howl rolled through the chamber, raw and ragged—thunder cracked by fatigue. The guardian beast's fur, once a stormy corona, now smoldered dimly, sparks skipping like dying fireflies across his back. With every laboring breath, lightning flickered then guttered as if sucked straight into the guardian's gaping wounds. Sylvanna's chest tightened; she felt his heartbeat stumbling, an uneven drum in the hollow of her ribs.
The corrupted behemoth answered with a guttural roar, swinging a dripping claw the size of a wagon wheel. Molten sap slung in fiery arcs, spattering the stone floor where it sizzled and burned through moss and bone fragments alike. Its glare fixed on Sylvanna, eyes twin furnaces that promised ruin.
For one cold instant—blue and red still warring across her rune—fear threatened to hollow her out. But she shoved that terror deep, sealing it beneath a slab of anger and a steel-hard vow. She would not watch Raëdrithar fall. She would not become Virellionn's mirror.
"Raëdrithar!" she cried, her voice cracking the echoes overhead.
The storm beast lunged at her summons, lightning erupting around his paws in a nova of silver fire. The surge of their bond slapped the ember-red back, drowning it beneath pure azure. Strength flooded Sylvanna—tingling along nerve endings, stitching clarity into her spinning vision. She ran, bow in one hand, the other tracing arcs of static that sliced through grasping vines.
Roots lunged for her ankles, barbed tips glistening with venom. She vaulted a fallen trunk, dropped into a slide on slick sap, then sprang upright in one smooth, practiced motion. Each heartbeat, an arrow. Each arrow, a lightning rod. She drove them into dryad chests, into snarling vines, into rotting bark, every shaft singing with storm-light. Wood burst. Sap steamed. The taste of metal thickened at the back of her tongue.
Vaelira's Vanguard pressed forward, shields creaking, spears darting through gaps to punch holes in corrupted flesh. One elf faltered, a vine stabbing through chain under her arm. Vaelira caught the soldier before she fell, pushed her back with a growled command, and stepped into the breach herself—spear whirling in tight, deadly spirals. "Hold!" she roared. "Hold for the storm-bearer!"
