The forest swallowed sound.
After Desufeióras vortex blast scattered both sides of the battlefield, all that remained was a deep, suffocating silence. The trees here were unlike anything on Earth—massive trunks twisted into spirals, their bark glowing faintly with veins of blue-green light. Vines hung like dead serpents from the branches above, and the air was damp, heavy, and cold enough to make every breath feel sharper than it should.
Ido was the first to stop running.
He leaned against the trunk of a giant tree, chest rising and falling hard, one hand gripping the Blue Shark Crescent Blade so tightly his knuckles turned pale. The others came to a halt around him in rough, exhausted bursts.
Yul dropped to one knee, her hammer digging into the soft glowing soil.
Pelon snapped an arrow into place out of instinct, scanning the darkness.
Abi raised his shield, bruised arm trembling from the impact of the Leviathan's blast.
NJ and JS stood back-to-back, listening for movement.
And on Ido's back, Drago still hadn't woken up.
Fuffy rushed over immediately, kneeling beside him. Her bracelet, Hera, gave off a soft pulse of healing light as she pressed her hand over Drago's chest.
"He's alive," she whispered. "But something's wrong. His energy keeps shifting."
Lui frowned. "Shifting how?"
Fuffy swallowed. "Like there's more than one presence inside him."
Nobody answered.
That silence alone said too much.
The New Planet Breathes
A low sound rolled through the forest.
Not a roar, No thunder, Something older.
The trees trembled as if reacting to a heartbeat buried beneath the world itself. Blue spores drifted from the high branches, floating around the group like tiny stars. One landed on Pelon's shoulder and melted into his cloak.
He slapped at it instantly. "Nah., I don't trust anything in this place."
Luijo tried to laugh, but it came out strained. "Agreed."
Ido slowly lowered Drago against the roots of a massive tree, keeping himself between him and the darkness ahead.
"We can't stay still long," he said. "AAG is going to regroup."
"And Snow's group knows how we fight," NJ muttered. "That makes it worse."
Yul punched the ground once, anger flashing in her eyes.
"Let them come."
Abi shook his head. "That's exactly what they want."
JS looked deeper into the forest, where the trees grew so close together, they seemed to form walls. "No. They'll hunt carefully now. That blast separated us, but it also gave them time to think."
"Then we move first," Ido said.
But before anyone could answer—
The necklace around Drago's neck began to vibrate.
Everyone froze.
The pendant glowed with the same eerie blue light that had revealed the hidden stairs back in the chamber. This time, though, it didn't just glow.
It pulled.
Like a compass dragged by something ancient and unseen.
The First Echo
Drago's eyes snapped open.
He sat up so sharply Fuffy almost fell backward.
His breathing was ragged, his pupils wide, his body covered in a thin film of golden light that faded almost as quickly as it appeared.
"Drago!" Fuffy cried. "Can you hear me?"
He blinked once. Twice.
Then looked at the necklace in his hand.
"…It's calling me," he whispered.
Ido crouched in front of him. "What is?"
Drago lifted his gaze toward the dark forest ahead.
"Something old."
The group exchanged uneasy looks.
Lui folded his arms. "That doesn't help."
Drago stood on shaking legs, staring into the trees like he could see through them. "When I was unconscious… I saw fragments. Symbols. Ruins. My parents." His voice tightened. "And something they were protecting."
The necklace vibrated again.
This time, everyone felt it.
A pulse moved through the ground under their feet, spreading outward in a ring of blue light before vanishing.
Pelon stepped back. "Okay, that's definitely not normal."
Drago's expression hardened.
"No," he said quietly. "It's not. But it's ours."
The Trail Beneath the Roots
The necklace led them deeper.
The forest changed the farther they went.
The trees bent inward unnaturally, forming archways of wood and crystal. Glowing moss crept across the ground in spiral patterns, almost like writing. Insects the size of birds drifted above them on translucent wings, their bodies carrying dim lights inside like lanterns.
No one relaxed.
Not even for a second.
Pelon moved in the back, arrow drawn.
Abi guarded the center.
Yul stayed near Drago.
NJ and JS rotated the flanks.
Fuffy kept close enough to heal anyone at a moment's notice.
And Ido stayed up front, blade ready, watching everything.
After nearly an hour, the necklace's pull became stronger.
Then they saw it.
A wall of roots.
Not a natural colossal, braided mass of trees, stone, and crystal wrapped together into what looked like the remains of an enormous gate. Its surface was covered in symbols identical to those in the chamber Drago had opened before.
The group stopped dead.
"No way…" Luijo whispered.
At the center of the gate, half-buried in roots, was a circular emblem.
And in the middle of that emblem—
The crest of Drago's family.
Drago stepped forward slowly, unable to hide the shock in his face.
"My parents were here."
The necklace glowed brighter.
Then a hidden line of blue light shot across the gate and another of the roots began to emerge.
A Sanctuary Left Behind
The gate opened with a deep groan, tearing itself apart just enough to reveal a passage inside. Cold air rushed out the group entered carefully.
The chamber beyond was enormous—a hollow space under the earth, supported by crystal pillars that stretched high into darkness. Ancient murals covered the walls. There were no monsters here. No dust. No signs of decay.
It was preserved.
Protected.
Waiting.
At the center of the chamber stood seven stone pedestals in a circle. Six were empty. One held an orb of dim silver light.
Drago approached first.
The moment he came close, the orb brightened.
Then the chamber came alive.
Murals began to glow.
Symbols rose from the floor.
And above the central pedestal, a projection of light formed—the outlines of two figures.
A man and a woman.
Kaelor and Mirava Koushi.
Drago stopped breathing.
"Mom… Dad…"
The projections weren't truly alive. They were echoes—memories left behind.
But they looked real enough to break everyone's heart.
Kaelor's image spoke first.
"If you are seeing this, then the first sanctuary has fallen… and the second has opened."
Mirava's image followed.
"Drago, if you survived long enough to reach this place, then it means the war has already begun."
Nobody moved.
Nobody even blinked.
Drago stepped closer, trembling.
"Why did you leave me? What am I?"
The projections couldn't answer directly. But the chamber could.
The silver orb split open, releasing images into the air:
The five pillars descending upon EarthAncient guardians sealing creatures into dimensional gatesBeings of impossible scale moving in the dark between starsDrago as a child, glowing with the same power now waking inside himKaelor and Mirava fighting against people wearing early AAG insignia
Then came the truth.
The pillars were not just containment systems.
They were anchors.
The new planet was not just a world.
It was a core world, a place where multiple realms overlapped.
And Drago's bloodline?
Not merely guardians.
Keys.
His family carried the ability to awaken or shut down the planetary nexus itself. Fuffy covered her mouth. JS whispered, "That means…" Drago finished it.
"That means the AAG doesn't just want me for experiments."
His voice went cold. "They want control over the entire system."
The Hunters Regroup
Far behind them, somewhere beyond the thickest part of the forest, another group had finally regained formation.
Snow wiped blood from the corner of her mouth as an AAG medic sealed the cut across her shoulder.
Alex punched a tree hard enough to split bark. "We had him."
Rayan knelt beside fractured soil, studying footprints and drag marks left by the crew's escape. His eyes narrowed.
"They went east."
Sara's expression was unreadable, but her voice was sharp. "Then stop wasting time."
Otoro stepped out from behind the agents, coat torn, glasses cracked but still in place.
He looked far less angry than the others.
That was the problem.
He was thinking.
"The Leviathan didn't appear to save them," he said. "It appeared to seal the breach." He adjusted his glasses. "Their survival was a consequence, not the objective."
Snow folded her arms. "Does that change anything?"
Otoro smiled faintly.
"It changes everything."
The others turned toward him.
"If Drago is important enough for ancient beings to move," Otoro continued, "then he is more valuable than I estimated."
Alex sneered. "Then we hit harder."
"No," Otoro said.
He pointed toward the forest.
"We corner him smarter."
He raised a small crystalline shard recovered from the battlefield—one of the fragments still echoing with Drago's energy from the broken bridge. The shard pulled once then a faint trail of blue light appeared in the air.
Snow's eyes widened. "You can track him?"
Otero's smile deepened.
"For now."
Sara stepped forward. "Then lead."
The Second Warning
Back in the sanctuary, the projection dimmed. The final recorded message from Drago's parents echoed through the chamber.
"The moment the sky watches you back, run from the first war and prepare for the second."
The message was cut off.
Silence returned.
Then The necklace around Drago's neck burned, Not warm, not hot, Freezing.
Drago looked up instantly.
The orb at the center of the room darkened. The murals flickered. Outside the sanctuary, the forest screamed. A long, distorted shriek rolled through the trees, something between metal scraping, an animal dying, and reality tearing apart.
Yul gripped Fafnir.
"That was not AAG."
No one disagreed.
Pelon drew an arrow.
Abi planted his shield.
Ido stepped toward the entrance, Blue Shark Crescent Blade already glowing. Then the sanctuary's outer wall exploded inward. Roots, crystal, and shattered stone blasted across the chamber A shape landed in the smoke on four limbs, Tall, Twisted.
Covered in reflective black surfaces that looked almost like armor but moved like skin. Its face had no eyes.
Only a vertical line of pale light where its mouth should have been. The unknown entity from the sky had found them first and behind it, through the ruined wall, the blue light of Otero's tracking shard was getting closer. Drago stared as the creature slowly lifted its head toward him. Then that pale vertical line split wider and it smiled.