Olivia twisted the blade inside her enemy’s chest as a shockwave of energy tore across the room from their clash.

  Pebbles exploded into dust as they slammed into the walls, the air buffeting everything around them.

  The pressure reached the onlookers standing farther away, forcing hands up to faces in reflex.

  This was… intense.

  Keleanos, at a loss for words before the duel unfolding in front of him, could only think so.

  The maids were speechless.

  “In one blink, Master was there…” Laure said, holding her trembling hand with the other.

  “Yes. Next, she exchanged blows with the Devourer and brought her illusions of herself to create an opening.” Serena took over, her shoulders still shaking.

  “And the next instant, she was in the air, falling down like a falcon upon Yivern…” Niya almost whispered the last part, yet everyone heard it nonetheless.

  They all wanted to rush forward, to congratulate Olivia—but something was wrong with her eyes.

  In fact, Olivia noticed their slow steps, though she kept her gaze upward, her head still turned toward the shaken Devourer.

  She looked at Keleanos.

  “!”

  Not even a faint movement touched her lips, yet Keleanos understood immediately.

  “Wait! Stop moving.” He ordered in her stead, drawing startled gazes toward him.

  No one questioned him. This was a battlefield, and it only ever ended one way.

  They froze and turned back to Olivia. Yivern appeared subdued, yet its breathing remained heavy and strong.

  Something wasn’t right.

  “I… cannot believe it.” A violent, storm-like pressure erupted from the Devourer for a brief instant, trying to force Olivia away.

  Without batting an eye, she held her ground, even pushing the blade deeper, widening the wound.

  With an audible snap, the sword tore through the flesh on its back, sending blood spattering across its twitching wings.

  “Gha!” A scream—raw, almost animalistic—ripped from Rakia’s bloodied mouth.

  Yivern’s eyes surged red as its true identity slipped through the cracks of agony, locking onto Olivia.

  “A puny creature, weak and worthless… severing away the form I valued!” It spat blood with every word, droplets splashing dangerously close to her boots.

  “What is it you want from me?! Are you looking for a death even worse than what I offered you?!” Driven by sheer rage, Yivern tried to stand.

  But the wound to its leg was too severe. The bone had been sliced clean through by Olivia’s earlier strike, and nothing could mend it now.

  Olivia stared in silence as Rakia’s body began to darken, fissures crawling across her skin.

  Keleanos, watching from behind, immediately grasped the urgency.

  “Olivia! Remove your sword and come here!” Before he could finish, Olivia kicked Rakia’s shoulder and yanked her blade free, a thick trail of blood following its path.

  Yivern did not flinch or buckle and simply groaned, glaring at her.

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  The sword collapsed into a dark jewel, which she clasped tightly in her hand. With a single glance, she looked toward Zara.

  Her maid stepped forward from the rear, merging with space itself.

  She appeared beside Olivia in an instant, placed a hand on her shoulder, and vanished.

  Less than a second later, both reappeared beside Keleanos, the maids lining up around them without hesitation.

  “We need to get out of here—and fast!” Keleanos kept his eyes locked on Rakia’s back as it slowly began to crumble into dust.

  “You heard the man. Girls, we’re escaping.” Olivia’s voice was cold, but everyone could hear the strain beneath it.

  “Yes!” The maids answered in unison, sprinting toward the door to the previous room they had passed through.

  Olivia and Keleanos followed, keeping pace as the room itself began to rumble and shake.

  “Shit! Faster!” Keleanos swore, the urgency ripping the words from him.

  They tore through the laboratory in seconds, noticing the walls expanding as if something pushed against them from the inside.

  Near the staircase, the maids formed a line as the angels—frailer by nature—took the lead.

  One by one, wings snapped open, and like bullets, they launched themselves upward instead of taking the steps.

  The demons followed in the same fashion, while the void users warped from step to step in frantic succession.

  Only Olivia and Keleanos remained.

  They paused at the exit, casting one last look toward the Devourer slumped in the farthest chamber.

  Pods shattered, their contents spilling across the floor. The entire room lay in ruin as Yivern’s head slowly turned.

  Its deep, hateful gaze locked onto them while the skin of its face fractured, crumbling into ash.

  Keleanos hesitated as Olivia took the first step.

  “…”

  With the ceiling collapsing around him and debris crashing down, his thoughts strayed. His hand drifted toward her, but his awareness forced him to stop.

  As his hand closed and returned to his side, he lowered his face.

  Mother… This is goodbye.

  He closed his eyes, turned, and stepped onto the stairs, vanishing into the darkness.

  Behind him, everything collapsed as a red aura swallowed the remains of Rakia.

  The glow expanded rapidly, pulsing like a colossal heartbeat as it consumed the rubble.

  Then the entire underground gave way, taking the Devourer—and its twisted experimentations—with it.

  Keleanos stepped out through the doorway with bated breath.

  As he joined Olivia and her maids, he could hear the shock trembling through every word they spoke.

  “You were right, Master.” Eden pushed her glasses up with her index finger, almost unable to bring herself to look around.

  “This is stupid! How can that even be?!” Serena shouted, throwing her hand out to the side, pointing at nothing. “There was a building there when we came!”

  “W-Where’s the rain? Master, this doesn’t make sense…” Angie murmured, trembling delicately beneath her breath.

  Olivia took a measured inhale between two deep rumblings. Keleanos stepped in beside the group and signaled her with a nod before she finally turned to face them.

  “This entire city was a giant lie. It was an illusion.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Well. Partially.”

  The building they had emerged from still stood behind them, ruined as though centuries had passed in a single breath.

  Around it, countless structures—eerily devoid of life—rose just as they had before. Desolation stretched outward, heavy and absolute, as if truth itself had been stripped away.

  The clouds that once rained over the city, the people who had walked beneath them, the lights and neon reflected in puddles, the distant sirens and barking dogs—none of it had ever been real.

  A few tall buildings still stood, like the hotel Olivia had stayed in. Most had collapsed inward, reduced to broken heaps of concrete and steel.

  Skeletons littered the streets in pale piles. Vehicles had become hollow carcasses, stripped of purpose and form. Silence reigned over the city like an unchallenged sovereign.

  The dry, arid air of the canyon finally reached them as the sun crested the horizon.

  “All we went through was the Devourer’s way of hiding its identity from people like us.” Olivia turned away, the light of dawn catching her face.

  She clenched the dark jewel with more strength, preparing herself.

  “And…” she began, never finishing.

  The ground split open beneath the city, and something pressed its way into the world.

  A bent sign fell from a building, itself crumbling into the hole as the earth groaned violently one final time before an immense shadow swallowed them whole.

  Keleanos’ eyes trembled as his gaze locked onto a shape he recognized from memory alone.

  A vast, avian-derived form filled the sky.

  Massive wings stretched outward, unmoving, spanning the horizon without a single flap.

  Its head was narrow and elongated, ending in a beak that never fully closed.

  Yivern’s eyes burned red—no pupils, no depth—only a solid, oppressive crimson that made every onlooker recoil under its weight.

  At the center of its chest lay a recessed cavity, shaped like a fractured sigil, incomplete and wrong.

  Below, vast tendril-like appendages reached toward the ground, reminiscent of a squid or octopus. Veins of red pulsed through them, giving the false impression of fire moving beneath translucent flesh.

  A low-frequency vibration rolled outward from its presence alone.

  The maids staggered as nausea and disorientation crept over them, their gazes lingering just a second too long.

  “Yivern…” Keleanos whispered, giving the thing its name.

  The monster that called itself an Elder One.