The six Wyrmlings battered Rowan’s shield, their attacks relentless and varied.

  One of the weaker beasts raked flaming claws against the shimmering surface, trying to gouge out his Intent with its own. Another swung its glowing tail like a hammer, each blow sending sharp vibrations through his defenses. At the back, one spat what looked like [Firebolt]’s, while the other exhaled a torrent of flames, attempting to suffocate him under the searing heat.

  But the two strongest Wyrmlings were the real threat.

  One of the Silver-ranked beasts clamped its jaws onto the barrier, teeth glowing with heat as its own Intent gnawed away at Rowan’s mana. Its partner, slitted eyes unblinking, pressed its snout against the shield, its will crashing against Rowan’s like a tidal wave.

  He gritted his teeth, sweat dripping down his brow. Every claw, Every snap of fangs, every fiery spell chipped away at his reserves, pushing him a step closer to collapse.

  The heat inside the bubble was oppressive. His breathing grew shallow, the air heavy. Every second stretched into what felt like hours, and still, the teleportation token tucked into his belt glowed faintly—far from ready to whisk them away to safety.

  Kai let out a soft, distressed trill, his wings pulling tighter around Rowan’s torso as if to shield himself from the heat.

  “Just a bit more, buddy,” Rowan muttered, his voice hoarse. “Just a bit more.”

  The Wyrmlings grew feral. Their attacks came faster, harder, their screeches echoing through the cavern like a discordant symphony of violence.

  But Rowan refused to panic.

  Trust the tools in your hands and the strength of your will, and no obstacle shall ever waylay you for long.

  His father’s voice echoed in his mind, unbidden but steadying. The memory didn’t bring sorrow this time—only steel.

  Rowan’s eyes burned with determination.

  I am not going to die to a bunch of fucking lizards.

  The two strongest Wyrmlings, realizing that their assault wasn’t having an effect, changed tactics. Instead of battering his shield, they went after the source, directly clamping their Intents onto the mana spewing up from the vent. Contesting his own.

  The other four continued their assault, slowly whittling away at his reserves.

  The effect was immediate.

  If it had been a contest of raw Intent, Rowan could have crushed them. Their Cores were weaker, their wills unrefined. But Rowan’s focus was split in too many different directions: drawing mana from the vent, keeping his shield intact, and maintaining his Intent against the assault.

  The strain was growing overwhelming.

  His mind was stretched thin, balancing on the edge of collapse. He felt his control slipping, the Wyrmlings carving small victories as they siphoned fragments of his mana away.

  Keeping this delicate balance took every ounce of concentration Rowan had. Juggling one need against another, and if even a single one faltered, it would spell his end.

  Rowan withdrew deeper into himself. Forgoing all distractions, pushing them as far back as they could go. In this moment, there was only him, and his mana. Nothing else mattered.

  He’d wanted to push his abilities, and it seemed like his wish had come true.

  This was his domain. His calling. These monsters wanted to beat him with his own sword, and he’d be damned if he let that happen.

  His mind slipped into an unfamiliar sort of meditation, the outside world fading away.

  A strange calm settled over him, soft and weightless. The frantic chaos of the cavern dimmed, the pounding in his head and the blistering heat fading to distant murmurs.

  His eyes fluttered closed.

  Draw the mana in, he thought, fighting against the two Wyrmlings trying to take what was his.

  Funnel it through your body, he did so, fighting against the power trying to overwhelm him.

  “Channel it and imbue your Intent,” he whispered, reinforcing his spell.

  Each second was a triumph. His mind pushed to its limit trying to keep the delicate house of cards he’d built from toppling.

  But even when you do everything right, sometimes, it just isn’t enough.

  The two Wyrmlings managed to subdue a sliver of his Intent. Diverting the mana from the vent to their own ends.

  It was less than a tenth. An amount that shouldn’t have mattered or changed anything. But it was enough for his reserves to start dropping.

  The cost of channeling his shield grew higher than what he managed to draw into himself. Rowan desperately tried to claw back the slivers of mana the Wyrmlings stole. Yet as he did so, his control over the spell wavered, his Intent buckled, and his focus faltered.

  It took every shred of willpower he had at his disposal to not let everything implode. Rowan quickly pulled back, stabilizing what he could and trying to keep his death at bay.

  He somehow managed it, but the damage had already been done.

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  Two more slivers of mana went towards the monsters and his reserves started dropping even faster.

  Rowan was stuck in a furious tug of war, yet that strange calmness never left him. The longer it went on, the deeper into it he fell.

  As he blinked open his eyes, what greeted him wasn’t the sight of six monsters vying for his blood, but a small island surrounded by a seemingly endless sea.

  Rowan found himself sitting cross-legged on soft sand. The waters were unnaturally still, their surface reflecting the faint glow of an unseen light. A warm breeze brushed against his face, carrying a strange sense of familiarity.

  “What is this place,” Rowan whispered, his voice echoing across the barren island.

  He stood up, and the world seemed to move with him, the sand yielding beneath his steps before smoothing itself over, leaving no trace. He reached the water’s edge, drawn by its stillness.

  “Like polished glass,” he muttered, kneeling down.

  His reflection stared back at him, but it wasn’t just his face he saw. The water shimmered with strange, radiant threads that twisted and flowed beneath the surface, a vast network of power he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  “This isn’t real,” he said softly, his voice barely more than a whisper. But as he ran his fingers through the water, feeling its coolness, he couldn’t deny its presence.

  Time moved differently here. The frantic seconds ticking away in the cavern felt like distant memories, muted and insignificant. Yet Rowan could still feel his reserves dropping, his shield slowly faltering.

  But there was something about this place. Something that told him he’d find the strength he needed here.

  Looking up at the sky, Rowan knew that the only thing he needed to do to return was will himself away, but he didn’t do that. Not yet. There was nothing but a quick death waiting for him if he left. And if he wanted to do something about it, he needed to find a solution.

  As his reserves dropped below half, Rowan waded into the shallows, his legs cutting through the tranquil surface.

  At thirty percent, he knelt, cupping the water in his hands, watching as the strange threads swirled and coiled between his fingers.

  At twenty, his Core screamed in protest, his shield on the brink of collapse. Desperation tried to claw away at his resolve, but here, in this space, desperation felt distant. Almost irrelevant.

  And at ten, Rowan drank his fill.

  The water was cool and impossibly smooth, sliding down his throat with a strange weightlessness. It tasted of nothing and everything—a purity he couldn’t put into words.

  The moment he swallowed, Rowan’s world fractured.

  His eyes snapped open.

  The cavern roared back to life, the heat and chaos crashing over him like a tidal wave. His shield shattered in an instant, the spell collapsing under the strain. The mana from the vent dissipated, leaving Rowan bare before the Wyrmlings.

  But his Core…

  His Core burned with an intensity he’d never felt before.

  Power—raw, unbridled, and terrifying—flooded through his channels, filling them to bursting. Pain followed a heartbeat later, a searing agony that wracked his entire body.

  Rowan screamed, his muscles convulsing as the energy tore through him. His channels felt like they were splintering apart, unable to contain the force surging through him. His mind teetered on the edge of oblivion, but something deep within him stirred.

  Control it.

  The thought was not his own, yet it resonated with undeniable clarity. Rowan latched onto it, using the last shreds of his willpower to grasp the storm raging within him.

  And then, amidst the agony, there was clarity—a single thought, unbidden yet undeniable.

  Whatever was coursing through his channels wasn’t mana. It was different, and foreign. But even still, Rowan could feel the potential just waiting to be unleashed.

  The words echoed in his mind, and with them came an overwhelming surge of will. Rowan drew on that strange energy, shaping it with nothing but sheer desperation.

  I… I want… he tried to think, yet his mind was sluggish, but as Kai pressed himself closer against his chest, a thought crystalized.

  I want them… Gone.

  For a heartbeat, the cavern fell silent. Then, with a soundless explosion, a wave of force erupted from his body.

  It was almost gentle, like the first breath of wind before a storm.

  And then it struck.

  The Wyrmlings didn’t stand a chance. The unseen blast slammed into them with the force of a hurricane, flinging their bodies across the cavern like broken dolls, colliding with the cavern walls in sickening crunches. Bones shattered, scales cracked, and the once-proud predator fell lifeless to the ground.

  The walls shook as the blast hit, dust raining down from above.

  Rowan collapsed right along with them, his body trembling uncontrollably. His vision blurred, the edges of the world darkening as unconsciousness closed it.

  Kai stirred weakly against his chest, his faint trill the only thing keeping him anchored.

  A small, broken smile touched his lips.

  “Can’t believe… we won…” he whispered, the words barely audible.

  He’d touched upon something dangerous today. Something frightening and mesmerizing in equal measure.

  All six Wyrmlings lay dead and broken, scattered around the cavern. And while the pain radiating from his Core and his channels felt different—more intense—than ever before, he much preferred it to the alternative.

  As the token finally activated, spiriting them away to safety, Rowan’s last thought before unconsciousness took him wasn’t on the Wyrmlings, nor the power he’d unleashed.

  It was of the strange, still water—and the cost it had exacted on his body.

  .

  .

  .

  Far to the north, a woman sat atop a mountain.

  She wore plain, unadorned armor, her feet bare, unbothered by the snow as she looked out across the Wilds.

  The enormous beast she came here to slay stirred, and with barely a thought, the woman shot a fragment of jagged energy into its skull.

  “Enough of that,” she said, not even looking at the monster. “I’m trying to focus.”

  It had been a strange few months. Ever since little Roro had the brilliant idea to scamper off, she’d gotten the unfortunate duty of tracking him down.

  I take my eyes off him for one minute, and the menace burns down a mansion.

  She sighed, standing up and running a hand through her ashen gray hair.

  “I just hope you didn’t get yourself killed,” she muttered, drawing mana from her Core. “The last thing I need is your mother's ghost haunting me.”

  With a single step, she appeared high overhead.

  Her Domain erupted from her body, a silent and undetectable pulse of perception that filled her mind with everything it touched. From the worms crawling deep beneath the earth, to the griffins flying high overhead.

  And still, no Duke.

  The ashen-haired woman scowled. “Stupid Vault,” she grumbled. “Who in their right mind gives a kid teleportation tokens? That’s just asking for trouble.”

  With a slight working of Intent, she appeared back on the mountaintop, laying back against the soft fur of the slain Arctic Roc.

  Waving her hand, the monster's skull soundlessly split open. With a wet crunch, its brain condensed into a pellet the size of her pinky, floating to her palm. The woman popped it into her mouth, savoring the rich flavour.

  “This is taking longer than I thought it would,” she muttered to herself. “It’s not like he had a wide range to choose from. Rowan was always the smart one. He had to have picked one of the weaker regions.”

  She’d already checked the Stormspire Heights, and the Onyx Sands. That only left three more regions, but even with all the power she had at her disposal, it was a monumental task.

  The Wilds were a lot of things, and massive was definitely one of them.

  I wonder how strong he’s gotten, she couldn’t help but think, a faint smile tugging at her lips. It’s been almost half a year. He’s bound to have gotten something useful out of that trait of his by now.

  Just then, something tugged at her perception. Something small, almost insignificant. Like a leaf rippling against a calm lake.

  Lyriel stood up, her gaze moving towards the west. She strained her senses, pushing them as far as they could go, but even a Purple-Core mage had limits.

  “Huh,” she muttered, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I wonder what that was.”

  The Sunswept Marshes were in that direction, beyond them, the Ebonwood Basin, and even further still, the Scorched Plateau.

  It was probably nothing, but Lyriel had a nagging feeling she should probably check it out. And over the course of her very long life, she’d learned to trust those.

  “Well, a quick detour shouldn’t hurt.”

  And with that, she disappeared from the mountaintop. The corpse of an Ebony-Ranked monster the only thing left behind in her wake.