Chapter 180: Gather Up
Damon led them east across the valley.
The ground shifted beneath their feet as they moved, the spiritual energy in the air growing denser with every step.
Trees with silver leaves swayed in a wind that didn’t exist.
The sky above them churned with colors that shouldn’t exist in nature.
Ariel walked beside Seraphina, her trident resting on her shoulder.
"So how did you two meet?" Ariel asked, her blue eyes drifting sideways toward Seraphina, curiosity threading through the lightness of her voice.
"In a cave..." Seraphina said, her tone as level and unhurried as still water.
She kept her gaze on the tree ahead, as though the memory were simply a fact and nothing more.
"There was a dragon."
Ariel’s brow lifted sharply. "A dragon?"
"A spirit of the Azure Dragon," Seraphina clarified.
"Ancient. Territorial. It had been waiting for a successor for a very long time, and it wasn’t patient about it." She paused a breath.
"We were both tested. Damon won."
Ariel let that settle for a moment before she turned her gaze toward Damon, something warm and entirely unsurprised shifting behind her vivid blue eyes.
The corner of her lips curved upward. "Of course he did."
Damon kept his eyes forward, his golden gaze cutting through the strange churning light of the valley ahead.
He said nothing, but the faint line of his jaw suggested he had heard every word.
"The inheritance split between us. Seraphina got the bloodline and physique. I got something else."
Ariel didn’t ask what.
She just nodded.
They reached the edge of the valley and entered a forest of crystalline trees.
The trunks were made of solid crystal, each one refracting light in a thousand different directions.
The ground beneath their feet was covered in shards that crunched with every step.
Damon activated his Incubus Celestial Eyes.
The world shifted.
He could see Mio and Mia’s energy signatures ahead, two shadows moving through the crystal forest like ghosts.
The twins’ energy signatures burned clear and steady in his vision — no erratic flickering, no signs of injury. They were safe.
"Twins are up ahead," Damon said, his golden gaze still fixed on the shifting light filtering through the crystalline canopy overhead. "About two kilometres."
Ariel’s fingers tightened around the shaft of her trident, the ancient weapon catching the refracted light and scattering it across the crystal-strewn ground in dancing ribbons of blue.
She adjusted her grip with the practiced ease that had become second nature to her since the weapon had chosen her, her posture straightening instinctively.
"Any hostiles between us and them?"
Damon swept his gaze across the surrounding forest, the golden patterns deep within his irises shifting as his Celestial Eyes pressed further into the crystalline haze.
He could see smaller beasts lurking at the edges of his perception — low-level things, skittering between the glowing trunks with nervous, twitching movements.
"Nothing big," he said. "Some smaller beasts scattered through the area, but they’re keeping their distance."
He let out his Aura breathe outward, just enough, a quiet and invisible pressure that pressed against the instincts of every creature within range.
The scattering intensified almost immediately. "They won’t bother us."
Seraphina said nothing, her calm expression unchanged as she fell into step beside him.
They pressed forward, their footsteps crunching softly against the crystal shards blanketing the forest floor.
The crystal forest opened into a clearing where Mio and Mia stood back to back, their weapons drawn.
Mio stood with her feet planted wide, a bow materialised from pure void energy held taut in her grip, an arrow already nocked and aimed at the tree line.
The deep purple of her hair had come loose from her ponytail in places, strands curling against the sides of her flushed face.
Beside her, Mia held twin daggers low at her sides, tendrils of living shadow coiling and dripping from the blades like dark smoke reluctant to leave the steel.
Both of them visibly relaxed the moment they caught sight of Damon moving through the crystalline undergrowth, the tension bleeding from their shoulders in the same breath.
Mio was the first to lower her bow, dismissing the void arrow with a casual flick of her wrist.
"Took you long enough," she said, her cheerful voice carrying its usual brightness, though there was a faint edge of relief beneath it.
"We found something," Mia added quietly, her large purple eyes lifting to meet his.
Damon closed the remaining distance between them, his golden gaze sweeping over both twins with a quick, instinctive assessment — no wounds, no torn robes, nothing more than the lingering agitation of a close watch.
He relaxed slightly. "What kind of something?"
Mia turned without elaborating further, one slender hand still loosely gripping her dagger as she pointed behind her into the glowing heart of the clearing.
"There’s a structure at the center of this forest. A temple. It’s sealed, but we felt something inside."
Damon looked past her.
He could see it now, a massive crystalline structure rising from the center of the forest, its surface covered in ancient runes that pulsed with dormant power.
The Chaos Devourer hummed in his soul.
’That place... it’s connected to something.’
Damon walked toward the temple.
The others followed.
The structure loomed above them as they approached, its walls made of the same crystal as the trees, but denser, older.
The runes carved across its surface pulsed with a dim, rhythmic light as they drew near, as though the structure itself was breathing — slow and ancient, sensing the warmth of living cultivators approaching after what felt like an eternity of silence.
Each symbol was intricate and unfamiliar, unlike anything Damon had encountered.
They overlapped one another in layered, concentric patterns that spiraled outward from a central point, dense with accumulated meaning he could not yet decipher.
Damon stepped forward and pressed his palm flat against the crystal wall.
The reaction was immediate.
Every rune within reach blazed to life beneath his touch, light cascading outward from his hand in a rippling wave that swept across the entire face of the temple, illuminating the clearing in a cold, brilliant pulse.
The Chaos Devourer stirred again, deeper this time, a low resonance that vibrated somewhere behind his sternum like a second heartbeat answering a call it had always known was coming.
A section of the wall dissolved, revealing a dark passage that led deeper into the temple.
"Looks like we’re going in," Damon said.
He stepped inside.