Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan staggered a few steps, one hand clamped over his chest, and looked from front to back.

On one side was mechanical Cindara—armor-plated, mechanical wings spread wide.

On the other...

Was the real Cindara.

Mechanical Cindara didn’t press the attack.

She beat her wings and drifted to the original’s side. Starting from her legs, her body softened and melted, turning into a puddle of flowing iron.

Silver-gray liquid crept up along Cindara’s feet.

Legs. Waist. Chest. Arms—each part was wrapped and sealed by a mechanical layer in sequence. Finally, the molten metal flared out behind her and reformed into a broad pair of mechanical wings.

Two Cindaras became one.

Cindara rose slowly into the air.

Armor hugged her frame. Every joint made a faint metallic sound when she moved.

"You’re pretty good," she said, looking down at Ethan.

"But only pretty good."

One Cindara had already been a nightmare.

Two—then merging into one?

Now it was going to be worse.

At the same time, inside the corridor, Seraphine, Kaelira, and Catheryn moved.

Three forces surged together in the cramped space.

Holy radiance, purple-red energy, and darkness supported each other, forming a massive composite shield.

Seraphina stood at the back and raised her fist.

No energy—just raw dragon-born strength.

She punched the shield.

BOOM!

The entire shield was launched out through the opening.

Everyone followed right behind, piling into the shield’s interior as it sailed over the abyss toward the steel bridge.

On the far side, Cindara had already closed in on Ethan again.

Her armor-reinforced fist dropped, and Ethan was driven straight into the wall.

Stone cracked with his body as the center, fractures spreading outward like a giant spiderweb.

Cindara didn’t give him a breath.

Her fists became a storm, hammering Ethan’s face and chest in a rapid chain.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Ethan braced his back leg against the wall so he wouldn’t be punched deeper into it.

His hands kept rising—blocking, deflecting, catching her strikes.

Every collision shook loose another shower of stone.

His arms were going numb under the mechanical knuckles.

Then a shield slammed in from the side.

They’d finally left the corridor and entered the abyss.

With Seraphina at the core, the composite shield expanded outward—covering the bridge first, then swallowing Ethan, still embedded in the wall, inside its range.

The moment it passed over him, Ethan felt energy return.

White lightning surged back through flesh and thought, snapping into clarity.

The four little ones’ presence sharpened too.

Relief hit so hard it was almost dizzying.

Ethan condensed an energy sphere in his palm and pressed it straight into his body.

His form broke apart, dissolving into a cloud of black particles.

Cindara’s next punch came down and only scattered drifting black specks.

"What?" She froze mid-motion.

Then—an enormous pulling force yanked from the side.

Ataneya’s twenty-four fox tails had already slipped through the shield, wrapping around Cindara’s arms, legs, waist, and mechanical wings.

They tightened in unison.

Cindara was ripped off the wall and whipped sideways, smashed hard into the opposite cliff face.

BOOM!

Mechanical armor collided head-on with stone.

Cindara tried to lift her head—

But Seraphina had already restored her dragon body and dropped from above, huge mass pressing down.

A dragon claw slammed into Cindara’s chest.

Cindara was driven into the wall again.

She snapped open a mechanical barrier at once.

Steel plates popped from her armor, locking together into a thick shield in front of her. Firelight flashed inside the seams, feeding the barrier continuously.

Seraphina’s size kept growing.

Her massive claw covered the barrier, and with Cindara behind it, she punched everything deeper into the mountain.

Stone exploded outward.

But just as the dragon claw was about to crush the defense completely, a spatial wormhole opened in front of Cindara.

Seraphina couldn’t pull her strength back in time.

Her claw plunged straight into the wormhole.

In the next instant, Seraphina’s enormous body appeared below the others, dropping into the abyss along the exact vector of her own strike.

Seraphina flared her wings, forcing her posture to twist and stabilizing mid-fall.

Cindara finally got a breath.

Her mechanical wings beat once, and she tore free of the broken wall, rising above them.

She had just started to count heads inside the shield when black particles gathered beside her.

Ethan re-formed.

A white energy sphere was already pressed close to Cindara’s face.

Arcs snapped across it, the glow reflecting in her pupils as they contracted.

BOOM!

The sphere detonated at point-blank range.

White lightning slammed Cindara back into the wall. The stone layers collapsed in sections under the impact.

Andona lifted both hands.

A golden barrier rose in front of the shattered opening, sealing off the only direction Cindara could escape.

The barrier finished forming—and immediately began to shudder.

Every strike from inside sent waves rippling across the gold surface.

Kaelira’s charge was ready.

A purple-red energy sphere left her palm, slipped through a gap Andona opened for a heartbeat, and flew deep into the wall.

BOOM!

A fresh explosion bloomed behind the barrier.

The golden wall stopped shaking.

Ethan came out of particle form and closed his eyes, feeling for the white lightning inside Cindara.

No new resistance.

No continuing mechanical "hum" of moving structures.

Cindara felt... shut down.

Cheers almost burst out—

Ethan raised a hand and cut them off.

His eyes weren’t on the sealed opening anymore. They’d shifted to the darkness under the bridge.

"Not over," he said.

"Don’t—"

He didn’t get to finish.

A voice roared up from the abyss below.

"Don’t celebrate too early!"

It was loud enough to shake the entire Adilik Abyss.

Nearby walls split with cracking lines. Rocks broke loose and plunged down from between countless openings.

Out of the dark, a gigantic dragon surged upward.

Its body slammed into Seraphine’s circular shield head-on.

BAM!

The massive shield looked like a toy in front of it.

Everyone—and the steel bridge with them—lost their footing inside. The sphere was knocked into a wild tumble, smashing into the surrounding cliff faces again and again.

And with the real Cindara’s furious roar, the tunnels around them stirred.

Mechanical Cindaras began drifting out.

One after another.

So many it was impossible to count.

They spread across the abyss, and the sound of their metal wings beating merged into a single overwhelming roar that drowned out almost everything else.

The biggest difference between the real Cindara and those mechanical bodies was type and size.

The true Cindara was flame-red at her core, yellow scales speckling her chest, wings, and limbs. The little flame that had once sat atop her head had become a towering pillar of fire that speared upward.

The mechanical Cindaras clustered like hornets around the outside of the shield.

Dense. Swarming.

The group finally stabilized back on the steel bridge, staring down from the high ground at Cindara in the abyss.