Chapter 414: A Sudden Attack

Aiden completely ignored Hermes's theatrical sighs, staring blankly up at the bright moon hanging in the night sky.

....

Under that same moonlight in Orario, within the Eighth District's Twilight Manor...

"What?! What did you just say? I can't leave Orario? Why the hell not?!" Loki's shrill shriek nearly blew the roof off Finn's office, the decibel level so high the window panes buzzed in protest.

Finn sat with his fingers interlaced beneath his chin, watching his furious goddess with utter calm. "It appears to be a direct order from the Guild. They've strictly mandated that you must remain in Orario for the time being. No leaving the city."

"But I had business in the port city this week!" Loki roared, slamming her hands down on the ornate desk.

"Well, you clearly aren't going now," Finn said, offering a helpless shrug.

"Just what are those bureaucratic pigs at the Guild planning?!" Loki paced around the office, stomping her feet in frustration.

Out on the balcony, Ais remained completely deaf to Loki's ranting inside. She simply looked up, quietly gazing at the crescent moon.

"Miss Ais, what are you looking at?" Lefiya asked, tearing her eyes away from the arguing captain and goddess to look at Ais curiously.

"Nothing," Ais shook her head, pulling her gaze back. "Let's go."

"Oh, okay." Lefiya tilted her head in confusion but obediently followed Ais back to their rooms.

At the top of Babel Tower, Freya held a wine glass, the blood-red liquid gently swirling inside, reflecting the cold moon outside the window.

"A storm is coming," she murmured, her tone carrying a hint of amusement mixed with an imperceptible gravity.

Ottar stood behind her like a silent statue, uttering no words.

Two days later, the wyverns crossed a lush valley, revealing a dead, silent forest ahead with a terrifyingly stark boundary.

"W-what is this?" Furina leaned over the edge of the saddle, all her exhaustion vanishing as she stared in shock at the woods below, which had shifted from vibrant green to a grotesque, sickly purple-black.

"What in the world... happened here?" Hyacine and the others were equally horrified.

As far as the eye could see, extending for hundreds of miles, the entire forest had been reduced to a dead, purple-black wasteland. The withered, twisted trees looked like struggling ghosts, and the cracked earth exposed ominous purple soil. Even the winding river had turned into a viscous purple sludge, emitting visible clouds of toxic miasma.

This place had been completely transformed into a forbidden zone for life.

"This is all Antares's doing," Artemis said, her voice cold and heavy. She pointed toward a silhouette on the distant horizon. "And over there... that is the Elsos Ruins."

Silence fell over the group. No matter who looked upon this thoroughly "dead" forest, they would feel a suffocating chill creep down their spine.

Suddenly, Artemis let out a suppressed gasp of pain, violently clutching her chest.

"Lady Artemis, what's wrong?!" Aiden whipped his head around, asking in deep concern.

"It's coming..." Artemis groaned, clutching her chest as cold sweat beaded on her forehead, her voice trembling from intense agony.

The next instant, countless points of light flared into existence in the sky above them without a shred of warning.

Aiden looked up, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

It was a torrential rain of arrows made of pure white light, densely packed like an inverted galaxy, pouring directly down toward them.

"Dodge!" Robin shouted, the first to sense the lethal strike raining from above.

Everyone instantly hauled back on their reins, desperately forcing their wyverns into evasive maneuvers. But the rain of light covered far too wide an area, and its speed was beyond imagination.

Operating on pure instinct, Aiden yanked Furina and Artemis close, shielding them tightly in his embrace and offering his own back to the apocalyptic barrage.

A deafening boom ruptured the sky, quickly chaining into an endless, earth-shattering rumble.

Countless beams of light slammed into the earth, blasting the ground into a pockmarked ruin. Dirt and shrapnel were hurled into the sky, only to be vaporized by the relentless follow-up strikes. Billowing dust and blinding white light swallowed everything, the continuous detonations sounding as though they sought to tear this dead world apart entirely.

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