Adlet barely reached the ridge when his heart lurched.
Linoa was falling.
She slammed into the rock below in a spray of dust and feathers. Before the echo of the impact even settled, Adlet sprinted forward.
"Linoa!"
But a hand seized his wrist.
Polo.
"Don't," the boy said, voice low but unshakably firm. "If we step in… she won't be able to assimilate it. And she'll blame us for the rest of her life. This is her moment."
Adlet froze, torn between instinct and reason, jaw clenched.
"She'll die if we stay here doing nothing!"
"It'll take more than that to bring her down."
Polo's tentacles flexed tensely behind him. "Trust her, Adlet. We intervene only if it becomes truly critical."
Adlet swallowed hard, frustration and fear twisting inside him.
He wasn't convinced—but he nodded anyway.
Before either of them could say more, a surge of Aura rippled up the cliff.
Linoa rose.
Her body shimmered with a dense, trembling sheath of Aura—cracked in places, glowing in others, but strong enough to have softened the brutal fall. With a single beat of her spectral wings, she launched herself skyward again, cutting through the wind like a dart of silver light.
The fight resumed—harder, heavier, more desperate.
From the moment the clash began, Linoa had been drowning under pressure.
Between Lucien's overwhelming Aura waves and the crushing presence of the Mountain Master Rokh above, her senses had been smothered, her instincts throttled. The young Rokh before her—still massive despite its age—pressed her relentlessly.
She had been fighting scared.
And when she took that first clean hit—when pain exploded across her ribs and her breath left her—fear swelled, poisoning her focus.
But as she surged back into the sky, she caught sight of them.
Adlet.
Polo.
Standing on the ridge, not rushing, not panicking—just watching her with a sharp, unwavering seriousness. Not pity. Not worry.
Encouragement.
Trust.
Something clicked inside her.
The fleet—the disaster she'd dragged them into, the lives lost for her sake—had wrapped around her heart like chains, each mistake tightening the noose. Every beat of the young Rokh's wings had sounded like a sentence she had no right to oppose.
But now, seeing those two boys who still believed in her…
Those chains cracked.
A sliver of light pierced through the fog.
Her breath steadied.
Her vision sharpened.
She remembered who she was.
Linoa pivoted midair, wings snapping open as she dove.
This time, she wasn't trying to kill quickly—she was thinking.
Her mobility was slightly higher than the young Rokh's.
Its wings were enormous.
Its defense nearly impenetrable except in motion.
So she changed targets.
Not the body.
Not the head.
The wings.
She darted past a sweeping arc of feathers sharp enough to tear flesh from bone. Her foot crashed against the Rokh's wing, Aura condensed like a spearpoint at her heel. Feathers scattered like shards of metal.
Again.
Again.
Small cuts. Deep stabs. Rapid strikes.
The Rokh shrieked, its flight pattern beginning to wobble.
But Linoa was burning fast.
Her Aura was thinning.
Her limbs trembled.
And her renewed determination had tempted her to exceed her limits.
She needed to end it—now.
She inhaled sharply, folding her wings tight.
Then she charged straight toward the beast.
The Rokh's wings slashed around her, each pass a blade that grazed her Aura shell and whistled past her throat. She ducked one, rolled under another, waited—then saw it:
An opening.
She spun.
Aura flooded her right leg, shaping itself into a gleaming crescent blade.
Her heel sliced clean through the base of one of the Rokh's six wings.
A spray of feathers and blood burst into the sky.
But the recoil knocked the breath from her lungs. Her prepared follow-up beat failed; her wing spasmed. She was momentarily stuck in place—
The Rokh struck back.
Even clumsy, even imbalanced, the creature's wing hammered into her side with bone-shattering force.
Linoa's scream dissolved into a gasp as blood filled her mouth.
She hurtled downward, vision flickering.
The young Rokh, now destabilized by its missing wing, spiraled after her.
Both were falling.
Both wounded.
But only one had resolve burning bright enough to defy the descent.
Linoa forced her eyes open.
This was her only chance.
Her last chance.
With a roar born from every failure, every regret, every life she refused to waste—she tucked her legs together and dove.
Aura erupted around her feet, enormous, wild, concentrated to a lethal point.
No hesitation.
No fear.
No thoughts of pain.
Just purpose.
She struck.
The Aura lance pierced through the Rokh's chest and pinned it to the mountain floor in a thunderous crash. The creature thrashed, shrieking, wings beating weakly—then weaker—then still.
Its body dissolved into swirling white particles, drawn in a majestic spiral toward Linoa, who stood trembling atop the stone. The lights wrapped around her, sinking into her skin, her wings, her heart.
Assimilation.
Complete.
Adlet and Polo rushed forward, relief bursting into triumph—
But when they reached her, Linoa was already lying on the ground, unconscious, her wings flickering weakly before dissolving into sparks.
"Linoa…" Adlet dropped to his knees beside her, his voice cracking as he checked her breathing.
Before they could check her pulse, a sound shook the entire mountain.
A roar—deep, ancient, furious.
The Mountain Master Rokh, colossal and wild-eyed, thrashed against Lucien's chains of Aura. Its bellow was grief incarnate.
Lucien turned, far above—still locked in battle, but his gaze reached across the sky and met the boys.
His voice boomed directly into their bones, carried by sheer Aura.
"Take Linoa and run! I'll hold it back!"
Another shockwave erupted as he clashed with the titan.
"Take care of her—I trust you!"
The mountain trembled.