— Amanda's Team POV
The rift opened with a muted shriek, the kind that curled along the spine like cold fingers. Amanda stepped through first, boots crunching over dead gravel, eyes narrowing as the air warped around her. She had entered dozens of E-rank dungeons, but this one felt… wrong. Dull. Too still. As though the dungeon itself was holding its breath.
Behind her, the rest of the team crossed the boundary—eight total, counting her. Brandon adjusted the haft of his halberd with a grunt, scanning the gray canopy of twisted branches ahead.
"Feels off," he muttered. "Like the environment's pissed at us."
Amanda didn't look back. "Mana distortion?"
"More like mana is… sick," Celis said quietly, stepping forward with her staff hugged to her chest. Her soft brown eyes darted around anxiously. "Not poisoned. Not corrupted. Sick. I've never heard of something like this."
"It's an E-rank," one of the twin mages, Ryn, said with forced cheer. "Nothing here's strong enough to make mana sick."
His sister, Lysa, elbowed him lightly. "Stop jinxing it. Last time you said that we got jumped by ten screechlings."
"Because you made fun of them out loud—"
Amanda cleared her throat. The twins fell silent instantly.
"Stay focused," she said. "Something happened to this place. Now keep formation."
They moved as a practiced unit—a triangle formation with Amanda at the tip, Brandon guarding the rear, Celis tucked safely in the middle, and the five other mages forming a shifting perimeter. They'd cleared this dungeon before. It normally opened into a series of hollowed stone groves full of low-level beasts. Boring work. Routine.
But not today.
The trees here were wrong. Their bark had an emerald sheen, like veins of malachite pulsing faintly under the surface. Mana thickened the deeper they walked, clinging to the skin like humidity before a storm.
It was Ryn who noticed the first sign.
"Why are they running?" he whispered.
Up ahead, several horned scrablings—weak, almost harmless creatures—bolted across the path with their tails tucked, fleeing deeper into the dungeon. Not toward the exit. Away from something.
Lysa shivered. "They've never done that before…"
Amanda halted, assessing. Monsters fled only when there was something far stronger behind them—something outside their ecological chain. Something invasive.
"Eyes sharp," she murmured.
Minutes later, they encountered the second sign.
The cavern wall to their left had been gouged by something—not with claws, but with blades of mana sharp enough to melt stone into a glossy, glass-like finish. The wound stretched from floor to ceiling, as though a creature twice their size had dragged its fingers lazily along the wall.
Brandon crouched near the melted stone. "This isn't E-rank. Not even close."
Celis drifted closer, expression tense. "Please tell me someone else feels that."
Amanda didn't need to ask what she meant—the pressure in the air pulsed with awareness. As if something unseen dragged its gaze across all of them, weighing, measuring, dismissing. Her hand tightened around her sword.
"We keep moving," Amanda said. "But slow. Something's watching us."
And it was.
The first voice came when they reached the inner grove.
The air dimmed, folding inward like a curtain being drawn. A whisper threaded itself through the branches, so quiet it felt like it materialized directly inside their skulls.
"The air… stinks of her ether."
Brandon jerked around, halberd raised. "What the—who said that?!"
The twins pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. The support mages stepped closer to Celis out of instinct.
Amanda lowered her center of gravity, scanning the shadows. "Show yourself!"
Nothing.
Only a faint ripple in the mana—like a breath exhaled too slowly.
Celis swallowed hard. "That wasn't human."
And she was right.
Behind them, a twisted silhouette moved between the emerald trees. Too tall. Too narrow. Too fluid. The team whirled around—
But it was gone again.
"That thing's stalking us," Brandon muttered, voice low.
Amanda nodded once. "Don't provoke it. If it wanted to attack, it would've. It's studying us."
As if in answer, another whisper shivered through the grove—
"The light… the light… A shadow of her light…"
"What the hell does that mean?" Lysa whispered.
But Amanda didn't answer.
The creature finally revealed its hand.
A blast of warped mana shrieked across the grove, slamming into the nearest support mage before anyone could react. The man didn't even scream—he was thrown into a tree, the impact cracking bone before he crumpled to the ground.
"Enemy attack!" Amanda barked.
A second blast came faster, and this time the twins countered, weaving a barrier spell that shattered on impact but slowed it enough to avoid a fatal hit.
"Celis, on me!" Amanda ordered.
The healer rushed forward, sliding to the fallen mage, hands glowing gold—but she froze the moment she touched him.
"Amanda…" her voice broke.
"He's gone."
A single hit. One of their team erased instantly.
The air thickened. A low, guttural hum vibrated through the grove.
And then it stepped into view.
It emerged between two malachite-veined trunks, ducking beneath them with a fluid, predatory grace. Its height was monstrous—well over three meters—but its body was thin, almost gaunt, draped in ragged bands of deadened green flesh cracked like dried stone.
Emerald fire seeped through the cracks like veins of molten ore.
Its face was wrong—split into angular ridges, with four eyes arranged in a diamond. Each one burned a deep, poisonous green. Its mouth stretched too wide, splitting vertically rather than horizontally, revealing rows of needle-like obsidian teeth.
Two jagged horns curved backward from its skull, dripping faint motes of corrupted mana.
A demon.
A real, intelligent demon.
D-rank at minimum. Possibly higher.
Its claws were the most disturbing—long, malachite-stained and razor-edged, shaped as if carved deliberately for precision, not savagery.
It looked at them the way a scholar might study specimens.
"Ether…" it hissed, voice layered with several tones.
"Left behind. She was with you. She should be dead."
Amanda took a slow step forward, sword gleaming faintly. "Who are you?"
The demon tilted its head, as if amused by the question.
"You reek of lingering ether."
Brandon spat. "Speak normally, you overgrown—"
He never finished.
The demon's head snapped toward him with unnatural sharpness.
"Not light. A memory of light."
"A lie of power. A false dawn."
Amanda's mind raced.
Memory of light.
Lingering light.
Her.
It was referring to someone. Comparing Ael's Ether residue—left in the previous rift—to someone else entirely.
Brandon tightened his grip. "What do you want?"
The demon's four eyes narrowed.
"It cannot be."
"The Paragon… again?"
Amanda's stomach dropped.
The twins froze.
Celis stumbled back a step.
The demon's voice cracked with fury when it spoke again, its vertical jaws trembling in rage.
"Impossible. She is dead. Our master killed her."
"And yet… Ether lingers in this place."
Celis gasped. "What is it talking about? Who is—"
Before she could finish, the demon moved.
Not ran.
Not leapt.
Moved—instantaneously bridging the space like reality bent around it.
The second support mage barely had time to scream before claws carved through him, cutting him cleanly in half. The demon's movements were precise, almost surgical.
Amanda roared orders.
"Formation B! Twins—on high alert! Celis, behind Brandon!"
Mana erupted across the grove as their spells activated, light and lightning crackling from the twins while the remaining support mage boosted their strength and reaction times.
Brandon engaged first, swinging his halberd in a wide arc. The blade scraped sparks off the demon's arm but failed to cut deeper than a few centimeters.
The demon didn't even flinch.
Instead it leaned close, its four emerald eyes glowing like molten stone.
"Feeble."
Its tail—previously unseen—lashed forward like a whip, striking Brandon square in the chest and throwing him across the grove. He hit a boulder with a sickening crack.
"BRANDON!" Amanda shouted.
But there was no time to reach him.
The demon advanced again, voice echoing in cruel, fractured tones.
"Where is she?"
"Where is the light that should not exist?"
"Where is the Paragon?"
Amanda readied her blade, teeth gritted.
"We don't know what you're talking about," she growled. "But you're not taking anyone else."
The demon's jaws cracked into something resembling a smile.
"You misunderstand."
"I am not here to take you."
It raised a claw dripping with green mana.
"I am here to erase you. My master won't be happy when I tell him that she is alive."
The grove exploded into chaos.
The demon's claws sliced through the barrier spells like wet parchment killing one of the two remaining support mages. The remaining support mage tried to cast a reinforcement spell—but the demon's fingers pierced his throat before he could finish.
Three mages dead.
The twins screamed in unison, unleashing a synchronized lightning blast that scorched the demon's chest. A direct hit.
It staggered back a single step.
Then began laughing.
A broken, layered sound like grinding stone.
"Amusing."
Amanda charged. Her sword, enhanced by Celis's strengthening charm, flared with golden light as she slashed at the demon's exposed flank. Sparks erupted as steel met stone-flesh. She felt the blade dig in—barely.
The demon whipped around, its claws streaking for her throat.
Brandon intercepted from behind, slamming his halberd downward onto the demon's wrist, forcing its strike wide. His armor was cracked, blood leaking down the side of his face, but he was still standing.
"Like hell we're letting you touch her!" he shouted.
The demon hissed, lowering its stance.
For the first time—
It looked mildly irritated.
"Persistent insects."
"But insects all the same."
The grove dimmed as mana spiraled around the demon's arms, emerald fire gathering into a dense, seething sphere.
Amanda knew instantly what it was.
"MOVE!" she screamed.
The demon unleashed the attack.
A beam of concentrated corrupted mana ripped through the grove like a scythe, tearing trees, stone, and earth apart. The twins dove apart, spells shattering, Celis flinging herself behind a boulder as the blast carved a trench straight through the dungeon floor.
When the light faded—
Smoke filled the grove.
Half the trees were gone.
The trench still glowed like molten glass.
And one more of Amanda's mages lay dead where they had stood.
Amanda forced herself to stay upright, chest heaving.
"Damn it…" she whispered. "We're down four of our friends."
Her.
Brandon.
Celis.
Lysa—the last surviving twin.
"NO! BROTHER!", Lyra cried in agony.
The demon strode through the smoke with slow, deliberate steps, its four eyes gleaming brighter than before.
"Four embers remain."
"Let us snuff them out."
Amanda steadied her sword, blood trickling down her cheek.
"This thing… is not E-rank."
"It's not D-rank either," Brandon rasped. "This is a monster."
Celis trembled behind them, knuckles white around her staff. "Amanda… we need to retreat."
Amanda's jaw clenched. They could try—but the demon had been faster than any of them could consistently track. Turning their backs might be suicide.
But staying might be worse.
Before she could decide—
The demon spoke again, voice colder and quieter.
"The light… is near."
"I can smell her shadow."
Its gaze swept across the grove, settling on Celis—no, beyond her. Through her. As if it sniffed the faintest lingering trace of Ael's Ether.
"You walked where she walked."
"The Paragon touched you."
Amanda froze.
Brandon stiffened.
Celis's breath hitched in her throat.
The demon's vertical jaws twisted in rage.
"She is dead."
"Our master saw to that."
"And yet… her light remains."
It raised its claw.
"I despise the light."