The brutal air-and-ground battle continued. Dex was engaged in fierce combat with three of the hounds that had scaled the enormous trees in electrified leaps to attack him in the air. He was evading their bolts and striking back with fire arcs shaped in half-circles that severed branches and forced the beasts into retreat, his concentration fully locked on this complex triple engagement as he searched for a gap in the coordination of their double heads.
But in the midst of this blazing chaos, in a blind angle entirely beyond Dex's exhausted senses, a treacherous movement had been set in motion. The Greater Hell Hound, the pack's alpha, had been closing in. This beast was twice the size of the others, its fur a deep blue bordering on absolute black that absorbed all light. The alpha's right head pulsed with pure white electricity, while its left head pulsed with dark black electricity carrying corrosive properties. Exploiting the loud explosions and Dex's intense distraction, the alpha ascended a nearby tree trunk in complete silence, like an electrified shadow that produced no crackling.
When it reached a height level with Dex, it charged an immense, concentrated quantity of electricity into its front claws and all four jaws. The white and black lightning converged to form blades of unstable plasma. Then, with a colossal muscular contraction, the alpha hound lunged toward Dex's exposed back, targeting the precise point between the bases of his two fire wings. It was a treacherous blow engineered to bypass the Phoenix shield and immediately paralyse his heart and nervous system, tearing him apart from the inside out.
Dex was entirely oblivious to death approaching from behind him.
"Dex!"
A resonant cry, clear and sharp as a crystal bell, split through the cloud of smoke and the smell of ozone. Not the cry of a frightened human, but Lumia's cry.
Lumia, who had been standing on the ground throughout the battle observing with her habitual calm, saw the alpha as it lunged. In that pivotal moment, she did not deliberate with her lost mind, did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. The Celestial entity, the Calamity of a Thousand Years who regarded life and death with indifference, moved driven by a pure, primal instinct: to protect the one man who had shown her kindness, the man who had pulled her from the darkness.
Lumia surged upward with an instinctive speed that defied the laws of physics, converting her body into a projectile. She did not know offensive combat or attack techniques, but she summoned the greatest thing she possessed: the Void Aura. She spread her silver aura to form a shield of pure void around her body, and collided with the alpha hound at the midpoint of the air between it and Dex's back. She chose to use her slender body as a living shield to deflect this catastrophic blow.
The terrifying collision occurred. The claws and jaws charged with the combined destructive lightning energy, both white and black, struck Lumia's shoulder and her void shield. The destructive force of the electricity collided with the stillness of the void, generating a massive and distorting electromagnetic explosion that sent shockwaves tearing out the roots of nearby trees.
Because she was in a purely defensive state and not prepared offensively, the void shield could not absorb the kinetic impact in full. Lumia was hurled away with brutal force, following an arc trajectory toward the ground. Worse still, the corrosive black lightning energy pierced through a portion of the shield, striking her with a long, deep gash along her right arm. Lumia fell to the ground with violence and rolled across the dead leaves. She attempted to rise, but pain paralysed her movement, and the residual sparks of black lightning that remained began gnawing savagely at her pale silver skin, leaving hideous burn marks and drawing from her lips a faint moan.
In that moment, Dex froze in the air. He turned his head slowly, as though time had stopped entirely.
He saw the explosion. He saw Lumia fall. He saw her slender body strike the ground, and he saw the malicious lightning sparks tormenting her. His pupils widened until they nearly consumed his blue irises. An absolute silence descended over his mind, blotting out every sound of battle.
And in that absolute silence, something broke inside his soul.
The sound of shattering phantom glass resonated in the depths of his consciousness. The last seal. Since awakening in this strange world, Dex had tried to maintain his calm, to act rationally as a novel reader, as someone trying to survive with a plan. But seeing Lumia in pain because of him summoned every demon of his past.
The rage. The black, savage rage he had suppressed for long years in his dark cell. Rage at the injustice that had robbed him of his youth. Rage at the wardens who had mocked his pain. Rage at this brutal world that would not allow him a single moment of peace without attempting to strip away those he came to care for. All this rage, ground inside him for fifteen years, detonated now.
Dex was no longer the quiet young man trying to survive. His crimson wings transformed suddenly to a white bordering on blue, the colour of fire at its most insane extremity of heat. His eyes lost their pupils entirely, becoming two spheres of pure flame. He descended from the air as a god of destruction, and the earth could no longer contain the magnitude of his fury. He had become a human volcano with no extinguishing point: ready to burn the forest, the lightning hounds, and everything that breathed in this place, even if it cost him his life.