The cut Arthur had opened in the wall was still alive.
It was not merely a fissure in stone — it was a wound in a body too ancient to bleed… and yet, it bled.
From within that deep gash, blue light pulsed like an exposed heart, throbbing in silence, forcing the air outward with a pressure that was neither wind, nor heat, nor ordinary mana. It was something else. It was origin.
Arthur remained motionless for a second longer than he should have.
His breathing came heavy — adult. His chest broader than before, shoulders spread wider, muscles traced as if they had been carved by force in the very instant prior. His red hair fell long, like embers dragging shadows across the floor. And in both hands, the blue energy still trembled in filaments, as though his own skin remembered what it had been before becoming flesh.
The world around him was no longer gray.
The gray had been torn from the hall by the same thing now struggling to be born there.
The king's avatar — that skeleton crowned in black flames, now reduced to a body with its skull destroyed and a dark mass in its place — took a step back. The absence of a face did not prevent what accompanied the movement from being felt.
Hesitation.
And then, fury.
Black energy flared like a scream held too long. The body tensed, preparing to advance.
But the blue reached him first.
The fissure in the wall expelled a surge — not a gentle wave, not a beautiful glow. A violent outpouring, like a river bursting a dam, like a contained sea deciding to crush its own barrier. The entire hall was flooded by a radiance that did not blind: it revealed.
And the first thing the blue did was hurl the monarch away.
The skeletal body was ripped from its place as if the floor itself had become a hand and thrown him backward. He slid through the air, black flames distorting and crackling with hatred, until he slammed into an ancient column with a dry impact — CRAAC — stone and bone fracturing together.
For an instant, silence was absolute.
Then the blue continued.
It did not stop because it had fulfilled a purpose. It did not think. It flowed — and it touched everything it found.
The surge spread veins throughout the hall, racing along the walls, through the cracks in the floor, across the ancient markings Arthur and Mia had seen in the murals. And when it reached the heaps of scattered bones — bones of erased races, fragments of buried eras — something reacted.
Not all of them.
Most were dust, history too shattered to return.
But there were three sets there… strangely more intact. As if preserved by chance, or by fate. As if they had waited, unknowingly, for the right touch.
The blue brushed against them.
And this time, the light did not burn.
It recognized.
A fitting snap answered from the ground.
Clac.
Then another.
Clac.
And another.
The hall began to breathe again — but not like a cavern. Like an ancient machine awakening in the dark.
The first bones to move were delicate, far too fine to belong to stone warriors. A slender spine rose, vertebra by vertebra, as if gravity had inverted for a second. Ribs joined carefully, without brute force, like fingers assembling an instrument.
And then the flesh came.
Not blood. Not ordinary human muscle.
A blue, translucent substance at first slid over the bones like liquid silk, covering them, shaping them, defining a form that was not merely life — it was apex.
The being opened its eyes.
Clear, deep eyes, carrying an ancient glow. Long ears traced themselves backward, elegant, and the face took on an almost unreal symmetry — not mortal beauty, but perfection of species. When the fingers lengthened, energy ran beneath the skin like hidden rivers.
The Luminel was born.
He did not fall to his knees. He simply stood as if he had always been there, blue still emanating in fine lines across the surface of his body, like living inscriptions.
Beside him, another set of bones rose with violence.
The sound was different.
It was not careful assembly.
It was impact.
A femur spun and struck the floor — THUD — like a hammer being called to work. The spine surged upward with force, ribs spreading like a cage, and the skull snapped into place with a crack that sounded like a warning.
The blue touched him — and for a moment, seemed to be challenged.
The reconstruction came as an explosion of presence. Flesh emerged denser, heavier, as if the world itself wanted to increase the mass of that body. Broad shoulders, thick arms, hands far too large for small weapons. Tusks grew into the jaw with the natural ease of something always prepared to crush.
The Orcal lifted his face.
His skin still carried pulsing blue veins, as though part of him remained connected to the outpouring. But the rest was raw force, tension, a body made to break whatever stood before it.
And then… the third.
At first, it did not even look like rebirth.
It looked like a mistake.
A small creature moved on the floor — a spider, tiny, but with a torso that did not belong with its legs. The blue touched it, and the thing trembled as if deciding whether to exist or remain memory.
Clac.
The torso grew first.
Not into a monstrous shape — but toward something almost human. A waist took form. A chest. Shoulders. A neck.
The head… human.
And yet, the legs remained — eight of them — thin, long, multiplying across the ground like articulated shadows. The body grew little by little, as if pulled by invisible threads. With each pulse of blue striking the hall, the creature rose higher.
Until the transformation reached its apex.
The legs withdrew — not vanishing, but folding into a new balance. The final form stood: almost entirely humanoid, upright posture, arms and legs capable of combat like any human's… and on the face, the remaining traces of an older truth.
Eight eyes.
Two large, human eyes, expressive — alive.
And six smaller eyes, shining like points of night trapped in skin.
The Zaraqnil breathed.
And for an instant, the blue within her flared brighter than in the other two, as if the energy wanted to remind her of what she had been.
At the very moment the three were completed, something else emerged from the outpouring.
Because the blue was not only rebuilding bones.
It was shaping.
The light ran across the floor toward the stain where life had been crushed before. Where only the unrecognizable had remained. Where death had taken on a liquid, silent form.
The blue touched it… and did not recoil.
It enveloped.
It lifted.
And, like invisible hands remaking what the world had destroyed, it formed a body.
Not in haste. Not as a trick.
With brutal calm.
Skin.
Hair.
Curves.
A human figure rose from the ground as if sculpted from within. A woman — beautiful without ornament, with a real presence, not an idealized one. A body that carried strength and delicacy at once: defined waist, soft hips, a full chest without excess, natural proportions that made it clear this was life returned.
She opened her eyes.
And for a brief second, there was blue within them.
Not as much as in the other three. Not as permanent veins.
But enough to betray it: she had been touched by the same place.
The blue glow traced the lines of her body like a reflection that did not want to fade — and then it settled, leaving only a faint trace beneath the skin, as if hidden, waiting for the right moment.
Arthur saw her.
And the world, for the briefest instant, seemed to hold its breath with him.
The king's avatar, on the far side of the hall, released a sound without a throat, but heavy with intent. The void where the head had been filled with shadows, and the dark mass in its place pulsed like a crown of rancor.
The black flames grew.
His hatred recognized what was happening.
And when the monarch lifted his body, still unsteady from the blue impact, the entire hall vibrated with a scream that seemed to pierce stone and bone — a scream of one who refused to lose dominion over that place.
The three newly molded beings turned at once, instinctive, alert.
And the human woman — still silent — took a step back, as if the air itself had reminded her that this was not a safe rebirth.
Arthur, now larger, now undeniably adult — no longer a boy lost in ancient corridors — tightened his grip on the blue sword.
The cut in the wall continued to pulse.
And the energy pouring from it had not finished saying what it wanted.
The battle… was only beginning.