Elysia
Chapter 17: Lessons in Silence and an Echo in Hell

Under the soft light of the Aurora Palace's conservatory, Elina's first lesson in life magic began. Her teacher, Laethel the Dryad, was an instructor of few words. She believed that the language of nature was not spoken with words, but felt with the soul.

"You wish to heal this wounded earth," Laethel said on their first day, her voice like the rustle of leaves in summer. "But you cannot heal that which you do not understand. First, you must listen."

She led Elina to a patch of healthy, thriving starlight flowers. "Touch this plant. Close your eyes. Listen to its song."

Elina placed her small hand on a glowing petal. At first, she felt nothing. But at Laethel's urging, she quieted her mind, pushed away all other sounds, and focused. Slowly, she began to feel it—a very subtle vibration, a pure hum of life. It was a calm and content melody, a song of sunlight, clear water, and the simple joy of growth.

Then, Laethel took her to the patch of black, corrupted earth. "Now, listen to this one."

The moment Elina touched the dead soil, she recoiled as if from an electric shock. There was no song here. There was only a screaming silence. A painful dissonance, a void filled with the echoes of suffering. It felt cold, hopeless, and wrong.

"That is the song of death," Laethel whispered. "It is the song of Malgorath's magic. Your task, little one, is not to shout over it with your own song until it goes quiet. Your task is to find the one, single note of life that still remains in the midst of that silence, and make it sing again."

For days, Elina practiced. She would sit before the corrupted earth, close her eyes, and hum her [Song of Life]. But every time she tried to pour her energy into the soil, she felt the corrupting force push back, absorbing her energy and leaving her with a deep sense of fatigue and sadness. Her Rank-F skill felt like a single drop of rain trying to extinguish a bonfire. She began to grow frustrated.

Elysia observed this progress—or lack thereof—from a distance. She saw Elina sitting with slumped shoulders, on the verge of giving up. She could have intervened, cleansed the soil with a wave of her hand and solved the problem. But she knew that would rob the child of a crucial lesson. Instead, she approached without a sound.

"You are trying to fight silence with sound. That is exhausting," Elysia said, her flat voice making Elina jump.

Elina looked at her, her eyes glistening with frustration. "But there's nothing here but a wicked silence!"

"Incorrect," Elysia corrected calmly. "There is no absolute silence as long as existence itself remains. You are too focused on the noise of your own song to hear the smaller music." She knelt beside Elina, a gesture that still felt foreign to her. "Stop singing. Stop trying. Just… listen. Listen to the silence. Find the one remaining note of life, no matter how faint its pulse, and then give all your strength to amplifying that single note."

The advice was a high-level magical concept, a metaphor for her own survival strategy over thousands of years. Don't fight the entire enemy army at once; find a single weakness, no matter how small, and strike it with all your might.

Elina didn't fully understand, but she trusted Elysia. She closed her eyes again. This time, she didn't sing. She was just quiet, listening, diving into the painful silence of the corrupted earth. At first, there was nothing. Then, after what felt like a very long time, she felt it. So, so faint. Beneath all the suffering and death, there was a single, dormant seed that was still dreaming of the sun. A single, nearly inaudible note of life.

With a small smile, Elina began to hum her song again, but this time with a different purpose. She wasn't trying to blanket the entire patch with her power. She focused all her energy and intent on that one tiny point, singing a lullaby meant only for that one sleeping seed.

While a seed of life was being given hope in the Aurora Palace, the hopes of the Alliance were being severely tested on the battlefield.

Inside a war tent on a new front line, at the border of the Glass-Sand Desert, the atmosphere was grim. The glorious victory in the Weeping Marshes felt like a distant memory. The faces of the commanders were filled with exhaustion and frustration.

"They were waiting for us," Commander Borin reported, slamming his fist on the map table. "Our forces were ambushed in the Echoing Canyon. Magical traps, illusions, and sand monsters that could camouflage themselves perfectly. They knew we were coming."

Archmage Gideon let out a heavy sigh. "Our previous victory made us arrogant. It also gave the enemy information on the Heroes' powers and tactics. Malgorath, or whatever serves him, is no foolish beast. It learns."

In another corner, Kenji was cleaning his sword, Luminara, of sand and black monster blood. "They had Obsidian Golems that were immune to my holy attacks," he said, his voice flat. "And their sorcerers used curses that specifically targeted the weaknesses in Yui's life magic. We won, but… we lost thirty good knights."

The victory felt hollow. They had managed to destroy the enemy's desert fortress, but at a much higher cost than they had anticipated. The brute force approach that had worked so brilliantly before had now backfired. Their enemy was intelligent, adaptive, and cruel.

"We cannot win a war of attrition like this," King Theron said, his voice weary. "Our resources are finite. The Heroes' powers, while immense, also have their limits. We are attacking Malgorath's shadows while his true form remains hidden, laughing at us."

The harsh reality began to sink in. Their Mythic-grade power was not a magical solution. It was a tool, and even the best tool is useless if the user's strategy is flawed. They had to stop striking blindly and start searching for their enemy's heart.

Far, far away from the mortal plane, in a separate dimension, inside a gothic palace made of shadow and blood-red silk, a pair of eyes opened.

The silence in the opulent bedchamber was broken. For years, Nyxoria, the Crimson Queen, had been in a deep slumber, recovering her depleted power after her final, fateful battle against her greatest rival, her only love.

But something had disturbed her.

Some time ago, she had felt a strange surge of energy from outside her dimension—a mixture of holy power and a familiar chaotic energy. It was like a distant gong, a first alarm she had ignored in her sleep. Then, more recently, a massive and absolute wave of purifying energy had swept through reality, so powerful its vibrations were felt even within her isolated kingdom. That vibration carried the faint trace of an aura she knew all too well.

The aura of Kael.

And now, there was a constant, persistent stream of holy energy, like a relentless dripping of water, that had finally been enough to wake her completely.

Nyxoria sat up on her bed of ebony wood and red velvet. Her crimson eyes glowed in the dim room. She closed her eyes, sensing the echoes of energy from the mortal plane. She recognized two things clearly. First, the unmistakable aura of her beloved, which now felt slightly different, calmer, but as strong as ever. Second, a foul and crude aura of corruption, which she recognized as low-grade primordial magic.

Kael… she thought, a thin, cruel, and possessive smile forming on her pale lips. So you are playing with new toys in another world? And you didn't invite me?

She sensed the corrupting power. And there is a pest dirtying his playground. How unsightly.

She rose from the bed, her graceful body clad in a black silk nightgown that seemed to merge with the shadows. She walked to her balcony, which overlooked a silent, crimson landscape of Hell. She felt no sense of urgency or anger. She only felt a cold, obsessive joy.

"It seems," she whispered to the silence of her kingdom, "it's time for a reunion."

A new, unforeseen threat had now awakened, and its trajectory was about to collide with the war of gods and men, ready to burn the world just to reclaim what she believed was hers.