NOVEL WEB Chapter 51 – Vernara Village (17)
"Their bodies are too unstable…" Elder Mia whispered, her voice trembling like a fraying string. "If we interfere directly, the Voidflare may destabilize entirely."
Her old hands clutched the edge of her robes as if trying to hold onto something, hope, perhaps.
Beside her, Elder Loe clenched his fists, his knuckles pale. His eyes followed Ko's every move on the battlefield, trembling not from age, but from helplessness.
"We're too old for this battlefield now…" he muttered bitterly. "They carry what we couldn't."
Elder Lao, silent until now, knelt slowly in the dust. His gaze was hollow, fixed on the storm beyond. The lines on his face deepened like cracks in a statue worn by centuries of regret.
"We started this… now we can only witness it end."
BOOM.
Lightning lit the battlefield again briefly illuminating the cracks in the sky, the blood on the grass, the Void in Lin's eyes.
Khael didn't hesitate.
He drove his foot into the earth and burst forward in a second Galebind Spiral Drive, wind howling around him like a cyclone desperate to be free. The blue resonance flared white at the edges.
Too much pressure.
His Vein Gate 2: Resonance was straining—but he kept pushing.
Not for power.
For her.
"LIN!!"
He reached out—
—but her eyes flashed black.
A tendril of pure Void Shinrei shot out from her chest, grazing Khael's hand. It didn't burn.
It drained.
A sickening numbness spread through his fingertips. Like his emotion was being stolen. Like the world itself blurred, and fear whispered into the corner of his thoughts—
"Let go. She's already gone."
But he clenched his teeth and roared.
"NO!!"
With one swing of his wind-infused blade, he cut the tendril clean, spinning into a backstep, eyes locked on Lin.
Her body was floating now.
Hair drifting.
Eyes empty.
Voidflame curling off her skin.
Juno collapsed to one knee, coughing.
"Her Shinrei… It's not stable," he gasped. "The Vein Gates inside her—they're cracking."
Ceyla landed beside him, her Nox aura flickering erratically. "She's about to breach the Fourth Gate. But not naturally. The Rift's forcing it open."
Juno's eyes widened. "That would awaken a Hybrid…"
Ceyla shakingly said, "Or kill her."
Braggen roared, slamming a Voidborn into the earth.
"TOO MANY!!" he bellowed.
Sil Vorrun etched a glyph into the air. "Echo art: Whisper Bloom Veil," he muttered.
A protective illusion shimmered over Lin's position —but already twisted fingers were clawing through it, dripping with Voidrot.
Therys, always grinning, licked blood off his hand and stepped forward.
"Well," he said calmly. "Guess I better feed the rot before it feeds on us."
Raiquen stepped onto the field like thunder given form.
His cloak snapped behind him as the Bloom-Flame aura burst from his skin in a dual spiral.
"Everyone—form around Lin!" he commanded.
Kirell smirked, cracked her knuckles. "Finally."
The six moved as one.
Khael shouted over the roar.
"She's waking a Second Affinity—but she's not ready! We need to shut the Rift—NOW!"
Raiquen nodded once.
He turned to Therys and Sil. "You two—hold the flank. Buy me sixty seconds."
"To do what?" Sil asked, already carving glyphs.
Raiquen's eyes glowed.
"To open the Fourth Gate willingly."
NOW.
Raiquen knelt. Plunged his hand into the dirt.
Flames burst outward not to burn but to bloom.
A spiral of fire-petals.
A ring of Shinrei.
He closed his eyes and began the Rite.
"Vein Gate Four… Gate of Transcendence.
Show me my other self."
Meanwhile—
The Voidborn shrieked as one. A massive one descended.
A winged Voidborn, twenty feet tall, stitched together from fallen souls. Faces protruded from its chest, whispering prayers, curses, regrets.
"It's the Wail-Keeper!" Ceyla cried. "It's drawn to fractured spirits—it's trying to take Lin!"
Khael's eyes blazed.
He spat blood.
Then raised his wind sword.
And shouted from the depth of his soul:
"ECHO ART WIND: SEVERING SKY!!"
His blade vanished in a cyclone. A dragon-shaped spiral of wind formed, howling, made entirely of Shinrei. It crashed into the Wail-Keeper's side—tearing off half its wing.
But Khael dropped to one knee, coughing hard.
"Tch… too much. Vein's burning..."
A crack laced his forearm. Not on the skin beneath it.
His Vein Gate was overcharged.
Ceyla rushed forward, supporting Khael.
"Don't go Hollow on us, idiot," she snapped. "You're not ready."
He smirked. "Neither are you."
They both smile even as blood dripped from their lips.
Up above—
The Rift tore further open.
Lin floated higher.
Two forces clashed inside her:
Bloom. Hope. Her original affinity.
Shade Now awakened.
Hybrid Shinrei was forming.
The color of her aura turned strange lavender with flickers of gold. Beautiful. Terrifying.
Her Vein Gates were wide open.
"Don't let it take me…" she whispered, voice echoing from somewhere distant.
"Khael…"
He looked up.
"I'm still here," he said softly.
"And I'll drag you back—even if I have to shatter this Rift with my soul."
Meanwhile Eliryn's breath caught in her throat.
"Raiquen…"
She whispered his name like a prayer, her stormy violet-gray eyes widening as they locked onto him—no, not just him, but the power surging from within him now.
Raiquen Veylthorn stood at the eye of a growing gale. The Fourth Gate had opened.
From his back, threads of red and gold pulsed like roots ripped from the earth, spiraling in jagged, untamed motion. His aura bloomed quite literally into a halo of thorned light that cracked the dirt beneath his feet and made even the encroaching Voidborn hesitate.
His eyes, once cold and clear, now shimmered with blazing scarlet.
Veins along his arms glowed faintly, tracing the path of Shinrei flowing through his body. The symbol of the Veylthorn line the coiled bloom burned visibly into his chest, searing through the fabric of his robes.
Wind tore through the battlefield, pulled toward the epicenter of his awakening.
Eliryn's grip tightened around the obsidian scythe.
The flower at its base pulsed, half-open now.
He's changing it, she thought. No, he's defying it.
The Fourth Gate was not meant to be opened this way. Not alone. Not while injured. Not while the Void pressed in from all sides like a hungering sea.
To be continue