The woman hovering before Marcus was a vision of celestial grace.
Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders like willow branches drifting in a spring breeze, framing a presence that felt as though it had been sculpted directly from the essence of the Spring of Purity itself. She radiated a quiet purity, soft and serene, an ethereal beauty so overwhelming it stirred both awe and an instinctive urge to protect. Simply standing in her presence made the world feel calr, as though even the lingering chaos of fire and water dared not disturb her.
Yet that tranquility was only part of the truth.
Beneath the still surface lay sothing far sharper. A fierce, unyielding pride hid behind her calm expression, a heroic will honed like tempered steel. It burned not with lunar gentleness, but with the sa solar intensity as the crimson flas that had birthed her return. She was not rely a goddess born of beauty. She was a goddess of war, a figure so noble and resolute that the very idea of harboring a disrespectful thought toward her felt like a sin.
’Chloe?’
The na surfaced unbidden in Marcus’s mind. Sothing about this woman’s commanding presence, her dignified strength, reminded him of Chloe from his real life. They shared the sa authoritative energy, the sa natural gravity that demanded attention without effort. Yet where Chloe’s presence was warm and vibrant, filled with movent and laughter that drew others close, this woman was silence itself.
Her beauty resembled millennium frost: pristine, noble, and utterly unreachable.
"She’s a literal goddess," Marcus breathed.
She was the perfect fusion of opposites, the union of lunar purity and solar fire given physical form.
"Wyvern Saint Knight, Lyanna."
The realization settled with absolute certainty. Who else could embody such peerless beauty and such overwhelming spirit? The legends suddenly made sense. Lyanna had not vanished a thousand years ago. She had been hidden here, within the Spring of Purity, sustained by its essence as centuries slipped by.
Lyanna. The legendary heroine of ancient myth.
A knight, just like him. One of the most powerful ever to walk the continent.
Marcus stared longer than he should have, then felt heat creep up the back of his neck. As a self-proclaid red-blooded male, he found the situation... complicated.
When she had first erged from the violent collision of fire and water, her form had been nothing more than a shifting silhouette, indistinct and unreal. But now, as the elents cald and her presence solidified, that mystery gave way to a stark and undeniable reality.
She was breathtaking.
Her skin was as pale as fresh snow, her figure graceful and flawlessly proportioned. She hovered effortlessly in the air like a lotus blooming above a tranquil pond, a masterpiece untouched by imperfection. The fact that she was completely unburdened by clothing only heightened the surreal, and deeply awkward, nature of the mont.
’God, she’s beautiful.’
Marcus tried to look away, but the sheer aesthetic perfection of the scene held his gaze captive. He wasn’t a saint. He was a man, and he could appreciate beauty when he saw it. Still, guilt tugged at him. It felt wrong to stare, as though he were intruding on sothing sacred, even if she was an NPC.
As her physical form fully stabilized, Lyanna’s eyes, which had been tightly shut, slowly fluttered open.
Her lips parted, and a cold yet strangely comforting incantation flowed into the courtyard of the Mist Veil Palace. The sound carried an ancient rhythm, echoing with power older than empires. Her slender hands moved in perfect harmony with the chant, weaving intricate hand seals through the air with practiced precision.
As the spell took hold, a violet-red fla sigil flared to life on her chest.
The sigil began to rotate, forming a small but intense crimson vortex that unleashed a breathtaking phenonon. The vortex generated a trendous suction force, drawing in the raging red flas beneath her feet while simultaneously pulling the icy-blue negative essence from the spring itself. Fire and water, solar and lunar, twisted together without conflict, harmonizing in midair before being devoured by the spinning sigil.
All of it poured directly into Lyanna’s body.
"She’s absorbing everything," Marcus whispered, unable to look away. "She’s pulling the energy of both the spear and the spring into herself."
Driven by fascination and a growing sense of understanding, he activated his Insight skill.
—
The Spirit of Lyanna (Wyvern Saint Knight)
Commander of the Sky Legion of the Goddess of Dreams and one of the most powerful knights from a millennium ago.
A thousand years ago, Lyanna was ambushed by the Six-Headed Twin-Winged Serpent, one of the Eight Guardians of the Demon Clan. Mortally wounded, she fled to the Mist Veil Palace and used the Boundary Stone Needle to seal the palace away from the outside world.
Her injuries proved too severe. After enduring several brutal battles against the palace’s guardians, her life force was exhausted, and her soul began to dissipate.
In her final monts, Lyanna reached the Spring of Purity. Her soul-bound mount, the Glacier Ice Dragon, sacrificed its entire Energy to activate the forbidden spell Glacial Defiance. The spell shattered the spring’s natural seal and cast Lyanna’s spirit into the purest negative essence, preserving her soul.
For a thousand years, the Spring of Purity nourished her spirit, allowing it to slowly regain strength. Under the influence of the forbidden spell, her soul rged with the spring’s energy, absorbing its power and gradually reshaping a physical form from the water itself.
A century ago, Lyanna’s spirit regained the ability to manifest a body, but she remained trapped beneath the Lunar Seal. Furthermore, a body ford purely from lunar energy is inherently fragile. Without the infusion of living lifeblood, it would dissipate the mont it was exposed to sunlight.
The Wyvern Fla Spear, bound by fate to its destined master, waited centuries for a warrior with sufficient vitality to awaken its fire. Its true purpose was to shatter the Lunar Seal and channel that living lifeblood into Lyanna, allowing her to fully resurrect and return to the world of light.
—
Marcus lowered his hand slowly.
His gaze shifted from the place where the Wyvern Fla Spear had vanished, then back to the woman floating above the spring. Understanding settled heavily in his chest.
The over two hundred thousand HP the spear had drained from him hadn’t been wasted.
That had been the living lifeblood she needed. And now, Lyanna was real again.
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