For a second, all of them froze as the fire giant burst through the wall of the castle and crashed partly into the corridor.
It lay there only for a few breaths, held awkwardly in place by the broken stone around it. Fortunately, it caught itself before its full weight could slide any farther in. Even so, the sight was enough to make Kai’s stomach tighten. For one brief mont, he found himself wondering whether the battle outside had already ended.
If it had, then they were royally screwed.
But the next instant, the fire giant let out a low, furious sound and forced itself up. Its eyes stayed locked on the sky the whole ti, and then it threw back its head and scread, a torrent of black and red flas bursting from its mouth. The heat rolled through the broken opening hard enough to make the corridor feel suddenly smaller. Debris continued falling from the wall around it as it rose fully to its feet.
Then, with another heavy motion, it leapt back out of Kai’s sight.
He let out a breath, and moved forward carefully, looking out through the jagged hole left in the wall. The battle was still raging in the sky.
That, at least, had not changed.
But he could see now that one of the Ignivar’s legs was bleeding heavily, and the creature looked far angrier than before. It had stopped fighting with any hint of restraint. At one point, it tore up a massive tree, burned it black in its own flas, and swung it like a weapon. The spirit king answered by summoning thick vines to catch the blow, and after that the two of them simply kept tearing at each other with the sa overwhelming force.
Kai watched for a few seconds longer.
Then he lowered his eyes and adjusted his estimate of how much ti they had left.
Not enough.
When he turned back, the others were staring through the broken wall at the sa scene.
“Let’s move,” Kai said. “I think we have less ti than I’m comfortable with.”
That got all of them moving again at once.
Kai went first, using wind mana to carry himself through the great gap in the wall. The others followed behind him—Veridia and Elias using their spells, while Killian simply trusted his own body and strength to clear the broken opening. Once they were through, they picked up even more speed than before.
Hallways and stairways blurred past them as they kept climbing, and with every turn Kai found himself wondering more and more just how enormous the castle really was.
From the outside, it looked massive, yes, but not like this. Not like sothing that could keep unfolding inward without end. Every corridor seed to lead to another stretch of stone, another stairway, another passage that split and bent and opened into new sections before they had even fully cleared the last.
And the size of the place was only one problem. The other was the number of spirits inside it.
Kai had underestimated that badly.
It felt as though every few breaths brought another group into their path. So waited in the hallways. Others ca from side corridors or dropped from higher levels the mont they sensed intruders moving through. There were simply too many to stop and fight properly each ti. Before long, the group stopped thinking in terms of battles at all and settled into sothing more practical.
A rhythm.
Veridia and Elias struck first whenever they could, trying to thin out whatever stood in front of them before it fully closed the space. Kai followed by cutting the clearest path straight through the middle, and if anything survived long enough to try attacking from the side or rear, Killian handled it without slowing.
That was how they advanced, and for a while, it was enough.
But by the ti they were roughly halfway through the castle, the things blocking their path began to change. The weaker spirits that had filled the lower sections gave way to stronger ones. By then, they had already pushed through dozens of different kinds of spirits, and the pace of it had left all of them tired enough that every new obstacle felt slightly heavier than the last.
Then they took another run of stairs and reached a chamber that forced them to stop.
Vines covered most of it.
Purple plants spread through the room in dense clusters, thick enough that they had almost swallowed the floor beneath them. The mont Kai and the others appeared at the entrance, several of the plants responded at once, unfurling in slow motions as though the chamber itself had just opened its eyes.
One look was enough for Kai to know these were not going to be like the things they had dealt with below.
The mana in the room told him that much.
Every step inside that chamber looked as though it could injure them in so new way. Worse, Kai already recognized more than a few of the plants. So would release clouds or plus the mont they were disturbed, and he had no intention of finding out in the middle of a rush exactly how dangerous those clouds might be.
His expression tightened before he acted.
A spell structure ford in front of him, and in the next second, wind wrapped around the heads of his three companions, sealing each of them inside a light bubble of moving air.
“It’ll keep you from breathing in anything you shouldn’t.”
Elias gave a quick nod, eyes still on the chamber ahead. “And how exactly are we getting through this?”
“I burn us a path,” Kai said. “You follow. Don’t let the vines touch you, and don’t get caught by anything funny.” He kept his eyes on the mass of plants ahead. “Ten seconds. That’s all we need. After that, we’re back to the stairs, and closer to the Elder Trees.”
No one questioned his words, so he stepped forward.
Instantly, the vines reacted. They shivered through the chamber as if his movent alone had disturbed the whole room. But before they could properly strike, he shaped another spell. Fla rolled over his arms first, then spread across the rest of his body, layering itself over the wind armor he already wore. The two aspects did not clash. Under his control, they folded into one another cleanly, and as the heat rose around him, he ran.
The chamber ca alive in the sa instant.
Vines lashed toward him from every side, while the purple plants answered in their own way. So spat out thin needles that hissed through the air. Others released pale plus that sank low and hardened the ground where they touched. A few launched swollen pods that burst before they reached him, sending fragnts and fus across the corridor.
Kai did not slow.
He kept his attention forward and burned through everything that tried to close around him. Fla spread where he passed. Wind and fire burst outward whenever a thicker patch of plants rose up to block the way, shredding and scorching them before they could fully form a wall. The chamber filled with smoke, heat, and the sharp scent of burning sap.
He trusted the others to keep pace. There was no ti to look back.
By the ti the end of the corridor ca into view and the stairs beyond it appeared, relief almost started to rise in him—
Then he saw what was waiting there.
“Fuck.”
A large humanoid figure sat before the foot of the stairs. Its body was made of black bark layered in thick ridges, the surface rough and split in places like old wood struck by lightning. Broad shoulders hunched over a trunk-like chest, and its arms were massive, each forearm ending not in hands but in heavy, jagged stumps shaped like broken tree trunks cut down to blunt killing weight. Roots clung to its legs like hardened tendons, and dim green light glowed from the cracks running through its body, as though sothing unpleasant pulsed beneath the bark.
It moved the mont Kai ca close.
One of its stump-arms rose and ca down toward him with crushing force.
Kai threw a wave of flas at it imdiately.
Fire rolled over the thing’s bark and caught in the cracks running through its body, but the spirit only let out a low grunt and kept swinging. He shifted left at once, the heavy stump-arm smashing down where he had just been.
“Look out!”
The montum of their rush broke apart then. The flas around him thinned as he pulled them back under control, and the tree giant adjusted its stance, turning just enough to fully block the stairs behind it.
Kai glanced back long enough to see that at least the others had kept pace, and the look on their faces matched his own. The quick, cold kind of calculation that only cared about one thing—how long it would take to kill this spirit?
If Kai had wanted to flatten it outright, he could have done so.
Half a dozen sixth-circle spells would have reduced it to burning splinters.
But that was exactly the problem.
He could not afford to spend that kind of mana now. Not when he still needed to hold enough back for the step into the sixth circle.
Before he could settle on a proper approach, the spirit moved again.
Its massive arms swung down in another brutal arc. Elias reacted first, raising walls of earth between them and the blow, but the walls cracked almost as soon as the attack landed. Veridia answered from the side, shaping two heavy spheres of magma and hurling them straight at the spirit’s chest.
It lifted one arm to block.
The magma burst on impact and splashed everywhere.
Kai threw out a wind barrier around the group at once, shielding them from the worst of it while molten fragnts hissed and struck the floor around them. When he looked again, parts of the tree spirit had finally caught fire, eating along the bark, but even then, it was not burning as quickly as it should have. The creature clearly carried so fire resistance.
Kai let out a low sound of frustration.
The faint tremors from the battle outside still ran through the castle beneath their feet, a constant reminder that ti was tightening around them.
“I’ll pull its attention,” he said finally. “The three of you go up. I’ll be right behind.”
Killian answered imdiately. “Lord Arzan, I’ll stay.”
Kai turned and growled the words back before the Knight could say anything more. “Clear the path ahead. Our destination has to be close.”
No one argued this ti.
The mont the tree spirit moved again, Kai acted. Two spell structures ford above his head at once while the wind around his legs drove him forward. The spirit saw him coming and lunged, one of its massive stump-arms swinging down in another attempt to crush him outright.
Kai veered left at the last possible second.
White flas flared over his left hand as he slipped past the attack, and in that instant the others used the opening to rush up the stairs behind the spirit.
While they did that, he triggered the spell structure waiting in his right hand.
Three conjurations burst into existence at once, all of them shaped like fire trolls. They appeared directly in front of the tree spirit, large and burning and their bodies made from dense fla and rough form. The spirit’s eyes widened slightly before it swung again. One of the fire trolls t the blow head-on, bracing both arms up in a crude guard to absorb the impact, while the other two lunged in from either side. Their claws lengthened into blades of fire and cut into the spirit’s flanks.
The tree thing let out a rough sound of pain.
Taking the chance, Kai vaulted over the spirit, landed across its back, and turned imdiately. The white flas around his hand burned brighter as he drove them down into the bark. Fire spread at once across the creature’s back, eating through the dark wood in fast, hungry lines. Parts of it blackened, then crumbled into ember and ash, and for the first ti the spirit truly cried out.
Kai did not stay to press the attack.
The conjurations were enough. They would keep its attention fixed for a little while longer and maybe kill it too. That was all he needed.
The strike to its back had only ever been ant to weaken it further, not finish it.
So the mont the flas had taken hold, Kai pushed off and moved.
He turned, took the stairs in quick strides, and only spared a brief glance behind him at the tree spirit still locked in battle with the burning trolls below.
Halfway up the stairs, Kai stopped bothering to take them one by one. He pushed wind into his legs and jumped, clearing the remaining steps in one motion before landing in a huge chamber above.
The place looked like a battlefield.
Half of it was still burning. Earth spikes jutted up from the floor at uneven angles, while torn vines were strewn everywhere, so still twitching faintly as if they had only just been cut apart. Dead spirits lay all across the chamber, their bodies broken, scorched, or pierced through. His party had clearly carved their way through this part of the castle without holding back, and the trail they left behind made it easy enough for Kai to follow.
He rushed across the chamber, and the next two minutes blurred together. He passed through more hallways, more staircases, more chambers. So still had spirits inside them, trying to block the way, only to be cut down as he forced through. Others had already been completely cleared out by the others, who were obviously going all out to keep the path open for him.
At one point, he crossed a chamber that had been nearly torn apart, with a whole section of its structure collapsed and hanging open.
He guessed that had less to do with his party and more to do with the battle outside between the Ignivar and Vaelthoros. Still, he did not waste ti thinking about it. He simply jumped over the ruined section and kept going.
Then, at last, he saw them.
Far ahead, in a hallway that opened outward, he caught sight of the silhouettes of his party mbers. Just seeing that opening made sothing tighten in him, because the mana pouring from beyond it hit him even before he reached it.
It was overwhelming.
With every step he took, the pressure only grew stronger. The air itself felt thicker, richer, denser, so saturated with mana that it almost felt as though he were walking deeper into a spell instead of a room.
Then, halfway down the hall, he saw them for the first ti.
The trees.
That alone made him push more wind into his legs.
A mont later, Kai crossed into the chamber beyond.
The others, who had already been looking around, turned as he entered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Killian let out a breath of relief at finally seeing him catch up.
But Kai barely noticed.
His attention had already been taken by the trees ahead of him, and for a second, he could do nothing but stare at what stood before him, hardly able to believe it was real.
Kai had only ever seen a single Elder Tree in his life.
Now there were… Dozens. For a mont, he simply stood there, unable to do anything but look.
It all looked divine. The chamber spread wide around them. The ground was covered in soft, carefully trimd grass, each blade lush and impossibly green. The air itself felt different here—cleaner, richer, almost sacred. Mana filled the space so densely and so purely that every breath Kai drew into his lungs seed to restore him. Not by much, but enough for him to feel it clearly. Each inhale gave back a sliver of what he had spent, nearly a full percent of his reserves at a ti, sothing so absurd that in any other place he might have thought he was imagining it.
And the trees…
They were magnificent even now, though Kai could tell they had not yet reached even half of what they would one day beco. They were already tall, their pale trunks smooth and faintly luminous, their branches spreading outward with an almost graceful weight, but there was still sothing youthful about them. They had not yet grown into the full enormity promised by their kind. They were still in the infancy of their lifespan.
Even so, just standing among them felt like standing inside the breath of the world itself.
Kai might have stayed like that longer if Elias had not spoken.
“We should just take one of these and go ho.”
His voice snapped Kai back to himself.
Veridia let out a quiet snort, though her expression remained as flat as ever. She turned toward Kai and said, “We’re going to search the area for the Elder Tree seeds. How long will it take you to reach the sixth circle?”
Kai pulled himself fully out of the stupor the chamber had put him in and answered at once.
“Five minutes. That should be enough.”
They all nodded.
Then, without wasting another second, the others spread out through the grove, searching for the seeds the earth sovereign had said would be hidden sowhere here. Kai watched them go for only a brief mont before lowering himself to the grass and sitting down.
This was the final part.
The last and most delicate step in everything they had done.
Even from here, he could still feel faint tremors running through the air as Spirit King Vaelthoros clashed with Ignivar outside. The battle was still ongoing, but Kai knew it would not last much longer. Whatever chance they had left was narrowing by the second.
He needed to use the ti he had.
If he could reach the sixth circle, then he would gain the one thing the plan still relied on most—enough speed and power to cross the distance back to the ritual circle in under a minute. From there, they could escape.
But to do that, Kai needed to do sothing he had never managed even in his past life.
He needed to cultivate his own soul.
***
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