Leo stared at the diary page in his hands, stunned and increasingly uncomfortable. His brow furrowed deeper the more he read. After everything that had just happened...after the eerie chanting, the screaming, the explosion of flesh and void energy...this was what Lorent had died for?!
His cheeks burned with secondhand embarrassnt.
"This is... seriously?"
He rubbed his temple with a sigh and held the page at arm’s length as if distance would help make sense of it. The emotional tantrum of a divine being? This wasn’t so ancient truth or forbidden knowledge. It read like sothing scrawled by a moody teenager who had been grounded for the first ti.
He quickly stuffed the page away before anyone else could see it.
Footsteps echoed from the hallway.
Seryn was the first to return, walking with slow, hesitant steps. Her body moved on instinct alone, her eyes fixed on the spot where Lorent had been monts ago. There was nothing left now. No blood. No bones. Just Leo, standing quietly in the storm’s aftermath.
She clutched her robes at the chest, her breath shallow and broken.
"You... you stopped it," she whispered. "You stopped the void."
Leo didn’t answer. He simply gave a small nod.
She looked around in disbelief, her eyes wide and wet. "How? That kind of energy... if it had continued, the entire Heartwood Tree would have been devoured. All of us would have been swallowed. The sacred roots... the wildlife... the ancestral spirits..."
More footsteps followed. Rachel reappeared first, carrying Luna gently in her arms. She lowered the unconscious girl to the floor with care and turned to Leo with a deadpan expression.
"Still alive. Good. I’d hate to explain to your sister why you exploded."
Leo forced a tired smile. "Thanks for believing in ."
Rachel snorted. "I didn’t. I just didn’t have a better plan."
Next ca Crystal, then Adam, then the others, slowly filtering back in with cautious steps. The swirling energy that had filled the air was gone now. The pressure had lifted, but its ghost remained in their minds. Their gazes settled on Leo who remained quiet and composed, standing over the place where Lorent had vanished. However the few who knew him could tell that he was feeling incredibly awkward about sothing. So of them stared at the page poking out from his back pocker, but no one said anything. Not yet at least.
Seryn moved to kneel beside Luna, brushing her hair out of her face with trembling hands, checking to make sure she was okay.
"I... I don’t understand. Lorent... he was one of our wisest. He helped raise . He taught to climb the sacred branches, to commune with the spirits. And now..."
She trailed off, unable to continue.
Leo didn’t know what he could say. Clearly Lorent had ant sothing to her and he felt like it would tarnish her mory of him if she knew the truth.
"He was brainwashed by the demons. In his last monts....he hoped you would forgive him..."
Seryn bit her lip, nodding slowly, though the tears building in her eyes betrayed the calm she was trying to maintain.
Rachel stood and stretched her back with a groan. "Sooooo. Just to recap,we almost got drawn into a magical black hole that our fearless leader sohow stopped... and now we’re going to pretend that was a completely normal Friday?"
"That sounds about right" Leo muttered.
Rachel rolled her eyes with a now tired expression but still kept her teasing tone.
"This is just the par for the course at this point. Why do I even bother~!"
The group lapsed into silence, all eyes once again turning toward the walls of Heartwood Tree. Though it stood tall and unhard, a subtle change lingered in the air. A sense of danger narrowly avoided. A crisis defused.
Penny placed her hands on her hips as she once again found herself perched on Greg’s shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"If anyone still thought we didn’t deserve a reward before, I think we’ve more than earned it now," she said with a smug little nod.
Tremlin approached slowly, his steps cautious and deliberate. His entire posture had changed. The tension in his jaw was gone, replaced with a asured stillness. When he finally ca to a stop in front of Leo, he gave a slight bow of his head.
Leo narrowed his eyes. "You alright?"
"Yes," Tremlin said carefully. "And I owe you an apology. I didn’t know before. But now... I know what you are."
That made Leo stiffen. "What do you an by that?"
"I don’t an it as a threat," Tremlin added quickly. "Just... I understand now. And I’ll treat you with the respect that deserves."
Leo didn’t answer right away. The sudden shift unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He wasn’t used to being looked at like that. Not with reverence.
A short distance away, Aria was crouched beside Luna, gently checking her pulse and brushing her hair back. Her focus was completely on making sure her friend was alright.
At least until Luna jolted awake with a sharp gasp and shot upward like she had been electrocuted.
Their heads cracked together with a solid thunk, sending both girls crashing back down.
"Ah—dammit!" Aria groaned, clutching her forehead.
"Why do you have a skull made of steel?" Luna hissed, eyes watering.
Greg turned his head at the noise and found both of them twitching on the ground, faces red and a thin wisp of steam rising from each of their heads.
"Uh," Greg muttered, blinking. "Are they gonna be okay?"
Behind him, Crystal caught the dumbfounded stares of the village Elders. Their expressions were a mix of awe, confusion, and complete disbelief.
She didn’t need to read minds to know exactly what they were thinking.
These lunatics are the ones that saved us?
Crystal sighed in defeat as both Lily and Rachel began cackling at the scenes like twin gremlins.
She didn’t want to say it but it was beginning to feel like this was going to be the gold standard when it cos to the average day in the Chaos Pantheon.
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