anwhile, elsewhere among the chaos. The queen and the princess were swiftly surrounded.
The won who had been tailing them since the hunt began closed ranks, forming a tight, protective formation. No words were wasted. With practiced efficiency, they redirected the queen and princess, guiding them rapidly toward the forest's edge.
Then, Crack.
The sound echoed everywhere at once, sharp and wrong, as if the sky itself had fractured. Every head snapped upward. Magic faltered. Movent stalled.
Above them, space split open.
Reality fractured like glass, jagged lines spreading across the air before tearing wide. From within that broken space, a familiar figure tumbled out, The cub.
Its massive form erged mid-fall, wings flailing awkwardly as panic drove it. It had teleported randomly, desperately, fleeing danger it could not understand.
And in doing so, it had landed directly above the queen, the princess, and those sworn to protect them.
The won reacted instantly.
"Two people, get the queen and her daughter out!" one of them shouted. "The rest of you, engage the cub and keep it away from them!"
There was no hesitation. Two broke formation at once, gripping Amina and the princess by the arms and pulling them back toward the forest's edge. The others spread out, blades gleaming, magic flaring as they placed themselves between royalty and the falling beast.
The cub hit the ground hard.
Its wings, still too weak and untrained to lift its massive body, twitched uselessly against the earth. It raised its head slowly, golden eyes locking onto the figures surrounding it, the sharp tal in their hands, the killing intent written plainly in their stances.
It roared.
The sound was soft, raw with confusion and fear. In its own tongue, the aning was simple and desperate:
Why are these two-leg creatures all hostile to ?
Layered beneath the anger was another call, higher, panicked, reaching far beyond the forest.
Mother.
The won did not understand the words. They heard only a beast's roar.
They charged.
Steel flashed as they rushed forward, boots tearing through leaves and soil. The cub sensed the danger imdiately, instinct screaming but its body refused to answer the way it needed to. There was no strength left to tear space open, no power to flee.
Panic took over.
With a distressed cry, the cub collapsed inward, wings spreading wide as it curled into itself. Its enormous fra shrank, compressing unnaturally as it folded down, covering itself protecting what it could, the way a child might hide from a storm.
The attack ca anyway.
Infused blade energy tore through the air, crescent arcs of lethal force ant to carve the cub apart, enough power behind them to reduce flesh and bone to nothing.
They never reached it.
The mont the attacks crossed a certain distance, the air locked.
The blade energies froze mid-flight, suspended as if embedded in invisible glass. Leaves caught in the shockwave hung motionless. Dust stopped falling. Even sound seed to choke and die around the cub.
Its inherited talent had acted on its own mixed with it's own will to survive.
At the sa ti, the strange shield surrounding the cub began to fracture.
The suspended blade energies trembled, then slowly dissolved, breaking down into raw power that stread inward, drawn into the cub's starved body. The air shimred as the energy was consud. The cub flinched at first, then cautiously peeked out from beneath its wings, golden eyes widening when it realized.
It was still alive.
Warmth spread through its limbs. Strength returned, if only a little. Instinctively, it quacked a sharp, plaintive sound at the won who stood frozen in shock.
"Retreat!" one of them shouted.
The order was imdiate and absolute.
There was no hesitation. The won broke formation and scattered, sprinting away in multiple directions, abandoning the attack entirely. This was a tough opponent, they realized an it would take a lo of ti to deal it when they are supposed to be protecting the royal families.
The cub watched them run.
Confusion rippled through it, followed by distress.
The ones who had fed it were leaving.
With a frightened cry, it lurched forward, wings dragging uselessly as it chased after the retreating figures. Its massive body tore through brush and roots, driven not by aggression, but desperation.
By chance or cruel fate the direction it chose was the sa path along which the queen and princess were being hurried away.
And so, unknowingly, the cub ran straight toward them.
At that sa mont.
High above the capital, space collapsed inward.
Darkness spilled across the sky as a colossal shadow blanketed entire districts, plunging them into sudden twilight. The air scread as sothing vast forced its way through the boundary of reality.
Then it erged.
The Beast King.
Its mountain-sized form swam out of torn space, feathers brushing clouds aside as its titanic wings spread wide. The sheer presence of it crushed the atmosphere, driving a tremor through stone and soul alike. The city below fell silent, its celebration obliterated in an instant.
Osita had already been receiving reports, so fragnted, alarming, incomplete. He had held his position, uncertain of the full shape of events unfolding, weighing every possibility with care. But through it all, one priority remained unchanged.
The safety of his wife and daughter.
When no new information ca, when there seed to be nothing new, he made his decision.
He would act himself.
Osita rose and turned toward the palace exit, resolve settling heavily in his chest. One step forward when he froze.
His head snapped upward, eyes locking onto the massive form now hovering above his kingdom. Power rippled across his skin as instinct and recognition collided. He felt it imdiately.
Sothing was wrong.
The Beast King's presence was distorted. The sensation was familiar, twisted. Its aura was fractured, warped by an alien undertone that did not belong to it. He sensed the beast king was incomplete, suppressed… ridden by sothing else.
A somber expression crossed Osita's face. This was not simply a parent coming for its child.
From the Beast King, he sensed danger that a beast king should not have possessed to soone like himself.
Through the haze of fractured awareness, he sensed multiple vast presences, imasurable, and utterly alien each of them focused on him. Their attention pressed down like a crushing weight. And then he felt them smile.
Before he could speak or react, space itself betrayed him. Osita found his body froze mid-motion, locked in place as though reality had decided he no longer had the right to move.
At the sa ti, he felt it then sothing ripping through the Beast King's mind. The last remnants of its true consciousness scread soundlessly before being erased, wiped clean as though they had never existed.
And then, sothing else opened its eyes.
The host was claid.
The people of Osita's kingdom, already breaking under panic from the Beast King's arrival, were suddenly confronted with a new spectacle, one far worse than fear.
The Beast King moved, it's huge body glided forward, its destination clear: the western forest.
But as it moved, sothing impossible happened.
Behind its massive form, reality itself began to peel apart, like a curtain being slowly, deliberately drawn open. The air warped and thinned, stretching into translucent strands that tore one by one.
By the ti the Beast King had fully passed, the sky behind it was no longer the sky.
A vast gash split open above the capital.
And at the sa mont, the beast king space talent acted upon everyone, every man, woman, child, mage, knight, froze unable to move.
Their bodies locked where they stood, unable to scream and run away or fight what was happening before them.
Above them, the heavens had been replaced.
It was as though the night sky itself had descended upon the city, endless darkness filled with distant, glittering stars. Cold. Silent. Infinite.
But sothing was wrong, the stars were moving. Slowly at first but it was then clear that sothing in the stars was moving.
They were drawing closer.
Each "star" pulsed faintly, rhythmically, like a living thing breathing in the dark. And as they approached, the pressure in the air grew heavier, crushing thoughts, bending wills.
So people wept without realizing it. So scread soundlessly, mouths open, eyes wide. Others felt their minds slipping, dragged toward sothing vast and waiting beyond the tear.
And far below, deep within the western forest, a cub cried out for its mother. Unaware that what was coming for it now was no longer the mother it had known.
From the torn gap left in the Beast King's wake, the sky wept fire.
teors began to fall.
They scread as they descended, tearing through the false night above the capital, their burning tails carving scars of light through the darkness.
Osita felt it before he saw it.
His body was frozen in space, bound by a domain not his own. The pressure pressed in from every direction, attempting to pin his existence in place.
Osita frowned as his power activated.
Space folded around him as his own domain erupted outward, overlapping and then shattering the one restraining him. The invisible cage fractured like glass, and Osita stepped free.
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