We were falling.
Not tumbling through stone or screaming corridors of ruin—but through open air.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
I opened my eyes, expecting darkness, collapse, or the grinding pressure of another hostile space. Instead, light flooded my vision. Real light. Sunlight—warm and honest—spilling across an endless expanse of sky.
The orange sky.
So impossibly vast.
Below us stretched rolling grasslands that shimmered gold beneath the sinking sun, the horizon bleeding into itself as if the world had no end. Wind rushed past my ears, threading through my silver-white hair, tugging at it like it was alive. The air smelled clean—soil, leaves, distance.
…I made it back.
The surface of Ehianara.
My chest tightened, not from the fall, but from something dangerously close to relief.
Then I remembered—
I wasn't alone.
The girl.
She was drifting away from me, her body turning slowly as gravity pulled us apart. Panic cut through the awe. I spread my arms and kicked instinctively, forcing my body toward her despite the screaming protest from my injured foot.
I caught her hands.
Our fingers locked, and the momentum spun us together, slow and weightless, the world rotating around us as we fell. Her crystalline, ocean-blue hair fanned out like liquid glass, catching the sunlight in fractured hues.
I shouted—something meaningless, urgent—but the roar of wind devoured my voice. The air was too loud, too violent for words.
No time.
I forced Axiom through my system and traced the simplest circle I knew—one I hadn't used seriously since my early lessons.
No engineering. No edits.
Just survival.
ᛋᚱ ᛚᚨ (Serra Latus – Gentle Descent)(Axiom-assisted reduction of gravitational pull.)
The spell took hold with surprising ease.
Too easy.
Our fall didn't stop—but it slowed, the air thickening beneath us like invisible water. The sudden deceleration sent a pressure wave outward. The sky rippled. Trees far below bent as if bowing, their leaves shuddering violently as shockwaves raced across the land.
I realized it then.
Casting on the surface was effortless.
No resistance. No suffocating pressure. No need to fight the environment just to shape a circle. My body—after months of exposure to pure Axiom—adjusted instinctively, automatically throttling the output to survive impure conditions.
So this was what it felt like.
To cast without the dungeon trying to kill me.
We descended slowly now. I shifted her carefully, cradling her against my chest as I guided the spell downward—
And then, two feet from the ground, the circle collapsed.
"—GAAAH!"
My injured foot hit first.
Pain exploded up my leg as I stumbled forward, barely managing to keep her from hitting the ground as I crashed to one knee. The spell snapped completely, the remaining force dispersing harmlessly into the air.
I bit back a curse, clutching my ankle.
Of course. Of course it would end like that. I rolled through the pain.
When I looked up, she was staring at me.
Still wrapped in the cloak I had stolen five floors ago in the dungeon—the one stripped from a dead man whose bones had been fused into dungeon stone. It looked enormous on her, swallowing her slight frame, but it kept her warm.
Her eyes were sharp.
Too sharp.
I felt it immediately.
A ripple of Axiom passed over me—focused, precise. Her pupils contracted, and for a brief instant, a magic circle reflected within her gaze.
"—Mm. A spell."
Before she could finish whatever she was doing, I reacted.
I slammed my good foot down, traced a micro-circle, and vanished in a burst of kinetic force.
ᚲᛋ ᚠᛏ ᛋᚱ (Crucis Flux – Vector Step)
I reappeared directly in front of her, my right hand raised, Axiom coiling tightly in my palm. A basic offensive construct—compressed, ready to fire.
"Know this," I said coldly, breath still uneven, "if you're a monster, I won't hesitate. I won't even think twice before I blow your head off."
She blinked.
Once.
Then spoke, her voice calm—too calm—like stone remembering how to speak.
"I see."
The words were… old. Not archaic exactly, but weighted, as if shaped by centuries rather than years.
"Thou wouldst bare fangs at divinity itself?"
My eyes widened.
"…God?"
She tilted her head slightly, studying me as though I were the strange one.
"You jest," I scoffed. "Gods already forsook humanity two hundred forty-three years ago—after the First Lie."
"How, then," she asked softly, "would thy kind know? Were they yet breathing when the heavens fell silent?"
Something about the way she said it made my skin crawl.
My mind raced.
A high-level dungeon entity, I thought. A shapeshifter. Something ancient that feeds on belief.
She looked at me—and smiled faintly.
"Do not liken me to the beasts thou hast culled," she said, eyes narrowing. "I am not of that crude lineage. Is this the courtesy modern mankind shows its saviors?"
My spell faltered.
The magic circle dissolved.
I lowered my hand slowly, heart pounding. Teleportation magic, I remembered. The complexity. The precision. The impossible authority required to cast it instinctively.
No monster should be able to do that.
…No human either.
—
Long ago, gods had walked alongside civilization. Every major era had its patrons, its watchers. But when the First Lie occurred—when the Blight was born—the gods vanished.
Some said they caused it.
Others said they fled.
The common belief was simpler:
The gods abandoned us.
—
"I hear what thou thinkest," she said quietly.
That did it.
Silence stretched between us.
Finally, I exhaled.
"Alright," I muttered. "I humbly apologize for my behavior. Goddess or not… you saved both our lives."
She stiffened. Seemed surprised.
"…Thank you."
Her eyes widened—genuinely startled.
"And uhh," I added, scratching my cheek awkwardly, "how old even are you? You talk like my great-great grandfa—"
I stopped.
My grandfather.
The memory stabbed deep and sudden. The execution. The crowd. His absence. Not even a shadow among the watchers.
Where is he?
Why didn't you save me?
My expression hardened before I could stop it.
"Mm…anyway," I continued flatly, turning my back. "You look my age. Act like it."
"I had thought thy kind would show greater astonishment, faced with such things." she replied.
"Nothing can surprise me anymore... after everything I've gone through."
I hoisted her onto my back despite the pain. She let out a small, surprised sound.
"—Kyah!"
"Careful," I hissed. "My foot's still injured."
"Y-your foot…?" she murmured.
"It's nothing," I replied. "Compared to everything else."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then, softly: "I am… grateful."
"I see."
Night crept in quickly as we moved through the forest. Lanterns eventually appeared along a dirt path—different designs powered by Axiom crystals, carved from a rare pale wood streaked with silver veins.
My breath caught.
"…That type of wood."
It was only found in one region.
On one particular continent.
I hurried towards the path that leads to a clearing and emerged from the treeline.
Before us stretched an elevated plain, dotted with towns and windmills turning lazily in the dusk. And beyond them—
A bastion.
Massive. Walled. Protected.
The Bastion City of the Mythril Empire, standing proud on the Assembia Continent.
My heart sank.
"…We weren't sent back to Sunspire," I whispered.
No.
We were sent far, far away.
And whatever came next—
Nothing would be simple again.