A hot wave struck her face—a hook. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Unlike the frozen Tie, Grandpa Nordiks reacted instantly.

Grabbing the bag and staff, he shouted,

“Run!”

And shoved Tie hard in the back.

Her vision went white, but Tie ran.

Because she had seen the Magical Beast appear from behind Grandpa.

Wet earth, fallen leaves, and jutting roots made the ground slick, but Tie clutched her backpack and ran with all her strength.

‘Uncle Basto was telling the truth.’

Her heart thundered.

The beast chasing her really did look like a tyrannosaurus.

“Run farther! Faster! I’ll distract it!”

Over Grandpa the diviner’s voice, her father’s words overlapped.

‘You can’t let your guard down.’

Now she understood what that meant.

The forest was so quiet that not even birdsong could be heard.

Grandpa the diviner had been dozing, and just a moment ago the stars had been glittering in the sky.

And then— a fiery mass fell onto the tent, and a dinosaur-like beast began chasing Tie!

Fear bound her entire body.

Running without daring to look back, Tie only pressed herself against a large tree when she realized the pounding behind her had vanished.

She immediately slipped into the nearest bushes and hid.

In the distance, the elm where they had set up the tent was ablaze.

Strange screams came from all sides, and Grandpa was nowhere to be seen.

Her face white with terror, Tie looked in the opposite direction.

It seemed she hadn’t even noticed when she ran toward the cave—the entrance where Basto and Bale had gone was very close.

Staring there, Tie parted her lips slightly.

The surroundings were brightly lit by the forest fire.

Someone was coming out of the cave.

It was Basto, clutching a bloodied shoulder from which blood was gushing.

Another person sprang out of the cave after him.

‘Bale oppa?’

As Bale burst out, he fought something chasing him.

Several Magical Beasts, also dinosaur-like, but smaller than the one that had chased Tie.

Her mouth went dry.

‘No, no......’

The situation was bad.

Basto was injured.

And Bale, fighting the Magical Beasts, was being pushed back more and more.

Tie’s face grew even paler.

“Kgh—!”

A cry tore from Bale’s mouth—he was hit.

When Bale’s thigh, slashed by a beast’s claws, turned red, Tie burst out of the bushes without realizing it.

Her fear-stricken green eyes trembled.

At that moment, everything around her seemed to slow.

How Basto, running forward, fell to the ground.

How the Magical Beasts, as if waiting for that, lunged at him.

Their appearance was something Tie had never seen before.

Perhaps a hundred times more terrifying than the dinosaurs in books.

Eyes glittering coldly in the firelight.

A gaping maw with sharp teeth.

And long, gleaming claws.

‘......Uncle Basto will die.’

She swallowed dryly.

Maybe Bale oppa would die too, and Grandpa the diviner who had disappeared.

Before her eyes flashed the box of her father’s belongings she had received in Jongno-gu.

Death separates everything.

It makes it so you never see those you loved again, and stains even happy memories with unbroken sorrow.

And in all of this, Tie thought:

‘I can never do anything. Nothing at all......’

Tears spilled down her cheeks on their own.

Tie squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Please, please, I beg you.’

If gods exist, hear Tie’s prayer.

I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone anymore.

I just... at least once, I wanted to see Dad again.......

And at that moment—

Uuum—

A cold sensation rippled in her chest.

Opening her eyes, Tie saw a pure white light tightly enveloping everything around her.

“W-what is this......?”

The light was coming from her—from her body and both hands.

Bale, teeth clenched, felt pain spear through his thigh.

Behind him, he saw Basto, fallen yet still fighting the Magical Beasts.

“Damn beasts—!”

Basto, driving his hammer straight into a beast’s maw, was still holding on, but there were almost no chances left.

It was the same for Bale.

“Kgh!”

Another attack crashed down on him almost immediately.

The breath he used to fend it off rose to his throat.

Magical Beasts did not know fatigue.

Block one side, and they immediately aimed for a vital spot from another.

‘The limit.’

His legs trembled.

Just the day before yesterday, in the Tenebra Cave there had been only small Magic Stones.

Who could have imagined that overnight another would rise—a medium Magic Stone.

And that it would be right behind the stone Bale and Basto had planned to suppress.

Swinging his sword, Bale reached under his collar with his other hand.

His fingers found a small vial.

A lethal poison that stopped the heart immediately after a swallow.

Better to die quickly than be torn apart alive—and in that instant—

Zhelgryak—

With an unfamiliar sound, the sky suddenly darkened.

At the same time, the Magical Beasts lunging at Bale froze.

For some reason, their gazes were fixed behind his back.

He frowned for just a moment, not understanding what was happening—

“......!”

Something whistled right over his forehead.

“Kiaaak—!!!”

In the next instant, a piercing shriek rang out right in front of him.

Bale froze, staring at what he saw.

Something whitish binding a Magical Beast.

Bones.

A skeleton had cinched the Magical Beast’s neck.

A sharp cry burst from the mouth of the small Magical Beast, a Bellios.

“Kieek—!!”

It thrashed, trying to shake the skeleton off, but failed.

Bale staggered back and sank to the ground.

“Kyaaak—!”

Other Bellios rushed to save their kin, but—

“Kiek— Kieeek!”

Other skeletons bursting from the ground entwined their ankles as well.

Bones caked with earth.

Dead and yet alive—contradictory beings.

This was without a doubt.......

“Bale.”

A low whisper came from behind.

Basto was already standing right beside him.

“You.......”

“Get up. Now.”

Basto roughly dragged Bale along.

Pulling him farther from the skeletons, he frowned.

“Are you a mage?”

Bale froze, not immediately grasping the meaning of the words.

Then, stunned, he answered:

“What nonsense! What mage?”

They stared, as if bewitched, in one direction.

The defeated Bellios.

And even the huge Rikellops, which had tried to flee toward the forest but now lay dead at the boundary.

Dozens of bones sunk into the Magical Beasts’ flesh looked so eerie that a chill crawled down the spine.

“I... I actually thought it was you......”

Stammering, Bale fell silent.

He understood.

The one who had summoned the skeletons was neither him nor Basto.

He lowered his gaze.

Before his eyes was his bloodied thigh.

Where the Bellios’s claws had only grazed him, it still burned.

‘Ten more seconds......’

And he would have surely become a soulless lump of meat.

“But how?”

The words spilled out on their own.

Until now, skeletons had existed only in names.

It could not have been otherwise.

Magic that made the dead move had no real manifestation.

Dark magic, necromancy, had until now been passed down only in legends.

“So then who.......”

Bones rising from the ground.

Skeletons that did not touch humans and precisely targeted only Magical Beasts, dragging them into a ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) deadly quagmire.

With trembling eyes, he looked around.

The one controlling the spawn of darkness had to be nearby.

The screams of Magical Beasts coming from underground testified to that.

And with high probability, it was no ordinary person.

Most likely, an unprecedented being—the first in history to wield dark magic.

That meant they had to find him.

Where was he......

“Uncle Basto! Bale oppa—!”

Suddenly, someone’s footsteps rushed closer.

Bale and Basto turned—and froze.

“Y-you’re alive! Waaah......!”

With tears flooding her face, Astie stopped in front of them.

In both hands, she carefully held something.

“Tie thought you would both die, waaah—!”

It was...... a skull.

“Thank goodness, really thank goodness!”

When she wiped away her tears, something that had been resting on the skull fell to the ground with a clatter.

Rolling across the earth, it stopped at Bale’s feet.

It was a jaw.

A human jawbone—in the state of a bare skeleton.