Aureus and Nox were on the losing end from the start. Their attacks troubled me, but my body adapted quickly to the increased weight pressing down on it.

  The drain on my stamina was rapid, yet I managed to evade Nox’s blade, weave around them, and land a quick series of punches. With the added weight behind my strikes, the mantis’s exoskeleton stood no chance. It burst apart, revealing soft, unprotected flesh.

  As much as I wanted to keep my Soulkins safe, they had to pay for striking me when I least expected it. A second barrage of lighter punches flashed toward Nox, only for him to burst into action. His leg muscles tensed as Nox blurred, a pair of wide golden eyes flashing into view.

  Gravity reversed without warning, and I felt lighter than ever. My legs dug into the ground with the same strength as before, but instead of rocketing toward my target, I shot into the sky. At the same time, the Earthheart’s eyes glowed. Paralyze triggered, and it bypassed my mental defense…not that it should have surprised me. Not after exhausting myself with Fortress and Mindbreaker Shell.

  Still… I froze mid-air, Nox appearing beside me with his blades brandished. A fireball conjured next to Nox as Paralyze’s effect wore off, but by then the Ferronox Mantis’s blades were already pressed against my neck and chest.

  Maybe taking Nox down with me would have been possible. However, that was not the lesson I took from the surprise attack. Aureus and Nox had demonstrated my greatest weakness: I needed to be prepared to fight at all times. There might not have been a single threat in this part of the forest since we arrived, but that did not mean the situation couldn’t change.

  I was in the wilderness, spending most of my time wearing myself out. Even if a beast had attacked me, I wouldn’t have been able to do much about it, too exhausted to move or react appropriately on most days over the last three weeks.

  We will protect you with our lives. But I do hope you can focus on something other than working out. This place is mythical, but we don’t even know where we are. Your family must be worried.

  Aureus had more to say, and so did Nox.

  The Earthheart had spent the last three weeks flying around, enjoying the sky and the change in scenery from high above, but he could only fly so far. Something about this place pulled him back toward the towering tree in the distance whenever he ventured too far from it. He felt compelled to move toward the tree.

  The pull had been subtle at first, but it grew stronger as the weeks passed, and it affected all of my Soulkins. Only the Mirage Serpent remained unaffected, with Resh spending no more than half an hour in the open.

  Nox was bored out of his mind, the occasional spar with me the only thing keeping him in check.

  “You want to leave already?” I asked Aureus, trying to hide my dissatisfaction.

  I wanted to return to my family, but this place was the perfect opportunity to finish the Fortress technique and fill the Gates. I also felt much safer here than in the Bastions. At the very least, I didn’t have to hide the Elemental Phoenix or Volca’s mark.

  Still, I understood Aureus. Nox was bored, his condition slowly worsening, and the Earthheart had spent months completing his transformation into a proper sacred beast. Now I was asking him to remain here for a few more months just to train. To do the exact same thing he had done when he finally gained the freedom to travel the world, to see more of the region. Maybe he even wanted to carry us back to the Bastion, flying over all the threats rooted to the ground.

  “We can leave. Soon. Just… let my mind recover. I’m also almost done with another Blazing Gate,” I grumbled. “Give me two days. Then we’ll figure out how to leave this place.”

  As grumpy as I wanted to feel, returning to the Bastion to see my parents again sounded wonderful. I could hardly fathom how devastated they must be, believing I was dead. Nearly a month had passed in this strange forest, which meant Daniel should have returned by now. Even if the Bakurean had forced a change in schedule, news of its strike must have reached my parents by this point.

  A sting of pain bloomed in my chest at the thought of my parents grieving my death, and it only deepened knowing I could have tried harder to return home sooner. Instead, I had focused on recovery and training, letting time slip by.

  Do not speak like that. You had to rest. To recover. But I am glad we think alike.

  Aureus smiled, joy sweeping through our bond.

  We need to leave. Return home. Then we can grow stronger again.

  “Once we know how to leave, we’ll know how to return as well,” I mused quietly, scribbling down notes about the waterfall, the spatial letter etched into the depths of its blue pool, and everything else that might help me understand what this place was, how I’d arrived here, and how to leave it.

  After all, it appeared that we weren’t in the same forest as before. For all I knew, we might as well have been in a different dimension, the cloud-piercing tree at its epicenter acting as an anchor.

  My understanding of pocket dimensions was lackluster, for lack of a better term. Still, I had yet to see beasts beyond the tree line behind the lake. Neither Aureus nor the Elemental Phoenix had reported any beast sightings from that location either, and they had failed to see beyond it as well. It looked like the forest stretched far into an infinite mass of green, but to me, it felt as though we were enclosed by an invisible dome. A structure that kept creatures from beyond outside and the beasts within trapped inside.

  It was perfectly balanced, separating two realms, and my arrival disrupted it all.

  What worried me most was that my Soulkins didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. They were affected by something in this place, and I… I couldn’t tell what.

  “Is this a prison or a sanctuary?” I muttered. The words seemed to stir something within the Elemental Phoenix.

  Volix had been silent since the incident. Reserved, filled with uncertainty. Yet as I spoke, he turned to me, confusion rippling through the bond.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  This place feels familiar. Like I should know it.

  Volix’s voice was no more than a whisper.

  Maybe he had been here in one of his earlier rebirths. Considering what I knew about the Elemental Phoenix, it wasn’t impossible that he had forgotten entire sections of his past lives. He may as well have forgotten entire lives. Or, and I hoped that wasn’t the case, Volix remembered something Volca had experienced and had only partially forgotten it.

  “Don’t blame yourself. It’s fine if you can’t remember,” I said calmly. “You can think about it for the next two days. Maybe something will come back to you.”

  Turning to Aureus and Volix, I added, “If you feel like it, the two of you can check out the tree while I finish my business here.”

  Volix didn’t seem to listen, while Aureus quickly shook his head.

  Any closer and I might never return. Something about this tree draws me in, and it terrifies me.

  That said, Aureus disappeared into the World.

  A relieved sigh escaped me mere moments later as the tree’s pulling force receded.

  That’s weird. I sensed something just now.

  I furrowed my brow and reached out to the receding force. It slipped through my fingers and dispersed without trying to clamp down on me or compel me to move.

  Unable to do anything about it, I focused on Aureus’ desire for action. The Earthheart was confused but embraced this new side of himself. It was odd nonetheless. If Aureus only desired strength, he would have been willing to stay longer in this place and deepen his understanding of the Major Earthen Aspect, reach new heights, and nourish his potential.

  The Earthheart was like me. Or at least, he used to be. Willing to do just about anything to go above and beyond in pursuit of strength. Now he wanted to leave, to escape this place as fast as possible. And that meant a lot, especially when my Soulkins rallied together to share just how mind-boggling the force pulling them toward the tree truly was.

  Yeah. Okay. I get it now. We need to leave. I swallowed hard, my mind blank as I turned back to the tree, the lingering culmination of its effects on my Soulkins flooding my senses. The tree appeared even larger now that I looked at it once more, my hair standing on end.

  Was there really no other way out of this place?

  What if we scouted the area again? No. Volix and Aureus had already done that. There was no golden letter, no vortex… no nothing. Everything pointed back to that damn tree. Uncertainty nibbled at my confidence, and my heart sank just a little.

  Will we be alright?

  ***

  Two days later, my thighs pressed firmly against Aureus’ back. Sore from all the shifting as I tried to find a comfortable position, I grumbled quietly. Air blasted into my face, but that was the least of my concerns.

  Lying low, my chest brushing against the Earthheart’s scales, I cast a glance downward, toward the endless mat of green unfurling several hundred meters below. It was beautiful, yet terrifying.

  It was the first time I had been back in the sky since the fall, and I didn’t want to be here. If not for Aureus insisting, I wouldn’t have bothered at all. To my greatest misfortune, the Earthheart was giddy, excited to fly through the sky with me. And so, I found myself on his back, flying straight toward the cloud-piercing tree.

  As intense as the compelling force ahead was, moving toward the tree gradually diminished its effect, until it no longer tormented the Earthheart.

  Anyway, I was in the sky, even though I really didn’t want to be. Maybe I should have practiced flying with Soulfusion active. With two winged Soulkins, it shouldn’t have been much of a problem to learn how to fly, yet the thought had never even occurred to me.

  Why? That didn’t make any sense. No, actually, that was a lie. I knew exactly why the thought never occurred to me. I was scared shitless. My first flight had been a disaster that nearly ended in death. The conditions had been far from ideal, but that didn’t change the outcome. I had survived through sheer luck.

  That was an issue for another time. Aureus was with me, and I trusted him with my life. He glided smoothly through the air, the distance to the cloud-piercing tree slowly fading. Much more slowly than I had expected.

  The tree was even greater than anticipated. The more distance we covered, the more apparent it became just how far away it had been. Even after traveling more than a dozen kilometers, the tree was still far off, and somehow, it appeared even larger than before.

  When I looked down again, fear and restraint gripped my heart. Yet as Aureus’ emotions washed over me, those ill-fated feelings were replaced by anticipation and a subtle hint of excitement. Beasts roamed the land below, each commanding liquefied ether that fortified their bodies. As we passed overhead, they looked up at us, eyes glinting with intelligence.

  Still, something about them felt off. Setting aside the fact that even the predators didn’t seem bloodthirsty or behave like hunters, there was another detail that didn’t make sense. Golden etchings marked small spots at the base of their skulls.

  I hadn’t noticed it before, but my Soulkins sensed it immediately. As we closed in on the tree, more–stronger–beasts appeared along our path. Yet it wasn’t their strength that drew attention. It was the similarity they all shared. Every beast felt alike in some indefinable way. It wasn’t kinship, nor resemblance in form, but something far deeper–something embedded within their very being.

  That sensation extended beyond the beasts to the plant life as well. The trees grew larger, the bushes more lush, and countless ether plants, some that would have driven most Beasters mad with greed, bloomed closer to the cloud-piercing tree.

  Traces of Essence.

  Volix spoke, offering no further explanation.

  The pull intensified again, and this time it affected Aureus strongly. The soulshare flickered and pulsed, as though struggling to resist a loss of control. And that was exactly what it was. As the compulsion shifted and deepened, Aureus’ control over himself diminished.

  That realization was terrifying.

  I shuddered, my hair standing on end as my gaze drifted back to the cloud-piercing tree. Only a few kilometers separated us from it now, yet I wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave. The rational part of my mind screamed that a tree of this size shouldn’t exist. How was it possible that no one knew about it?

  A tree with a trunk the size of an entire Bastion district was impossible to miss, let alone one that reached several kilometers into the sky. As far as I was concerned, even its smallest branches were larger than the flying ship had been.

  And yet, it had gone unnoticed.

  The reason revealed itself before my eyes. The tree pierced the clouds, dispersing them and unveiling streaks of golden motes woven through the canopy. The motes spread outward across the sky…and then stopped. A ripple in the surrounding space caught my attention, but it wasn’t until we were only a few kilometers from the tree’s base that I finally saw it.

  A structure resembling the Bastion’s dome.

  Unlike the domes surrounding the Bastions, this one was completely invisible. I only caught fleeting glimpses of it as the golden motes distorted the space around them. As little as I knew about domes, invisible structures, or even the motes themselves, I was certain of one thing.

  My initial assessment had been correct.

  A prison or a sanctuary.

  This place was one of the two, if not both.