The sirens wailed like screams torn from the throat of the dying world.
Red lights strobed violently through Sector 454, painting the soldiers' faces with urgency and dread. Yuji's heart pounded in his chest as the alarm's echo rattled his bones. Within moments, every soldier stood in the central gathering ground, eyes fixed on the command tower.
Commander Xian stood tall above them, eyes hard, voice cold.
"This is not a drill."
The words were like bullets.
He clicked a switch, and the giant hologram flickered to life above them. Five nations appeared on the map.
"These are the pillars of our world," Xian began, gesturing sharply. "Zeyrus—our home. Wind and Ice. The defenders of balance."
The screen shifted to show four more nations.
"Srenya—Fire and Lightning. Marina—Water and Poison. Kaidu—Earth and Crystal. And Verin... the land of shadows. The origin of our nightmare."
Whispers stirred. Yuji's brows furrowed.
"From Verin," Xian continued grimly, "come the Darkians. Not humans. Not soldiers. Monsters in human shape. Entities born from the corrupted veins and the forbidden Dark Element."
The image zoomed in on Sector 3—smoke rose, dots flashing.
"Sector 3 is under attack by thirty Darkians. Thirty is enough to kill hundreds. They've slaughtered our outer squads. They've begun stealing our EBs. This isn't just an invasion. It's theft. It's declaration."
He paused.
"All squads deploy. Now."
---
The Battle of Sector 3
The red alarm continued to blare like a death bell over Sector 3. Explosions rang out, echoing through the tall crystalline towers of the Zeyrus outpost, now bathed in flames and ruin.
Darkians had arrived.
Thirty of them. Entity-like devils from Verin—the nation of shadow and ruin—stood tall across the horizon. Their bodies, once human, were now consumed by the Dark Element, cloaked in an ever-shifting veil of pitch-black fog. Their limbs flickered like smoke, and in their hands grew weapons formed of living shadow—blades, whips, spears—morphing by the second.
Zeyrus soldiers fought back, unleashing Wind and Ice attacks in a coordinated barrage.
But nothing landed cleanly.
The Darkians moved like nightmares, their bodies turning intangible mid-attack. Spells phased through them. Ice shattered against empty air. The Wind itself bent around their shadow-formed skin.
Yuji Kazehaya stood in stunned silence, his boots scraping against cracked stone. His black ADM Gear ring vibrated with tension, but no ability came. His heartbeat thundered. Around him, chaos bloomed like fire.
"Yuji! Move!" Sagai yelled, launching a bolt of lightning at a charging Darkian. The attack struck, but the creature dispersed like fog, reforming behind him with a hiss.
Before it could strike, Hakiru slammed his palms to the ground. Spikes of jagged ice exploded from below, piercing through the Darkian's legs. For a moment, it twitched, stunned.
"Go!" Hakiru barked.
Yuji nodded and ran toward a nearby crumbling structure. Inside, a family of civilians huddled, trapped.
A screech echoed.
One of the Darkians spotted them.
It sprinted with insane speed, shadow blades erupting from its arms.
Yuji's instincts screamed. He jumped in front of the civilians, raising both hands.
Nothing.
Wind didn't answer.
But his body moved.
He kicked over a broken metal support beam and rolled it forward. Dust exploded. The Darkian's strike missed by inches, slashing through air.
Yuji tackled the family out of the way, panting, sweating, terrified.
"Get out through the back!" he shouted.
They ran. He stood there, breathing hard.
Helpless again.
Nearby, Aika moved like a demon.
Her blade shimmered with teal wind energy as she zipped between enemies. A slash to the right—an enemy's neck split open. A burst of wind behind her—she vanished and reappeared mid-air, striking downward with both feet.
Boom.
She landed, cracking the earth, her sword spinning into a spiral slash. Two more Darkians were cleaved in half, their bodies evaporating into shadowy smoke.
Then—
A scream.
Aika turned just in time to see another Darkian launch a whip-like blade of shadow. She ducked—
Too late.
The blade slashed across her thigh and impaled deep into her leg.
"AAGH!!" she screamed, collapsing.
Shadow tendrils snaked from the weapon into her wound, spreading a black, pulsing poison. Her sword clattered to the ground.
"Aika!!" Yuji yelled.
Before the creature could finish her—
Lightning.
BOOM.
Sagai appeared in a streak of yellow light, arms glowing, lightning arching from his entire body. He tackled the Darkian with a lightning-infused fist to the face.
It shrieked, disintegrating on impact.
Hakiru followed a breath later, ice swirling in his wake. He kneeled beside Aika and began sealing the wound with frozen pressure. Her breathing was sharp, uneven.
"It's shadow poison," Hakiru muttered. "This is bad."
Sagai's grin faltered. "We need that red potion. Fast."
Above them, the sky split open.
From the central vein tower, where EB energy was usually stored and refined, three Darkians emerged—one holding a glowing Core Map.
"They're stealing our tactical network!" Hakiru shouted.
Yuji looked up in horror.
The Darkian hovered in mid-air, black wings formed from fog spread wide. In its left hand was the Core Map—Zeyrus's visual guide to all 50 veins and their energy flow. In its right, a black crystal—the Core EB Absorber, designed to drain energy directly from veins.
And it was glowing red-hot.
"No…" Yuji whispered.
The Darkian slammed the crystal into the tower.
VRRRMMMMM—!!
The entire tower pulsed. A shockwave of dark energy burst out.
EBs were being drained. Faster than any Zeyrus team could stop.
Streams of light, once blue, turned black, sucked upward into the crystal like lifeblood. The Core beneath them was being drained.
"We're losing everything!" a soldier screamed.
Dozens of soldiers rushed the tower, spells flying.
The three Darkians defending it simply vanished into smoke, rematerialized mid-air, and decimated the front line with waves of dark wind.
One by one, Zeyrus soldiers fell. Screaming. Bleeding.
Yuji wanted to scream too—but his voice didn't come.
He saw a child again—crying in the street.
He ran, pulled the boy into his arms, and dove as a beam of shadow seared through the air where they'd stood.
"GO!" he told the boy. "RUN!!"
And the boy ran.
Yuji stood slowly. His hands were trembling. Not from fear—
But rage.
He looked down at his ADM Gear ring.
It was glowing faintly.
Not bright. Not active.
But it pulsed… like it was watching.
Like it was waiting.
The Darkians, their mission complete, retreated with the map and the EB crystal, disappearing into a tunnel of shadows as quickly as they came.
The silence left behind was colder than death.
---
BACK TO SECTOR 454
The quiet inside the healing chamber of Sector 454 was unbearable.
Gone was the chaos of Sector 3, but what remained was the soft moaning of pain, the sharp scent of medicinal herbs, and the frantic whispers of healers moving around Aika Miyawaki's motionless body.
She lay on a white cot, her skin pale, her breaths shallow. Her leg, the one stabbed by the Darkian's shadow blade, was wrapped in multiple layers of freezing runes and crystal salves, yet the black veins spreading from the wound pulsed with a sinister light.
"She's resisting it," one healer said, holding a glowing blue orb over her leg. "But the poison's sinking deeper."
"Keep the blood from clotting. If it reaches her spine, she's gone," another muttered.
Yuji stood at the entrance, fists clenched. His jaw trembled as he watched Aika groan in agony, trying to move—but failing. Her face was flushed, drenched in sweat. Her sword lay next to the bed, untouched, powerless.
"Damn it…" Yuji whispered. "I should've done more."
Behind him, footsteps echoed.
Commander Xian entered, his cloak trailing behind like a shadow of war. His expression was grim, harsher than usual.
"She doesn't have long."
Hakiru and Sagai stood beside Yuji, both tense, their faces grave.
"We'll find a way," Sagai said softly.
The Commander nodded once, then turned his back to them and walked toward the war map mounted on the wall.
"There are three types of healing potions across the elemental world," he began, tone sharp and measured. "Pink Potions, made from herbal alchemy—common, weak, used for surface wounds. Blue Potions, rarer—used for internal damage and energy restoration. Then there's Red…"
He tapped a section of the map glowing faintly with crimson.
"Red Potions are nearly myth. Only a few remain in recorded history. And the only way to obtain one—"
He turned, eyes like steel.
"—is to kill the beast known as Vernakar, a cursed predator from the Forbidden Forest."
The name alone made Hakiru stiffen.
"I've heard of it," he said. "They say even 4-star ADM users fear it."
Xian nodded. "Because they should."
The hologram above the map shifted, showing a twisted forest near the southern cliffs of Zeyrus—thick black trees rising like claws, fog choking the terrain.
"The Forbidden Forest is older than any nation. Filled with corrupted energy, rogue creatures, unstable Veins… and Vernakar. That beast was once part of the Elemental Trials hundreds of years ago, but it escaped. No team has hunted it since."
Yuji stepped forward. "We'll go."
"You don't even know what you're facing," Xian snapped. "That forest is alive. It moves, it whispers, it tries to consume intruders. And if Vernakar doesn't kill you, the forest might."
"We don't care," Sagai said, eyes hard. "We're not letting Aika die."
The Commander paused—then nodded.
"You have five days," he said. "Her body will collapse if the shadow poison isn't neutralized by then."
He handed them a satchel of ten EBs each.
"Charge your ADM Gear rings. If the fight with Vernakar takes too long, you'll run out of power. And no reinforcements are coming."
Hakiru blinked. "Why?"
Xian's face darkened.
"Because Sector 3 is in ruins. The rest of Zeyrus is on emergency lockdown. We've lost more lives today than in the last five years. All other units are tasked with protecting the remaining Veins and rebuilding what we can. You three are on your own."
Yuji looked at his ADM ring, then at Aika, who stirred in her sleep, whispering in pain.
He nodded.
"We'll return with the Red Potion. No matter what it takes."
The Commander led them outside. Three horses—battle-trained, armored, and scarred—stood ready near the gate.
He gripped Yuji's shoulder once.
"If you die… no one's coming to save you. Go."
Yuji climbed onto his steed.
Sagai and Hakiru followed.
With one last glance at Sector 454, they rode off toward the Forbidden Forest.
END OF CHAPTER 7