There was no sky here.
No ground. No sun. No gravity. Just a realm of infinite twilight.
Yuji Kazehaya floated through the darkness, not with his body but with his soul. His physical form lay unconscious in the real world, but his mind had been pulled into something greater—a mental plane where power and identity took shape.
And there, in the heart of this otherworldly void, she appeared.
Ara.
She did not walk. She simply arrived.
A woman of divine design, cloaked in luminous green flames. Her body shimmered with emerald light, like jade sculpted by gods. Her hair flowed behind her like threads of glowing vines, swaying despite the still air. Each step she took left trails of green petals that faded into motes of light.
Yuji felt it immediately.
She wasn't just powerful. She was nature given form.
She stopped ten feet before him. Though she said nothing, her presence wrapped around Yuji like the embrace of an entire forest.
Before he could speak, the air tore open beside him.
Two more entities emerged.
His Wind Element stepped forth, a tall, noble figure draped in flowing silver robes. His long hair moved like clouds caught in a storm. His eyes were endless blue, and wind circled his arms like loyal hounds. He held his head high—proud, swift, and sharp.
Beside him, the Dark Element crawled from a pool of shadows. A figure forged from nightmare, its body was a patchwork of armor and liquid shadow. Eyes that burned with violet flame. Its aura was crushing—hateful, cold, filled with quiet screams.
Yuji gasped. "Both of you..."
The two figures turned to Ara.
> "Who are you?" the Wind Element asked, voice distant, like wind through a canyon.
> "You do not belong here," growled the Dark Element, shadows twisting behind him like a cape.
Ara said nothing. She merely raised one hand.
The entire realm shuddered.
With a single finger lifted, a pulse of energy erupted from her, invisible but absolute.
BOOM.
Wind and Dark dropped to their knees.
The space around them warped, pressure rising like a mountain pressed upon their shoulders. The void cracked under the weight of her anti-gravity manipulation—a mythical, long-lost technique spoken of in ancient scrolls.
Yuji staggered, too, feeling a fraction of her pressure.
> "What... what is this power?" he gasped, his mental form shaking.
Ara turned, her eyes glowing brighter than any sun, and focused on the Dark Element.
Then she vanished.
And reappeared inches from his face.
SLAM!
She grabbed him by the throat and lifted the Dark Element like a child.
> "You thrive on fear and chaos," she said coldly. "But you are not a god."
She hurled him across the void.
The shadow being crashed into a pillar of thought, dissolving into smoke.
She turned to the Wind Element, who stared in stunned silence.
> "And you... You are too proud to grow. Too swift to listen."
She let go of the anti-gravity pulse, and the Wind Element crumpled.
Yuji watched in awe, his mind screaming, body convulsing in the real world.
Ara approached him. Slowly. Each step echoed through his bones.
> "In the Flame World," she began, "mortals cultivate their element to produce fire. Ice becomes Ice Flame. Lightning births Thunder Flame. Fire yields fire flame
She raised her hand.
A flame bloomed above it—green, but not hot.
The fire danced like leaves in the breeze. It shimmered with life, not destruction. Each flicker was a heartbeat, each spark a breath.
> "But there are thousands of Mythical Flames in this world. Ancient. Divine. And they are not born from elements... but from truths."
Symbols floated above her:
VENOM. NATURE. LIGHT.
> "Three categories. Three pillars."
Yuji's mouth parted. "You... You're a Nature Flame?"
She nodded.
> "I am the Green Flame. The source of forests. The balance between decay and life. The judge of harmony. I have burned longer than most kingdoms have existed."
Yuji could barely stand.
> "Why... why are you inside me?"
Ara paused.
> "Because you are unstable. Torn between light and shadow. But you carry the seed of potential. You destroy. But you also save. That duality... intrigued me."
Yuji dropped to his knees, eyes wide.
> "So... I can become your successor?"
She gave a gentle nod.
> "Yes. But it will not be easy."
Then, cracks formed along her arm.
Her form dimmed.
> "This realm... is not ready. Your mind is not strong enough to contain me. And I..."
She clutched her chest. Her divine aura began to flicker.
> "I am still healing."
Yuji shouted, "Wait! I still have questions! What about the eye? The tattoo? The--"
Ara smiled gently. Not with warmth.
But with respect.
> "Survive. Grow. When you face death again... I will return."
With that, her body dissolved into a storm of emerald fireflies.
Yuji felt the realm collapsing.
The Wind Element and Dark Element stared at him—silent now, observing.
The green flame scattered.
---
Yuji awoke.
His body lay half-buried at the cave's edge. Daylight burned his vision. His skin felt like it had been flayed. His lips cracked.
> EB: 4.2
His ring barely flickered.
He groaned, reaching for his satchel. Pulled out a Blue Medicine Potion with shaking hands.
Uncorked.
Drank.
The icy liquid rushed down his throat like salvation. It hurt at first—his nerves sparking from the potion's surge. But soon, the warmth of healing began.
His vision sharpened. The pain dulled.
Yuji forced himself up.
Wounds half-healed, bones still cracked, but mind intact.
> Day 3 of the Grand Treasure Hunt had begun.
But something had changed inside him.
He wasn't just the Wind and Dark anymore.
He had touched something older.
Something green.
---
The memory was not his. The pain was.
Yuji rose—slow, unsteady—as if the earth itself pulled against his bones.
His body screamed in silence, each movement a war,
each breath a whisper of agony wrapped in blood.
He staggered toward the mouth of the cave,
light bleeding into shadow as the world spun.
His knees trembled beneath the weight of invisible chains.
And still… he moved.
The wind outside kissed his broken frame with cruel softness,
carrying the scent of ash, of moss, of things that once lived.
His ADM Ring glowed faintly—
a fragile glimmer pulsing blue.
A potion.
No thoughts. No hesitation.
He pressed it to his lips like prayer and drank.
Cool. Sharp. It fell like starlight into his veins,
racing through torn flesh, stitching wounds with energy.
Relief came like a wave—
then broke.
The world faltered.
Yuji's hands gripped nothing.
His eyes widened… and blurred.
What he saw next—
was not his own.
It was not the forest. Not the cave.
Not his pain.
It was her.
Green fire.
A temple drowned in time.
The sound of rain falling upward.
A girl's scream muffled by silence.
Flashes—
too vivid to be dream,
too foreign to be memory.
And yet…
his soul shook as if it knew.
Ara.
The green flames weren't just power.
They were a story.
A warning.
And somehow…
a part of him
---
The Goddess of Verdant Flame
Far beyond the present, beyond time's current flow, lay a memory wrapped in roots and smoke. Ara's memory.
It began in a world where emerald forests stretched beyond the horizon, thick and divine, ruled by a kingdom no longer found in any living map. In this forgotten land, kingdoms did not rule nature—they begged for its mercy. The Verdant Empire, it was once called. And within it, there existed a being unmatched in her command of elemental purity.
Ara.
The Green Flame.
She was not born. She was manifested.
Born of the first leaf, the first river, the first storm. A flame not of destruction, but of balance. She didn't conquer by razing her enemies, but by overwhelming them with growth and decay, rebirth and wither, poison and healing. She was the equilibrium of life. And in the heart of her forested citadel, she held a scroll.
The Verdant Scroll.
Written in a language older than spirit tongues, it held the secret to bending nature's code itself—to create forests from breath, to summon beasts from air, to manipulate the genetic force of elemental beings. It was her burden, her legacy. And it was the reason kings waged war against her.
On the eve of the War of the Crowned Thorns, the forest groaned with tension. Thousands of soldiers, some riding molten beasts, some glowing with radiant flames, others surrounded by howling lightning, gathered on the borders of her kingdom. Ten sovereigns from the Flame World had formed a coalition. Their greed made them allies. Each of them desired Ara's scroll, not for balance, but to tip the scales of their power.
They feared her. So they brought armies.
And Ara stood alone.
But she was never truly alone.
From her outstretched hand, a single call echoed across the wind. It wasn't a scream. It was a pulse. A resonance.
Nature answered.
Trees awakened. Their roots tore through mountains. Their trunks moved like giants. Her beasts—Verdant Ones—descended from hidden groves. Panthers cloaked in vines. Hawks made of bark and thorns. Spiders that could cast spores of sleep. All marched behind her, beside her, not as tools, but as family.
She descended upon the battlefield wielding her sword, "Viridion," forged not with flame but from the World Tree's deepest root. One swing of that blade could summon a storm of spores that blinded armies. Her cloak billowed, woven of grass and silk, immune to flame and blessed by time.
And so began the legendary battle.
The sky turned green with flame.
Soldiers screamed. Earth shattered. Lightning crashed. Ara, like a moving temple, danced through it all. She summoned entire groves mid-air to redirect fireballs. She summoned vines to drag generals into the soil. Her sword clashed with four kings at once.
Still, she did not fall.
But betrayal doesn't come from armies.
It comes from trust.
And her trust had been stolen by a man named Silas Reign.
He had arrived weeks before the war. A scholar, he claimed. A refugee. He praised her flame, admired her control, learned her teachings. He knelt beside her as she treated sick creatures, smiled when she meditated near her ancient tree.
And she trusted him.
Even allowed him near the Verdant Scroll.
During the height of the battle, as Ara prepared a sealing technique that would have trapped the coalition's armies in eternal roots, she felt the pain.
Steel.
Through her back.
Her body spasmed. The scroll fell from her hand.
She turned slowly, eyes wide with disbelief.
Silas.
His eyes no longer held curiosity. Only ambition. The green flames reflected in his black irises as he smirked.
"You have something... too great for one heart to hold."
He twisted the blade.
Her breath left her.
Everything slowed.
The battlefield echoed with the screams of her beasts.
Ara collapsed.
But she didn't weep.
Instead, she smiled.
Even as blood spilled from her mouth, she whispered one last incantation. The words were old, almost forgotten.
She raised her hands, and the sky cracked.
A burst of emerald fire rose from her core.
"If I must fall to protect what is sacred..."
The ground shook.
"...then let me burn for them."
Her body ignited in a swirling maelstrom of green flame.
A self-destruction technique known only to the Ancient Flame Bearers.
The entire forest burst into divine fire.
Silas screamed, his robes burning, half his face disfigured.
But he survived.
Barely.
The scroll was destroyed. Her temple reduced to ash. Her beasts fled to distant worlds.
But her spirit?
It didn't vanish.
The Green Flame became formless. It roamed, hidden, broken.
For one hundred years.
Waiting.
Searching.
Until now.
Until Yuji.
---
And as that memory faded into silence, back in the mindscape, the remnants of Ara's soul dimmed.
Her green flames flickered low.
She whispered one last sentence:
"I chose you not because I want to conquer you, but because your soul refused to become evil
Then she disappeared.
Sleeping.
Recovering.
But the legend had returned.
And with it—the world would change.
---
The Bound Book
Far from the desert caves, beyond the reach of sunlight and storms, deep beneath a ruined citadel shrouded in illusions, there stood a forgotten sanctuary.
Its walls were black stone etched with ancient symbols, glowing faintly red—symbols that even time refused to erase. This was no ordinary stronghold. It was the heart of the Shadowbound Society, and only one man had the authority to walk into its innermost sanctum unannounced.
Silas Reign.
The air around him shimmered as he stepped forward, long coat brushing the dustless floor, his boots making no sound. His presence distorted the temperature itself—shadows thickened, and the torches along the corridor flickered violently in their sconces, despite the absence of wind.
He passed two colossal doors of obsidian. They opened for him—not with mechanisms, but with fear.
Inside, ten figures waited.
The Commanders of the Shadowbound Society, each a master of their own forbidden art, clad in dark robes with silver insignias etched into their shoulders. Each one powerful enough to destroy entire cities alone. But none of them spoke.
Not until Silas stepped into the center of the round chamber.
A voice broke the silence. Raspy. Old. From the left.
> "Silas… what happened out there?"
Silas didn't answer at first. He removed his gloves slowly and looked at his fingers. They shimmered with a strange, green-tinted residue. Like essence that didn't belong to this era.
> "The balance has shifted," he said quietly.
Another commander leaned forward, frowning beneath his silver mask.
> "Shifted how?"
Silas raised his eyes—those void-black irises glowing faintly with the power of thousands of souls consumed.
> "A Nature Flame has awakened."
Murmurs erupted around the chamber. One woman gasped audibly.
> "Impossible. Those spirits were wiped out during the Sky Reign War. You made sure of it."
Silas smiled, lips thin, sharp like a blade unsheathed.
> "So I thought."
He raised a hand, and the center of the chamber lit up with a projection—green flame swirling in a human silhouette. Ara's silhouette. Her energy pulsed unnaturally vibrant, as if she was beyond death, but not alive.
> "The Green Flame has chosen a successor."
> "Who?" a commander hissed. "A human?"
Silas didn't answer with words. He waved his hand, and Yuji's image appeared.
Battle-scarred. Eyes half-closed. The 3rd Eye faintly glowing.
> "He survived the Illusion Serpent. And Ara's first judgment."
> "No one should've even made it to that chamber," muttered the eldest commander. "That domain was sealed off centuries ago."
Silas turned, his coat snapping behind him.
> "And yet… he's alive."
He began walking again—past them, deeper into the sanctuary. The ten commanders followed, saying nothing more. They all knew what came next.
Deep beneath the Shadowbound chamber was a place even most of the Society never saw.
The Bound Vault.
A gate carved with roots, bones, and ancient glyphs stood before them—unmoving for generations. Silas stepped forward, extended his palm, and whispered in a forgotten tongue.
> "Ver'haem Noradim…"
The roots pulsed. The glyphs glowed. And the gate opened with a creaking groan that echoed like a scream through the abyss below.
Within the vault was a single pedestal. Upon it lay an obsidian-bound book—its cover chained shut by silver wrappings, marked with a red seal resembling a cracked eye.
Silas reached for it.
The book resisted.
But only for a second.
Then it surrendered—just as all things did, eventually.
The book flew open.
Pages fluttered, runes glowing across their surfaces, shifting with the windless air. Silas flipped through until he reached a page marked not in ink, but in flame.
A drawing.
A woman with vine-like hair and emerald eyes.
Ara.
Beneath the sketch, an inscription:
> "She who commands the forest shall return once the world forgets her name. Her flame shall choose another—and the balance shall fall."
Silas closed the book.
> "She's not just a relic," he murmured. "She was the key. All this time…"
The eldest commander stepped beside him.
> "What do we do now?"
Silas's gaze narrowed.
> "We let the boy grow."
> "Why?"
> "Because," Silas said coldly, "if Ara chose him… she will appear again. Fully. Reborn. And when she does, I'll finish what I started."
The air thickened.
The flame on the page flickered—as if it heard him.
> "Yuji Kazehaya," Silas said slowly, "the Green Flame has chosen you. But the shadow still follows."
He touched the page again.
And it burned.
The book screamed in an ancient voice.
And the Bound Vault sealed itself shut once more.
---
End of Chapter 20