Flexo had just finished telling the most painful part of his family's story—the devastating end of the rebellion—when his mother's desperate voice suddenly called out from outside the hut.
"FLEXO! HELP ME!"
He paused instantly, the tragic tale hanging mid-air, replaced by a sudden, sharp fear. He shot out of his chair, his body snapping taut, and rushed outside, all traces of the cheerful narrator gone.
Mama Rubberon was near the small, tethered herd of Cattle—but something was horribly wrong. The powerful, usually docile animals were trembling violently, their large bodies shuddering. They were coughing, a wet, rattling sound, and dark, viscous blood dripped steadily from their mouths onto the black sands.
Elios and Gracia ran out of the doorway behind him, their minds reeling from the heavy history they had just heard. They froze, staring at the sickening scene.
"Is this because of the radiation?" Elios asked fearfully, the word connecting instantly in his mind to the death of Flexo's brother, Tyber.
Mama Rubberon shook her head wildly, her face a mask of profound panic. "No, no… the terrible radiation faded long ago. This is new. This is different… This must be something else…"
Gracia, seeing the animals suffering, quickly moved everyone aside. She closed her eyes, placing her trembling hands gently on the flank of one of the dying cattle. Unlike the others, Gracia possessed not only the rare ability to transform but also the unique, innate gift of communicating with animals—a power born from her family's closeness to the living energy of Mynthara.
She focused, silencing the chaos around her. She whispered softly, her mind reaching out to the creature, "What's hurting you? Tell me what this is."
The cow's voice echoed weakly in her mind, a high-pitched, desperate plea, trembling with pain and confusion.
"It's… the poison… from the Black Stone…"
Gracia gasped aloud, retracting her hands as if burned. "Black Stone?" she repeated, stunned, her own breathing growing shallow as she tried to process the answer. The term was ancient, whispered only in tales of the Savior's deepest evils.
The cow cried out one final, terrible time, its voice a mental shriek that nearly shattered Gracia's concentration: "We're all… going to die! It's spreading! Run!"
"What?!" Gracia exclaimed, the shock and pain overwhelming her—just before she began coughing violently herself. The sudden, agonizing spasms sent warm, dark blood spraying from her lips and onto the ground.
Elios's heart stopped, slamming against his ribs in sharp, painful beats of absolute horror. Flexo froze completely, his rubbery body rigid, unable to believe the sickness had attacked the beautiful woman he was so desperate to impress.
Gracia's body shook violently, seized by the cough. Blood filled her mouth and she collapsed onto her hands and knees.
She lifted her head, her eyes wide and fixed on Elios. She gasped the words out, wet with blood: "Elios!… the Black Stone…!" and then she succumbed, falling heavily to the ground, unconscious.
Mama Rubberon's face, which had endured the loss of a son and the tyranny of the Savior, finally turned a sickly, ashen white. Suddenly, the impossible mystery of the animals' death and Gracia's collapse clicked into terrifying focus.
Her voice, usually strong, was nothing but a fragile, heartbroken whisper. "The Royal Gate… you two climbed it, didn't you?"
Elios's eyes widened, the guilt hitting him like a physical blow. He didn't need to answer. His silence was his confession.
In a flash of horrifying clarity, he remembered—the rough, dark stones embedded along the colossal surface of the Royal Gate. He and Gracia had scaled them out of curiosity, driven by their desperation and a failure to heed Flexo's earlier, frantic warning.
Those innocuous "decorations" were not just stones.
They were Black Stones—the cursed, dark fragments of the Savior's own twisted magic, specially sealed within the Gate to instantly prevent any infiltration. The curse of the Black Stones was terrifying in its silent efficiency.
Once activated by contact or even close proximity, they released a potent, invisible energy that spread through the very air within a radius of three meters. Even breathing near the source meant rapid, agonizing death. The Royal Gate itself was built mostly of these stones, making it not just a fortress, but a boundary of death.
Animals were the most vulnerable to the raw Aetheric corruption—which was why the entire herd of cattle on the Rubberon farm began dying one by one, screaming their final, terrified warnings into Gracia's mind.
Flexo, shaking off his shock, acted on instinct. He caught Gracia's falling body with his rubber arms, cradling her head and trying desperately to keep her steady. He looked around wildly for help that wasn't there.
"SOMEONE CALL THE MEDICAL TEAM! Anyone!" he shouted, the grief and desperation straining his voice—just before a terrible pain shot through his own chest, and thick, dark blood poured violently from his mouth, nose, and ears. The sheer speed of the curse was unbelievable.
He gently placed Gracia's limp body down and collapsed beside her, his long, usually springy limbs twitching uncontrollably.
"Flexo!" Elios yelled, the sound tearing from his throat, a raw mixture of panic and self-loathing.
Gracia, weak and trembling on the ground, reached out a hand. Her eyes, filled with blood and pain, looked straight at Elios. "Elios… help… me…"
Her hand slipped away, falling limply onto the black sand.
Elios's world collapsed into a ringing silence, all sound muted by the horror.
He finally understood the full scope of the tragedy. The curse had spread. His reckless curiosity, his desperate, narrow-sighted search for clues about his father, had blinded him to the simplest danger. He had become a silent carrier of death.
Now, because of him—the outsider—the kindest family in Mynthara had been exposed. The airborne infection had already transferred during dinner, earlier that night, passing unknowingly from the infected Elios and Gracia to the Rubberon family. And since Gracia's powers linked her so closely to animals, the poison had spread to every living creature on the farm.
Elios fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands as tears and snot poured down. He raised his fist and punched his head repeatedly, the pain barely registering over the screaming guilt in his soul. "It's my fault! It's all my fault!"
But Mama Rubberon, even as blood seeped from her own trembling lips, grabbed his shoulder. Her voice was strong despite the gurgle in her throat. "No! This isn't the time for guilt—we need help! We need a healer!"
She stumbled out of the house, desperate and gasping for air, leaving the three young people bleeding on the floor.
As she staggered down the dusty path, fighting to keep upright, her eyes blurred. Then, she saw a figure approaching—a young teenager clad in thick, powerful-looking armor, carrying a sword that gleamed with cold fury in the dying light.
His eyes, beneath the helm, burned with a terrifying, single-minded vengeance.
It was TITAN—the only son of the Brave Warrior who had fought the Giant and sacrificed his life at the Royal Gate for the sake of the Gracia.
Titan's heart was filled with corrosive rage toward Gracia when he heard the news of his father's futile death. He had come here for a confrontation, an outpouring of his grief and anger.
But the moment he saw Mama Rubberon staggering toward him, blood staining her lips and her gown, his anger melted instantly into absolute shock. The sight of such pure agony in an elder completely shattered his concentration.
He rushed forward and caught her before she could collapse. "What happened?!" he demanded, his training taking over.
Barely able to speak between her ragged, shallow breaths, Mama Rubberon explained everything—from the cursed Black Stones to the poisoned cattle and the collapsed youth.
Titan's face hardened beneath his helm. His young soldier's mind registered the seriousness instantly.
He lifted her carefully in his arms and ran toward the Rubberon house. When they arrived, he froze again, the sight more shocking than the last.
Elios, Gracia, and Flexo lay on the floor, bleeding from every orifice and gasping for the rapidly diminishing air. The entire house felt heavy, as if the air itself was thick with the invisible poison of the curse.
Titan's eyes widened with sudden, terrifying realization. "This… this is no ordinary illness…"
He clenched his armored fist around his sword hilt, realizing the lethal weight of the conflict he had walked into. This wasn't just a sickness. It was the direct consequence of the Savior's power—the return of the lethal, unseen curse of the Black Stones—and it had arrived to claim more lives.