THE STORY CONTINUES.
Chapter — The Sound That Should Not Exist
The furnace roared.
Firelight danced across the walls of the hidden base as Armin worked in silence, sweat tracing paths down his scarred back. Metal rang against metal—raw, imperfect, alive. He had built the furnace himself from salvaged stone and broken mechanisms, reshaping scraps into something that could endure heat no human tool should.
The youngsters stood at a distance, watching.
"This metal," Armin said without turning, hammer striking again, "isn't from your world. It won't break easily. But strength alone is meaningless."
Sparks burst outward like dying stars.
"I can enhance weapons," he continued, voice calm but heavy. "Runes.
Reinforcement. Memory carving. I've studied the books in your base library—old carving techniques, symbolic bindings."
He paused.
"But it's useless without magic."
The fire crackled.
"I can't use mana here. No qi either."
Their hope wavered.
"There is a way," Armin added quietly.
"Dangerous. Painful. Not everyone survives it."
Silence fell.
He placed the unfinished blade aside and straightened, eyes sharp.
"But before that… it's time for a hunt."
Day came without sunlight.
The town walls loomed beneath the endless moon-scarred sky as Armin stood at the border, wind tugging at his cloak. In his hands rested a magical spyglass—an old artifact Yorin had gifted him with a half-serious warning.
"In the right hands, it shows the future for a moment,"
"In the wrong ones… things meant to stay unseen."
Armin lifted it.
The lens shimmered.
First—the swamp.
Endless black water. Still. Watching.
Then—the village.
The abandoned one.
The place where Arkhel should have died.
The image trembled.
And then—
A sound.
Not the bell.
A flute.
Low. Hollow. Wrong.
Armin's breath caught.
From the village, black-purple smoke began to rise, thick and coiling like something alive. It twisted upward, folding in on itself, and from within it—
The shape formed.
That monster.
The one that killed Leon.
The one that should not exist anymore.
Its body was incomplete, distorted, yet unmistakable. Cracks of dark light ran across it like wounds that never healed.
Slowly, deliberately, it lifted its head.
And stared directly at Armin.
The spyglass burned in his hands.
The creature raised a finger.
Pointed.
At him.
Something invisible struck Armin's chest.
Not force.
Not magic.
Intent.
His heart seized as if pierced by a frozen blade. His vision shattered into fragments—Leon's fading smile, the centaurs' last promise, the bell, the scream, the silence.
The spyglass slipped from his grasp.
Armin collapsed.
The moon above did not move.
The flute continued to play.
And somewhere between worlds, something had found him again.
TO BE CONTINUED.