Chapter 39—Great Animus of the Mountain

The forest had grown still. Too still.

Even with four corrupted ogres sprawled lifeless at their feet, the air did not lighten. Instead, it thickened, cloying, as though the trees themselves were holding their breath.

Raiden wiped ichor from his cheek with the back of his sleeve. His lungs burned, his sword hand trembled. But his eyes—his eyes never left the hulking stone shape rising ahead through the canopy.

It loomed like a mountain that had sprouted legs and slumped back into slumber. A vast stone formation, its ridges curled and jagged, its surface webbed with veins of faint red glow. And it breathed—slow, steady heaves, each inhalation pulling the forest floor inward, each exhalation rattling branches and scattering leaves.

Lodor.

The Great Animus of the Mountain.

Yuka’s voice cut the silence. “That is no formation.” She lowered her twin blades, though they still glimmered with frost. “I found it this morning. Thought it some cursed monument until the ground shuddered with its breath.”

She wiped ichor from her jaw, her voice hardening. “My team tried to strike it. We never reached it. The beasts… tore through us before we came within ten paces. I alone made it back.”

The words struck Raiden like stones, but Yuka’s eyes showed no grief—only the iron frost of a warrior who had already buried her sorrow.

Randall lowered his bow, swallowing hard. “And we’re walking toward it?”

“We have to,” Raiden said quietly. His hand curled tighter around his sword hilt. “If it wakes fully, the Academy won’t stand.”

Ophelin grunted. “Then we cut it down before it stirs.”

“Easier said than done,” Liana murmured, her gaze fixed on the glowing veins pulsing across the stone beast’s back.

Lynda stepped closer, her brow furrowed in determination though her hands still trembled faintly from the spells she had woven. “We can’t let this corruption spread further. If Shelen was right, this is what she meant. This is what we’re here for.”

Raiden looked at them—Randall, arrow still trembling on its string; Ophelin, shield cracked but lifted high; Tadari, his blade stained but steady; Liana, staff aglow; Lynda, her wards dim but still ready; and Yuka, blades already gleaming cold light.

“We stand together,” Raiden said. His own voice surprised him—quiet but resolute. “That’s the only way.”

The earth groaned.

A fissure split along the stone formation’s flank. Dust and debris rained down as the entire mass shifted, rising inch by inch, boulder upon boulder grinding into motion.

Then came the sound—deep, guttural, older than language.

A roar that shook the marrow of their bones.

The trees bent outward as if bowing before a god.

When the dust cleared, it stood.

Lodor.

A colossal giant of stone and mist, its body a mountain wrenched upright, shoulders broad as fortresses, arms like pillars. Its head bore no face, only a jagged crown of horns, and from its back poured streams of black vapor that seeped into the forest, corrupting all it touched.

Its eyes opened at last—two pits of molten crimson, searing against the night.

The Great Animus of the Mountain was awake.

“Positions!” Raiden’s voice cracked across the clearing.

Ophelin and Randall flanked left, shield raised and bowstring taut. Tadari slid into the shadows of the roots, searching for an opening. Liana planted her staff, runes burning bright. Lynda whispered prayers into her palms, her wards spilling into the air like threads of silver light.

Yuka stepped forward without hesitation, her swords crossing before her. Frost coiled around her like a second skin.

Raiden drew a long breath, forcing the storm inside him to still. His visions clawed at the edges of his mind—battlefields, the Legendaire, storms—but he shoved them down. Not yet.

“On me,” he whispered.

And with the next heartbeat, they charged the mountain.

The roar split the world in two.

Lodor rose from the earth like a mountain wrenched upright. Stones cascaded from its shoulders, roots tore from the soil, black vapor hissed from every crack. The trees bent outward as if cowed by its presence. Its eyes flared open—twin furnaces of molten crimson.

The Great Animus of the Mountain had awakened.

Raiden staggered back, his heart hammering. Even the corrupted ogres had been but shadows before this.

A cry reached him through the quake. “Here!”

Through the veil of dust, figures emerged. Grenald Tarin, bloodied but unbroken, his sword glowing faint blue; Rad, shield splintered but still raised; Weldin, his runes flickering faint against his arm. Behind them, six Olwen elites lay wounded, their armor crushed, their breathing ragged. They had bought time with their bodies, and little else.

Ophelin’s face hardened as she recognized them. “Those are vassals of Olwen’s line,” she muttered. “The best. And even they…”

Grenald thrust his sword downward, driving back a tendril of vapor that had crept toward the wounded. His voice rasped with exhaustion. “We’ve held it here… but not much longer.”

“Then we finish it,” Yuka said, stepping forward, her twin blades igniting in frost.

Raiden’s breath caught. She stood like the woman in his vision—icy grace, twin swords poised like wings. For a heartbeat, the past bled into the present.

Then Lodor moved.

Its arm, thick as a tower, swept through the clearing. Trees shattered like kindling. The ground buckled. Yuka blurred forward, frost spiraling from her blades, carving a path to meet the giant’s swing. She struck with a dancer’s precision, her blades ringing sharp against stone. The impact jarred even Raiden’s teeth, but Yuka held.

“Move!” Raiden shouted, dragging himself back into the present.

Ophelin slammed her shield into the dirt, bracing against the tremors. Randall loosed arrows into fissures of the beast’s joints, shafts bursting into sparks as Liana’s runes ignited them mid-flight. Tadari darted low, steel biting into Lodor’s ankle, sparks hissing where blade met stone. Lynda’s wards rippled outward, deflecting falling debris before it could crush the wounded.

The forest had become a battlefield.

And yet Raiden felt himself pulled elsewhere.

Each strike of his blade, each echo of Lodor’s roar, split his mind in two. One part fought here. The other was dragged into visions—too vivid, too real to be dreams.

The battlefield stretched endless, lit by fire and storm.

He saw them: the Ten Legendaire.

A woman clad in pale frost, blades dancing in arcs of snow and ice. A man of fire hovering above, hurling meteors that burst like suns. A colossus of stone, a serpent of shadow, a stag crowned in lightning. They moved like gods, like storms given flesh.

And he—he was among them. He saw his own hands, no longer hands but talons, arcs of lightning crawling across his skin. The sky answered his call. With a cry like an eagle’s scream, he summoned storms, five—no, six tornadoes twisting across the battlefield, tearing corruption apart by sheer fury.

But even the storm could not hold forever.

From the smoke, a spear came—dark, jagged, dripping with corruption. Too fast to evade. It tore through his chest. Pain seared, but worse was the hunger, the corruption devouring his very soul.

“Alluvare…” he heard someone cry—then a voice, layered over his own, a whisper that had haunted him for lifetimes.

“Alluvare Revantus.” Owner of the spear that impaled him.

The name carved into him like fire.

Raiden gasped, nearly collapsing to his knees. His vision cleared—back to the forest, back to the towering form of Lodor. But the revelation did not fade. It sharpened.

His eyes locked on Lodor’s back. Amid the fissures of stone and mist, a glint. Metal. A blade driven deep into the beast’s core.

The missing piece.

“The sword…” Raiden muttered, his voice trembling. “It’s not binding Lodor. It’s holding him.”

Tadari had seen it too. “There! On its back—some kind of weapon stuck in the stone!”

Randall’s voice cut in, grim. “If it is what I think… then it’s no weapon we’ve known. It’s the seal.”

Raiden’s grip tightened. The visions, the whispers, the storm within him—they all pointed to the same truth.

The Nameless Blade was lodged in Lodor’s flesh, binding him, feeding mana to his corruption, keeping him tethered to this world.

If they wanted to end this… he would have to take it.