Elves lay all around them, unconscious, many even breathing. Lyssari was curled up against a tree, skin pale while her chest rose and fell. With the baby still in her arms, Hera remained slumped against a barely conscious Arwin. Telmar groaned and pushed his weight upright.
"They're alive," Thalanar said quietly. "But they won't wake unless mana is put back into their channels."
Telmar wobbled toward them. "Then... we use ours."
Thalanar turned sharply. "No. We are too weak. You can barely stand."
Telmar lowered his head. "Then who?"
Luenor crouched down beside Hera, putting his hand to her face.
"I... I think mana works strangely for me," he said, his voice low. "I've felt it before. That wave, when it hit me. I didn't black out. I felt... stronger."
Thalanar stared hard at him.
"Explain."
Luenor nodded slowly. "In the tunnels, when the mana wave hit hard, I did not faint or black out. It hurt, yes, but it did not stop me. I feel, even now, like it is still within me."
Thalanar was quick to withdraw his staff and place a hand on Luenor's chest.
He closed his eyes, reached through his senses.
Then he opened his eyes—and stared.
"You..." he said in disbelief, "You have no mana heart."
Luenor blinked. "What?"
Thalanar pulled back, his voice softer now, almost reverent. "Every living creature is born with a mana heart, a core within them where energy binds together, pulses outwards, and grows. Yours... it is not there. It is empty."
Luenor stumbled back. "But... my parents never said anything."
"They couldn't, Thalanar said curtly. "To protect you. Most people that are born without a mana heart do not live through their infancy. But you... your body did something very rare. It absorbed mana externally. Like a vessel. You have no origin... but you can still harness it."
Luenor opened his mouth to say something but no words came through. He felt the truth of it, somehow. What he felt made too much sense. The surges. The lagging fatigue. The glow that lingered sometimes after he was exposed.
"You're a human," Thalanar said, his voice low. "But your body... it functions like a mana storage crystal."
Luenor's lips quivered. "So... what does that mean?"
Thalanar paused. He surveyed the area again—the defeated elves, his daughter, the bleeding children.
He grimaced.
"I have a thought," he said. "But it's... inhumane."
Luenor straightened. "Speak it."
Thalanar exhaled. "The Stone Tyrant's core - it's enormous, dangerous, unstable, but if someone could simply absorb it, then expel the mana out into the environment, they would be able to rejuvenate the unconscious. Or wake up every elf here."
Luenor just stared. "And I am the only one who can do it."
Thalanar did not respond.
He turned his attention to Valdrak who was preoccupied, still gnawing at the creature's side.
The white tiger stopped, sensing he was being watched now. He turned with a growl in his throat, panting blood and bits of bone.
Every single living elf and human had turned to look at him now.
Thalanar approached slowly.
"We will need the core," he said. "To save them. Save my people."
Valdrak stared for a long moment, at least for a tiger. Then he turned his golden eyes to the dead children, to Lyssari, then to the elders who were without breath.
He let out a grumbling sigh.
Then he lunged in, and with one talon sharp teeth, he sunk his jaws into the beast's belly.
He tore through the hard mana crystal, and the charred flesh, and finally with a rip of his neck, he pulled out the glowing mana core, still exposed to flowing heat, flickering black red energy.
He took a few proud steps towards Thalanar, and dropped the core at his feet.
He then turned and went back to finish eating the corpse.
Thalanar looked down at the core, then stared at Luenor, handing the core slowly him.
"It will fight you," Thalanar warned. "It will burn. But you will have to guide it."
"How?"
"Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Imagine mana channels in your body—thin streams of light moving from your limbs toward your chest. Imagine a core, not inside you, but outside. An imaginary lake. When you're ready, push the mana from the core into those streams. Store it. Then—release it outward."
Luenor swallowed.
He took the core with trembling hands.
It was warm. Alive. Humming like a heart.
He looked at Thalanar, then down at his sister.
And he closed his eyes.