Chapter 7: The Sealing of the Beast
The cliff was ruined.
Cracked stone, splintered soil, and melted spiritual essence coated the battlefield. Smoke still rose where the guardian beast had once stood—its body erased by Riven's fivefold seal.
And yet… something remained.
A pulse.
Not from the beast.
From beneath it.
Riven's eyes snapped to the center of the crater. So did Elysia's.
"Do you feel that?" she whispered, sword drawn again.
Kara's smirk faded. "I was about to relax."
Yen raised his hand. The wind around his fingers stopped moving.
"That's not natural," he said flatly. "The air just died."
Vera stepped forward, biting her thumb. "It's not over. The beast left behind something."
Instructor Halden's voice boomed through their talismans. "Back away, all of you. That's not a normal residue. That's... a Soul Fragment."
The crater pulsed again—and this time, it took shape.
It wasn't a full beast anymore. Just a twisted shell: a half-formed head, a skeletal wing, and one flickering eye. It floated in place, like a thought clinging to existence.
But the pressure it emitted was enough to crush the stones around it.
"This is the real danger," Elysia murmured. "The first beast was just a container. This fragment... it's the soul that powered it."
"A second layer?" Riven said. "Like a nested seal?"
Yen frowned. "Exactly. And if we don't bind this one—"
"It'll regenerate."
Kara was already spinning her lightning daggers. "Guess we're sealing this one too, right?"
Riven shook his head. "No. That won't be enough this time."
He pointed to the fragment. "It's not physical. We can't hurt it. We need to perform a complete spiritual seal."
"A soul seal?" Elysia blinked. "That's... high-level mystic art. We're barely at Initiate Core level!"
Riven exhaled slowly. "I remember the theory."
Fenrik crossed his arms. "And what, we're just gonna let the scholar-boy handle it solo again?"
"No," Riven said. "This time, we do it together."
He knelt and drew a large spiritual array on the cracked stone, each stroke glowing with energy. It was a classic Five-Spoke Binding Seal—one that required five sources of elemental qi to harmonize in perfect rhythm.
Everyone had a role.
Kara would channel lightning—pure disruptive qi to destabilize the fragment's form.
Elysia would act as anchor, her sword qi slicing through spiritual noise to hold it still.
Yen would control the wind barrier, keeping the soul from dispersing mid-seal.
Vera would deploy soul mist, drawing the fragment toward the array like incense lures a ghost.
And Riven would manage the formation's core—combining the Fivefold Elemental Tree energy and stabilizing the seal's structure.
Fenrik?
He smiled and cracked his knuckles. "I'll break its attention if it tries to lash out."
The plan began.
Kara danced around the soul fragment, hurling javelins of golden lightning into the sky, striking it with piercing precision. The ghost-beast screamed in silent anger.
Elysia chanted sword mantras, each syllable forming radiant barriers. She used her blade like a brush, painting glyphs in the air that stitched the fragment in place.
Yen's control over air was near perfect—he created a dome of still wind, keeping the fragment from dispersing like smoke.
Vera's gentle poison mist drifted upward, and as it touched the soul piece, the glowing eye within the fragment turned toward her. Entranced.
Then came the final phase.
Riven activated the formation.
The ground pulsed.
The five elements surged from his palm and into the binding seal—fire, water, earth, wind, lightning—each taking their place at a separate spoke of the glowing sigil.
The moment all five ignited, the circle flared.
"Now!" Riven shouted. "Final incantation—together!"
They didn't hesitate.
Each of them pressed their hand to a different part of the formation. Words came to them not from memory, but from the world itself. From the Legacy's will.
"By fire, we purge."
"By water, we calm."
"By earth, we bind."
"By wind, we disperse."
"By lightning, we awaken."
"And by harmony… we seal!"
The array snapped shut.
A beam of pure multicolored light shot into the sky, piercing the clouds.
The fragment let out one last echo of pain—then folded into itself.
Gone.
Silence returned.
The array faded, leaving only a faint spiral carved into the stone.
Kara fell to her knees, panting. "That was... intense."
"I feel like I aged six years," Yen muttered.
"Worth it," Fenrik grunted. "Teamwork, huh?"
Vera looked at Riven, her eyes soft. "That seal… was ancient. It's not from this realm."
"I know," Riven said, not meeting her gaze. "I don't think I'm from this realm either."
Elysia sheathed her sword and stood beside him. "Wherever you're from… I'm starting to think it doesn't matter."
She smiled faintly.
"You're one of us now."
Far away, in a frozen fortress atop a snow-locked mountain, a jade-haired woman sipped tea and stared at a floating image in her palm.
It was Riven.
She smiled.
"So you sealed it yourself, little ember? Interesting. The next trial won't be so kind."