..The vast expanse of the sky tower, a place where wind stands still, rain and snow never visit. The peak of the mountain covered with clouds, hidden completely from the prying eyes.
This peak is one of the most beautiful places ever known to living beings. three towering, exquisitely-built structures stood proud on the vast expanse of glistering grass and pure white marbled pavement. Even air didn't dare make a sound, as if it just stood there marveling at the beauty of that place.
This place was known to very few individuals. Legend often spoke that they who finds this mountain, are those who are destined for greatness. And throughout history, these people could be counted on one hand.
Like a curtain drawn, a veil had been lifted at the space above the mountain. And three bloodied figures exited, falling hard on the ground. Two of them had a young appearance, a man and a woman, while the third was a very tiny humanoid with wings on his back.
The state of the three could only be described as if they had just escaped a terrifying battlefield.
"Yue!" Dust worriedly cried out, his eyes were threatening to tear as he stared at the woman. She had beautiful olive skin, long midnight hair, and enchanting sapphire blue eyes. By a worldly standard, she was an enchanting beauty; at least if not covered with blood from head to toe. The most noticeable thing about her was that her right side, stretching from the shoulder down the waist was completely missing, only a large bloody wound remained. "Licht, Dust, both of you help me up the Altar." She weakly said.
"Dust, don't cry" Licht supporting Yue against his chest said. Although he said that, his eyes were already wet.
Licht had a pale white body, long horizontal ears, and two tattoos under his eyes. He looked like a devil from folklore, though that failed to hide his handsome features and exotic eyes.
"Yue, we should treat you, those bastards will find this place in no time, they placed a trace on you, we need to escape," Licht said, his aura was full of murder and killing intent. His pale face was twisted with anger. He looked even more terrifying with his midnight black long hair draped over his black eyes.
However, the wounded woman just shook her head, "the Unholy Grail they used restricted most of my powers, and I can at most use one last ritual, hurry up and take me to the altar"
Feeling that their Yue had a plan, Licht and Dust looked at each other, before moving her to a circular platform, engraved with many runic marks.
Ying Yue freed herself from the two concerned males, she stumbled at first and held a hand to stop the two from coming to her. Although she had suffered a fatal wound, she still managed to stand upright and make her way to the square altar in the middle of the circular hall.
"What are you doing Yue?" asked Dust
"Yue, I can feel them approaching" shouted Licht.
"Hush, do not interrupt me!" She said while joining her hand to her heart in prayer before wetting her finger with her own blood and climbing up the altar.
"What is she doing?" Dust whispered to Licht in his ears.
"I've never seen an incantation that required blood drawn runes" Licht shook his head. "Prepare to fend them off, they'll be here in a few minutes" Licht's dark black eyes turned misty green.
"Don't use the Legacy of the drowned, you may lose your mind again" Dust said as a black heavy flower appeared in his hand, much bigger than his foot-long body.
After years of adventuring with Licht and Ying Yue, Dust had lost his innocence and weeping personality, he now was ferocious and capable of killing without blinking an eye.
"We may be dead soon, what use is worrying about my sanity?" he faintly smiled, "plus, you're one to talk, that flower weapon will drink your blood when it gets thirsty again"
The two kept discussing their battle strategy when suddenly, they could feel the energy distortion, and the space above the hall was torn open, letting a dozen men and women emerge. Every single one of them excluded an aura of dominance and power. Calling them men and women is stretching it.
They were different in size but had the same general appearance. Unblinking golden eyes, some had reddish skin while others had dark blue skin, horns that stretch from their foreheads to curve around their pointy ears. Aside from that, they all had particularly handsome and beautiful features.
"What is she doing?" asked a woman after seeing that Yue completely ignored them and kept on drawing with blood on the altar.
"No matter what, we can't let her finish it, that thing is crafty and shrewd!" answered the man who was obviously leading them. He raised his staff and flew towards the old Yue.
However, Licht and Dust blocked his path. Their battered bodies from the previous battle threatened to drop at the moment they use the slightest of power, but they did not care for it.
"Dust the pixy, Licht the slayer." The leader looked at the two and called out calmly, "must you continue to fight? The two of you are the most outstanding talents the Shagat realm has ever seen, you belong here to lead the next generation. Why do you keep opposing us with that woman from the Realm of ascension? She does not belong here."
"They come and take our treasures for themselves, our legacies. Command us from the shadows, like we're rats that do their bidding. And your Yue here have been planning to destroy the eye of the arcane, our only source of Mana" added another man behind the leader, his eyes glaring daggers.
Dust's face turned gloomy. This talk, he and Licht heard before, but they always kept silent for the sake of their Yue, but now he could hold back no longer, "since you are so ignorant, let me educate you for a bit," she looked at Licht and the latter only smiled.
"You want to defend her? She tried to destroy the eye of the arcane, what else do we need to be educated about?" a man from the group stared coldly.
"Hmph, my Yue's intentions were never to steal your Shagat realm's pathetic one power, we have enough of that in our own realm." his voice quivered, "my Yue…she just wanted to open the portal to Ala because she is a key, a key from the Ifrit race, your race!"
"What?"
Most of the middle landers gasped, "You mean that the door to Ala is in our eye of the arcane?"
"He's lying. How can the door from the prophecy be found that easily." A woman wearing a red crimson dress snickered.
Dust smiled, he just wanted to buy some time for Yue to finish whatever she was doing but still, what he said was the truth, "it's up to you to believe me or not. Yue lost her child years ago in the war. But as a half Ifrit, half-human, she was condemned to have her soul and the soul of her descendants all suffer in the abyss realm for all eternity, never entering the reincarnation circle."
The hall was quiet for a second before the old man in the lead laughed loudly, "This is magnificent. The door to Ala, we found it, at last, now the god realm can only bow in front of us. Haha"
His laughter was joined by the others who were convinced of what Dust said.
Prophecy has it that whoever finds the door to Ala, the place where souls linger after their deaths can acquire the power no one has ever dreamt of before. Unmatchable in the whole seven realms.
"You found the door and wanted to keep it all to yourselves? What a selfish bunch, you…"
All of a sudden, the man felt a killing pain in his chest. He looked down and saw the edge of a sword sticking from his heart.
"Tssk, I knew you would greed old man" the woman dressed in crimson red clicked her tongue and pulled out her sword. Around her, two more people moved like blurs and slaughtered the Shagat realm's Ifrits.
"Why?" the leader asked with his dying breath as he fell to the ground. Wondering why his allies betrayed them.
"Why?" Licht snickered, "it's because they are the Forsaken, that's why. Now that you found out that where the door is, there's no way they'll let you live to tell."
He then turned to the woman in red.
"So you three infiltrated the Shagat realm for so many years just to find the door to Ala. I assume, that Shagat has already fallen completely under your hands by now right? We already told you where the door is, so why don't you go find it and leave our Yue alone. If you chose to fight, then we will use our very last breath defending our Yue."
"Yes, but too bad that we already knew where the door was. We stuck around just to find you, my dear Licht. You see, your brother, the goblin king, is making quite the trouble for us, even from the God realm…"
She didn't finish her words as she felt a terrifying power from Yue's way.
The three Forsaken locked onto Yue, and dashed, not wanting to give her the chance of finishing the incantation.
"Yue!" Licht and Dust shouted and charged at the three, their aura turning into a murderous red. But the red woman and her two companions were too fast for them. This was after all a forsaken from the Shagat realm who practiced for tens of years longer than them.
The two of them used the full power of their fused energy, madly trying to block the trio. When suddenly, the world around them seemed to come to a stop. The air became gloomy and every sound ceased. They halted their advance as the bodies of that trio were frozen in a charging position. They could sense that everyone was alive, but it felt like time has stopped.
Time!
They thought and turned towards their Yue who spared them no glance but laid her good hand on the altar and started shouting. Her voice carried with it a force that reverberated in their hearts and shook their very core of existence.
[She who dwells in the unseen...
The roads of yesterday and the uncertain tomorrows,
Wife of Nada the pale and Karis the somber,
The unfelt who commands time and space...
I, who hold the Legacy of the Seeker, summon your seraph to guide the soul and body of your children to the embrace of yesterday and the confines of tomorrow.]
The next moment, two black lights surrounded Licht and Dust. Rotating madly around them, making sounds like hundreds of clocks ticking at the same time. From his words, they felt something was wrong.
"Please don't, Yue!' they shouted in unison.
"It is the will of the arcane my friends" she turned to Dust and smiled, her body aging at a visible speed, from a young lady to a wrinkled old woman, her body started to disintegrate like flower petals in a stormy day.
Dust did not hold his tears, his Yue's words raging through his mind like a hurricane.
Her gaze stopped and turned to Licht, "of all the people I've met in my life, you're the one that shattered my expectations completely. At first, I thought you will succumb to the Fanalis bloodline memories and your haunting past, but who would've known, hidden behind that cold exterior is the kindest heart I've ever seen" she smiled more warmly this time, "maybe not even you realize it yet, but the hatred you bore in your heart had long since disappeared. You became someone that cares for and loves those closest to him"
The usually composed Licht who doesn't show his emotions joined Dust in sobbing.
She turned back to Dust, her voice now nowhere near the bell-chime-like sound from before, instead hoarse and weak. "Dust, you are a magnificent soul. You always find the right words to cheer me up when I'm down…I hope... I hope that you never lose your smile…always… smile…"
"Why are you saying this?" Dust said, panicked. The stern Yue rarely spoke kind and soft words.
"I'm sure you all know about borrowing the power from a god" she slowly spoke.
Borrowing the god power was something only heard of in legends, once you manage to communicate with a god, you can ask for their power. Of course, that is assuming one gets the chance to communicate with one.
"The most powerful forgotten magic I possess is the Legacy of the Seeker. With it, I managed to find and communicate with the goddess Helatia that commands time and space" her body now was halfway dissipated.
"In exchange for my time; past, present and future, you two will be sent to a time past or future in any realm. It can be a minute before or tens of years after, this realm or any other. Where I do not know. But it's a gamble I will take."
They gasped at these words, erasing the past, present and future were similar to erasing the entire existence as one had never been born. But to go back in time, that was a power never even heard of.
"Yue…" they started, but she interrupted them.
"Say no more, my current strength can't handle these three, nor can yours. Licht, your bloodline is terrifying. Your brother has done something that should've never been done. In doing so, he angered the existence that can wipe us with a wave of their hands. The Forsaken are just their minions.
"Licht, Dust's body and soul are made of pure Mana and cannot handle this spell. Lock him in a time-isolating capsule."
Licht seemed to wake up and he quickly entrapped Dust in the egg-like cage despite the pixy's protests.
"Goodbye…my…family"
And the two dark lights swallowed the sobbing Licht and Dust.