Julia walked toward the training hall with a smile. All those years ago, Braden had buried Daveth effortlessly—without even touching him. It had felt so exceptional—so otherworldly—to her at the time. Now, she'd done the same to an entire crowd—instantly.

She wasn't any stronger now than she'd been yesterday, but for some reason it felt as though she'd crossed some kind of threshold.

The ground shook slightly, the rumbles of skirmishes all across the city refusing to silence. Julia fought down the anxiety that bubbled in her chest. She'd known that things would become loud—buildings of stone don't fall silently—but she still nearly flinched every time she felt a rumble.

Surely those were just from collapsing buildings, right? They weren't blowing up with people in them?

She shook her head slightly. No time for pointless regrets. Even if she joined the rest of the fighting, she couldn't be everywhere at once. She had to trust that others were exercising restraint. The sounds of devastation unnerved her, but she had to stay focused and do her part.

Still, she had learned something from her brief skirmish in the Guild hall. While what Cass said had deeply unsettled Julia, she wasn't entirely correct. The Guild—the adventurers within it—would likely save many lives today.

The fighting between the elves and the city was eventually going to come to a head. Guerrilla strikes were the plan, but there was no possibility that all the individual elf teams would be able to avoid contact with either the city guards or the military, and fighting would inevitably break out. Civilians would run for cover, clutching their loved ones tightly.

Many would head here—to the Guild. It was a common story: political strife threatens to tear a nation apart, but through it all, the Guild stands strong as a bastion and shelter for those civilians caught in the conflict.

It wasn't that the Guild's neutrality was based on a lack of morals—the Guild's principles were simply all-inclusive. Sure, it was easy to look at the power the Guild could muster and accuse it of allowing suffering through inaction. However, the Guild would watch over all the civilians it took in during such tumultuous times, and their lives counted.

Indeed, it was specifically due to the Guild's neutrality that it was permitted to operate so widely. Although it might seem moral for the Guild to interfere in this or that specific conflict, the high-level view would deem such action foolish, as it would likely result in states viewing the Guild with distrust in the future—potentially even kicking it out.

The reality when viewed from a thousand stretches high, was that far more lives would be saved by maintaining long-term neutrality, even if it seemed cruel in the moment.

Julia smiled as she recalled Braden's words.

"We do it for fame, gold, glory, and power, yes. All of those things are great, but we do it first and foremost to help people. The Guild, together, can help many of those people, the ones falling through the cracks, far more than you and I individually ever could."

His words rang louder with the knowledge that he'd founded the Guild in the first place. Julia didn't know how long he'd lived, but he must've seen an unbelievable amount of strife and conflict, especially if, as Julia suspected, he'd been around since the first city was built.

He'd decided at some point that he could help more people by creating a structure to rope others into his intentions, and Julia felt like she was beginning to understand—fully—why.

She pushed the door to the arena open, the echo was almost deafening against the cavernous silence. Although empty now, the arena would undoubtedly fill as the day progressed. Not only would the main hall quickly reach capacity and overflow, the arena had the Etherium barrier surrounding it, which would add an additional layer of protection. It was an attractive location for a shelter.

The barrier reminded Julia of the Shroud, stirring a brief pang of guilt before she pushed the feeling aside. She'd spent a few hours early this morning crafting amulets for as many of the elves as she could manage.

Of course, she didn't have access to an abundance of enchantable materials, so the majority of enchantments were placed on scrap wood or metal slag—anything nearby that might last more than a few minutes.

It wasn't enough to negate the Shroud's effects for the whole day, and some of the lesser materials would barely last a couple of hours, but it was enough to get the job done—that was what she was telling herself, anyway. She could only hope that was the case.

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She chased away all extraneous thoughts before closing her eyes.

"Would you mind?" she asked.

Lumenfall nodded, extending a small paw and pointing it at the arena before launching a golden bolt. It flew across the arena with a fzzt before crashing into a pale blue wall that arose suddenly, as if from nowhere. The lightning crackled as it dissipated across the transparent surface of the barrier, and Julia focused on the movement of mana.

It was difficult at first—there was a lot of mana in that barrier—yet after a couple seconds of focus, she found a distinct flow. Or maybe "tide" was a more accurate word. Mana wasn't so much flowing as shifting. It was one of the strangest things Julia had ever seen it do.

Whenever she worked with mana, it was consumed immediately—that was what magic was. She functionally traded a certain amount of mana for an effect she wanted to create in the world. Even ambient mana in the environment would flutter about and interact with objects as well as itself.

This mana was stationary, though not stagnant. It was as if it were contained, just waiting for intent to shape it. In some ways, it was similar to the core of mana that living things contained.

Regardless, dispersing Lumenfall's bolt had required the use of some of that store, and Julia had located the spring replenishing it.

There seemed to be a great cage surrounding the arena not too dissimilar to how she imagined her Faraday's Cage spell. She couldn't sense much detail, since the 'bars' of the cage were surrounded by an ocean of mana, but it felt…receptive, like Mithril or Orichalcum—it was some kind of mana-accepting material.

She traced the movement of the mana around the cage and discovered that the entire thing originated from a line of the material running straight toward the wall. Julia attempted to visualize where she was in the city and where the mana material might be leading, and it took very little triangulation to arrive at the obvious answer.

The chains.

The line ran straight toward one of the white stone towers the golden chains of Orichalcum were anchored to, and this realization informed her of the nature of this entire contraption.

The Orichalcum was being used similarly to pipes for water, though for transmitting mana. The great chains anchored to the towers on the wall, and The Stone itself, weren't for structure or stability. They connected The Stone—high in the air—with the wall and the entire city within.

Thin 'pipes' of Orichalcum likely ran throughout the entire city, connecting the Etherium deposit in The Stone with places like this arena, where finer control of the Shroud was required.

Julia suspected that, if she could see the city from above, she would detect hundreds—maybe thousands—of pipelines crisscrossing the city, like the web of a great golden silk spider.

She sighed in relief—this would work.

Truthfully, she only had an idea about getting to The Stone. She had no proof that her method would work, nor that she'd even guessed correctly about the barrier's structure and function. Her entire idea was predicated on the assumption that the Etherium in The Stone must be supplying the mana for the arena's barrier, and if mana flowed in one direction, she could make it flow in the other.

Julia walked to the unseated side of the arena, her eyes still closed. The rock of the arena flowed like water and parted around her body. She entered the stone wall as one might calmly enter a pool of water.

She walked, the stone under her feet firm, while the rest flowed around her, toward a bar of the cage, its presence in her mind growing stronger as she approached.

She heard a faint call, almost like a voice. It called to her like a melody whose words she couldn't understand. Julia could feel…not sadness, exactly. It was more like disappointment. The voice—the call—was forced away from its purpose, which it longed to fulfill.

Julia refocused. Etherium had called to her before; she knew what it was like. This call was like a siren song, however. Rather than a gentle suggestion, the will behind this call gripped at her mind, trying to draw her in, as if it somehow knew Julia would be able to restore it to its purpose, if only she were a bit closer.

"Fortify your mind. We must get closer still," Lumefall whispered into Julia's head.

Julia found her voice comforting—an anchor in the storm of will and passion in the Etherium's song.

She mimed a deep breath to stabilize herself. There was no air to breathe within the liquid rock, but the actions her flesh-and-blood body used to take still comforted her.

She reached out and grabbed the thread of Orichalcum—and a thread it was. Little more than the diameter of a bracelet she might have worn, the Orichalcum hummed with the entrancing melody as she gripped it.

"Haa…" she exhaled, mentally preparing for the allure to become much stronger.

"I am ready when you are. Fear not; the melody holds no power over me. I will keep your feet on the ground," Lumenfall assured.

"Ironic to hear about remaining on the ground from a dragon," Julia joked.

The two shared a brief chuckle before their bodies seemed to vaporize, as if a bucket of water was poured on hot coals.

With a sfft and a bright glow, they disappeared, the golden thread of Orichalcum growing dark once again.

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