The spike filled his vision.

Ryn didn't think.

"Aquila—!"

The Blessing answered with a violent surge. The world snapped sharp as his senses screamed warnings all at once. Every instinct lit up in perfect clarity.

Ryn twisted his body sideways with everything he had left, rolling out of the way as the sand spear tore off him.

It missed his chest by inches.

The spike slammed into the ground where he'd been lying, detonating into a spray of sand and shattered stone that blasted across the battlefield. The shockwave flung Ryn hard, sending him tumbling across the desert until he skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust.

He didn't get up right away.

[MP: 10 / 110]

Ryn stared at the number, jaw tightening.

He'd been saving his final Aquila use for an emergency, but now that seemed out of the equation.

The desert settled.

Ryn stayed where he was, one knee pressed into the sand, chest rising and falling as he forced air back into his lungs.

Across from him, the earth dragon had stopped advancing.

Sand still moved around her, but slower now, dragging as though weighed down by more than just the heat.

Her chest heaved.

Ryn could feel each of her breaths as they sent a dull tremor through the ground.

The ground around her feet no longer reshaped cleanly. Sections hardened too early, others collapsed before forming at all. The desert answered her will, but with delay, and with resistance.

She was tired.

For one suspended moment, neither moved.

Two wills, stretched thin.

The desert still answered her will.

But it resisted.

Grains slipped from between cracked scales, no longer returning to her body. Where her claws pressed into the ground, they sank deeper than they should have, stone dissolving into loose sand instead of rising to support her weight.

She was becoming part of it.

Ryn's grip tightened.

He could leave.

The realization came unbidden, sharp and undeniable. She would eventually die, disappearing into the sands without him having to do anything.

No more battle or risk, it was the exact choice that he would regularly make.

And yet—

His feet didn't move.

Something deeper tugged at him instead, quiet and insistent. A pressure in his chest that had nothing to do with mana or survival. He could feel it, her exhaustion, confusion…the weight of waiting stretched across centuries.

It felt wrong to turn away.

Not like abandoning an enemy.

Like leaving someone alone at the end.

Another breath shook the ground, weaker than the last. Sand slipped from her frame in slow cascades, scales crumbling as the desert claimed them grain by grain. She shifted, trying to rise again.

The effort failed.

She lunged anyway.

Claws tore through stone as she dragged herself forward, momentum carrying her into one final strike. The desert resisted her now, pulling her down even as she moved.

The attack missed.

Barely.

Her forelimb slammed into the ground beside Ryn, close enough to shower him in grit, but not close enough to end him. Her weight carried her forward, body sinking deeper as sand swallowed what strength remained.

She did not rise again.

"You promised…"

Her voice was rough, worn thin by time and stone.

"You promised you would never abandon me."

With that last attack, the guardian had lost all of her strength. Her boundless years of waiting had finally caught up.

Cracked scales loosened and crumbled, grains slipping away where stone no longer held. Each shallow breath sent a faint tremor through the ground, weaker than the last.

Ryn stepped forward before he realized he'd decided to.

He'd stopped just short of her—meeting her dulled eyes, that now no longer held hostility…but tender yearning.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"…I couldn't keep it."

Her shoulders sagged as the desert finally stopped resisting her descent, sand flowing over fractured scales, filling the spaces where strength and purpose had once been.

Light condensed into his fingertips, thin and steady. Ryn didn't hesitate, giving her not execution, but the only thing left to give to such a lonesome beast.

Mercy.

[Orion.]

The arrow flashed across the short distance and passed cleanly through the guardian's head, piercing what little remained of hardened scale.

There was no roar nor final struggle.

The sands simply fell still, until the rest of her body had dissolved into it once more.

What had once been a battlefield smoothed itself over, dunes settling into quiet slopes as the last traces of motion faded away.

Only what remained.

At the center where the guardian had fallen, the sand slowly parted, revealing a faint crimson glow beneath the surface.

Ryn stepped closer.

A gem lay half-buried in the earth, smooth and warm to the touch. Unlike the others he had collected, this one pulsed with a deep, steady red, light moving slowly through it like a heartbeat beneath crystal.

The third key.

It did not resist him.

As Ryn lifted it free, the surrounding sand slid away further, uncovering something else.

A horn.

Long and curved, its surface bore natural patterns of stone and mineral, the color shifting subtly where earth and crystal had fused together. The base was intact, cleanly separated—as though it had been left behind deliberately.

Ryn paused.

Then he knelt and took it.

The horn was heavier than it looked, dense with compressed Essence. It was clear what purpose this horn served.

An earth dragon's horn had two values. The first being the outer shell, which was hard enough to create good-quality equipment.

It was a nice find, but something Ryn isn't rushing for.

But what mattered lay within…the bone marrow.

A stabilizing medium—one of the components required to safely form the Essence Condensing Pill.

Ryn exhaled slowly.

He now had all three keys, along with two of the three ingredients he needed to create the pill.

He should be ecstatic right now. The whole reason they had traveled to the Isles was to get stronger…

And yet—

A lingering ache remained.

The feeling couldn't remain for long, as his Dimensional Ring tinged with motion.

He felt it immediately, mind drawing to the three keys now finally in sequence.

Ryn took them out.

The three keys pulsed within his palms, their resonance synchronized as they hummed the same steady rhythm.

Jay barely managed to make it by his side, but stiffened when he saw the jewels.

"Ryn…?"

Light suddenly spilled outward. The jewels hovered before him as their glow intensified. Crimson, into pale blue, and finally an amber.

The clouds above the Isles began to part. Sky folded inward as the three lights surged, projecting a solid path to the heavens.

A bridge.

Leading straight into the cloud cover.

Jay stared upward, mouth slightly open.

"…So that's it?"

Ryn followed the path with his eyes.

Whatever the final island looked like…

They weren't meant to see it from below.

The keys pulsed once more, urging him forward.

Ryn strolled over and picked up Snow from the ground, securing it tightly on his waist.

Once he was ready, he looked skyward again.

"…Guess there's only one way to find out."

He took the first step.

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