Chapter Summaries

Emilia led Shade through a hidden passage beneath Saint Byron's, opened by a female Unicorn's horn, and Shade recognized its night as coming from Eternal Night City. As they reached the far end, a golden pebble in his pocket began moving inside its vial.

• Emilia showed Shade the hidden entrance to the passage and explained that a female Unicorn's horn and the Space Spirit Rune were needed to open it.
• The Unicorn lifted the night curtain, and Emilia, Shade, and Mia entered an ancient corridor instead of arriving directly at Randall River Valley.
• Shade recognized the corridor's resemblance to the passage before the Witch Council's door and identified the night as originating from Eternal Night City.
• Shade stepped into an eroded patch of night with Mia, and their radiance pushed it back without harming them.
• Emilia asked why Shade wanted to use the passage, and Shade said he was helping an important friend.
• Shade noticed something moving in his pocket and found a golden pebble striking the inside of its vial.

Shade followed the Fragment of the Heart of the Earth to a hidden mural of Fiona, who left him a powerful Earth fragment and a relic Pepper Shaker as gifts. After the unstable corridor disappeared, Shade and Emilia returned to Miss Danist and Miss Sylvia, while the battle raging nearby continued to devastate the mountains and forest.

• Shade followed the golden fragment into a dark passage and found a mural of Fiona, who gave him the insight into Dragon and pointed out a hidden compartment.
• Shade retrieved the Lord of the Blood Feast's Pepper Shaker and a powerful Fragment of the Heart of the Earth from the compartment.
• Fiona's mural cracked, and Shade, Emilia, and the Unicorn escaped the destabilizing corridor through a night-colored curtain.
• Shade rejoined Miss Danist and Miss Sylvia, and Miss Danist took Emilia with her while Sylvia led Shade away.
• Emilia and Miss Danist witnessed a mountain collapse and a fierce battle overhead, then headed back to camp.

Shade returned to the moment when Fiona faced the Old God of Night, determined to keep his promise and save her. As the Old God’s power struck, the story written by Dorothy and Leisha began transforming on Shade’s Destiny Ring.

• Shade entered the Time Corridor carrying the Heart of the Earth fragment and learned he had one attempt to rescue Fiona.
• Shade prepared to face the Old God of Night and stepped through the White Fog with Dorothy and Leisha’s story in hand.
• Fiona recalled her life and mastered the secret art of stopping time as darkness threatened to consume her.
• Fiona prayed to the Silver Moon, and Shade returned through the White Fog, pulled her into his arms, and faced the Old God.
• Shade declared that he would keep his promise, and the burning story was inscribed upon his Destiny Ring and in his heart.

Shade awakened the Cinderella Enlightenment Rune and used its Mystic Lock to transform Fiona into a Demigod Witch while they fled the God of Night. As the illusion and Silver Moon collapsed, Shade opened the Curtain of Night and urged Fiona through it, leaving their escape from Eternal Night City unresolved.

• Shade obtained the Cinderella Enlightenment Rune, completing the four Spirit Runes of his fifth ring and sensing the power of the sixth.
• Shade and Fiona agreed to go home as midnight rang, and moonlight transformed Fiona into a Demigod Witch within Shade’s Mystic Lock.
• When the God of Night attacked again, Fiona used Time Stop and carried Shade out of the palace toward Eternal Night City.
• Shade explained Cinderella’s second power could bring nearby things home, and asked Fiona to sing while they flew toward the Distant Place.
• As the Mystic Lock collapsed and the God’s darkness closed in, Shade spread the Curtain of Night and told Fiona to pass through it.

Shade and Fiona escaped Eternal Night City through the Night Curtain, and Fiona gave Shade a glove before they crossed into the Fifth Epoch. They emerged in a glass house where two women watched them arrive, leaving their identities unrevealed.

• Mia's frightened cry released golden light that drove back the night and gave Fiona time to pull Shade and the cat through the Night Curtain.
• Shade and Fiona recovered in an ancient passageway, where Fiona explained that the Witch Council's hidden door was located there but that the passage itself was unrelated to the Council.
• Fiona gave Shade a protective glove containing her hair and scales, then asked him to stop accompanying her and promised they would meet again.
• Shade took Fiona through the passageway's exit despite his weakness, and they emerged in a sunlit glass house in the Fifth Epoch.
• Shade and Fiona found two women seated at an afternoon tea table watching them appear.

Fiona returned safely from Eternal Night City and reunited with her teachers, Miss Feliana and Miss Olanord, while Shade briefly appeared before being carried away by white mist. The witches planned their next move and assigned Fiona a time-travel task to seek traces of Shade in the past, revealing that others were also investigating time.

• Shade briefly reunited with Miss Feliana and Miss Olanord, asked about cleansing a soul tainted by the land and the Stone Heart Demon, then vanished with the cat in white mist.
• Fiona recounted her experiences in Eternal Night City, including her time with Shade and her transformation into a demigod.
• Miss Feliana concluded that their contract had been fulfilled and planned to spend spring in the river-valley city before negotiating with the god of Eternal Night about the Academy.
• Miss Olanord asked Fiona about Shade, and Miss Feliana explained that he may have brought back an echo of power Fiona had left with him in the future.
• Miss Feliana gave Fiona a Time Key and tasked her with finding traces of Shade while contacting Chloe, the Ice Demigod Witch, in the year 910 of the Fifth Epoch.
• Miss Olanord revealed that they were not the only ones investigating the mysteries of time.

After rescuing Fiona from the past, Shade returned to the worsening Randall River Valley disaster and prepared to seek the Heart of the Earth with Iluna. He left his allies ready to face the Guardians and the Chosen One Ritual if he failed to return in time.

• Miss Feliana questioned Fiona about her adventures and Shade, while Mana Falianna wondered whether she would see Shade again.
• Shade returned from the past with the fifth-ring Spirit Rune and a new Fairy Tale Mizzle, as earthquakes, blizzards, monsters, and cultists intensified the crisis across the region.
• Shade gathered Miss Sylvia, Luvia, Siris, and the Witch Apprentices and explained that he would travel through the Forgotten Church to the Black Night Spirit Temple and enter the Heart of the Earth with Iluna.
• Shade assigned Miss Sylvia to take Luvia and Siris to join the Great Witches, gave her supplies from the Holy Grail, and told the others to prepare for the final battle.
• Shade left Mia in Tifa's care and entered the Forgotten Church, heading toward its basement.

Shade and Iluna entered Mr. Lehmann’s sealed graveyard and learned why three Butterfly Girls had been buried beside him. They reached the Main Tomb Chamber, where Shade reflected on Stone Osenfott and Haila Osenfott.

• Shade met Iluna in the cave, and they confirmed each other’s identities before setting off together.
• Shade placed the Four Seasons Gemstones into the wall, opening the passage to the sealed graveyard.
• Iluna’s talisman failed to dispel the butterfly illusion, but Shade used the Butterfly Summoning Flute to clear the way.
• Shade and Iluna passed through the underground church and entered the Main Tomb Chamber during another earthquake.
• Shade read the tomb inscription and explained that the three Butterfly Girls had bound their souls to Mr. Lehmann’s, choosing to die with him.
• Iluna wondered whether their choice was love, and Shade thought of Stone Osenfott and Haila Osenfott.

Shade and Iluna used Mr. Lehmann’s key and a powerful Heart of the Earth fragment to enter the Heart of the Earth. They arrived at an immense lava lake, where its ancient power began to overwhelm their mortal bodies.

• Shade picked up the stone key in Mr. Lehmann’s tomb and used it to reveal a hidden entrance to the Heart of the Earth.
• Shade and Iluna realized Mr. Lehmann and his wife had made their grave the Material World’s only normal entrance and guardian passage to the Heart of the Earth.
• Shade showed Iluna the large Heart of the Earth fragment he had obtained, and they clasped hands to enter the black mud spring together.
• The fragment shielded Shade and Iluna as they descended through the black mud toward the earth’s core.
• Shade and Iluna emerged beside an immense lava lake, where the heat and ancient power threatened to overwhelm them.

Shade and Iluna reached the Heart of the Earth and fought its corrupted Guardian, using the Heart fragment and Mithril Cube to briefly restore his sanity. The Guardian warned them to perform the ritual and flee before his body exploded, engulfing both of them in black filth.

• Shade and Iluna crossed the lava lake to the island, where the Guardian revealed that the island itself was the Heart of the Earth.
• The Guardian attacked them, but Iluna used the Dark Gold Scales to weaken the blast and protect the Heaton Seal.
• Iluna advanced across the island and attacked the Guardian with Sunlight Guns, while Shade used chains and Soul Whiplash to restrain him.
• Iluna pressed the Heart fragment to the Guardian's chest as Shade touched his back with the Mithril Cube, briefly cleansing him and restoring his sanity.
• The Guardian told Shade and Iluna that the Four Seasons Flower had entered his soul and urged them to perform the ritual, defeat him, and run.
• The Guardian's body erupted in black energy and muck, swallowing Shade and Iluna.

Shade and Iluna survived the Mad Guardian’s escape from the Heart of the Earth, but Iluna was badly petrified by the Twisted Earth. Shade used a newly revealed Fragment of the Heart of the Earth to save her, and the chapter left Iluna beginning to awaken to the stone’s immense power.

• The Mad Guardian rose through the rock strata with the black sludge, leaving Shade and Iluna in the Heart of the Earth.
• Shade found Iluna nearly covered in petrification and tried to treat her, but she urged him to pursue the Guardian and preserve her fragment for the coming battle.
• Shade revealed the Mithril Cube’s sixth story and drew a larger Fragment of the Heart of the Earth from its light.
• Shade pressed the fragment to Iluna’s chest, and she absorbed its power as her petrification faded and her heart grew stronger.
• Iluna named the power within her “Stone Heart” and told Shade she had seen stories from the land’s past and possible future.

Shade and Iluna learned that purifying the earth could affect the Guardian, though the Feast of the Earth Mother God would gather dangerous conceptual filth that still needed to be dealt with. At the Heart of the Earth Furnace, they sought a gift from the earth, and Shade received a drop of divinity.

• Iluna communicated with the Earth Spirit and told Shade that purifying the earth could restore the Guardian’s senses, but the Feast ritual would concentrate the earth’s filth into a threat.
• Iluna explained that the gathered filth would have to be sealed or devoured and eliminated, warning that using the Chosen One of the Earth could destabilize the Material World.
• Iluna told Shade that the Guardian had sealed the Heart of the Earth, preventing them from leaving by touching the stone pillar, and that the stones they carried were contaminated to varying degrees.
• Shade deciphered part of the pillar’s writing and learned that the Earth Mother God had created the Heart of the Earth Furnace, a space that could temper matter and souls and reveal coming changes in the earth.
• Shade and Iluna pressed their hands to the pillar and resisted its contamination as they sought a gift from the earth.
• Shade’s fingertips cracked with golden light, and the divinity entered his soul.

Shade absorbed the divinity of the earth, gained new abilities, and escaped the Heart of the Earth with Iluna while suppressing an imminent advancement. They identified the Mad Guardian’s likely destination, then Iluna destroyed a flying fossil that attacked them as they headed there.

• Shade absorbed the earth’s divinity, gained the Active Mud spell and Earth’s Blessing, and became immune to Mad Earth.
• Shade restrained his urge to advance and used Divinity Overflow to open a passage through space, escaping with Iluna to a snowy forest outside Randall River Valley.
• Iluna sensed powerful beings connected to the earth, and Shade and Iluna concluded that the Mad Guardian was heading for Ailong Riverbank rather than the Black Night Spirit Temple.
• A flying, two-headed drake fossil attacked Shade and Iluna as they traveled by Bone Horse, so Shade gave Iluna the Higgs Dragon Head Stone.
• Iluna unleashed a beam of light that destroyed the fossil, creating a new region of Mad Earth, then carried Shade toward the Mad Guardian.

After regrouping at the temporary camp, the Witches learned that the Mad Guardian had appeared nearby and was spreading black mud across the land. The four Great Witches and Luvia and Siris went to confront him, where they met several Church and academy Thirteenth Ring Warlocks.

• Miss Sylvia reunited with Miss Galina, Miss Aurora, and Miss Benanis at the camp, and Siris handed over two Holy Grails to help treat the injured.
• Miss Galina explained that black mud was petrifying the Witches it touched, while Miss Aurora and Siris discussed the Church's efforts to contain the spreading Mad Earth.
• A powerful earthquake revealed that the Mad Guardian had appeared less than a mile away, and the four Great Witches decided to investigate without waiting for Shade.
• Luvia and Siris joined the Great Witches, who flew toward the Guardian while the other Witches reinforced the camp as a rear base.
• The Witches found the solid Guardian walking toward the Ailong Riverbank and spreading black sludge, then encountered Maria, Triss Michelle, Christian Klein, and Professor Miller Stewart.
• Miss Aurora warned the Witches that the Blood Spirit School's Weeper of Blood and other possible Thirteenth Ring Warlocks had not appeared, and told them to keep their identities secret.

Luvia and Siris advanced through the corrupted snow toward the Mad Guardian, whose main body was fighting the Church. They faced a Clay Avatar blocking their way, and Siris’s memories began affecting the Guardian even as his twisted memories reached her.

• The Blind Keeper of Secrets, Christian Klein, confronted the Mad Guardian, and their Thirteenth Ring Words of Sublimation clashed.
• Luvia and Siris approached the Guardian, but a Clay Avatar in Mr. Lathers’s appearance stopped them and warned that Siris could not reach his main body.
• The Clay Avatar attacked with black mud, earthen creatures, and Memory Threads while Siris summoned a memory of Miss Benanis to restrain the mud.
• Luvia struck the Guardian with Destiny—Destruction, erasing part of the forest, but the Clay Avatar reformed from the black mud unharmed.
• Siris’s milky-white Memory Threads intertwined with the Guardian’s black ones, sending memories and illusions between her and the Guardian’s main body.

Luvia and Siris fought a Guardian clone until Doctor Schneider arrived and destroyed its Stone Heart with the Stone Mirror Demon's power. Schneider then led them toward the Black Night Spirit Temple as they tried to stop the Mad Earth from reaching its irreversible fifth stage.

• Siris severed her connection to the Memory Threads after the Guardian's ancient memories overwhelmed her, while Luvia's attacks failed to defeat its clone.
• Luvia prepared to use her Words of Sublimation, but a stone Mirror appeared and the Guardian clone vanished into the woods.
• Doctor Schneider arrived, revealed that he had destroyed the Guardian clone by crushing its Stone Heart, and Luvia confirmed his identity.
• Siris learned that the Guardian wanted to accelerate the Mad Earth's spread and sacrifice itself at the earthquake's center to trigger the irreversible fifth stage.
• Luvia asked Schneider to protect them on their way toward the Guardian, and he used Earth Power Mirror Image to part the black mud as they set off.

Shade and the others reached the clearing where the Mad Earth Guardian was performing a ritual to corrupt the Earth, while Siris faced the choice of joining the Guardians to awaken them. Siris refused her father’s invitation and returned to Shade as the Guardian continued the ritual.

• Shade reunited with Luvia and the Witches, then used Active Mud to heal Miss Galina’s petrification.
• The Church’s Thirteenth Ring Arcanists attacked the Mad Guardian, but his earth avatars and the black mud blocked their strike and restored his defenses.
• Shade and the others saw Siris inside the guarded clearing, where Mr. Lathers briefly separated from the Guardian and invited her to join the Guardians to awaken their sleeping consciousnesses.
• Miss Maria gave Iluna the Nature Church’s divine wreath and told her that the Churches had prepared for her role as the Balanced Chosen One.
• Siris heard the Guardians’ memories, refused to sacrifice her own path, and told her father that she had promised Shade she would not do so.
• Mr. Lathers wished Siris happiness before rejoining the Guardian, who sent her back to Shade; Luvia sensed that Shade had changed another fated tragedy.

Siris explained how the cultists had prepared the sacrifices and vessel for the Divine Advent Ritual, while the Church and the Witches prepared to attack the Guardian of the Earth. Before the final battle began, Shade summoned Grace and Helen to conceal his movements and set off ahead of the others.

• Siris explained that the child statue had received a voluntarily offered soul, the youth statue a head sacrificed by force, and Osenfott's statue completed the requirements for a god's descent.
• Miss Aurora said the Church would attack the Guardian's twelve mud clones with the assembled Thirteenth Ring Warlocks and other forces, while Miss Sylvia stayed behind to preserve an escape route.
• Luvia asked whether Shade planned to kill the Guardian or purify it, and Shade said he would decide for himself.
• Shade refused to use Illusion: Cinderella and instead summoned Grace and Helen with the Butterfly Summoning Flute, asking them to conceal him with illusions.
• As the final battle approached, Shade said goodbye to the Witches and Siris, then went ahead alone toward the Guardian.

Shade arrived at the clearing surrounded by Red Butterflies and completed his ascension into a demigod, then used the power of Witch Light to dissolve the Guardian blocking his path. The divinity he guided into Moon's Shadow awakened Iluna's understanding of her own power as Shade crossed the Guardians' boundary.

• Helen and Grace joined hands and accompanied Shade into the clearing with an illusion of Red Butterflies and a sorrowful song.
• Shade released his suppressed power, ascended into the sky, and manifested his Destiny Ring as the bells rang across the River Valley Creeklands.
• Shade invoked Moon's Thorn/Moon's Shadow, Pride, Cinderella, and Puppet as their Spirit Runes and phantoms overlapped with him.
• Shade imbued Moon's Shadow with divinity, and the golden radiance caused Iluna to understand the power she wanted.
• A Guardian Colossus stepped toward Shade, but the Witch Light melted it into mud, allowing Shade to pass the boundary.

Shade tried to stop the Guardian from contaminating the earth by appealing to him and using a strange potion made from Desire Oil and the Lord of the Blood Feast’s pepper. After Shade collapsed, heavenly light descended upon him, leaving the result of his gamble unknown.

• The Church’s forces, including Sister Devlin, Miss Danist, and several Thirteenth Ring Warlocks, attacked the clearing while Shade walked toward the Guardian.
• Shade asked the Guardian why he wanted to contaminate the earth, and the Guardian said he believed it was the only way to protect it from the coming end.
• Shade mixed the Perfume Bottle of Desire’s liquid with all the pepper from the Lord of the Blood Feast’s Pepper Shaker in his Flowering Holy Grail, then challenged the Guardian to recognize the unusual souls fighting outside.
• Shade asked whether the Guardian had noticed Luvia’s purple eyes, then drank the mixture after saying a lady in the water had asked him to perform a play of desire.
• Shade collapsed onto the table, and heavenly light descended through the clouds to envelop him.