The firelight flickered for an instant. The moment the flames touched the boundary between the two forests, the spreading fire serpents vanished without a trace, as though swallowed by an ocean.
At the same time, the birds perched in Dead Leaf Forest suddenly beat their wings, darting between the trees and crying incessantly toward the sky, as if sounding an alarm about what had happened outside the woodland.
In the end, only a faint green glow remained, draped like a curtain over the forest's edge, leaving a brief silence.
The barrier was still intact.
"You lied to me, Lady Malin."
"Impossible!"
The barrier's presence had caught Malin completely off guard. She turned back in bewilderment toward the diminutive druid behind her. "Ailivy, what is that Markwen fellow you vouched for doing? Why is there still a barrier around the woodland!?"
Little Rascal looked up at the frail figure and suddenly noticed an inconspicuous bulge on her back. Beneath the robe woven from broad leaves, there had to be a pair of wings—the mark of a fairy.
Only now did she understand this fairy godmother's goal: to destroy the barrier protecting Ebony Forest.
But why was Grandpa Markwen involved, too?
She continued listening to Ailivy's defense. "How could I possibly know what happened? Without the [Road of Wealth] to make up the shortfall, the ritual maintaining the barrier should have stopped halfway through—"
During that interruption, the antimagic barrier hanging before them like a curtain would disappear, allowing them to burn away the dead branches and expose the passage into Ebony Forest.
That had been their original plan. The situation before them could mean only one thing. "Something went wrong on Markwen's end."
"So the ritual materials were replenished, and your plan failed. Is that right?"
The lord's voice was grim.