In the distance, the miners lay behind rocks. Some poked half their heads out, some hid their entire bodies behind the stones with only one eye showing, and some simply buried their faces in their arms, not daring to look at all.
The sight in the sky had gone beyond their comprehension-not fear, not shock, but the blankness that came when the brain could no longer process what was before it.
That golden beast with three heads swooped down from the black storm. One foreclaw seized the black monster covered in purple crystals that had crawled out of the pit, and then it pulled up sharply, plunging back into the clouds.
The black storm, wreathed in golden lightning, traced an arc through the sky and sped west.
The storm moved too fast for anyone to react. In the blink of an eye, it swept overhead. Thunder still buzzed in their ears, but the black cloud mass had already become a tiny, indistinct black dot on the horizon.
What... was that thing?
No one answered. No one knew the answer. The miners looked at one another, some with their mouths hanging open, some with their eyes wide, and some only just getting up from the ground, their knees still shaking.
Their faces all bore the same expression-Where am I? Who am I? What did I just see?
Dezi stood up from behind a rock, his legs a little weak. He steadied himself against it, then turned to face the miners still standing in a daze and took a deep breath.
"Head back first," Dezi said, his voice quiet but steady. "Everyone, head back first."
No one moved. Not because they did not want to, but because their legs would not obey.
"Those two things definitely aren't normal," Dezi added, an urgency in his tone that said, "I know what you're thinking, but stop thinking about it for now. Let's get out of here first."
Only then did the miners begin getting to their feet, one after another, as if someone had pressed a start button.
Some leaned on stones, some supported one another, and some took two steps before looking back at the western sky-there was nothing left to see, only a gray horizon and a few clouds scattered by the wind.
Dezi walked at the rear. He did not look back. He knew the pit was still behind him, knew that the black monster that had crawled out of it had been carried away, and knew that the crushed stones still lay scattered across its bottom.
But he did not need to look again. What he needed to do now was go back, return to Luoweida City, find the viscount, and tell him what had happened here.
That golden beast-Dezi was not sure whether what he had just seen was real, but with that size and that storm, there was no way everyone in Luoweida City could have missed it. No matter how slowly the people at the viscount's estate reacted, they could not possibly have remained unaware of such a huge disturbance.
Dezi quickened his pace. He had to report this; it was his duty. He did not want to concern himself with where the beast in the sky had come from, where it was going, or whether it would return.
He only knew that he could do nothing about it. An existence on that level was not something a lowly miner like him could concern himself with.
Dezi's brows were tightly knitted, the vertical crease between them like a knife cut.
This continent would certainly know no peace in the days ahead. Storms, giant beasts, and that dragon covered in purple crystals that had crawled out from underground. Everything was growing more and more insane.
In a certain corner.
A stretch of ruins ravaged by the storm that no one had yet had time to clear away.
Collapsed houses, fallen trees, heaps of rubble and earth. The air still held the dampness left by the rain and the smell of rotting wood.
A white-robed man stood at the highest point of the ruins-atop a stone half a person's height that had been torn in one whole piece from the wall of some building.
His white robe fluttered gently in the wind, its hem brushing the stone's rough surface with a faint scraping sound.
His hood was pulled low, hiding most of his face. Only a pale stretch of chin and a pair of extremely light, almost transparent gray eyes were visible.
His eyes were fixed on the western sky. Nothing remained there. The storm had flown far away, even the clouds had been scattered, and all that remained was a clear, pale blue sky that looked as though it had been washed with water.
"Confirmed. It's the one." The white-robed man spoke quietly, as if talking to himself, or to someone unseen behind him.
Another voice came from behind him, much younger than his and speaking a little faster. "We can't identify the other one. We need to consult the Scroll Keeper."
The white-robed man nodded. He did not ask, "What do we do about the other one?" Nor did he say, "No need to consult anyone. I'll judge it myself." He knew the limits of his authority, and he knew the limits of the Scroll Keeper's.
Record what they could see, and leave what they could not see for the Scroll Keeper to judge. That deeply ingrained sense of boundaries was what had allowed the Silence Society to survive between the continent's nations for so many years.
"Understood," the young voice said. "People have already been sent to deal with the Western Mine."
The white-robed man nodded again.
Wind swept over the ruins, stirring up a few dead leaves. The hem of the white-robed man's robe fluttered once more, and then he turned and stepped down from the stone.
His footsteps were light, so light that they made almost no sound on the rubble.
In the sky.
King Ghidorah flew west beneath the cover of the storm, holding Valeria in his claw. More precisely, he was not "grabbing" Valeria, but "carrying" him.
His right foreclaw gripped the surviving right half of Valeria's body, its tips embedded in the gaps between the rocklike scales to ensure that this fellow would not fall midway.
Valeria's battered body hung beneath his claw like a lizard caught by an eagle. Four legs-no, only two remained-dangled limply in the air, and his tail swung back and forth in the wind like a boneless rope.
Valeria did not struggle. Not because he did not want to, but because he truly had no strength left to struggle. The left half of his body had shattered, several deep cracks had opened across the right half, and the glow of the purple crystal in his chest had dimmed by more than half.
All he could do now was try to stay conscious and avoid passing out halfway through the flight.
It would not matter if he passed out, since he did not need to breathe or have a heartbeat anyway. But he did not want to look too useless in front of King Ghidorah-even though he was already useless enough as it was.
"So, when can you recover?" King Ghidorah's middle head lowered slightly, his golden slit pupils glancing at Valeria beneath his claw.
His tone was not concerned, but businesslike, the sort that said, "Give me a time so I can schedule your work."
Valeria fell silent for a moment. He was assessing his injuries-no, not injuries, but depletion.
He had no flesh, no organs, no meridians. He had only stone and crystal. Cracks in the stone could be repaired, and the crystals' light could be recharged, but both required materials.
[I need to absorb ore to rebuild my damaged body.]
Valeria's voice sounded in King Ghidorah's mind, weaker than before, halting and intermittent like a radio running out of power.
King Ghidorah's six golden slit-pupiled eyes blinked at once. "You should have said so earlier. Would that mine back there do?"
Valeria turned his head with difficulty, using his still-functioning left eye to glance at the ground racing backward beneath the claw holding him.
Luoweida City was already far away, and the abandoned mining area was nothing more than a blurry gray-green speck.
He still remembered the distribution of ore veins in that mining area-he had not been entirely unconscious during his slumber. His sensory system had remained in low-power operation, scanning his surroundings and recording the distribution of underground mineral deposits.
The mining area had limited ore reserves, and the quality was poor, mostly low-grade iron ore with a small amount of copper ore. To him, that ore was like a human living on bran and vegetables: enough to survive, but not enough to fill his stomach.
[There isn't much ore in that area. It might run out before I recover.]
King Ghidorah fell silent for a moment. His three heads exchanged glances, then turned west together.
The western horizon glimmered faintly gold in the morning light, with the outlines of several mountains appearing and disappearing in the mist.
He remembered Voraksa saying that the area was rich in ore veins-although the storm had ravaged it badly, the ore underneath should still be there.
"Tsk. West it is, then." As soon as King Ghidorah finished speaking, the storm swiftly changed course and moved west. The black cloud mass traced an arc through the sky, moving even faster than before.
Under King Ghidorah's control, the wind speed at the storm's center instantly increased by an order of magnitude. Golden lightning darted through the clouds, and the thunder made Valeria's chest cavity tingle-though his chest was already gone.
Held by King Ghidorah, Valeria swayed back and forth in the air. The wind folded his surviving wing backward, and the purple crystals on its membrane made increasingly frequent, faint rattling sounds.
He did not dare speak, or even breathe hard, for fear that King Ghidorah would decide he was too much trouble and simply throw him down.
Silence lingered for a while.
"Oh, right." King Ghidorah's middle head suddenly turned toward Valeria, a look Valeria could not decipher flashing through its golden slit pupils. "You have a coworker. Once you've recovered, go with him."
[A coworker?]
He did not know that word.
[...What coworker?]
"Another dragon. Black, can fly too. A little bigger than you," King Ghidorah said. "He's looking for things for me too."
Valeria fell silent. He tried to search his mind for information about "another black dragon." He had not known many dragons during the age of the gods.
There had indeed been several branches of black dragons during the age of the gods, but most of those dragons had measured around a few dozen meters-they could not possibly have been "a little bigger" than him.
Unless the "little bigger" King Ghidorah meant was... several times the "little bigger" he understood.
Valeria did not dare ask any further.
[O... okay.]
His voice was even quieter than before.
The Western Mine.
The ruins looked just as they had before. Heaps of rubble, collapsed mine headframes, scattered rails, workshops destroyed by mudslides.
Little had changed since the black-robed figures had awakened Voraksa here a few days earlier-the pit was still there, the altar at its bottom had shattered, and most of the murals had been destroyed, but the scattered stones and broken fragments of runes remained where they were, like forgotten corpses no one had come to claim.
Several white-robed figures stood at the edge of the pit, looking down into the seemingly bottomless darkness.
They stood far apart. Some paced along the edge, some crouched on stones examining something, and some performed sensory scans with their eyes closed. No one spoke or made any unnecessary noise.
"Go down," a voice said. It was not very loud, but it carried far across the empty ruins, bouncing between the stone walls in waves of gradually fading echoes.
No one answered, but all the white-robed figures moved. Some leaped down, some climbed down along the pit walls, and some cast a levitation spell of some kind, their bodies descending slowly.
Their movements were practiced and swift, without a trace of hesitation, as if they had jumped down here countless times. In less than half the time it took to drink a cup of tea, they had all gathered at the bottom of the pit.
The bottom was darker than the surface. The air was filled with a damp, stale smell, like a cellar that had not been aired out in a very long time. The rocks underfoot were uneven, with water pooled in places that made faint squelching sounds when stepped on.
The ancient murals on the walls were almost impossible to make out in the darkness. Only a few indistinct, darkened lines were faintly visible, like scars worn smooth by time.
Kaidezi walked a little behind the middle of the group. She was the least senior among them-although she had already spent nearly twenty years in the Silence Society.
Her hood was not pulled very low, leaving most of her face visible. She had regular features, fair skin, and a quiet, focused air about her brows and eyes that came from years spent working with ancient texts.
Her eyes were dark gray, gleaming faintly in the darkness like two pebbles polished smooth.