Isilad did not even let his daughter enter the village when she saw her next to Lua. As much as it pained him to stand against his own flesh and blood, the well-being of the entire village depended on it. With a swing of his staff, a summoning circle appeared between him and the two approaching women.

"Dìon," the Druid whispered as his staff lit up with an emerald glow. A row of giant Tree Knights sprouted from the summoning circle. They barely looked humanoid enough to hold sharp, wind-enchanted blades made of leaves and vines.

His summoned knights pointed their weapons at the two returning women but did not attack.

"Dad?" Rena questioned him. Her voice carried so much hurt that it only made his regrets grow. "What are you doing?"

Isilad stepped forward, and his summoned knights let him pass, twisting their wooden legs so he could pass between their roots. His daughter had stepped in front of Lua, bow in hand, and eyed the Tree Knights apprehensively. When her peridot gaze met his golden eyes, she seemed to relax.

"Did something happen?" Rena immediately asked. "I swear on the El, I didn't let any outsiders follow me while I was out."

"I know that, Sweetie," the Druid explained, finally pulling off his hood to free his long, ashen green hair. He looked past his daughter, and his fears were confirmed. "But you can't enter the village with someone who's irreparably corrupted."

"Irreparably?" The young Ranger scoffed. "Come on, Dad. Mom came back with worse a couple of times, but you always—"

"It's the nature of the corruption that matters," Isilad immediately shot back as he crossed his arms, "not its extent. She must leave."

"Then, I'll leave with her," Rena growled as she took her friend's hand and walked away.

"Rena," he called out to her, raising his voice only to make sure they would hear him. "She'll die in a matter of days. It's best if you part ways before you get corrupted, too."

Both women stopped at those words. Rena clenched her fist at his words, but she calmed down at something Lua said. The two women then continued their way, dashing out of sight.

It's only much later that Isilad would come to know that the two of them had journeyed in the world of humans.

Ainchase lifted his hand, signalling to the old, grey-haired Druid that sat immediately to the Elder's left to stop his tale.

"When you said that she could not be healed, did you know that she was becoming a scion of Henir?" the Celestial asked.

"No," Isilad answered. "At that time, she was corrupted by ancient demonic energy. If they really did travel across Elrios like my daughter promised to Lua, then they'd be easy targets for Henir's cult."

The Druid took a deep breath and glanced at his Elder, silently asking her to continue the retelling. Even though it was old history by this point, it still affected him.

"The two girls came back a decade later," Branwen explained. "Lua had succumbed on the way, but it seems that her death throes were very long and painful. Rena asked us to give her a proper burial."

The Elder paused to lick her lips before continuing more solemnly. "Lua's mother and grandmother still lived at the time, so we didn't refuse her request. But the moment we put her to rest… that's when Henir spread his Darkness on our village."

All the elves looked down somberly, some clenched their fists, others simply looked away, passing a hand over their necks. Ain knew how terrifying the experience may have been. The horrors born out of Henir's chaos only knew how to absorb all that they were not.

Still, as tragic as it was, a question lingered in his mind. Why would they not call upon the goddess? She was capable of smiting the Darkness in a flash.

He clenched his fists in turn, eyeing every elf present with suspicion. "Why didn't you alert the goddess?'

"It was all the previous Elder's fault," Branwen bitterly explained. Her expression soured for only an instant as she adjusted the crown of leaves and vines that circled her head. "None of us knew at the time, but he had wagered our safety with Henir long before he manifested a scion in our lands."

Ainchase leaned forward on his chair, setting his elbows on the table. "Are you saying that your territory is isolated from humans thanks to that god's foul magic?"

"It's isolated in spite of that," the other Druid, a middle-aged man with platinum hair and lime-green eyes, answered. "Every day since that disaster, every Druid works to keep the curse of Henir at bay."

The Celestial looked down and took a deep breath. Henir was an insidious entity that could bind entire civilisations to its will should his cult take over. A similar vow of silence was imposed on a Debrian research organisation a few centuries ago.

'If Henir left his mark on this land,' Ain reflected angrily at everything he had witnessed since he materialised on Elrios. 'It explains how the demons got here and…why the goddess could send me here instead of the major cities.'

The goddess knew. She had to. And yet, she had chosen not to purge the mark of Henir. The mere thought made him frown. There had to be an explanation, surely. Once the goddess fully fused with her vessel, he would need to ask her why.

"What about the ruins that Lua mentioned?" the demoness asked. "Are they still around?"

The elves did not take her question kindly. They frowned at her, only offering silence before turning their attention away from her.

Ainchase glanced at the Steel Queen, noting how she hardly let any emotions show. Still, she persisted with her questioning, poised as ever. "I think that there should be clues on that scion's whereabouts there, assuming you didn't raze it to the ground."

Elder Branwen's lips thinned at the demoness, and Ainchase saw her mouth 'insolent demon' before she continued in an even voice. "We've only sealed the ruins. It should have been off-limits to both outsiders and our rangers alike."

"Should have been?" Ainchase echoed the Elder's words, tilting his head at them. "Who went in?"

One of the women, a winged elf with ash blonde hair and peridot eyes reminiscent of Rena's, took a military decoration from the pocket of her black cloak. The piece chimed on the stone-like surface and slid until it was within the Celestial's grasp. He grabbed it, recognising the small cross of Illipia carved on the centre, surrounded by Velder's coat of arms—two cornucopias loosely tied together by a chain.

Though Ainchase could guess the nature of the artefact, he was entirely clueless about its origins or significance to humans. He slid it over to Ciel. "Do you know what order this belongs to?"

The Steel Cross took the medal and flipped it as his sapphire gaze took in every detail of the object before tossing it back on the table. "That's a medal of valour. Courtesy of the Kingdom of Velder."

Ainchase nodded, already certain that the same traitors who had injured them all in the Tree of El were taking their loot somewhere they knew, or at least thought, nobody else would follow them. There was only one more thing the Celestial wanted to confirm.

As the old blonde Centinel took the medal back, Ishmael's Servant searched the pockets of his coat and took out the scroll containing the map and the note he had found in the Tree of El. He carefully straightened both documents and laid them at the centre of the table.

The four elves leaned closer, taking in the details and inscriptions of the map, some furrowing their brow and others merely tilting their head slightly at it.

"We were following three traitors that took the El," Ainchase announced. "Their destination is the city of Elder. Are the ruins close to their route?"

Elder Branwen shook her head, "No. It's in the opposite direction," she explained before pointing at the left corner of the map with her left index. "A day's trip further north from this spot."

The information made his eyes widen. He leaned back in his seat, struggling to piece together the information he had just been given. Ainchase quickly shook his head and turned his attention back to the elven council. "Did they have the Shard with them?"

The grave nod from all four, older elves only bewildered him more. "What?"

"There's a chance," Ciel began, "that the Rogue Phorus made them get off-course."

"With the calibre of Nasod artillery they had," Luciela sighed, "I doubt they'd struggle against those rats."

Isilad's eyes narrowed at her words. "Nasod artillery? It can't be."

"It's a good motive, though," the blonde druid noted, rubbing his chin as he looked down at the map. "This patron of theirs, Lord Sunderland of Elder… he might be the one who gave them the weaponry in exchange for the gem."

The only Centinel who had not spoken – a blue-eyed woman with honey-blonde hair who kept half her face underneath a scarf – finally chimed in. "I agree with the abomination." Her voice was raspy, easily mistaken for a wheeze, but her eyes set on Ciel intently. "The scion may have been waiting for the El to be stolen and forced the thieves into her domain."

The Celestial frowned. Though Henir's power was antithetical to that of the goddess, he could use the gem to sow chaos and destruction on a massive scale.

They were in a race against time.

Lowe remained silent, clenching the El piece in his hand tighter than before. The silence in his office was thicker than the insidious, icy chill seeping through the cracks in the windowsill.

Even through the heavy interference in the golden communication orb before him, he heard Admiral Felford's words loud and clear: "There's no way this ends well for you, Lowe."

"Sir," the grey-eyed man began, passing a hand over the back of his neck. He briefly pursed his lips but found the strength to continue with a calm, firm voice. "This is Lord Sunderland's fault. I told Captain Evans, but he wouldn't listen—"

"Haven't you lied enough already?"

That question was a stab to the gut. As expected of the White Hawk, Owen Felford always waited for the perfect moment to strike.

The Admiral used his silence to continue to talk, "Lowe, you're young, but you're too brash for your own good. I have no choice but to inform Lord Cronwell about what you did."

The Lieutenant passed his free hand over his face and sighed. "How was I supposed to know they were Lord Cronwell's nephews?"

Lowe huffed, feeling the bitter taste of guilt twist his lips into something akin to a smirk. "I can tolerate having Hamelian refugees, but Senacian Royalty?" The Lieutenant scoffed. "Lord Felford, even you can see how dangerous it'd be for the two princes to remain here. It'd be a disaster! I had to get them back home."

"Is the disaster you've just caused less concerning than some diplomatic spat?"

Another question, another deadly strike he could only answer with silence. Lowe sank into his chair, covering his face with both hands. The small, powder blue crystal in his hand rolled out from his grasp and fell onto the wooden floor. The orb immediately disconnected.

Each breath was slightly painful, burning through Lowe's chest like the heat from a forge. He coughed and ended up spitting blood. His chest felt crushed under some invisible weight; he was tearing up, and pins and needles rapidly spread through his arms.

Instinctively, he lunged for the piece of El he had let fall and immediately felt better. With a big sigh of relief, he got up to grab a handkerchief and a mana potion. Lowe wiped the blood off his mouth and just as he was having the first sip of his potion, his office door opened.

Leyla and Darren entered, carrying a wheezing, black-haired knight while Wayne lagged behind.

The wounded knight was in his death throes. His sclera had turned red, making his blue irises seem almost white in comparison. His uniform was stained with blood, which was visibly dripping from his eyes, nose, and ears. The skin on his arms was raw, and his fingers were gangrenous. The soldier's face was so swollen it was impossible to recognise who he was. To Lowe, it was a reminder of something he would rather forget.

Leyla spoke first. "He's the only man on guard duty who hasn't died yet. He wanted to report to you." Her onyx gaze set on her dying comrade, and she gently told him that they were in front of the Lieutenant.

"Lieutenant," the soldier wheezed before coughing up thick, almost slimy black blood. "We aren't safe…outside. What's…going on?"

He gasped for air, almost gagging on his own bloody spit. Even if it was only briefly, Lowe saw the soldier's blackened gums. He was missing teeth, and those that remained were rotten. It was a grisly sight that made him cringe.

"Take him to the medical ward, now!" Lowe barked at his soldiers. "Get him out of here."

"Not…outside," the soldier croaked as his strength left his legs. The other soldiers struggled to support his weight, but Leyla quickly pulled out a chair to help him sit down, leaving Wayne to help Darren support their comrade.

"I can't see…I don't want to go out," the black-haired soldier weakly continued. Despite his pitiful state – or perhaps because of it – his unnatural gaze drowned in fear. "I don't want to… don't want to."

"Soldier, listen," Lowe calmly insisted. "If you stay here, you'll die."

The soldier weakly shook his head, "Let me stay here…"

"I'll bring medics here, sir," Wayne quickly offered before storming off the room.

When the door closed, a thick silence remained, only briefly interrupted every now and then by the black-haired knight's quiet pleas to stay.

"Is this what winter does to our men, Lieutenant?" The female leader of Squad Ten hissed, gesturing towards the dying soldier. "Are we supposed to fall in line after your decisions ended up causing this?!"

Darren nodded before setting his golden gaze on the Lieutenant. It asked a simple yet impossible question to answer. One Lowe never expected he would ever have to face. Still, he had to find the answer, did he not?

Lowe's brief moment of introspection ended when he heard the small chime of mail and armour coming from the remaining knights. Leyla and Darren had donned chainmail under their uniform and carried their weapons – unlike him.

"What do you want?" the grey-eyed Lieutenant cautiously asked, clenching the El stone tighter to get as much mana as possible.

"We want you to act like a real leader or step down," Leyla calmly told him. "I could bring everyone who's also sick of you here if you really need confirmation."

The door opened. The wounded soldier collapsed. The two healers Wayne brought immediately rushed to the soldier's side, their healing magic glimmering on their hands. However, the oldest healer gave up, her callous hands finally losing their shimmering glow, and her gaze sank. The younger, a novice, only strengthened her focus, but she found herself coughing and with a nosebleed. Her spell immediately dissipated.

"He's gone," the older healer sighed, taking the white hood off her head to reveal a greying pink mane tied in a clean bun. Her junior also removed her hood, revealing curly, strawberry-blonde hair. She was the youngest of all the people gathered there, but the bags under her emerald eyes made her look older. The young healer put her hands together and muttered a prayer for the fallen soldier.

The pink-haired healer looked at Lowe, and her copper eyes silently accused him of his death. "He's gone, sir."

"Yes, he is," he gravely admitted. "Inform his family and prepare his body for cremation, please."

The older healer's gaze narrowed. "You'll be the one to inform the families, sir. I'll give you the list of the ten boys who died today in an hour."

She turned towards Wayne. "Young man, could you help us carry the body?"

The silver-haired knight acquiesced and was promptly out once more.

"You can't even take responsibility for those deaths, can you?" Leyla scoffed, rolling her eyes at him.

"I didn't refuse the healer's request, did I?" he asked, his voice tethered on the edge of anger. "Let's be clear about one thing, soldiers."

Lowe poured all the mana he could gather into the shard he held. The dull, powder blue gem shone with a bright, electric blue light. Soon enough, his mana formed threads around the crystal, extending its reach until a blue and golden blade appeared in his hand. His nerves were on fire under the strain in which he was putting his mana circuits. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could without giving too much of his suffering away. Although his vision was blurring, the Lieutenant stood his ground firmly. Lowe knew his magic was mightier than theirs; he had a purer Elrian lineage and the better mana circuits that came with it.

The Lieutenant frowned at his subordinates. "I'm not going to make mutiny easy for you."

"We're not planning on killing you," Darren coldly said, taking his bastard sword off his hips and letting it fall. "It'd be hard for two peasants like us to win against the Asinis' bastard son."

Had Banthus not taught him to be a little less hot-headed over the years, Lowe would have cut Darren's head off when he uttered the name of his mother's House. Instead, he only clenched his sword tighter, letting the El Energy burn the palm of his hand.

Leyla hit her comrade with her elbow before tossing her spear aside. "I'm as mad as you are, but there's no need for low blows. Return to the barracks and organise everyone to check on the villagers."

Darren saluted the green-haired woman, apologising before picking up his weapon and leaving the room. Lowe dispelled his mana blade, and his vision slowly returned to normal. He briefly looked down at his hand. It was bright red, and the pain had not subsided at all. Still, the burn had not caused any blisters, or at least none he could see. It would be easy enough to treat it on his own.

"So, Lowe," Leyla sighed as she sat down. "I just want to be clear about something; we want to give you a chance to leave gracefully if it comes down to it. I hear your half-brother, uh…he has glasses, right?" She clicked her tongue, her onyx gaze briefly lifting up as she struggled to recall his name.

"Yes. His name's Allegro."

Leyla nodded, offering him a smile he did not reciprocate. "Right, right. Allegro. Well, I heard from Commodore Asini that Allegro works for the Council of Feita now. He might be able to give you a position as a City Guard."

The Lieutenant kept quiet. Commodore Asini. The name and position alone awoke bitter memories. Seeing that man again, dressed in glory and riches, was a stab in the gut.

Leyla dropped her smile and simply told him to tell her whether the El Shard had suffered the same fate as the one Feita or not.

"No," Lowe told her. "It was stolen."

"By who?"

The Lieutenant passed his free hand over his receding brown hair, looking down at the multiple reports on his desk. He thought about what he ought to say. Leyla was not as observant as Owen Felford, but she had a short temper – despite her assurances to the contrary – and a very strong intuition.

"Who did it? Do you know where it is?" Leyla insisted, yet he remained silent. "Goddess above, come clean already. This isn't a drill, Lowe! People could be dying at this very moment!"

The Lieutenant slammed his fists on the table, making her flinch. "You have no right to even insinuate that I don't understand how serious this is, Leyla."

The woman's gaze ignited with anger. "Oh, really?!" she sneered, "Well, I'm not the one who's been recalling the expeditions to the Tree of El using every excuse in the fucking book."

"We can't risk our men—"

"We can't risk our lives for what, the safety of the El?" Leyla shook her head disapprovingly. Though her tone was even, the look in her eyes revealed her outrage. "We all swore an oath to do just that." The green-haired knight clicked her tongue, almost as if to refrain from losing her cool once again. "All you've done as a Captain is break that oath. Hand over your position and get over yourself already."

Lowe got up and leaned closer to her; his silent rage was finally emerging through the veneer of calm indifference he usually donned. "Get over myself? You think I'm like that Commodore who came here looking down on us?" he spat out. "I know my oath. In fact, I've been fulfilling it long before I even took it."

The woman's frown grew deeper. It disgusted him. Lento deserved no medals or respect, and he certainly did nothing to deserve being a Commodore when he was two years younger than Lowe.

"I saved my ungrateful cousin and my half-brother," the Lieutenant softly said. His voice was down from an angry roar to the thin yet deadly edge of a sharpened razor. "I saved them from the clutches of those Sanderian dogs that almost wiped Feita off the map."

He let the weight of his words sink into the already tense moment. Leyla kept her cool, and her dark eyes, so expressive just a moment ago, were unreadable. It bothered him, but he had no intentions of continuing to lash out any longer. Lowe was already exhausted from both his miraculously successful attempt at using projection magic without his enchanted greatsword and his exposure to the lack of El Energy.

Lowe scoffed. "So, don't you dare question my resolve to protect the El and the innocent."

"Then why would you lie about the theft?"

The young Lieutenant leaned back and sat on his chair. "Because most of you would rather put my head on a pike than accept that Captain Evans betrayed us all."

Leyla blinked, furrowing her brow immediately after that. "What?"

"If you had not interrupted me before," Lowe explained, "I would've said that I don't want to risk having our men join the side of the traitor." Lowe licked his lips before continuing to tell the truth, at least the convenient part for now. "That's why I asked the Steel Cross to take that woman and the priest with him to retrieve the El."

He paused briefly, licking his lips. It seemed that he had convinced her for now. "The best we can do on our end is to protect the village at all costs. You already put Squad Three to work on that, so I'd like you to help me get everyone else's help."

Elsword never imagined that his first duty as a knight would be to return to his village. Like the other two dozen knights, six healers and Aisha, he was carrying a pendant with a small piece of El. It had to have direct contact with their skin to work. Still, he was winded and lagged behind his group. The air was thin and cold yet burned through his lungs at every breath. He felt the ground spinning around him, and he found himself staggering as every sound around him echoed, and every silhouette seemed to summon countless mirror images of itself to the sides.

The boy felt something catch him – a blur of purple and pink he vaguely recognised as Aisha. She slurred something to him: a question, surely.

"Huh?" he asked the increasingly bizarre, kaleidoscopic scenery that unravelled before him. "What's going on?"

The young knight felt her fingers forcefully put something in his hands. Its power was a balm on an ailing wound, and in only seconds, Elsword was back to normal. He straightened up and looked at the finely chiselled gem in his hands.

"Thanks, Aisha," he said to the mage, who was still weaving the threads of El Energy like she had done when they headed into the forests with Ciel and the rest.

However, unlike that time, only very faint threads flailed into the wind, some of which originated in the pendants they all wore.

The purple-haired girl did not immediately answer, though she kept staring at him with a mix of concern and fascination, which made him uncomfortable.

"Dear El, what's wrong with you now?" he grumbled as he turned away from her scrutinising gaze.

"What House are you from again?" she finally asked him.

"Felford," he maintained. It was getting easier and easier to see himself as part of Sir Owen's family. The more he repeated it to others, the easier it got.

"Hmm, that's strange," Aisha mumbled, but it was still loud enough for him to hear. "Your mana circuits are nothing like those of the Admiral."

The red-haired boy frowned. "Oh yeah? So what! I'm still—"

"Soldiers, halt!" Darren barked. He led the march to the front, followed by Wayne and two female knights that Elsword had not heard the names of. The troops stopped, and Elsword stepped to the side to glance at the reason behind the order.

He immediately regretted his decision. It took all he could to keep his breakfast down when he saw two old villagers lying on their backs at the edge of the road. They had one foot and a half in the grave; their flesh had rotted from the tip of their fingers up to their elbows. Elsword thankfully did not take in more details than that, as the group of healers immediately eclipsed his view. They were quick to determine that there was nothing they could do.

"They still have a few hours left," a young healer with strawberry blonde hair said, her voice quivering as tears streamed down her face. "There's no saving them, nor easing their pain…so— so—"

"Understood. Soldiers, lower your heads," Wayne solemnly ordered the troops. "Close your eyes and pray for their souls; may the goddess welcome them in her eternal light."

Elsword did as his senior asked, but the prayers did little to distract him from what Wayne had to do. His prayers quickly diverged from wishing the dead a peaceful rest to wishing Squad Three would not have to kill anyone else to put them out of their misery.