SPELLBOUND

Upon entering the wall of darkness, Evie began to see dead bodies. It was pitch black in there, but Evie could somehow still see clearly. She flew forward hastily as she could not see anyone who was still alive. It seemed as though the army was already far ahead of her.

Looking down, she saw that most of the dead bodies on the ground belonged to the monsters. She could not help but feel awed that there were little to almost no casualty on the side of the united army. Just how strong were they that even the humans – the weakest of all the races – could also stand their ground and fight against the monsters? From the lack of dead human bodies around her, it seemed to be pointing in that direction where even the humans could go against these monsters.

However, as she continued moving further into the darkness, she felt her heart becoming more and more restless. The monsters became bigger and bigger, and they looked even nastier.

She started seeing a few injured humans that were left behind as they could no longer go on with the rest of the army and a couple of light faes stayed behind with them. Evie was shocked to see that the light faes were healing them. What? How? Have they finally found a way to heal the humans now?! From what she knew, humans were impervious to the healing magics.

Evie was dying to investigate further into this as well, but she was afraid that she would run out of time. She was not sure how long these memories would last. So she could only ignore these other matters and move forward as fast as she could. She needed to find 'herself' and… Gav… and the others too!

Without stopping, Evie tried her best to keep on going even at the sight of the struggling, dying, and fighting soldiers. She did not dare to stop this time anymore and just continued pressing on, looking all around to find traces of the people that she was seeking for. Until she reached where the real battle was happening.

It was incredible how far the united army had already gone ahead and how many of their enemies they had already killed. Evie found herself awestruck at the thought of it and was at a loss for words.

But now that she had finally caught up with them, she could hardly believe what her eyes seemed to be seeing. The battle… it was something that she had never ever seen before… something that she could never even begin to imagine.

Dragons were flying and hovering around in the sky, as far as the eye could see and were incinerating the enemies with their fiery breaths. Whoever the fire missed would then be killed by the warriors who were dominating the ground level. One strike from a human soldier was enough to bring a monster down. No, some humans even managed to kill two or more, just with a single strike of their weapon. How? How did they all become so strong? What was the secret behind this miracle that she was witnessing?

The other races were even stronger than ever. All of them… they were all fighting like madmen, holding nothing back as they swung and thrusted their weapons around, every move bringing forth blood or welcoming death to their enemies.

Evie swallowed hard as she walked past them. It was so hard to watch. Though it was encouraging to see how the united armies were going on strong and giving their all in this fight, she still felt like breaking down every single time she sees an ally being teared apart mercilessly by the enemy. The heavily sweet and coppery scent of blood… the shrill and wailing screams… the crashing sound of weapons and brittle crunch of bones breaking… just the weighty scent of death that filled the air and was already enveloped with darkness, it all burned itself into Evie's mind and caused her heart to contract painfully.

Some monsters were so much bigger they could already be categorised as giants. She saw a few of those giants simultaneously propelling themselves from the ground and taking down one of the bluish dragons that was flying above. They came crashing to the ground in a tangled heap, causing the ground to shake as though the whole area would collapse into the earth itself.

That was when Evie saw that dragon Vera had been riding. As the giant monsters cruelly tore the smaller dragon they had caught apart, Vera's dragon breathed what seemed to be a blue flame over the giants.

Evie's eyes widened at the sight that she witnessed following that. The giants, including the smaller dead dragon, were then enveloped within a casing of ice rather than being incinerated into flames as she would have expected. And that was not the end of it yet, as Evie saw Vera stretch her hand towards the ice below and the moment she clenched her hand into a fist, the ice including everything within it imploded and burst out into tiny little sparkly crystals and came scattering down as a blanket of scarlet snow.

After that, Vera left again with her dragon as though nothing had happened at all. The coldness in her pale blue eyes sent shivers stabbing through Evie's heart.

She quickly followed after Vera as her dragon went further into the darkness again.

The battle continued raging down below, so fiercely as Vera continued destroying the giants without even batting an eye. All the while, Evie also did not forget to look around, trying to seek out Gav, and the others to see if they were in this battlefield. She was also looking for 'herself' as she had yet to see her.

'Where is she?' Evie asked when she saw a bright light that flashed up ahead. Her heart jolted at the same time Vera ordered her dragon to head forward. Was that light a signal?

Evie saw that all of the dragons had already left the battlefield. Each of them now has a rider on their backs as they all moved towards the light ahead at full speed, ignoring everything else below them.

Down below, the soldiers began to push forwards as well, as if they too had just gotten the same signal.

Holding her breath, Evie realized that this was now an all-out attack from both the ground and the sky. She forced herself to observe everything carefully and closely, committing every single one of their formations and movements to memory … what were they planning to do?