Chapter 23 — The night of frenzy

  Year 22,841 of the Dragon Era — Day 131

  Nightfall

  The forest darkened.

  Not slowly—

  but all at once.

  As if the world itself sensed something was about to go wrong.

  The voice in my head didn’t fade.

  It grew.

  Twisting.

  Echoing.

  Devouring every other sound.

  At first it was just a whisper.

  Then a command.

  Now—

  A roar.

  STRONGER.

  STRONGER.

  STRONGERRRR—!!

  I tried to speak—tried to breathe—but the words wouldn’t form.

  I could no longer hear the wolves’ mental link.

  Their voices, warnings, presence—everything became distant and muted.

  Like I was sinking underwater.

  My hands flew to my head instinctively—pressing hard, desperate—

  as if I could hold my skull together by force.

  But it didn’t help.

  Nothing helped.

  The corrupted mana surged again.

  And then—

  I lost control.

  A violent burst of green light exploded outward from my body—raw, unstable aura scattering like wildfire.

  The grass wilted.

  The ground cracked.

  The air vibrated with heat and pressure.

  My inner mana channels burned—searing pain ripping through them as if they were tearing open from the inside.

  It felt like my veins were being replaced with fire.

  STRONGER!!!

  My body convulsed.

  Another burst erupted—stronger than the last.

  The wolves flinched—not from fear, but force.

  They held formation, surrounding me—keeping distance yet ready to intervene if I turned hostile.

  Even the pups felt it.

  Their small bodies pressed tightly against Lyra’s barrier, ears flat, trembling—not because they thought I would hurt them…

  …but because the energy pouring from me felt wrong.

  My vision fractured.

  Shadows bled into light.

  The world twisted and blinked like reality itself was tearing.

  Colors smeared.

  Shapes collapsed.

  Sound stretched and warped until it became nothing but a low, endless ringing.

  And then—

  everything else vanished.

  I couldn’t feel the forest anymore.

  Or the ground.

  Or my own body.

  There was only the voice.

  Loud.

  Close.

  Inside me.

  It was twisted.

  Sickening.

  Wrong in a way that made my instincts recoil.

  And yet—

  It felt familiar.

  Like someone I knew.

  Like someone I shouldn’t know.

  That realization terrified me more than the pain.

  Because even as it screamed—

  even as it demanded strength—

  a part of me recognized it.

  Cira’s POV

  “Quick—give me your mana. All of it.”

  My voice snapped through the link, sharp and urgent.

  The pack responded instantly.

  One by one, the wolves closed in—forming a tight circle around Yuu’s collapsed body. Their auras flared, threads of mana drifting toward me like streams being pulled into a river.

  I pressed my paw against his chest.

  His body was cold.

  Unnaturally cold.

  But beneath the skin—mana churned violently, twisting like a storm trapped inside fragile glass.

  I grit my teeth and pushed my mana into him—forcing it to clash against the corrupted flow tearing through his channels.

  His body jerked.

  The reaction was immediate.

  I heard Kael’s voice cut through the tension:

  “Wait. Stop feeding mana into him.”

  I froze mid-push.

  His tone wasn’t commanding—

  It was warning.

  Kael stepped closer, eyes locked on Yuu’s aura, analyzing every shift.

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  “His mana isn’t loose. It’s condensing. I can see it—”

  A short pause.

  Then:

  “—a core.”

  My heart skipped.

  “What?”

  That shouldn’t be possible.

  Not this fast.

  Not under corruption.

  I shifted my senses deeper—searching, scanning past the unstable mana flow.

  And then—

  There it was.

  A small sphere of condensed energy—fragile, unstable, but unmistakably real—anchored at the center of his being.

  “The core… has already formed…” I whispered.

  Shock rippled through the circle.

  Even the pups quieted.

  Kael continued, his voice low and steady:

  “If we break that energy now—or disrupt it—he will die.”

  I swallowed.

  Hard.

  My claws dug into the soil.

  “Then what else can we do?” I snapped, frustration breaking through my control.

  “There’s no time. Even if we went to the Elder—he wouldn’t survive the journey.”

  For a split second, panic threatened to fracture my focus.

  Kael stepped closer.

  “Calm yourself,” he said firmly. Not commanding — grounding.

  “I know this is difficult. But think clearly.”

  I clenched my jaw, breathing hard.

  “There are no options,” I said. “The corruption is fused to his mana. I can’t rip it out without ripping him apart.”

  Kael’s gaze sharpened.

  “Not remove it,” he said slowly.

  “Separate it.”

  I froze.

  “…Separate it?” I repeated. “From what?”

  “From the flow,” Kael answered. “From his channels. From the core forming around it.”

  My eyes widened slightly — not in hope, but realization.

  “That won’t destroy it,” I said. “It’ll still be inside him.”

  “I know,” Kael replied.

  “But it will buy time.”

  I hesitated — only for a heartbeat.

  “…You’re right,” I said quietly.

  “If I isolate the corruption — partition it — it will stop tearing through his channels directly.”

  My teeth clenched.

  “It won’t solve anything. The corruption can’t be expelled. Not now. Not ever.”

  Kael met my eyes.

  “For now,” he said.

  “That will be enough.”

  I exhaled — sharp, controlled — fear forced into discipline.

  “Then I’ll change my approach.”

  I steadied my breathing, focus sharpening.

  “The channels are already connected to the core… but the corruption is destroying them faster than they can stabilize.”

  Mana flickered at the edges of Yuu’s form like sparks trying to become flame.

  “I’ll separate the corruption by force—guiding it inward through the damaged channels to stop it from tearing them apart.”

  Another pulse from his core shook the air.

  “—I’ll rip it away from the flow and seal it inside him before it can spread.”

  I planted my paw more firmly against his chest—teeth gritted, aura flaring.

  “Hold the formation. Don’t interrupt the flow.”

  The pack braced.

  I drew in a breath.

  And began.

  The response was immediate.

  A surge of mana erupted from him—violent, uncontrolled.

  Not merely strong.

  Wrong.

  The night ignited.

  Sickly green light tore outward from Yuu’s body, flooding the clearing, staining bark, soil, and fur alike. The air warped under the pressure, vibrating with a corrupted pulse that made my instincts recoil.

  This wasn’t mana reacting.

  It was rejecting restraint.

  Yuu screamed.

  Not a cry of pain—

  but something deeper. Raw. Unfiltered.

  A sound torn from somewhere beneath flesh and thought.

  It ripped through the forest, echoing far beyond the clearing.

  My focus wavered.

  Just for a heartbeat.

  The wrongness of it clawed at my senses, the corruption pressing back against my control like something alive—thrashing, resisting, hating what I was doing.

  My jaw locked tighter.

  No.

  I forced my aura steady—thread by thread—pushing past the nausea, past the instinct screaming at me to pull away.

  I could not stop.

  I would not stop.

  Even as his screams shredded my concentration, even as the green light burned behind my eyes—

  I held the flow.

  Kael’s POV

  Cira worked with absolute focus—expression sharp, movements precise.

  Her aura pulsed in steady, controlled waves, threading through Yuu’s unstable mana with a finesse only she possessed.

  I stood beside her, watching.

  In eight hundred and eleven cycles of life—

  I had never seen a core form this way.

  Cores existed from birth.

  They did not emerge.

  They did not force themselves into being through corruption and pain.

  The thought settled in my chest like stone.

  Yuu had lived among us long enough that his presence no longer felt foreign.

  And that made the possibility far more terrifying.

  When he woke—

  He might not be himself.

  Not prey.

  Not ally.

  Not even sane.

  The screams tearing through the clearing, the violent eruptions of sickly green mana, told me as much.

  He might wake like a Devourer—

  mind hollowed out, instincts twisted, driven only by hunger and impulse.

  If that happened—

  I closed my eyes for a brief moment.

  I would kill him.

  Not out of fear.

  Not out of necessity.

  But because allowing something else to wear his body would be a greater cruelty than death.

  Only if separation failed.

  Cira’s mana surged again—steady, unwavering.

  I trusted her more in matters of mana than I trusted myself.

  I may be the strongest in this pack—

  but she possessed the finest control.

  That was why she stood here.

  And slowly—

  I felt it.

  The corruption began to retreat inward.

  I released a breath I had not realized I was holding.

  It took time—but Yuu’s screams finally weakened, fading from raw agony into hoarse silence.

  His body, once rigid and convulsing, began to settle. The violent instability inside him calmed, replaced by something denser—more defined.

  The eruptions of green mana stopped.

  His channels—

  those invisible pathways all mana users possess—

  had been reforged by pain, strengthened by enduring corruption tearing through them and surviving it.

  Cira guided the separation while simultaneously shielding the rest of us from exposure.

  Even I could not do that.

  It took time.

  The final remnants of corrupted mana withdrew completely, collapsing inward toward the center of his being.

  There, it gathered alongside the untainted flow—

  the two held apart by a temporary seal, forged from the combined mana of every wolf present.

  The cost was immediate.

  One by one, the auras around me dimmed.

  Cira’s first—her control held until the very end.

  Even mine thinned.

  Yet I remained standing.

  Not because I was untouched—

  but because my reserves eclipsed theirs.

  Silence fell.

  And then—

  I sensed it.

  Clearly.

  His core.

  Stable.

  Whole.

  Uncontaminated.

  But that was not all.

  There was a seal—holding the corruption apart.

  And beneath it—

  Something I never believed I would witness in my lifetime.

  It was not a fractured core.

  Not a mutation.

  Not corruption holding something together.

  It was two.

  One whole.

  One corrupted.

  A second core—fully formed.

  Channels were already connected to it.

  Only the seal prevented the corrupted mana from flowing.

  For the first time in centuries, I felt something close to disbelief.

  Cira turned toward me, trying to speak—to say it was finished—but her legs gave out. I caught her before she collapsed.

  I looked at Yuu—still unconscious. Still unmoving.

  But alive.

  Now—

  Everything depended on what woke up inside that body.

  Because Yuu no longer carried a single future.

  Only time would tell whether the one who opened his eyes…

  was still Yuu.

  Or something else entirely.

  ________________________________________________________

  Yuu’s POV

  The voice in my head finally faded.

  Not gone — but reduced to a distant echo.

  The pain remained.

  Not sharp.

  Not screaming.

  Just… everywhere.

  My consciousness drifted back slowly, like rising through cold water.

  I still couldn’t move.

  Couldn’t open my eyes.

  My body felt distant — unfamiliar — as if it belonged to someone else.

  But my hearing returned first.

  The first thing I heard was my heart.

  Beating viciously.

  Too loud. Too fast.

  Like it was trying to escape my chest.

  Then came something else.

  The faint hum of mana flowing through my body — steady, constant, alive.

  And beneath it—

  Another sound.

  Low.

  Resonant.

  Wrong.

  Not loud, not violent — but present.

  A pressure that didn’t belong to flesh or breath or blood.

  Something dark.

  Almost terrifying.

  It wasn’t outside me.

  It was in me.

  Then sound returned.

  Worried whispers.

  Footsteps shifting against earth.

  Controlled breathing — steady, restrained.

  The faint hum of mana lingered in the air, thicker than before, heavy with exhaustion.

  They were still here.

  All of them.

  For me.

  I tried to speak — to answer, to reassure — but nothing came.

  Not a word.

  Not even a breath.

  Then I felt it.

  A presence kneeling beside me — calm, immovable, unmistakable.

  Kael.

  His voice was low — not stern, not commanding, but… relieved.

  I couldn’t respond with words, so I forced the smallest movement my body would allow.

  A nod.

  Barely visible — but enough.

  Kael exhaled softly, as if that single motion answered questions none of us could yet give voice to.

  “Rest now. We’ll speak tomorrow.”

  His voice held no doubt.

  No fear.

  Only certainty.

  My body finally gave in.

  The darkness returned—

  but this time, it wasn’t cold.

  It wasn’t violent.

  Just quiet.