Ra?k landed like he’d fallen off a bridge.

  Not flashy. No cracks spidering out, no explosion—just… the ground under our feet shifted, like something moved beneath it.

  Weird.

  There was no wind, nothing obvious. And yet the air and the earth both felt wrong.

  The next instant, the ground shook.

  It wasn’t literally an explosion. Not a bomb. It was a strange pulse, like compressed air being released all at once. My balance almost went.

  “Watch out!” I yelled, but it didn’t reach them in time.

  Ren was already moving. Sera wasn’t.

  The pulse caught Ren first. He tried to spring sideways with a quick, low kick to open distance, but the wave struck him from the side and shoved him back.

  Sera was a beat late. The air slammed into her, threw her to the ground, and she rolled several meters. She got up, but the tempo was broken. They were both reacting, but they still weren’t synced.

  Ra?k didn’t move.

  Not even his breathing shifted. Calm.

  He was striking the air—not the ground.

  He didn’t need to touch anything.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  And yet the ground responded.

  That wasn’t normal.

  I couldn’t see magic, but I could feel something resonating.

  Something was moving… like when the monks made me focus on a cup of water in the monastery. Focus—yeah. But not just that. It was like an echo you could feel on your skin, like something was ringing inside the air.

  Ra?k raised his staff and drove another vertical strike into the ground.

  At first, the air didn’t move. Then it moved late—like the ground compressed, and only after that the air got forced out all at once.

  The vibration reached Ren. He tried to rush in, but the pressure threw his balance off.

  Ren pitched forward, caught himself, and got back up immediately, resetting to fight again.

  But Ra?k was moving again.

  Sera saw Ren in a bad position and activated Vine, firing a heavy pulse of mana straight at Ra?k.

  Fast. Strong.

  Ra?k swept it aside and avoided it easily. With the change in vibration, the mana pulse faded before it ever reached him.

  Ra?k still wasn’t moving. And yet the space around him kept changing, and that movement had an invisible response to it.

  “What just happened?” Sera asked, her eyes steady but with something uneasy underneath as she looked my way.

  “Don’t trust the ground! Watch what you touch too!” I said—but honestly, I didn’t even know what I was saying.

  It was moving like a sensor.

  I needed to explain, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Ra?k laughed.

  Not like anyone else. Like he was enjoying his own show.

  “You can hear the echo, right?”

  He let the silence drag out, like he was savoring our confusion. Then he spoke again, calm.

  “I can hear it too. Ever since I got this. Before, I didn’t have power or magic. But now I have all the forces of nature. This staff lets me hear them. When I strike, they answer.”

  And in that moment, I finally understood. Vaguely—but clearly.

  “…No. Yeah. This is magic.”

  I said it like I needed to convince myself.

  “It’s not fully controlled, but it’s magic. The staff is leaving mana behind in the air. The problem isn’t the strike itself… it’s what it leaves behind.”

  Ra?k looked at us and grinned wider.

  “Got it? I don’t care how you look at it. What I’m saying is this: I’m part of the Kingdom’s Chains now. Eslabon Diez—that’s my position. And from here on out, I’ll use this power to change this place. This village.”