Ryan stood at the heart of the field, motionless, as if time itself had frozen around him.
His eyes never left the immobilized Shadow, the one struggling to breathe, as though his body could no longer endure the conflict raging within.
The staff in his hand pulsed with a slow, deep rhythm.
Ryan spoke in a low voice, addressing it directly:
"I don't want this battle to drag on any longer...
But this Shadow... I can't leave it like this."
He fell silent for a moment, then added:
"If I don't bring it under control now, it will slip through our hands."
At that very moment, something changed within the Shadow.
It did not move forward, nor retreat. Instead, its body suddenly trembled, a faint glow appearing along its limbs as a magical circle began to form beneath its feet ...a teleportation spell.
And inside him, the command arrived.
Not a whisper this time...
But a decisive, absolute call:
"Withdraw. Now."
The Shadow's muscles went rigid.
Its body began to respond... then stopped.
The violet call pulling him toward attack, and the yellow command ordering retreat, tore through him at the same instant.
His voice rose inside his mind, choked:
Why... now?
Why do I remember all of this now?
The staff reacted instantly.
Its pulse quickened, and its voice cut sharply through Ryan's awareness:
- Be careful.
- He's activating a teleportation spell.
- If it completes... he'll leave your range.
Ryan tightened his grip.
"No."
He raised the staff slightly.
"He won't retreat."
- Then pull him.
- Not to the ground...
- But into me.
Ryan hesitated for a fraction of a second.
"Into you?"
- Into the Ambition Prison.
- A vessel that answers only to your will.
- If you delay... you'll lose him.
He didn't wait any longer.
He aimed the staff straight at the Shadow, his voice clear and sharp as he spoke a spell never uttered before:
"By the will that was stored and never broken,
By what was sealed and never released,
I bind you not to the earth...
But to ambition itself.
Ambition-
Contained pull.
Target: the Shadow alone."
The instant the spell was spoken, the air overturned.
The magic circle beneath the Shadow's feet cracked, then shattered like crushed glass.
His body was hurled forward violently ... but not in escape. In attraction.
The Shadow screamed .. not with sound, but with a tearing sensation .. as he was forcibly dragged, his particles breaking apart, then compressing into a dark violet glow that surged into the staff.
The prison closed.
A heavy silence fell for a brief second.
Then Ryan said, without turning around:
"Now."
And the shadows exploded.
But not chaotically.
Ryan lifted the staff and issued his next command:
"Attack."
The other shadows surged toward Siron, but this time they were not pure black .. they were infused with sharp, dense violet energy, as if magic itself had been honed into a weapon.
Siron stepped back half a pace, and Zevyr's barrier snapped into place around him, black and white magical threads weaving into a tight net.
"Combined magic..."
he murmured, eyes narrowing.
"So you chose escalation."
At that same moment ...far from the battlefield-
The calling circle vanished.
The mysterious sorcerer halted abruptly.
He extended his hand, sensing the emptiness.
"...The Shadow?"
He searched again.
No response.
No trace.
His eyes shifted for a moment, glowing faintly as he tracked the energy.
Then he stopped.
"A vessel...?"
He drew in a sharp breath.
"So that's how."
The color faded from his eyes as he raised his hands, tracing a spell that did not target the body... but the soul.
"If the body is distant...
the soul needs no path."
His power surged forth.
It was no ordinary teleportation.
It was a massive spiritual thrust-a dense black current ripping through the forest from within.
Trees shuddered.
The ground trembled with every approach.
The forest itself seemed to resist... and fail.
On the battlefield, Sera froze.
She clenched her teeth.
"This energy..."
She tried to identify it.
She couldn't.
Then the ground shook beneath everyone.
A full, violent tremor, as if something older than the battle itself was drawing near.
Eileen gasped.
Siron slowly lifted his head.
And in a single moment-
a form took shape before them.
It wasn't a complete body.
But a mass of pitch ,black spiritual energy, dense enough to crush the air around it.
Silence fell like a final verdict.
Ryan clutched his chest.
His breath caught.
This... was not ordinary magic.
The forest did not stop shaking.
And everyone understood, at the same instant-
that the battle... was no longer just between them.