Chapter 932: Drastic Change
“She didn’t even get to finish her tea that time…” Seraphiel continued with a sigh.
The silence from the little dryad was damning. But it wasn’t shameful silence… It was purely strategic. Rosie was doing her utmost to perfect the art of dodging consequences.
“Mommy Sera is crueeelll!” Rosie wailed, lifting her head in over-the-top heartbreak, her eyes wide and glistening.
Seraphiel’s smile widened victoriously, looking at her daughter with her trademark smug expression. “Mm. I thought so. You’re still far too wet behind the ears, young lady.”
Rosie huffed. Her cheeks puffed up like dumplings, and she crossed her arms with enough drama to rival any noblewoman at court.
But then… From one moment to the next, Rosie stilled.
Not a shift of wind. Not a flick of motion.
Her laughter and exaggeration stopped all at once as if someone had hit pause on her entire being.
The little dryad’s ears twitched. Slowly. Sharply. Once. Twice.
Her pupils dilated as though her entire body had become a sensory antenna.
“…Rosie?” Seraphiel asked, tone turning serious.
The other women halted too. Blossom, who’d been sniffing to check if anyone managed to somehow get into the stronghold in their absence, lifted her nose higher, sensing something was… off.
The silence was thick. Unnatural. Tense.
Rosie floated upward, her back to the others, staring at nothing.
The forest felt still. Birds didn’t chirp. Leaves barely rustled.
As a dryad bound to her tree, her sacred sapling rooted at the heart of their stronghold, Rosie wasn’t merely a resident of the land.
She was part of it.
Through that ancient, living connection, she could feel vibrations others could not. The subtle shiver of energy rippling through the roots. The echo of footsteps not yet heard. The pressure of a soul returning… no, ascending.
Something massive—someone beloved—had just crossed an invisible threshold.
Rosie gasped. A real one this time. There was not a shred of pretense present in her entire being.
Her hands rose to her mouth, trembling.
Tears welled in her bright green eyes—not from fear, not from sadness—but pure, unfiltered joy.
She didn’t even realize she was whispering until the words passed her lips:
“… He is coming home.”
The moment the last syllable left her, the world shifted.
A pulse ripped through the forest clearing, akin to a silent thunderclap slamming into the bones of the earth.
It wasn’t hostile.
It didn’t need to be.
The sheer gravity of it made the world hold its breath.
Every woman in the clearing stiffened, hearts lurching in their chests as the air grew thick and electric. Even without seeing the newcomer, they all understood:
Something was coming. Something powerful. Something utterly ’beyond.’
This wasn’t the presence of a powerful warrior or a cunning mage.
This was pressure that bent the edges of reality. That made mighty beasts crawl into their dens and made ancient trees shudder as their roots whispered of a returning sovereign.
It wasn’t just power.
It was authority.
It washed over them like the tide of a rising storm. A mere moment more and the air itself thrummed, vibrating with an energy that danced between realms. Even Blossom unconsciously took a step back, her predatory instincts sounding every alarm in her head.
They had fought monsters.
They had slain tyrants.
They had walked through fire, blood, and steel.
But this…
This was not something the mortal world birthed.
This was something that returned to it.
And it was coming right here.
Ayame’s hand drifted instinctively to the handle of her katana, breath catching halfway in her throat.
Her heart hoped.
Her instincts warned.
’Could this truly be Quin…? But he never returned like this; it was always instantaneous teleportation before… Has something followed us home?’
She could not afford the risk.
“Positions!” she shouted.
The others didn’t question.
Seraphiel moved smoothly into place with her bow already in hand. Lucille rolled her shoulders and hefted her axe, ready to face whatever creature dared invade her home. Blossom faded into the mist between shadows, her eyes trained on the center of the pressure. Aurora cast her shields and buffs preemptively. Iris drew her blade. Lyra, the stalwart tanker of the group, steeled her heart to stand between the people her lord had entrusted to her protection and the invader, whatever it may be.
Rosie hovered frozen, lips parted, eyes glassy with emotion… but even she, who instinctively understood who was coming, fluttered closer to her mothers’ protective reach.
And then…
The world split.
A pulse of white-gold light erupted at the heart of the grove. Not like lightning from the sky, but like a geyser surging from the earth’s soul. It cracked the silence with a soundless roar.
The pressure intensified. The trees bent as if bowing. The wind stilled. The roots beneath quivered.
And when the light cleared…
He stood there.
Quinlan.
But not the Quinlan they had known.
The man before them radiated not just strength, but ’completion.’
He wore the silks and layered robes hand-stitched by his mothers. Garments of love, protection, and ancestral pride. Deep emerald etched with silver sigils of ancient elven script clung to his frame, the fabric too reverent to dare wrinkle.
At his hip, the Soul Reaper rested, its obsidian edge gleaming silently.
Until it shuddered.
A high-pitched ring tore through the grove. The black metal pulsed once… then again, akin to a heart remembering how to beat.
And then…
It exploded.
Not shattered. Unleashed.
A sudden storm of sapphire-blue light burst from its core, swirling upward in an arcing flare. The obsidian no longer simply gleamed: it glowed, radiating waves of pure soulnecrotic majesty.
The weapon was angry.
Not at the women, but at time itself.
At the restraint that had caged it.
At the silence imposed upon its purpose.
It had been sealed in Zhenwu. Muzzled. Bound.
But now?
Now it was free.
Its spirit screamed as its full strength flooded back into its frame, and with it came power that bent the very boundary between life and death.
The blue flares coalesced around the blade, forming drifting soul-wisps—tiny echoes of lost warriors who once fed the blade’s hunger.
It had not merely awakened.
It had returned not as a mere weapon of death.
But as a king’s crown.
A rightful extension of the man who had had the potential to master death, elements, and soul alike.
Home with its rightful holder, its master.
Whole again, and far, far from finished. ’
But none of this display—Quinlan’s handsome charm, his clothes, his weapon—was what froze the women.
It was his eyes.
They swirled, vivid and hypnotic, with four elemental hues.
Scarlet flame.
Azure tide.
Verdant stone.
Silken wind.
Not clashing. Not competing.
Dancing. In perfect, awe-inspiring synchrony.
His aura rolled outward in slow waves. Immense, yet serene. It no longer crackled or burned. It moved with intention. As if nature itself had been braided into his soul.
He didn’t feel like a mere combatant, not a mage nor a warrior.
He felt like a force of nature.
A breath caught in Ayame’s throat.
Lucille blinked hard.
Aurora clutched her fingers around her staff.
Seraphiel was utterly still, bow in her hand, eyes wide.
Even Blossom began sniffing furiously.
And Rosie… Stayed put, unable to move.
She wanted to shoot forward like a streak of joy uncontained, but she somehow couldn’t. Mere inches from him.
But then…
He smiled.
A slow, wicked, heart-splitting grin.
Quinlan spread his arms wide, welcoming and familiar.
And his voice, warm and thunderous, echoed through the stillness:
“I’m home.”
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