As Ethan’s figure slowly faded into the horizon, the mental fatigue pressing down on the flying mind dragon began to lift, its clouded thoughts sharpening back into focus by degrees.

As clarity returned, it quickly took stock of its surroundings and the full weight of its situation.

Trapped beneath a shimmering magical formation, ropes cutting into its limbs, summons positioned around it on every side. By any reasonable measure, this counted as bad.

Still, it had endured worse.

It ran through the count of its captors without much concern. The girl with the scythe. The one behind the holy shield. The smaller human working the array. None of them, individually or combined, posed a threat it hadn’t already priced into its calculations. Time was the only real variable, and time was something it had never lacked.

Only one detail truly gnawed at the edges of its awareness, refusing to settle no matter how it turned the memory over.

That human. The one who had somehow slipped inside its mind and left disorder in his wake.

It didn’t like the feeling that memory carried. Something about it sat wrong in a way instinct alone couldn’t fully explain. Someone like that shouldn’t have existed. Shouldn’t have been able to reach where he’d reached.

It searched for him now, instinctively, reaching outward through the haze still clinging to the edges of its thoughts.

He was gone.

That, too, unsettled it more than it wanted to admit.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Meanwhile, Ethan had shifted into a scattering of bats and activated White Transit, streaking toward the shifting light show still visible against the sky ahead.

The terrain blurred beneath him, ridgeline and broken stone folding past in a rush that left no time to register detail. He didn’t slow until the mountain came fully into view, its shape jagged against the strange painted sky.

When he landed at the edge of the mountainous terrain, he immediately triggered his white light inspection, his eyes flaring faintly as the spell swept outward, scanning the landscape in careful detail.

The light dragons were unmistakable overhead, their slow coiling movements bending the color of the sky itself, impossible to overlook even from a distance. Observation barely required effort at that point. Their presence alone announced itself.

The ground below was where the real problem began.

By this hour, the earth dragons should have been active, moving through their territory in search of food, their habits predictable enough that most trackers accounted for it easily.

Instead, there was nothing.

Claw marks scored deep into the dirt in several places, fresh enough to still hold their shape, but the dragons themselves were nowhere to be found.

"There’s no sign of migration, so what happened here?"

Ethan muttered the question aloud, confusion flickering across his expression as he dropped down and let his boots settle against the uneven ground.

His posture shifted, expression sobering as he crouched to examine the terrain more closely. Slowly, the picture began forming in his mind, pieced together from the scattered evidence beneath him.

Two beasts. A struggle.

One, an earth dragon of considerable strength. The other, something that fought from the air.

He worked through the conclusion methodically, reading the fighting style embedded into the marks scarring the dirt. Rough. Scattered. Chaotic in a way that spoke of desperation rather than control, the deepest gouges concentrated around what had clearly been the losing side of the exchange.

The flying dragon had held the advantage from the start.

He followed the line of disturbed earth further, tracing it toward the treeline, watching how the pattern thinned and scattered the closer it got to the rock face beyond. Whatever had happened here hadn’t ended quickly.

After completing his initial survey, Ethan’s gaze drifted away from the open field, settling instead on a narrow, secluded cave mouth carved into the mountainside, its entrance sloping downward into darkness.

Instinct pulled him toward it.

He approached slowly, cautious, his senses sharpening as a low growl reached his ears from somewhere deep within. Step by step, the interior gradually came into view.

Inside, the earth dragons had gathered together within a natural cave system, using the enclosed stone as protection from a specific flying dragon that had marked them as easy prey.

It made sense, given what he already knew. Caves represented one of the few reliable defenses against an aerial predator, the enclosed space stripping away the advantages flight normally provided.

"I’m not here to settle a dispute. But if I get too involved, I’m afraid it’ll draw attention I don’t need right now."

Ethan turned the problem over in his mind, weighing the risk carefully.

He found himself caught between two unappealing options, and eventually understood he would have to commit to one regardless of how imperfect either choice felt.

Whatever he chose next would shape the rest of how this played out, and there wasn’t much time left to stand at the mouth of the cave deliberating.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

At the same time, back at the altar.

"It’s about to make a move again. Prepare yourselves!!"

Fin’s voice rang out sharply, his attention fixed on the restrained dragon as he glanced toward the other two standing beside him.

The ancient magic array had done its job trapping the flying mind dragon physically, but against attacks aimed directly at the mind, none of them carried much of a defense. The moment Ethan had left to pursue his own objective, the illusions had started creeping in, subtle at first, then increasingly difficult to shake off.

Flickers of dreams bleeding into waking thought. Moments of disorientation that none of them could fully explain afterward.

The beast had already used the opening. Several of the ropes binding it had been torn clean through, the restraints giving way one after another under pressure that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

This mind dragon wasn’t merely formidable.

It was genuinely frightening to try and hold in place, its intelligence working against them in ways brute strength alone couldn’t counter.

No matter what they tried, no matter how carefully they adjusted their approach, the beast remained a full step ahead of every move they made.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​