Autumn Village — 1 month after Leli’s arrival

  The forest was alive.

  Not only with trees, animals, or wind — but with presences. With stories. With echoes breathing between roots and leaves. Every step Leli took felt like a heartbeat inside an ancient being.

  She wore simple apprentice clothes of the Season. A linen tunic dyed with tree bark, light boots, and her hair tied back with a vine cord braided by Sarya.

  She was alone.

  Nearly midnight. Moonlight filtered through twisted branches.

  She should not have been there.

  “Only initiates of the third cycle may enter the Forest of Whispering Leaves,” Patriarch Aurelius Rowan had said.

  But something had called her — a whisper only she had heard.

  —

  Leli crossed the trail’s boundary and stepped onto ground covered with burnt leaves from the eternal autumn of that forest. Trees with bark rough as old leather, branches arched like the pillars of a living cathedral. Everything was silent.

  Until…

  She saw it.

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  At the center of the woods was a clearing where the ground dipped slightly, forming a natural mirror of leaves, water, and mud. And in the middle… a dry tree with a black trunk, pulsing as if it were breathing.

  Leli approached, heart racing.

  “What is this…?”

  Then the leaves began to spin around her.

  Like a slow dance.

  A gentle spiral of wind lifting her hair, her clothes… until she lost her footing.

  And then she fell into the vision.

  —

  ???? The Vision

  Red ground. Cracked sky. Broken towers.

  Leli stood on a field of ashes where the forest no longer existed. Where time itself seemed to have exploded. And at the center of it all… the Tower of the Unfortunate, covered in black fractures, shattered… yet alive.

  “That tower… it will make the world bleed.”

  A voice echoed.

  “Daughter of Autumn, daughter of leaves that endure… you can still stop the endless hell. Help the heir. He can be your greatest weapon… but also your ruin. Please, do not let his heart be lost in the chaos. Do not let him lose himself again. The Prince must remain firm beside him — you still have a chance to defeat what is coming.”

  Leli tried to scream, but her mouth would not move.

  She saw the image of someone — only a silhouette. Short, strong, holding two curved shields, one on each arm. Facing giants whose eyes were marked with letters from a forgotten language.

  “Divine Defense… Sacred Shadow Tortoise Shell.”

  A wall of shields protected everyone… but the silhouette remained outside.

  “Do you see, little one? He can protect them…

  But no one will protect him.

  And they will be waiting for that.

  Please… protect our Prince.”

  She saw a small pink dragon.

  “You must summon him, little one. He awaits you.”

  She saw a chubby figure that looked like a lumpa, sleeping with a tiny hammer beside him. No taller than 30 cm.

  Wait… he’s bigger than a normal lumpa.

  The dragon smiled.

  “And I too await your call.”

  “What?”

  Leli tried to run, but her feet were sinking into mud.

  And then… she saw Lukas.

  But he was different.

  Stronger. Eyes burning like embers. A cloak made of shadows wrapping around his body.

  He did not see her.

  He was fighting.

  Against a four-armed creature made of pure darkness — one of the forms of the Disaster of Blind Perdition.

  And then everything exploded into light.

  —

  ????? Back to the Clearing

  Leli woke up gasping, fallen over the black trunk.

  Sweaty, trembling, blood running from her nose.

  The leaves around her had stopped. The forest was silent again.

  But now… she was different too.

  “What was that? That wasn’t Mother Rubra… then who was it?” she whispered, getting to her feet. “And whoever it was… showed me what’s coming.”

  She didn’t understand everything.

  But she understood enough.

  The tower would return.

  And she could not be just an apprentice when that happened.

  End of Chapter 5