The castle chamber was quiet.

  Blaze sat alone, dark circles hanging beneath his eyes—evidence of nights without rest.

  The cause lay shattered in the adjacent hall.

  The newly completed location-and-identity finder had cracked the moment it was pushed beyond its limits. When Blaze had ordered it to trace the source of the recent anomalies, the mirror had flickered violently before displaying a message that made no sense:

  “Target not findable.

  Reason: Marked by divine authority.

  Status: Non-existing entity.”

  Then, just before the system went dark, the same image had appeared again.

  A lava-filled cavern.

  No observer had ever confirmed its existence.

  Only Blaze had seen it.

  Sleep had not come afterward.

  By morning, Blaze did what he had always done best—he worked.

  He combed through reports with brutal attention, identifying failures not as abstract errors but as human negligence. Officials who delayed response. Commanders who misallocated forces. He reasoned that if the gods had punished anyone, it was those who failed their duty.

  So he corrected course.

  Forests were cleared thoroughly. Patrols moved faster. Villages that could be saved were saved.

  Efficiency rose.

  So did pressure.

  In the weaponry district, Alister worked without pause.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He oversaw experiments mixing holy materials with trace abyssal residues extracted from mutated beasts. The goal was clear: create weapons capable of killing corruption while slowing its spread.

  The result was failure.

  Holy and abyssal attributes collided violently, detonating within minutes of synthesis. Workstations were destroyed repeatedly. Assistants withdrew.

  Alister did not.

  He adjusted ratios. Changed containers. Ignored warnings.

  Opposites, he believed, were simply two faces of the same coin.

  Deep in the library, Marcella searched relentlessly.

  She cataloged standard interaction rates between holy and abyssal attributes, seeking equilibrium rather than dominance. At the same time, she dug through ancient records—fragments referencing the first appearance of darkness, long before modern systems existed.

  She flagged several texts as forbidden.

  Not out of fear.

  Out of interest.

  Despite their differences, the heroes shared one assumption:

  The recent events were not deliberate.

  They attributed them to dormant divine artifacts, forgotten failsafes, or ancient forces disturbed by rapid systemic change.

  None of them considered the possibility of intentional correction.

  Across the kingdoms, orders went out.

  Troops were stationed near sealed regions. Observation posts multiplied. Thresholds for sealing were reviewed—not out of mercy, but to conserve resources.

  New laws were announced.

  They were called temporary adjustments.

  Among civilians, behavior shifted.

  Explorers avoided silent regions at dusk. Guards doubled patrols along city walls. Merchants rerouted caravans away from places where monsters vanished without trace.

  Faith fluctuated like tides.

  Some clung harder to the heroes.

  Others grew quieter.

  No one spoke openly against authority.

  Not because they were silenced—but because they had not yet been harmed.

  In the Explorer Guild, whispers spread.

  People who had worked with Roy Val Drake asked clerks if any updates had come. Some speculated he was a dragonoid. Others dismissed the idea entirely.

  Ragnar listened.

  He did not speak.

  Privately, he calculated the timing. The nature of the events. The precision of the corrections.

  If Roy was responsible, then the scale should have been impossible.

  And yet—

  Ragnar increased patrol coordination anyway.

  Speculation did not excuse preparation.

  That night, Blaze stood alone on his balcony.

  The image from the mirror replayed endlessly in his mind—the lava cavern that should not exist, the result that denied existence itself.

  He had questioned the system afterward.

  It had returned no answer.

  Only silence.

  For the first time since becoming a hero, Blaze wondered whether authority still meant control—or merely responsibility without understanding.

  The day ended heavily.

  For everyone.