Magical Soul Parade

In that split second, as if his consciousness had taken a back seat in his body, Finn observed three terrifying things unfold.

First, his hands, driven by some impulse entirely outside his will, slowly stretched out in a grabbing motion.

Second, an uncanny silence settled over the surroundings. Riley stopped talking, Althea stopped asking questions, and even the Grade 1 Ossuarists kept mute, noticing from the sudden tension, that something was off.

And lastly, right in front of the chaos breach, where Finn's hands were pointed towards, three middle-aged Arcanists with identical clothing stepped out from the small outpost, staring at Finn with dead cold eyes as his hands stretched out and grabbed the empty air.

For a beat after that, nothing happened. Every party involved went dangerously, mutually still, as if in a silent, tacit understanding:

Finn's next actions decided what was about to happen. It decided whether a bloodbath was about to begin, or not.

And Finn, a helpless spectator in his own body, could only watch in terror as his outstretched fist clenched tightly, and the space around it warped and squeezed like he was pulling on a heavy veil.

The moment Riley behind, and the three Arcanists in front, registered Finn's action, their faces spoiled with immediate horror, as if a terrible, hidden secret was about to be revealed. And immediately, without the slightest bit of hesitation, a barrage of spells descended on the surrounding Ossuarists.

Althea reacted in the blink of an eye. A wall of earth materialized from the ground in front of her, shielding her body from the chain of lightning bolts streaking towards her from Riley.

The earth wall shattered from the intense force of the lightning bolts, showing that Riley attacked with the intention to kill.

In fact, by the time Althea successfully defended herself, Riley was already upon the junior Ossuarists. He took the chance to rain down heavy lightning bolts on the weaker members, starting with Neda — the freckled-faced girl.

She had barely raised her defenses when Riley's attack descended, charring her hands black, and sizzling the veins in her body, turning them black.

Brock roared in primal anger, charging to intercept the next strike and prevent Neda from dying. He was buck-naked, with muscles bulging, and his eyes red and bloodshot. He tanked the majority of the lightning's force, but from the grimace on his face, it looked like he still took serious damage.

Jie and Sian charged at Riley right after, manifesting their soul masses, but before they reached him, Althea had already pounced.

Riley turned to face her squarely with a cold, wary look in his eyes as three different soul masses materialized from her shadow: A large owl that took to the skies immediately after it charged out of her shadow. A female-looking human wraith that stood behind her, shaping eerie green balls of fire into existence. And a black, plain sword that she pulled out of her shadow herself.

[Cage of Lightning!] Riley roared as all of Althea's soul masses attacked at once.

The large owl in the sky swooped down and released a silent, high frequency attack that disoriented everyone within its range, Riley, Jie and Sian included.

The residual traces of the attack froze the two charging junior Ossuarists in their tracks, while the brunt of the attack destabilized Riley, rendering his [Lightning Cage] useless for a few seconds.

But that was all Althea needed. In a few quick steps, she was within the perimeter of his broken lightning cage, already by his side.

He roared, still seemingly disoriented, and blindly released a stream of lightning from his hands wantonly, intending to barrage his immediate surroundings to prevent Althea from getting close. But before he could make a full circle of lightning, one of his arms went flying.

Althea danced through his erratic lightning display and severed his arm cleanly. And she didn't stop there, she immediately pressed her advantage, chasing after him as he instinctively started to retreat.

But just as she charged forward, she slammed to an abrupt halt, just in time as an intense fireball twice her size whizzed past where she would have stepped, and sped into the distance, shaking the ground with a loud explosion.

Althea's eyes widened as she turned her head sharply to the source: One of the three Arcanists at the front had come just in time to save Riley. The other two were bombarding Finn, whose body still moved on its own, with heavy spells. But the spells didn't reach him at all, almost as if he no longer existed within the same space as them.

The fabric of space his hand pulled on came undone slowly like a grand unveiling. Behind the veil, traces of a distant grand building, mottled, old and majestic, could be seen beyond.

Finn, who was watching the whole thing happen from an observer's perspective, felt an intense apprehension at the sight that unfolded before him. Whispers and mutterings that he couldn't understand began to drone close to his ears. He picked up traces of "...Lost," of a "...Forgotten Age," and of "Transcendents…". But it all made no sense to him.

Everything felt too sudden, too abrupt and extremely confusing. From the loss of his ability to think clearly at first, to his loss of body control, to… whatever his hand was doing to the space in front of him…

He had moved past the point of feeling terror from the lack of control, rather he now analyzed with a critical mind, trying to figure out the reason behind it. And in his reasoning, he deduced that this was a soul mass at work.

But no matter how many times he brought up his Soul Register, nothing else had changed. There were no dormant soul masses that had suddenly become active. Nothing new at all.

So what the hell is the cause? He practically yelled in his mind.

At the start of it, he felt like he had heard a voice right when his mind finally regained clarity and he realized his body was moving without his consent. But the memory of what it said was lost.

His mind snapped back to the present, where the unveiling of the space had reached the final point.

The Arcanists blasting spells at him had stopped entirely a few seconds back, realizing trying to kill him was futile. Instead, they charged towards the others behind him, and out of his view.

They had clearly decided that to bury the knowledge of whatever this space was, they needed to make sure to kill the others, seeing as stopping him from opening it up was futile.

Finn feared for their safety. The power of the spells the Arcanists bombarded him with confirmed they were, without a doubt, Master Rank Elementals.

Now that their attention was fully turned on the others, Finn was certain their deaths were set in stone. Yet, he still couldn't help but hope that something... anything... a stroke of luck, or maybe a twist of fate, could help them to survive. He hadn't known most of them for long, but that didn't mean he couldn't hope for their safety.

And with this final anguished thought, the space finally unraveled. It opened fully and rapidly stretched forward, superimposing itself onto the exotic plane and overwriting the existing reality.