Frosthymn Bastion – Moments Later
The roar from beneath the ice was not just sound—it was force. A resonance that trembled through their bones and into their magic. Y/N staggered back, green fire flickering involuntarily in his eyes as the shard in his coat pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Masumi braced himself, electricity crackling across his arms.
Masumi: "Tell me that's not the dragon."
Erza: "No… not yet. But it's waking."
The robed cultists didn't flinch. They began chanting in a dead tongue, arms outstretched toward the pedestal. Runes etched into the ice lit with sickly green light, forming a wide ring of energy.
Grey cursed, forming a barrier of Ice-Make spears around the group.
Gray: "We stop the ritual now. Or that thing comes out."
Erza didn't hesitate. With a shimmer of magic, she Requipped her Heaven's Wheel Armour and launched into the air, blades spinning outward in a flash of silver and crimson.
Erza: "Scatter them!"
Steel rained down on the cultists, but they were ready.
One flicked their wrist, and a protective barrier absorbed the blades midair.
Another channelled frost-magic, directing it into the ground. Ice pillars erupted from below, forcing Y/N and Diana to leap apart.
Y/N hit the ground rolling, green fire swirling around his fists. He lunged at a cloaked enemy—only for his strike to be caught mid-air by a dark tendril of corrupted magic.
Cultist: "You burn brighter each time. Just like the others."
Y/N: "Good. Then I'll burn through you."
He twisted, launching a burst of flame that seared through the tendril and slammed into the cultist's chest, sending them flying across the ruin.
Masumi launched himself into the fray next, lightning arcing as he tackled another figure.
Masumi: "No more riddles. Just shut up and fall!"
Meanwhile, Gray and Diana worked in tandem to dismantle the ritual circle. Diana struck down runes with pinpoint blasts of light magic, while Gray froze the exposed glyphs to disrupt the flow of energy.
But even as they pushed back, the glacier cracked louder beneath their feet. From the fissure at the pedestal's base, tendrils of green and white light spiralled upward. The Bastion wasn't just a prison—it was a beacon.
Diana: "It's too late—they've fed it enough!"
Y/N spun toward the pedestal—and saw it.
The ice split.
From beneath it, something began to rise. Not the full dragon, not yet, but the shape of it: a spectral maw of flame and frost, a projection of what slumbered below. Its roar shook the sky, a chorus of rage and hunger.
One cultist stepped forward, arms spread wide.
Cultist: "The second seal fractures! The Frozen Pyre stirs!"
Erza landed beside Y/N, breathing hard.
Erza: "We can't hold this place. We need to retreat and warn the Guild."
Y/N stared at the half-risen phantom of the sealed dragon. Its body was still bound by ice and runes, but its mind—its presence—was reaching outward.
He clenched his fists.
Y/N: "Then we make sure they don't follow."
With a roar, he unleashed his flame—green, wild, unstable—into the pedestal, overloading the residue magic with raw energy.
Gray caught on instantly.
Gray: "If you're doing what I think you're doing, I'm in."
He slammed his palms into the ground, freezing the already strained glacier cracks, then shattered them with an Ice-Make spike, rupturing the weakened leyline beneath the ritual site.
Diana: "Everyone—move!"
The group leapt back as the ground gave way. The pedestal collapsed in on itself, dragging the cultists and half the rune circle into a sinkhole of magic and ice. The projection of the dragon shrieked—and vanished with a violent gust of wind as the flow of corrupted magic was cut off.
The glacier calmed.
Silence returned—deep, empty, and dangerous.
Masumi looked over the edge of the collapse, panting.
Masumi: "Did we… stop it?"
Y/N looked down at the crater, now smouldering with fading magic. He wasn't sure.
Y/N: "We delayed it. That's all."
Erza placed a hand on his shoulder.
Erza: "But that's enough for now. Let's get back. They'll come harder next time."
Fairy Tail Guild – Two Days Later
Makarov listened in silence as the team reported.
He looked tired—older than ever.
Makarov: "A second Bastion disturbed. A second dragon is stirring. This isn't just a cult anymore. This is war."
Levy brought over another stack of scrolls.
Levy: "There's more. I found a third potential site. West. Desert ruins. But that's not the worst part."
She unrolled a parchment.
Levy: "Rune Knights intercepted a transmission. The cult has a name for these dragons. The Seven Wounds of Earth."
Diana: "Seven?"
Gray: "There are seven of them?"
Y/N sat quietly, the shard from Frosthymn now sealed in a reinforced crystal box beside him. Even contained, he could feel its heartbeat.
Y/N: "Then we've only just begun."