DARK ISLAND X CAVIGOR: Legend of the Dreaming Spring(Sub: The Phantom Belt & The Underground Fortress)
The wind died the moment they crossed the ridge.
"What do you think of setting up camp here?" Haru Glory asked, dropping his heavy travel pack into the pale gray dirt.
"I don't know," Jasmine replied, her hand resting light and uneasy on the hilt of her dagger. "There's something about the trees here. They're completely silent. It's like they're dead."
The forest around them was a tangled graveyard of petrified bark, their bare branches clutching at a sky drained of color. No birds sang; no insects buzzed in the underbrush.
"Look, what is that?" Jasmine pointed toward a stone basin half-buried in twisted roots. Water bubbled up from its center, clear and cold, surrounded by carved mossy runes.
Lief, Deltora's King, knelt beside the basin, brushing back years of ivy to read the faded script aloud: "Dreaming Spring. Drink, gentle stranger. However, all of evil will beware."
"What does that mean?" Haru asked, leaning over Lief's shoulder, his hand tightening on the hilt of the Ten Powers sword.
"Looks like a warning to me," Lief said, his gaze drifting to the silver Belt of Deltora beneath his cloak. Several empty sockets glinted in the dim light.
"If you drank from this spring, then the dream you had was not just a dream, but a vision," Will Vandom said softly. She stepped forward, glancing back at her brother Phobos, who stood silent and tall near the shadow of the trees, his royal robes frayed from travel but his posture unyielding.
"In my dream," Will continued, her voice trembling slightly, "Lord Cedric and Doryu have taken control. Phobos, Elyon, and I thought we had driven them off, but they're using Cavigor Prison as their base. It's impenetrable. It's completely underground." She shuddered, adjusting her jacket against a sudden, biting chill. "It was designed around one principle: easy to get in, impossible to get out."
Phobos stepped toward the basin, his sharp eyes narrowing as he looked over his younger sister's shoulder into the glowing water. "Cedric knows how to bend dark magic to his will, and Doryu's Shadow Matter will only grow stronger in the deep," Phobos said, his voice quiet, cold, and calculated. "If my former captain and that monster have allied, they intend to draw energy directly from the core of this realm."
Lief stood, his jaw set as he looked past the dead tree line toward the jagged horizon. "You are all about to be tested. Until we add the final gem to the belt, evil has the upper hand."
"And there's the source of your trouble," Edmund Pevensie added, stepping up to the group and pointing toward a jagged, ink-black landmass piercing the sky across the grey waters. "Dark Island. A place where evil lurks. It seems to corrupt all goodness and steal the light and the heat of each world."
A cold gust swept through the petrified woods, carrying the faint, iron smell of smoke and shadow magic from across the water. With Phobos standing beside them and Cedric and Doryu awaiting them in the dark below, they had their warning—and their battle lines were drawn.
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