Legend of the Dark Realm: Dred Mountain – Raid Squad Doryu and the Bleeding Heart of Earth
The air inside the Meridian throne room was heavy with the scent of old dust and cold stone. Outside, the night of All Hallows’ Eve loomed—a single, perilous window of time when ancient laws frayed, and permission was no longer required to claim the power of a realm's heart. All it took was rubbing out the heart’s true familiar.
"What? You want to release more prisoners?" Will Vandom's voice echoed off the high, vaulted ceiling, her knuckles white as she gripped the wall. She glared across the chamber at her sister, Queen Elyon, before turning her gaze to Leif, the King of Deltora. "Narissa is stronger than ever! Next time the witch attacks, we’ll need help safeguarding Prince Phobos, not adding more monsters to the board!"
Phobos, standing bound between two guards, merely smiled, his violet eyes glittering with cold amusement at being discussed like a piece of precious cargo.
"This is the one night when the Heart of Earth is able to be stolen," Will pressed, her voice tight with urgency. "Which means I'm number one on Doryus's hit list."
Haru Glory stepped forward, resting a hand on the hilt of the Ten Powers. His expression was grim as he interjected into the rising argument. "There are also many new enemies attempting to take the place of the Shadow Guard as masters of the world. Most of them can't mount a serious threat on their own. However... Doryus’s raid squad and the Blue Guardians could easily overpower Kandrakar at any time." He paused, looking around the circle of heroes and rulers. "Perhaps we should consider releasing the prisoners. Narissa and Sigheart, from the desert dungeon..."
Silence fell over the war council, thick and uneasy. Releasing such dark forces was a desperate gambit, born of sheer terror for what the midnight hour might bring.
A few levels down, in the sunken subterranean passages beneath the citadel, the tension felt entirely different—it felt like a tomb.
Edmund Pevensie leaned his forehead against the damp stone wall, his breathing ragged. He looked back at the narrow, dark tunnel they had been crawling through for hours. "We'll never get back to our own world," Edmund muttered, a sharp edge of despair in his voice. "We're buried here deep in the earth. Many have come down, and few have returned to the sunlit land."
Beside him, Prin, the Kin Dragon, folded his massive, iridescent wings as tightly as he could against his sides to fit through the cavernous passage. He looked past Edmund toward a strange, low-roofed structure carved directly into the root-woven earth ahead.
"Who would have a hut way out here?" Prin murmured, his golden eyes scanning the eerie silence of the subterranean glade. "I think it's called a Gnome Rest, Prince Phobos..."
Though Phobos was physically trapped above with Will and the council, his dark magic still whispered through the stone, echoing in the minds of those traversing the roots of his former kingdom.
“In the old days, they were connected by paths before the thorns,” the faint, phantom voice of Phobos resonated through the earth around them, cold and mocking. “Something must have happened to the gnomes...”
Edmund drew his sword, the steel chiming faintly in the dark. Above them, the clock began its slow, agonizing countdown toward midnight, while below, the shadows of the forgotten paths began to stretch and twist.
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