Chapter 90: Withstood It All
The dome disappeared, and smoke still hung low over the village, drifting between the ruined buildings like something that hadn’t decided whether to leave yet. Nobody stood still for long. Within minutes, everyone had already gone back to work.
The Builders moved first, tearing down buildings that still stood but shouldn’t. Where a home had once been, one of them pressed both palms against the remaining foundation, and golden runes spread outward until a temporary shelter rose from the wreckage almost immediately.
Hunters cleared burned debris from the paths in long chains, passing broken beams hand to hand.
Archers combed through the ash for recoverable arrows and undamaged supplies.
Riders hauled massive fallen beams away on the backs of their Stone Bears, clearing space faster than any group of hands alone could manage.
Healers moved from one wounded Goblin to the next without pause.
The Su Tribe joined them slowly, hesitant at first, then without hesitation at all.
Arthur stood near the center and watched. They weren’t two tribes working side by side anymore but simply one.
The Healers kept treating wounds long after Arthur had lost count of how many. The Builders kept raising shelters, one after another, until the burned rows of the village had something standing over them again.
The Hunters checked beneath every collapsed section carefully.
The Archers climbed the remaining watchtowers and repaired what they could reach.
The Riders moved constantly between one end of the village and the other, delivering supplies wherever needed. The Guides moved through the crowd, calming the frightened and directing the confused.
Near the edge of the clearing, a group of children had gathered around Melo and refused to leave her side. One small boy had fallen asleep against her flank, his small hand still resting on her fur. Another child kept brushing his fingers through her tail, slow and careful, like she might disappear if he touched too hard.
A little girl looked up at her mother. "Can she stay?" she asked.
Her mother smiled for the first time since the attack, the expression looking almost unfamiliar on her tired face. "She makes them forget they’re scared," she said quietly, mostly to herself.
Arthur heard it from a short distance away. He didn’t think much of it in the moment. He kept moving, helping carry supplies toward the next row of shelters, the words settling somewhere in the back of his mind without asking to be noticed yet.
It was a while before he noticed something else.
There were injuries everywhere. Bandages wrapped around arms and legs. Blood staining torn clothing. Homes collapsed into piles of ash and broken wood.
But there were no bodies.
Athena noticed at nearly the same moment he did. She stopped walking entirely, eyes moving slowly across the wreckage like she was counting something that refused to add up.
Vedas’s expression shifted into a frown.
Mithra paused mid-step, hands still full of bandages.
Even Raku, who’d been moving steadily among the survivors all morning, grew quiet.
Arthur finally said what everyone else seemed to be thinking. "Has anyone died?"
Luka looked over at him, something like surprise crossing her face before she answered. "No," she said.
Everyone stopped what they were doing.
Arthur walked toward an unconscious Hunter lying near one of the temporary shelters. A deep wound ran across the Goblin’s chest, long and jagged, the kind of wound that should have ended everything the moment it was made.
Instead, faint golden light seeped from its edges, glowing softly against the torn skin.
It wasn’t healing the wound. Arthur could tell that just by looking. It was holding it. Keeping it exactly as it was, frozen in place, like something had reached into the moment itself and refused to let it get worse.
Arthur looked around slowly. Every injured Goblin nearby carried the same faint golden light along their wounds.
That alone would have been strange enough. But something else sat wrong beneath it. The village was too quiet. People had survived. Children had survived. And yet nobody smiled. Nobody said the word safe. Nobody celebrated any of it.
Arthur finally asked the question pressing against his chest. "Why does everyone still look afraid?"
Nobody answered right away.
Luka slowly turned her head toward the mountain rising behind the village, her expression unreadable.
Before anyone could press her further, Raku spoke quietly into the silence. "Where is Mara?" he asked.
Luka looked back at him, and for the briefest moment something like relief crossed her face. Then she nodded once. "Follow me," she said.
She gave no further explanation. Nobody asked for one. Everyone followed.
Luka led them away from the ruined village, through a stretch of forest that grew thicker the further they walked, until they reached the base of an old cliff overgrown with vines. She pushed a thick curtain of them aside, revealing a narrow passage cut into the stone that nobody would have noticed otherwise.
They descended together, single file, and the air changed almost immediately. Cooler with every step down. Quieter too. The distant sounds of the burning village faded until they disappeared completely, replaced by something that felt almost like silence pressing gently against their ears.
At the bottom, the passage opened into an enormous underground grove.
Ancient trees rose high enough that their tops vanished into shadow above. Flowers bloomed along the ground untouched by any trace of smoke or fire, colors bright and undisturbed. Soft golden light drifted through the air in slow, weightless currents, settling over everything like dust caught in sunlight.
It felt sacred.
Arthur understood immediately that this place had existed long before the village above it ever had.
At the center of the grove, Mara stood waiting. Her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, the kind that comes from days without sleep rather than hours. She noticed Raku first, and something in her posture eased slightly. Then she noticed Arthur, Vedas, and the rest of the group behind them.
She smiled, weak and thin. "You’re here," she said.
She stepped aside.
Behind her, everyone finally saw him.
At first, Arthur couldn’t even tell where the Guardian’s body began.
Massive roots spread across the grove floor like the roots of an ancient tree, wrapping around a body made of rough gray stone.
Most of him disappeared into the shadows above.
Only his upper body could be seen clearly. His enormous face was calm, almost peaceful, his eyes closed as though he were simply sleeping. Golden cracks spread across his stone skin. From every crack, tiny streams of golden light drifted upward like glowing leaves carried by the wind.
More roots wrapped tightly around his body, almost as though they were trying to hold him together.
Arthur stared. "He’s..."
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Even half-hidden in darkness, Voro felt enormous and somehow fragile.
Athena slowly lowered her notebook. "Beautiful..." She didn’t even try to write.
For once, words felt too small.
Sun quietly folded his arms. "He held an entire village together." There wasn’t even a joke this time.
Mithra looked toward the sleeping children nearby. "Now I understand."
Vedas slowly lowered his spear. It simply didn’t feel right to hold a weapon in front of someone who had protected people for centuries.
Raku smiled sadly. "As expected of a Guardian Spirit."
Everyone understood immediately; he was the reason nobody had died.
Luka stood near him, her hand resting lightly against his side. "Voro has protected this village since before any of us were born," she said. "Since the Kingdom of Dawn collapsed, he never left."
"I heard about that from Mu Tribe Guardian Spirit and Raku," Arthur said lightly.
She nodded before glancing toward the sleeping children who’d followed them down without anyone noticing. "Every generation grew up under him. We never had to wonder if we were safe. We simply were."
A little Goblin girl quietly hugged one of the roots.
Arthur looked back at Voro. "What happened?"
Luka lowered her eyes. "Three months ago... Something changed in the other Beast Tribes."
Athena frowned. "Changed?"
"They started targeting villages."
Sun’s expression hardened. "Something is leading them."
Luka nodded once. "Maybe? Or it might be there trying to create another turf war."
"Which beast attacked the village?"
"...The thunder birds. There were dozens of them."
Mithra blinked. "Dozens?"
"They filled the entire sky." Luka. "We couldn’t even see the sun."
Arthur could imagine it as he did recall the sea of lightning from before. "But wait... How did anyone survive?"
Luka looked toward Voro. "Our Guardian Spirit refused to allow any of us to be harmed." Everyone became quiet again. "He defeated them as they came, but when over thirty more arrived and began unleashing waves of lightning... He stopped fighting."
Arthur frowned. "Stopped?"
Luke closed her eyes and spoke softly. "He spread his aura over the entire village."
Every Goblin nearby quietly lowered their head.
Luka continued. "Every lightning strike that struck the golden light hit him instead."
Athena slowly looked toward the golden cracks. "Those are all lightning wounds."
Luka nodded. "For almost twenty minutes, he endured every strike."
Arthur slowly looked back at Voro. "By himself?"
"Yes, and then he collapsed after the Thunder Birds retreated." Luke clenched her fists. "He hasn’t opened his eyes since."
Nobody spoke.
Even the children nearby had become quiet. The only sound inside the grove was the soft drift of golden light escaping Voro’s body.
Arthur looked back toward the village entrance.
Only now did he realize...
The golden barrier that had protected every injured Goblin reached all the way here. Even while unconscious, Voro’s power was still spread across the entire village. He was still protecting them. He simply didn’t know how to stop.
Everyone looked back toward the fading Guardian, and the golden light drifting from his cracked surface finally made complete sense.
He was still protecting them even like this.
Even unconscious.
Arthur walked toward him slowly, without fully understanding why his feet had started moving. Something about Voro pulled at him, quiet and insistent, the same way certain doors in the underground kingdom had pulled at the King’s Mark.
He reached out and touched him.
The King’s Mark on his hand shone, not brightly, but warmly, like something settling into place rather than announcing itself.
Arthur froze.
He didn’t hear words. He felt something instead, pressing directly into his chest. An overwhelming determination that wasn’t his own.
Protect them.
Keep them safe.
They’re scared.
Not again! Not while I’m here! They’re my children; I will never allow anyone to hurt them!
The emotions crashed into him all at once, and none of it felt like duty or obligation. It felt like love, plain and complete, the same love he’d felt once before in the Commander’s memory back at the Academy, the same weight that had settled over an entire tribe fleeing through a forest long ago.
Arthur clenched his fist without meaning to.
He hated moments like this. People who gave absolutely everything they had, only to end up with nobody capable of helping them in return.
As he stepped back, he noticed something else. A small Goblin child walked quietly toward Voro and placed a single flower beside him, then turned and left without a word. Another child arrived a moment later and carefully straightened a row of flowers clearly placed there the day before, then bowed her head briefly before stepping away.
Nobody had told them to do it. It was simply what they’d always done.
Then, without anyone calling her forward, Melo walked slowly toward Voro on her own. She circled him once, quiet and deliberate, then curled up gently beside him, resting her head near one of his massive paws, like some part of her recognized another guardian without needing to be told.
Nobody interrupted her. Nobody questioned it.
The grove fell completely silent.
Arthur turned toward Luka.
"How do we save him?" he asked.
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