The city was dead.
No people. No guards. No welcoming voice, no warning sirens. Just stillness. But not peace—Hatku could feel it. The entire realm throbbed with a memory of chaos. The wide streets were marred by deep gashes, shattered stone, blackened scorch marks. The buildings, though intact, bore the scars of countless battles—walls splintered, some melted at their edges, others pulverized as if struck by impossible force.
"This wasn't abandoned," Tashina said, running her fingers over a crater that split the path before them. "It was emptied. Forcefully."
Hatku knelt beside what looked like a collapsed training post. It had once stood at the center of a circular courtyard now riddled with impact marks and clawed cracks. His green flame flickered over the ground, revealing faded runes burned into the stone. "Someone trained here. Maybe even lived here."
"But alone?" Tashina glanced around warily. "This place is too big for one person."
Hatku picked up something from the edge of the debris—a worn leather-bound journal half-buried beneath rubble. The binding was cracked, but the pages inside were miraculously dry and intact.
Tashina moved closer as he flipped it open. The handwriting was sharp and purposeful, each line pressed deep into the page like the writer had more strength than they realized.
"Father died without losing a single match. They say I have his eyes. But eyes don't win wars—power does. I will win until my name echoes louder than his. I will make them fear me… and then I will surpass him."
Hatku and Tashina exchanged a look. He flipped to another page.
"Won today. Again. Fifth match in a row. Took fire-sight from my opponent. It's… beautiful. I can see heat now, feel it pulse through the walls. Another power added to the vault. I need more."
Another page.
"Seventeenth match. Still undefeated. No one remembers my father anymore. They call me something else now. 'The Pulse Queen.' I don't know if I like it. But I'll keep going."
Tashina took a step back. "Seventeen victories? Without losing? And look at this—" she pointed at the list at the back of the journal, each line a power earned: Flame Shift, Echo Break, Frost Pulse, Phase Sight…
Hatku's voice was low, reverent. "Could the owner of this be… the Ultimate Being?" But how? And if it is indeed the Ultimate being, What would she be doing in a place like this all alone?
Before Tashina could respond, the air cracked above them.
A pressure wave slammed the ground as something plummeted from the sky, spiraling with impossible speed. Dust exploded around the impact site. Hatku shielded Tashina instinctively, flame rising around them. The ground quaked, trembled—and then stilled.
A glowing orb pulsed at the center of the crater, humming with strange, shifting energy unlike anything Hatku had felt before. Not green. Not red. Not any known element. The force radiating from it distorted the space around it, bending light, warping sound.
Inside, a silhouette knelt.
Then—she stood.
"I really need to work on my orb resistance," the figure muttered, brushing dust from her arms. "Still felt the impact. That's... not ideal."
Hatku's mouth parted slightly. The voice—it was feminine.
The orb faded around her, and she squinted into the haze.
"Now where did I put my journal?" she murmured, scanning the ground. Her eyes locked on Hatku, who stood still, the book open in his hands.
She stepped forward, brushing a streak of soot from her cheek. "Hi. I'm Shyla," she said casually, as though she hadn't just crash-landed from the sky surrounded by a mystery orb of undetectable power. "Could you hand over my journal?"
Hatku and Tashina stared at her in stunned silence.