Gilded Ashes-Chapter 273: First, Smallest Trick

Raizen and Enya moved through the lowest parts of Ukai, where the city stopped feeling like streets and started feeling like roots.

Down here, the world felt narrow. Thick trunks rose beside the main tree like pillars, and the roots turned the ground into uneven ridges and hollows. Everything looked the same in the rain - dark wood, dark soil, wet stone, and mist that swallowed distance. The lights from above barely reached this level. What did reach it came in weak, blurred patches, like someone smeared lanterns across the fog.

Raizen heard a shout somewhere ahead.

But it wasn’t a scream of terror. It sounded like a battle cry - short, fierce, alive. Then another. Then something that sounded like a deep, powerful roar.

Enya’s helmet turned toward the sound like a compass needle snapping north.

"There!" she said, too happy for the situation.

Raizen kept walking at a steady pace, careful where he stepped. The ground was slick, and the roots were shaped into awkward steps that made his ankles run harder than they should. His raincoat clung to his shoulders, wet and heavy. His chest plate shifted quietly when he breathed.

Enya started jumping between trunks, quick and confident, like she ran this entire maze for fun. Raizen didn’t doubt she did.

They angled south-east. The farther they went, the wilder it felt. Fewer walked paths. More raw ground, more low fog, more wet leaves that slapped at their legs when they brushed past.

And then Enya broke into a sprint.

"Come onn!" she shouted, already pulling away.

Raizen stared at her for half a second, then he sighed and followed.

His shoulders started hurting from the rain and the raincoat’s weight. His legs felt heavy. His nose still had that stupid, sore ache from the door earlier. Even breathing felt like work today. But Enya didn’t slow down for "today."

She sprinted like she had waited her whole life to do it.

Raizen pushed his pace. The fog thickened the farther they went. He saw it and felt a familiar, bitter disappointment crawl up his neck.

"Fog, again?" he muttered.

Of course.

Rain and fog together. The combination that made distance completely unclear, and guessing every shape a gamble. He only wanted a clean view. One clear horizon. Ukai didn’t even give him that.

Enya glanced back, helmet still oversized on her head. "What?"

"Nothing" Raizen said immediately.

Enya didn’t get it. Or she did, and didn’t care. She kept sprinting anwyways.

The sounds grew louder. Shouts. Roars. A weird, sharp buzzing that rose and fell like a saw cutting through air. Something thumped hard, like heavy legs slamming wet ground. Somewhere deeper in the fog, something hissed – a long sound that made your skin crawl. Raizen’s hands tightened around his coat for a second.

Then the trees opened. Not fully. The trees in Ukai never open "fully", but the trunks spread just enough to reveal a wide clearing where the ground dipped a bit and flattened, the fog thinning into a light gray veil instead of a literal wall.

The fight sat right there, alive and moving.

Raizen stopped without meaning to. For a second, he just stared. It didn’t look like he was used to. There were no lines of Gravers with luminite blades. No tight group of Vanguards. No clean arcs of bright Eon cutting through the air. No single fighter stepping forward and forcing space open by sheer force.

This looked like a living storm.

Dozens of Ukaians stood behind the frontline, not holding weapons, not charging in. Most had their hands lifted, fingers spread, palms angled forward. Their stances were grounded. Focused. Some had eyes closed. Some stared so hard they didn’t even blink. They weren’t fighting. They were controlling. And in front of them -

A zoo. At least, that was the only word Raizen’s brain offered, and it somehow wasn’t enough.

A bear the size of a small cart slammed into a twisted Nyx that looked like an oversized snake. But the bear didn’t look normal, either. Thick scales armored its back like a second skin, dark plates layered over fur. Its claws flashed when it swiped, and the swipe carried a faint shimmer, like Eon somehow made it sharper.

To the right, wolves moved in a pack - fast, coordinated, almost too smart. One wolf had four eyes, each one glowing faintly in the fog. Another had a long, wet tail that whipped like a a thick rope. Their teeth looked very white and sharp. Their bodies looked reinforced, like something inside them made their bones denser.

Above them, huge bees, insects and birds cut through the rain.

Raizen blinked when he saw them.

The bees were oversized, almost the length of his arm, and their wings beat hard enough to scatter the mist. One bee angled down and fired something - not a sting like an insect, but a thick, needle-like projectile that punched into a Nyx and made it stagger for a few seconds. The creature didn’t bleed - it shuddered, then the wounod opened a bit at the edges like smoke tearing apart. It looked just like when a luminite weapon cut a Nyx!

Suddenly, a black panther slipped through the chaos. It moved low and silent, and when it leaped, it landed on a Nyx’s back and drove it into the mud like a hammer. Its muscles flexed. Its two tails flicked once, then the animal sprang away before anything could grab it.

Nyxes fought back, of course. But all of them looked different. Of course, the same dark shapes, long limbs., weirdly placed joints... Distorted, minimalistic faces that didn’t stay still... The same things Raizen was used to. But these looked different. They looked... Animalic, almost, like a poor imitation. Some lunged at beasts, cutting them apart, some tried to slip around them and reach the tamers behind, but they didn’t get far.

Whenever a Nyx broke through, something stopped it.

A literal glowing elephant’s long fang slammed it sideways.

An eagle’s wing snapped in, cutting one in half.

A burst of thin vines rose from the ground and wrapped around its legs, yanking it into the mud – they didn’t look like Enya’s plants... They looked slightly weaker, more basic. But that meant that there were other people that could manipulate plants, right? Raizen thought.

And the tamers - the people behind – didn’t panic at all. They adjusted, corrected, shifted their hands with calm, practiced precision.

Raizen’s eyes kept moving, trying to understand how nobody collided.

There were so many moving bodies - beasts, Nyxes, people - but the battlefield’s chaos was still somehow controlled. Tamers made space for someone else without needing words. Beasts moved like they felt those spaces. When one beast fell, another slid into the gap. When a tamer stumbled, someone behind them reached out and steadied their shoulder without looking away from the fight.

Raizen saw a tiger take a deep slash along its side. The wound opened wide for a second, glowing. Its tamer flinched hard, but three others behind him lifted their hands at the same time. A faint glow ran through the tiger’s body, and the wound tightened. Not instantly, but enough for the tiger to move again.

Raizen’s chest tightened.

It wasn’t as lethal as a luminite blade. It wasn’t as direct as Neoshima’s style. Beasts didn’t cut Nyxes apart in one clean strike.

But it worked. The Nyxes still died.

...They just died differently.

When an Ukaian Nyx fell, it still became glowing ash - gilded, soft, beautiful in the worst way. The ash drifted in the rain, caught in wind, and then faded.

Those little lights reflected in the fog. Reflected in waterdrops. Reflected in wet fur and wet leaves.

And for a second, the whole battlefield looked like a light show - small bursts of glow, quick flashes of regeneration, Nyxes dissolving into gold.

Raizen hated it. He hated that something so deadly could look that beautiful.

Enya tugged her helmet down tighter, as if she remembered she was supposed to hide who she was.

Then she stepped forward.

Raizen finally looked at her properly.

She literally jumped from one leg onto the other with excitement. Not nervous excitement, either. Not "I’m scared, but I’m doing it anyway." This was pure joy.

Her hands curled into fists, and the armor on her gauntlets clinked softly. Her shoulders rose and fell with quick breaths. Even her stance changed - she wasn’t the prankster kid anymore, bouncing around and making jokes.

Raizen opened his mouth. "Enya -"

She didn’t answer. She just stepped closer and closer, until the clearing’s light hit her armor and made it look even more ridiculous.

Then she arranged her helmet one last time, like that sealed her identity completely.

Raizen scanned the battlefield again, searching for where Enya could even fit in. The tamers already had a system. The beasts had space. The Nyxes were being held back.

Then Raizen noticed something.

Even with all the coordination, there were tamers too close.

Some stood on the same ground level as the beasts, barely a few steps behind them. When a Nyx whipped back, when a beast stumbled, it came dangerously close to the tamer line. One mistake, one slip in the mud, and someone could get grabbed.

It wasn’t instantly dangerous, but it was close. Too close.

Enya lifted both hands.

The wet soil trembled.

And then the earth moved. Not violently or explosively. It didn’t erupt like an attack from Ichiro when he was mad.

Thick tree trunks pushed up from the ground like someone pulled them from beneath the world. Slick bark surfaced in smooth columns, forming platforms under the tamers’ feet. One after another, the platforms lifted people a few meters into the air, just enough to pull them out of reach.

A tamer gasped as the ground moved under them, but their beast didn’t panic. It kept fighting. Another tamer stumbled, arms flailing for balance, and a vine snapped up and wrapped around their waist like a belt, steadying them.

Enya didn’t even look strained yet.

She moved her palms again, rising them slightly. More platforms rose. Perfectly spaced, like she had already mapped the clearing in her head.

Raizen’s eyes widened. This was a level of precision he didn’t see from most warriors.

And Enya was thirteen.

Raizen felt a cold prickle run down his spine. Mina called her a problem student. Atman’s wife called her a problem student. And Raizen suddenly understood why.

Enya wasn’t a prankster with potential. She was a weapon someone didn’t know how to store. Nobody knew what she could truly do. The tamers rose higher, safely above the mud and the Nyx’s reach. In a few seconds, the entire backline became safer in seconds.

And the moment it happened, the fight looked even smoother - like Enya just removed the one weakness Ukai’s style had.

Raizen stared at her, rain running down his face.

Enya turned her helmet toward him. Even behind metal, he could feel her grin. She raised one hand like she presented the battlefield to him, like it was a stage she built. But in reality, it didn’t fel like a stage she just built. It felt like the first trick in her sleeve.

The smallest trick.

Then she shouted, loud enough to cut through roars and buzzing and rain, loud enough for Raizen to hear her.

"FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for years!!!"