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Chapter 214: Chapter 214: Zeyra, The Seductress

Before the high shaman could say something, he focused his attention on the dark roots holding the Star-Stones. His hand hovered over them, fingers twitching, before he grabbed one pulsing with the trapped essence of a Razor-Hawk.

And man, it was an absolute disaster.

The moment the Razor-Hawk’s spectral form manifested, the Grove was bathed in a sharp, tearing wind. Jaro’s chest ignited, but his core only flared a weak, sickly pale yellow. It was far too small, the metaphysical walls of his soul thin and fragile. The Hawk didn’t even bother to struggle or roar, it simply expanded its massive, razor-sharp spectral wings inside him.

CRACK.

The sound was entirely metaphysical, echoing not in the air, but in the minds of everyone present. Sol heard it clear as day… the sickening shatter of spiritual glass.

Jaro’s eyes rolled completely back into his head, showing only the whites. He shrieked, a sound of absolute, mind-breaking terror that tore at the vocal cords, as a fine mist of blood sprayed from his mouth and nose.

Zephyra moved with a sudden, explosive speed that completely defied her slender body. In a blur of motion, she crossed the space before the altar and slammed the blunt, heavy end of her wooden staff directly into Jaro’s solar plexus. The strike was perfectly calculated, it didn’t break a single physical bone, but it hit the fracturing core directly.

The Razor-Hawk was violently expelled from his chest, screaming in frustration as it was sucked forcefully back into the Star-Stone, which Zephyra snatched away with her free hand.

Jaro collapsed into the singing moss, his heavy body twitching in violent spasms. A dark pool of blood quickly formed beneath his mouth. The pale yellow glow in his chest was gone. It was completely, utterly dark.

“His core is coal rank,” Zephyra announced to the terrified, dead-silent clearing. She didn’t sound angry, only profoundly, heavily sad. “The vessel has shattered. He will live, but he will never wield essence again. Priestesses, take him to the healers.”

Two women in orange robes hurried forward, hooking their arms under Jaro’s shoulders and dragging the unconscious, crippled boy away into the silver fog.

The lesson was absolute, written in blood on the pristine moss. The Beast Bloodline Hierarchy did not care about a warrior’s ambition. It did not care about bravery or pride. It only cared about structural capacity.

The line moved on, completely sobered. The next four youths didn’t even dare to look at the Star-Stones. Their greed had been entirely extinguished by Jaro’s shrieks. They humbly reached into the pale-reed basket, accepting the grueling but survivable friction of the Quartz-Stones.

A River-Lizard. A Forest-Hound. A Stone-Badger. A Mud-Snake.

They suffered, they bled from the nose, and they panted like dying men, but they survived, securing their baseline futures.

Then, it was the voluptuous girl’s turn.

She stood up, casually brushing a speck of damp moss off her tight leather skirt like dress. The tension in the Grove was thick enough to cut with an obsidian dagger, a heavy miasma of fear and hope, but Zeyra walked to the altar as if she were strolling through a sunlit, peaceful back garden. The pendulum sway of her hips was deliberate… a hypnotic, confident rhythm designed to draw the eye and project absolute control.

Passing by Sol, she paused. The heavy atmosphere of the Shamanic Grove didn’t seem to touch her. She looked up through her thick lashes, locked her dark, heavy eyes onto his crimson ones, and flashed a slow, wicked smirk.

“Name’s Zeyra, by the way,” she purred, her voice a sultry, velvet contrast to the solemnity and recent screams of the Grove.

Sol’s internal monologue stuttered. Is she seriously flirting with me while standing in a puddle of the last guy’s blood? he thought, a mix of bewilderment and profound respect washing over him. I love this world.

Maintaining eye contact with him for a second longer than was appropriate, she turned to the baskets. She gracefully reached into the dark roots and pulled out a deep green Star-Stone.

Without a hint of hesitation, and completely lacking the dramatic, muscle-tearing straining the boys had displayed, she pressed the speckled stone directly to the deep valley between her massive breasts… which were already straining against her leather top, barely contained by the primitive stitching.

A sleek, enormous Green-Viper materialized in the mist. It didn’t roar like the Ape or squeal like the Boar. It hissed… a low, vibrating, bass-heavy sound that seemed to chill the blood and raise the hairs on the back of every neck in the clearing. Its massive, spectral coils slithered out of the stone, wrapping around Zeyra’s lush curves in a fluid motion that looked terrifyingly intimate.

Seeing the phantom serpent glide over her waist and coil around her shoulders. Sol couldn’t help but be jealous of that bastard serpent, and shouting internally, That should have been me.

But Zeyra didn’t fight it. She didn’t flex her muscles like a hulk, nor did she scream commands of absolute submission like Kaelen or Varn.

She simply closed her eyes, tilted her head back… exposing her throat to the phantom predator… and let out a soft, breathy sigh that echoed entirely too loudly in the quiet Grove. Her chest glowed with a steady, deep, incredibly stable orange light.

The Viper’s aggressive hissing immediately quieted. Its spectral head hovered near her neck, its forked tongue flicking out as if tasting her aura. Finding it welcoming, finding a host that matched its own cold, calculating, and seductive wavelength, the massive snake melted. It slid seamlessly into her core without a single ounce of struggle. It was a perfect, frictionless absorption.

Everyone’s jaws dropped in sync.

Varn, who was still clutching his bleeding chest and panting from his brutal wrestling match with the Blood-Ape, stared at her with a mixture of absolute outrage and undeniable lust. His brain seemed to be short-circuiting at the fact that she had just achieved a higher-tier binding than him by simply moaning.

Korr and the other surviving boys looked like they had forgotten how to breathe, their eyes glued to Zeyra’s glowing chest. Even Kira, standing at the edge of the clearing, blinked in sheer disbelief, her stoic warrior facade cracking as she muttered something under her breath about “shameless exhibitionism.”

High Shaman Zephyra just sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a withered hand as if Zeyra was a recurring headache she was simply too tired to deal with today.

Impressive, Sol admitted, his analytical mind evaluating the data with professional respect, because you know he wasn’t the type to swayed easily. Even as he was forced to thoroughly appreciated the view for professional reason, High-tier Flame core, highly stable. But her willpower is completely different from Varn’s brute force. She didn’t fight the snake; she… as strange as it sounded, seemed to simply seduce it. He didn’t know something like this was possible, but well, here we are. He looked at her straining deep valleys, and couldn’t help nodding, of course professionally. She aligned her metaphysical wavelength with the beast so it felt like a warm nest instead of a cage. Incredibly high combat intelligence and emotional control.

Zeyra opened her eyes. For a fraction of a second, her irises flashed with a vertical, reptilian slit, glowing with a toxic green light before returning to a deep, human dark brown.

She turned and walked back to her spot, making sure her path brought her just inches away from Sol again. The heady scent of crushed jasmine, sweat, and the sharp, ozone tang of raw essence washed over him.

“Your turn, Divine One,” she whispered as she passed, her bare arm brushing deliberately against his body. “Let’s see how big your capacity really is.”