The battlefield fell silent.<\/p>\n
Thousands of eyes followed the glowing boulder as it soared into the storm-dark sky like a falling star in reverse.<\/p>\n
No one moved.<\/p>\n
No one breathed.<\/p>\n
Then\u2014<\/p>\n
BOOM.<\/p>\n
The stone crashed into a distant hillside, shaking the earth hard enough to knock soldiers off their feet.<\/p>\n
The blue symbols continued to glow.<\/p>\n
Brighter.<\/p>\n
Stronger.<\/p>\n
The boy stood alone in the mud, staring at his own hands as if he didn’t understand what had just happened.<\/p>\n
The scarred commander pushed through the stunned soldiers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are you?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n
The boy looked up slowly.<\/p>\n
Before he could answer, the ground beneath the battlefield began to tremble again.<\/p>\n
Cracks spread through the earth around the place where the boulder had rested for centuries.<\/p>\n
Ancient blue light poured from the widening fissures.<\/p>\n
Panic swept through the ranks.<\/p>\n
Then an old royal scholar dropped to his knees.<\/p>\n
His face had gone pale with terror.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo…\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n
The commander turned toward him.<\/p>\n
The scholar pointed at the glowing cracks with a shaking hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat stone wasn’t a test.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trembling intensified.<\/p>\n
Chunks of earth collapsed inward.<\/p>\n
Blue light erupted into the sky.<\/p>\n
The scholar’s voice broke.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a seal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly, something enormous moved beneath the ground.<\/p>\n
And every soldier on the battlefield realized the same horrifying truth:<\/p>\n
The boy hadn’t awakened his power.<\/p>\n
He had awakened something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The battlefield fell silent. Thousands of eyes followed the glowing boulder as it soared into the storm-dark sky like a falling star in reverse. No one moved. No one breathed. Then\u2014 BOOM. The stone crashed into a distant hillside, shaking the earth hard enough to knock soldiers off their feet. The blue symbols continued to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}