When Elara first met Pale.
It was an endless emerald ocean, with lush water grass swaying in the wind, an infinite green sea sparkling as it stretched to the horizon where it met the azure sky.
The sky was vast, the wilderness boundless, and the wind blowing through the grass revealed cattle and sheep.
Young Elara was in the most dazzling and brilliant years of her life. Her silver-white long hair danced in the wind, flowing with pearl-like luster in the sunlight. When running, a fluffy big tail trailed behind her like a streak of lightning.
She was the princess of the grassland wolf clan, the most brilliant pearl of this grassland.
Though the grassland wolf clan was called a wolf clan, they were actually more similar to humans.
This description wasn't accurate—more precisely, were humans similar to the wolf clan?
Elara had long heard that other tribes seemed to be affected by a disaster called "calamity."
They said "calamity" wasn't a natural disaster, but more like a living, spreading plague. Wherever it went, all life perished.
The emerald, fertile grasslands would visibly fade, wither, and turn into barren yellow sand at an alarming rate, with flying sand replacing the sweet breeze.
Those mighty tribes, their proud warriors, after being touched by calamity, would have their bodies infected, twisted, and deformed by filth, ultimately becoming hideous monsters that only knew destruction.
What made Elara, a beauty-loving wolf like herself, most uneasy was the rumor that even the wolf clan's most prized possession—shining fur like hers and fluffy, soft big tails—would lose their luster under calamity's erosion, becoming matted, dirty, and even falling off and rotting.
This description was so horrifying that Elara initially dismissed it as exaggerated horror stories. After all, the grassland she experienced was still full of vitality and beauty.
Calamity? That sounded more like legends ancient shamans used to frighten wolf cubs.
Until that day, when that figure in a ridiculous pink-white dress brought cold words into her world, did she realize those legends weren't stories, but bloody reality unfolding in the distance, and moreover, sweeping toward the grassland she loved with unstoppable force.
The girl wasn't particularly tall compared to Elara, with a somewhat slender figure, wearing an incredibly exaggerated pink-white puffy dress. Layers of gauze and lace were piled up, decorated with tiny ribbon bows.
Elara's first impression of Pale was: Is this some princess from a fairy tale?
Elara snorted inwardly, her vigilance immediately relaxing by more than half. This creature that looked like it would shatter at a touch, wearing such movement-restricting clothing, really posed no threat whatsoever.
She decided to secretly frighten this little girl—watching her pale with fright would surely be very interesting.
Elara suddenly stood up from the grass, stretching her slender body. Her silver-bright hair sparkled in the sunlight as she raised her head and let out a low, wild, intimidating throat sound with chest resonance—"Awoo~"
This was the typical way grassland wolves showed warning and demonstrated power. She expected to hear screaming, see collapse, or at least panicked fleeing.
However, this didn't happen.
The girl seemed to have found her target and instead slowly approached her?
Elara suddenly found the girl very interesting.
Perhaps she was simply momentarily at a loss upon encountering such an exquisite, beautiful creature, or maybe it was her wolf nature's playfulness acting up.
Elara suddenly pounced out, spreading her arms wide. "Haha! I caught you!"
Bang! came a dull thud as Elara's face collided solidly with a pink light barrier, making a metallic collision sound.
"Awoo..." She instinctively covered her nose that was sore from the impact, her silver-white long hair somewhat disheveled, her beautiful amber eyes filled with disbelief and confusion.
"Hello... I'm Pale, and I'm a magical girl. Are you from the North Wind Wolf Clan?"
The girl asked very calmly and politely.
Elara: ???
No way.
Nothing happened at all?
"What is this thing! Why is it so hard!"
Pale seemed quite speechless. "This is a magic barrier. You'd better not try to bite through it anymore—your teeth will break."
"Magical girl..." Elara repeated the term, her tail unconsciously swaying lightly. This was the first time she'd become interested in the girl before her.
Pale introduced her origins and purpose.
She was a traveling messenger and... recorder.
Pale cast her gaze toward the distance, as if she could see through the vast grassland to those lands that had already fallen. Her voice lowered several degrees:
"I come from the far south, constantly chasing the spread of a plague called 'calamity' with my footsteps." Her words flowed like cold streams slowly into Elara's ears. "My job is to deliver warnings and information in advance to races not yet affected, while also leaving final traces and memorials for those civilizations and races that have already perished or are about to perish."
"The southern wolf clans have very few left. Their habitats were the first to suffer 'calamity's' attack." Pale paused, reaching into thin air to pull out an envelope. "This is a letter the wolf king there left for you all—seems to be advice? Calamity will come here soon. I advise you all to hurry and relocate, find new living places."
Young Elara didn't seem to fully understand the scenes Pale described.
But she still felt regret for the southern tribes' disappearance.
The wolf clan was an exceptionally honor-conscious and disciplined race.
Elara knew they could never migrate.
This was their home.
She looked at the boundless, vibrant grassland before her—this was the land where she was born, grew up, ran, and played, the homeland the North Wind Wolf Clan had guarded for generations. The wind carried the scent of green grass and family, and beneath the soil lay buried the bones and glory of ancestors.
After this, Pale seemed to temporarily halt her endless journey, like a migratory bird temporarily resting, traveling back and forth between the already deathly silent south and the North Wind Wolf Clan territory that still had life, constantly conveying increasingly suffocating news.
The southern tribes had completely perished—they had fought to the very last moment.
Calamity's influence had already spread here, the yellow sand's erosion was visible to the naked eye, and the sweet breeze carried the scent of death.
On a night with sparse starlight, Pale, who had been traveling continuously for days, appeared particularly exhausted.
She sat quietly by the campfire at the tribe's edge, watching the dancing flames. The pressure from long journeys and witnessing countless tragedies seemed to finally crush her always-straight spine.
Pale slightly tilted her body, gently resting her forehead on Elara's shoulder beside her.
Elara suddenly stiffened. She could feel Pale's body weight—very light, yet abnormally heavy.
The campfire crackled, illuminating the silhouette of the two snuggled together. Pale breathed evenly, seemingly finally falling into sleep. That always calm, unruffled face showed in dreams a trace of extremely faint fatigue and vulnerability that belonged to her age.
Elara maintained this position all night.
She watched the starry sky, listened to the grassland's wind, felt that slight weight on her shoulder, her heart filled with complex emotions.
Pale told her that if she was willing to move to live among humans, there would be other magical girls who could resist calamity.
Elara gently shook her head—she was an unrestrained, freedom-loving wolf.
Her pride, her roots, were all in this vast world. Leaving here, even if alive, she would no longer be Elara.
However, calamity's footsteps never stopped for anyone's determination.
It began with the withering of edge grasslands. Green grass blades visibly lost moisture, becoming yellow, brittle, and finally turning to powder that scattered with the wind, revealing the barren, sand-turning soil beneath.
Water sources began becoming turbid, carrying an indescribable strange smell mixing rust and decay. Tribespeople who drank the water began showing coughing, weakness, and... emotional irritability and anger.
The sky was no longer always azure blue. The southern horizon was often shrouded by a murky yellow, turbid sand curtain that seemed to possess life, slowly and steadfastly pushing northward, devouring the blue.
The beautiful grassland, Elara's beloved homeland, was being eroded and devoured bit by bit, irreversibly. Her most feared nightmare was slowly unfolding before her eyes with unprecedented clarity and cruelty.
Pale came here more and more frequently, displaying vast magic power and unparalleled strength.
Pale told Elara that her soul was all crystallized in the small pink gem on her lower abdomen—this was why she could remain unaffected by calamity.
However, individual strength seemed like a drop in the bucket before the civilization-destroying "calamity."
The North Wind Wolf Clan... had no hope left.
The last bloodline was like a candle in the wind, ready to be extinguished at any moment. The last habitat would also be completely buried by endless yellow sand before long.
Pale had to leave.
This land had reached its end. As a recorder and messenger, her duty here was concluded. In the distance, there were more wails and final songs that needed to be heard and remembered.
But how could Elara bear to let go?
Birds ultimately belonged to the sky, and Pale had her unfinished mission.
But how Elara wished this girl with endless stories, inexhaustible songs, and unlimited magic power would stay.
That was the last time Pale came to see Elara.
The camp had almost turned to ruins, with very few surviving tribespeople left, their eyes showing only numbness or madness.
Elara stood quietly beside the newly raised, already sand-turning mound in front of her father's grave, her feet on the "grassland" she had once deeply loved, now turned to yellow sand.
Pale silently walked to her side, not looking at that despairing scene, only looking at Elara. Her gaze remained calm, but seemed to contain deeper heaviness than usual.
"I... I can take away proof of your existence. Sorry."
Elara's choice was an extremely young poplar sapling with roots wrapped in moist soil.
Poplars were the most tenacious trees on the grassland, known as the "backbone of the desert."
This was the last sapling Elara had rescued with great effort before the grassland's springs completely dried up—a witness to the North Wind Wolf Clan's former existence and prosperity.
The other item was a bone necklace in the shape of a wolf head, taken from her father, the previous Wolf King, symbolizing the North Wind Wolf Clan's honor.
Elara handed them to Pale, her amber eyes burning with despair and one last stubborn gleam.
"Take them." Her voice was hoarse. "And... take me too."
Pale was slightly stunned, seeming not to fully understand.
"I'm going to die soon too. I can feel it. The North Wind Wolf Clan has an ancestral secret method that allows girls to reproduce offspring together. Use my bloodline! Use your... your soul gem's power that isn't contaminated!"
Her voice trembled with excitement.
"This is the only way our North Wind Wolf Clan... can leave bloodline in this world. Please!"
This was no longer a request, but the heart-rending plea of a dying race's last princess.
For the continuation of bloodline, she abandoned all pride and reserve, presenting her deepest despair and most fragile desires naked before this magical girl she both depended on and couldn't understand.
In Pale's molten gold eyes, there was still no disgust, no terror, not even much surprise. Only a kind of... bottomless, calm sadness as if she had already seen through all endings.
After a long time, Pale extremely slowly shook her head.
Then gently accepted the sapling and necklace, placing them into the void.
"There are still many, many races that need me. I can't stop yet."
Pale looked at Elara's face that instantly turned ashen, as if all light had been drained from those amber eyes. Pale seemed to want to say something more, her lips slightly moving, but ultimately it only became:
"Sorry."
These two words, like a final death knell, shattered all of Elara's fantasies.
"Heh... hehe..." Elara let out a low, twisted laugh, her shoulders trembling violently.
She suddenly raised her head, no longer showing any pleading or vulnerability in her eyes, only the mad, destructive crimson that wanted to destroy everything.
"Awoooo—!!!"
A wolf howl that tore through the sky, containing all pain and anger, suddenly burst forth. The sound waves, wrapped in thick filthy aura, shook the surrounding remaining ruins, causing sand and dust to fall.
Then she suddenly leaped back, opening distance, her silver-white long hair wildly dancing without wind.
"Pale!" Elara's voice became hoarse and hideous, like metal scraping. "Elara! In the name of the North Wind Wolf Clan's last bloodline! I hereby challenge you to—a Wolf King duel!"
The ancient war cry once again echoed through this deathly land, yet filled with desperate wailing.
"I swear by my ancestors' bones! I swear by my soon-to-perish soul! I swear by the last trace of life on this cursed land! If I win! You stay! Your power! Your body! Your everything! All belong to me! To continue the North Wind Wolf bloodline!
If you win, all survivors of our tribe, all resources and power will belong to you for your disposal."
Wolf King duel—a decisive battle staking everything, victor becomes king, loser becomes subject.
Pale agreed.
Massive magic power torrents sufficient to devour everything swept over Elara.
After that day.
Pale took the small sapling and necklace and resumed her journey.
A person-high stone block stood in the yellow sand, with "North Wind Wolf Clan" carved on it.