Chapter 134: The Call to War
Arthur stood before the tall windows of his private study, his golden hair catching the last rays of afternoon light as he read the report in his hands for the third time.
The messenger had departed moments ago, leaving behind a scroll sealed with the urgent markings of the border command.
His red eyes moved across the words again, and his jaw tightened with each line.
The Zenith Empire was mobilizing. The Hidden City of Lightning was moving their army.
A small military advance, twenty thousand elite warriors marching toward the border with supply lines and siege equipment and the kind of coordination that spoke of months of preparation.
David's confrontation with Ronan had not been an isolated test of strength. It had been the opening move.
Arthur rolled the scroll closed and set it on his desk. His voice was calm when he spoke, carrying the weight of command that had become second nature since he took the throne.
"Send a letter to the Emperor. Tell him to prepare his army to move against the Zenith Empire. We will handle the Hidden City of Lightning."
The secretary beside him—a woman with black hair tied in a severe ponytail and red eyes as she was a Moon Class nodded once. "And the Black Ops teams?"
"Summon them. Ethan's team specifically. They have two hours to report to the throne room." Arthur turned from the window, and his expression was hard. "I will not have another war if I can prevent it. But if the Hidden City of Lightning wants to test our strength, they will find we are not as weak as they believe."
The secretary bowed and departed without another word.
The Vermillion Wood had grown quiet as the afternoon faded toward evening, the shadows lengthening beneath the pines and the birds settling into their nests.
Lucas walked along the forest path with Nora beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm as she laughed about the morning's hunt.
"You were terrible," Nora said, her white eyes bright with amusement. "You stepped on every dry branch in the forest. The boar heard you coming from a kilometer away."
"I was not stepping on every branch," Lucas replied, though a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "There were a lot of branches."
"There were the normal amount of branches. You just do not know how to walk quietly when you are not using mana."
"I was trying to experience the hunt naturally."
"You were trying to impress me, and you failed." Nora's laugh rang through the trees, bright and genuine. "It is okay. I still love you even though you are hopeless at tracking."
Lucas opened his mouth to respond, but the words died in his throat. His eyes fixed on a point above the treeline, where a shape had appeared against the pale evening sky.
It was small and distant at first, barely more than a speck, but his Mana Eyes caught the truth of it before his conscious mind had fully processed what he was seeing.
A Golden bird, not flesh and blood, but a construct of mana shaped with precision, its wings beating in a rhythm that was not quite natural.
His face went still. The smile faded from his lips. His body tensed with the sudden alertness of a soldier who had just heard the call to battle.
The war should not have started yet, he thought.
The novel said it would take months. Austin's death was supposed to happen after but his reveal should have came first, the council's fear, the assassins. None of that has happened. The timeline is shifting.
The golden bird circled once above them and dissolved into motes of light that drifted downward like ash from a distant fire. The light reformed into a single word written in the air for only a moment before fading: Return.
Nora had stopped walking. She was looking at his face, her smile gone now, replaced by something more serious. "Lucas? What is it?"
"We need to go back to the city," Lucas said. His voice was calm, but there was an urgency beneath it that Nora had learned to recognize. "Now."
He did not wait for her to respond.
He lifted her onto his back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck without hesitation, trusting him completely.
His mana surged through his body as he cast the spells that would carry them home.
[Mana Spell: Body Reinforcement]
[Mana Spell: Flash step]
[Mana Spell: Body Enhancement]
The world blurred around them. Lucas moved at one hundred and twenty meters per second, his feet barely touching the ground as he raced through the forest and toward the walls of the Hidden City
Trees became streaks of green and brown.
The wind screamed past his ears. Nora held on tight, her face pressed against his shoulder, and she did not ask questions because she knew he would explain when they arrived.
The afternoon light filtered through the windows of the small café where Austin sat across from Grace, their plates nearly empty and their cups growing cold.
He had been telling her about his training, the new techniques he was developing, and the way Blake had been pushing him harder than ever before.
She had listened with her usual calm expression, offering occasional comments that were brief but never dismissive.
"It sounds exhausting," Grace said, lifting her cup to her lips. "Training all day, every day. When do you rest?"
"When I sleep," Austin replied with a grin. "And sometimes not even then. I have been working on a technique that lets my body rest while my mind stays alert. It is not the same as real sleep, but it helps."
"That sounds worse than not sleeping at all."
"It is not so bad once you get used to it."
Grace shook her head, but there was something almost like fondness in her black eyes. "You need to sleep, Austin."
"Many say that."
He reached for his cup, and his hand stopped in mid-air.
His eyes had caught something through the window—a flash of gold against the blue sky, a shape that was too precise to be a natural bird.
The three leaves of his Clover Eyes spun in his irises as he focused, and he saw the construct for what it was: a summons, keyed to the runes that had been placed on his body when he joined the Black Ops.
The rune was so that only those the Sky King wanted to see the bird would see it and everyone else won't.
Austin stood. His chair scraped against the floor, and Grace looked up at him with a question in her eyes.
"I have to go," he said.
Grace's expression did not change, but her fingers tightened slightly around her cup. "Be careful."
"I will." He paused at the door, looking back at her for just a moment. "I will see you when I return."
She nodded once, and then he was gone, moving through the streets of the Clover Clan's territory at a speed that left pedestrians staring at the empty space where he had been.