Another month bled away beneath the black storm clouds of Ebonreach and the crimson banners of Voss.
While Aster's coronation ashes still drifted in the wind, the newly swollen Voss Kingdom (now ten million square kilometers strong) began to move. Land itself obeyed the shifting of crowns: forests that had once belonged to conquered kingdoms uprooted overnight and marched across the continent like obedient herds, rivers reversed course to feed Voss soil, mountain ranges folded and re-formed into jagged crimson ridges ringing the original capital like the teeth of some colossal beast.
Plains flattened into perfect parade grounds; ruins sank into newly formed lakes that reflected only the Voss banner. The continent groaned and reshaped itself around the single beating heart of Kale's ambition, every stolen kilometer grafted seamlessly onto the original territory until the horizon itself looked wounded.
Far above this ever-changing ground, the true ranked kingdoms floated in layered heavens.
The higher the Kingdom rank, the higher the Sky-Kingdoms drifted....
At the very bottom of that ladder, still clinging to the crust of Elaris, like a titan too proud to rise, lay the Stormrend Kingdom (rank 10,000, yet monstrous in scope). Fourteen million kilometers of continent-sized sky-islands chained together by perpetual lightning, cities carved from storm-clouds made solid, rivers of liquid thunder, and a central citadel that looked less like a palace and more like a mountain someone had taught to hate the ground.
It dwarfed every unranked kingdom… except the new Voss, which now stared at it from the horizon like a red wound that refused to close.
Inside Stormrend's highest war-room, a floating fortress of black glass and living lightning, the three S-rank pillars of the Kingdom lounged with the lazy confidence of men who had never lost a war.
King Tharion Stormrend was broad-shouldered with an iron-grey beard braided with silver lightning.
Queen Maelis Stormrend next to him was a tall woman with storm-cloud hair bound in copper rings, and eyes the pale grey of a hurricane's heart.
Lastly, General Orion Stormrend the youngest of the trio, he was lean and sharp with short grey hair and eyes.
Around them stood four of their thousands of A-rank elites, each commanding personal battalions of ten thousand warriors.
First was Captain Riven Stormrend, a storm-blade prodigy, hair white as lightning with twin swords on his back.
Marshal Sasha Stormrend came next, she was a fog and mist user with a voice soft as rain, able to drown entire battalions in razor sharp fog.
General Dren Stormrend was like a thunder-armor incarnate, every footstep leaving craters of burnt ozone.
Then there was Marshal Vale Stormrend one of the most talented lightning users they had.
King Tharion took a slow pull from a tankard of lightning-wine and glanced at the mirror. The feed showed four women (Sylvara torching supply lines with fire, Rhea carving border fortresses apart, Seyra directing mana constructs with cold precision, Lyrin leaving noble heads on pikes) tearing into Stormrend territory exactly as their master had ordered.
He snorted. "Tsk. Do they even know the steps beyond A-rank?"
Queen Maelis laughed, low and rolling like distant thunder. "Four A-rank girls and a swarm of ground-crawling ants. How cute."
General Orion never turned from the window, not even giving them a piece of mind.
King Tharion set the tankard down with a crack of electricity that spider-webbed the table. "Still, courtesy demands we answer the doorbell."
He flicked two fingers.
"Riven, Sasha, Dren, Vale; take your battalions. Go play with the children. Break whatever toys they brought but leave the girls breathing. I want to meet the fool who sent A-ranks to knock on Stormrend Kingdom's door in person."
The four elites saluted with lazy, predatory grins, armor already singing with storm-song.
As they left.... Forty thousand warriors rose from the citadel docks in perfect formation...
The real war had not even started, and Stormrend Kingdom was simply stretching.
----
On the scorched outskirts of Stormrend Kingdom, where the ground itself had been baked black by weeks of war, Sylvara stood in a perfect circle of ruin. Her long black hair danced in the furnace wind, and around her body swirled golden-black flames. She was from a heritage that were known flames users, and her Bloodline was at the A rank.
Eight B-rank Stormrend guards circled her, spears crackling with leftover lightning. Sylvara smiled... it was sweet, but terrible all in one. Her nine-tailed whip made of golden-black flames uncoiled from her wrist like a living serpent forged from the heart of a dying star.
|Infernal Flames (A)|
Nine tails of pure golden-black fire lashed outward in a single heartbeat the moment she willed her talent into action.
The first tail wrapped a guard's spear and turned it to molten slag that ate through his gauntlet and kept going.
The second and third tails snapped like whips, severing legs at the knees before the men even registered pain.
Four through seven became a spinning ring of flame that carved the remaining five into perfect, cauterized halves before their bodies realized they were dead.
The eighth and final tail simply flicked the last guard's helmet off, revealing wide, unbelieving eyes a fraction of a second before his head ignited from the inside.
Eight bodies hit the ground in eight separate pieces, steam rising from neatly severed flesh. Sylvara exhaled, flames settling back into gentle orbits around her shoulders, and turned toward the horizon where the others waited.
-----
A kilometer away, Rhea Voss charged alone into a Stormrend shield wall of two thousand. Her family was known for their use of raw kinetic force. Much like Sylvara, her bloodline was at the A rank. Currently, the warrior that Rhea was, finally being unleashed.
"Haha, let's see if you can keep up!"
|Unstoppable Momentum (A)|
She laughed as she willed her talent into action, charging headfirst into a Stormrend phalanx of two thousand. Crimson plate flashed beneath the bruised sky, with her spear trailing a wake of ionized air.
Momentum stacked with every heartbeat.
WHOOSH
First step: fast.
BOOM!
Fifth step: sonic boom.
BOOOM!!!!!
Tenth step: the space began to faintly crack open.
She hit the front-rank spear-first with Gorehowl, and the impact detonated like a collapsing star. Two thousand became eight hundred in the span of a single, glorious charge. Rhea planted her spear, spun, and laughed as the next wave hesitated because they had just watched as physics itself knelt to a single crimson woman.
On the other side of the Kingdom was Seyra Valethorne, she walked through a fortress that had once housed ten thousand strong. She was one of the most talented of the four... Her family had faint traces of space affinity, however the amount of people to get the affinity was rare. She however was the first of many to have mutation in the bloodline of her heritage.
She didn't have space but Void, her bloodline was S ranked 'Voidtouch' which gave her an affinity to void and higher sensitivity to space...
As she walked through the now ruined fortress her shadow swallowed everything she passed by. Whether it be men, women, weapons, or even the banners themselves vanishing into wait was called the Void Garden...
Which was the true terror of her Talent... an S ranked physique that made her shadow an endless pocket dimension. When she had arrived, A ballista crew fired bolts of lightning from a mana construct; she raised one finger as she used a talent.
|Spatial Severance|
The moment the talent was willed into action, the kilometer between them folded into a single step.
She stepped out of her own shadow atop the ballista, touched the barrel, and the mana construct disappeared.
A heartbeat later it reappeared overhead, now a perfect copy raining lightning on its former masters.
BOOOM!!!!! CRACKLE!!!! BOOOM!!!
Ten thousand became zero without Seyra ever drawing a blade.
----
In the capital's noble quarter, Lyrin Marrowfan danced barefoot across rooftops, teal-green hair glowing like moonlight on water.
Every giggle became an invisible sonic blade that slipped between armor joints.
Every playful "oops" shattered eardrums and turned hearts to red mist.
She had an A rank bloodline that turned stealth and sound into two deadly combinations. She had an affinity for Shadows and Sound. Her talent Shadow step allowed her to enter any shadow as if they were doors themselves and when she used |Siren's Lullaby| any single sound could turn into a blade that killed her enemies.
When a company of elite guards tried to corner her with tracking runes, she melted into the shadow of their own captain's cloak and reappeared behind the formation, finger pressed to the commander's lips.
One whispered "shh" and the entire street fell silent forever....
That was until...
Forty thousand Stormrend troops dropped from the low storm clouds in different parts of the kingdom, boots hitting the trembling ground in perfect unison, forming a living wall of lightning and steel around the four women.
Above them, four figures rose into the air as their A-rank aura flared bright enough to cast shadows in daylight.
Captain Riven hovered directly above Sylvara, twin screaming swords already drawn.
Marshal Sasha drifted over Rhea, mist blooming into razor-sleet veils.
General Dren loomed above Seyra, thunder-armor groaning with pent-up voltage.
Archon Vale Stormrend locked eyes with Lyrin, his grey eyes flickered with lightning bolts as he summoned a saber.
The ground belonged to forty thousand versus forty thousand lesser cultivators. The sky now belonged to four versus four A-ranks.
Sylvara looked up, smiled, and flexed her whip.
Rhea rolled her shoulders and began to build momentum again.
Seyra's shadow stretched upward like a hungry staircase.
Lyrin blew a kiss toward Vale and vanished into thin air.
The second phase of the war had just begun.