BOOOOM!!!!!
The Heavenfall Cinderblade struck the Crysend Kingdom like the wrath of a dying sun, its colossal blade of molten cinderflame slamming against a flawless dome of pale blue crystal that spanned more than ten million kilometers.
This S-rank barrier, a privilege reserved solely for kingdoms inscribed upon the world stele, flared with blinding luminescence as the impact unleashed a cataclysmic shockwave of white-hot cinderflame laced with razor-sharp shards of frozen light.
Before when Kale's women came through, they didn't need to deal with Stormrend's barrier... directly, they spent weeks of prep, before they first attacked.
These four though?
The impact birthed a shockwave of white-hot cinderflame and razor-sharp shards of frozen light that tore across the sky in every direction, turning the air itself into a storm of burning frost. For one heartbeat the barrier held, crystalline facets flaring blinding white as every rune etched into its surface screamed in protest.
Then,
CRACK!!!
Hairline fractures spider-webbed outward from the point of impact, each crack glowing with cinder-red light that refused to freeze.
------
Deep inside the central crystal palace, the royal war chamber lit up like a storm.
A massive holographic feed snapped into existence above the obsidian war table, projected by a dozen trembling attendants.
The image showed a lone girl with tricolor hair floating in the sky, her summoned sword raised again, face set in a sweet, terrifying smile as another colossal blade began to form above her head.
King Crysend Aurelith stared at the feed, knuckles white on the arms of his throne.
"Four thousand years this barrier has stood," he said, voice low and dangerous. "Not even the top eight thousand Kingdoms dared test it directly."
Princess Eira's eyes narrowed behind her frost-crystal mask. "Father, the world is growing chaotic. In less than a year two unranked kingdoms forced their way onto the Stele. First Voss, then Ebonreach. Now this."
Second Prince Fenris snorted, arms folded. "Lowly ants learning to bite. They see the rankings shifting and think the rules no longer apply."
Royal Guardian Maelis said nothing, only watched the feed with the stillness of a glacier.
On the hologram the second Heavenfall Cinderblade slammed down.
CRAAAAACK!
The fractures doubled, tripled, racing across the dome faster than sound. Cinderflame bled through every crack like molten blood, eating the frost from the inside out.
[A/N: I explained this in aux chapter recently.... Skills after being initiated the first time won't keep draining the user. Only after executing a new skill would the cycle start again.]
A third blade formed above Nia's head, larger, brighter, hotter.
The Ancestor's ancient voice rasped from the shadows. "It's not just that little girl. Four S ranks... I don't know how a lowly unranked Kingdom could produce such a thing.... but--"
The fourth blade fell.
CRACKKKK!
BOOOOM!!!
The Eternal Crysend Prison shattered like glass beneath a god's hammer.
A perfect dome of crystal exploded outward in a ring of frozen shrapnel and burning light that lit the horizon for fifty thousand kilometers.
The shockwave alone leveled three border cities.
Silence fell across the war chamber, broken only by the ringing of alarms.
King Aurelith rose slowly, frost crackling across his armor.
"Mobilize everything," he said, voice colder than the void between stars. "Every legion. Every A-rank. Every C-rank... Wake the outer arrays. Wake the inner sanctum guards. Wake every soldier who has ever held a blade."
He turned to the feed one last time, watching four figures descend through the falling shards like gods of the apocalypse.
"Today the Crysend Kingdom reminds these lowly kingdoms, why the rankings matter."
Across the nine sky-islands, horns sounded the call to war.
Eight hundred thousand one hundred and eighty-seven A-ranks snapped to attention.
Thousands of more in the B and C-ranks flooded the streets in perfect formation.
Five S-ranks stepped onto the royal balcony together, frost and crystal swirling around them like a living storm.
Above them, Nia waved cheerfully.
The sky answered with thunder.
"Hehe, well it worked well enough." Nia said her mana slowly regenerated. Staring at that massive army of Crysend she grinned. Her eyes shifted to the other three.
"Well, let's have fun, shall we?"
------
The moment she said that they all burst into action... holding back nothing.
Vaeloria crossed the thousand-kilometer gap in a single breath, ten flowing tails trailing behind her like torn pieces of the night sky itself, each strand rippling with a weight that bent the air and made the frost on the islands crackle in fear.
Her ears, black fur tipped with pure white, twitched once, catching the heartbeat of every living soul below. Her eyes were literal full moons: pale, perfectly round disks of cold light that reflected nothing, not the sun, not the crystal islands, not even the terror in the faces before her.
King Aurelith's hands closed around a towering greatsword of living glacier ice that screamed with the trapped souls of ten thousand frozen warriors, the blade so cold it turned the surrounding air into falling diamonds.
At the same instant the Hidden Ancestor slammed his gnarled staff down; a single shard of never-melting Worldfreeze Crystal atop it flared with the chill of dead stars, the ground beneath his feet spider-webbing into absolute zero.
"What the hell are you?" the King snarled, voice cracking the sky like a glacier calving... Two thousand years of royal blood and he had never felt this kind of pressure nor seen something so...
The Ancestor's withered lips parted, breath frosting before it left his mouth.
"Ten tails... those eyes…"
Vaeloria did not answer.
SHHHIIIING—!
Her sword left its sheath in a soundless crescent of black lunar steel that drank every photon it touched.
The blade moved faster than thought.
SHK!
The King's left arm spun away in a perfect arc, severed so cleanly the nerves didn't register pain for a full heartbeat. Blood sprayed out in a crimson fan that crystallized mid-flight into a thousand rubies that hung in the air like frozen fireworks.
"FUCK!!!!!"
CLANNNNG!
The Ancestor's staff met the follow-up strike aimed at the King's throat; Worldfreeze Crystal met lunar obsidian and screamed, a hairline fracture racing up the priceless shard for the first time in his long life.
The impact alone flash-froze the moisture in a five-hundred-kilometer sphere into glittering dust that rained upward instead of down.
Vaeloria pivoted in mid-air, tails flaring like the wings of a falling eclipse, blade singing a note no human throat could ever reproduce.
SHK!
The King's right arm followed its twin, spinning end over end into the void.
SHK!
His left leg vanished, severed at the hip so cleanly the royal greaves kept their shape for a moment before collapsing.
SHK!
His right leg disappeared a heartbeat later, leaving the King of Crysend floating limbless, blood freezing into crimson icicles that drifted around him like a halo of death.
The Ancestor could only stare, staff trembling in ancient hands, pupils blown wide with primal terror.
Vaeloria's face held no warmth, no mercy... only a cold, evil smile that promised agonies older than the kingdom itself.
For the first time since drawing her blade she spoke, voice barely above a whisper, yet it carved itself into every mind for thousands of kilometers.
"Don't die too quickly, little humans…"
|Eternal Night Dominion|
Absolute darkness swallowed the entire kingdom in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
No warning, no transition; one instant the sun existed, the next it was a memory. Light itself died screaming.
No reflection, no hope, only perfect, suffocating black that pressed against eyeballs like frozen fingers.
The Ancestor's scream never left his throat.
A hundred kilometers away, inside the same endless abyss, Nia laughed...
-------
Her skin was already knitting shut, faint frostbite wounds closing as phantom sunlight she should not have been able to feel poured into her veins like molten gold. She danced between Princess Eira's ice mirrors and Prince Fenris's blizzard spears, every cut, every burn, every shard of frozen soul closing faster than it opened.
Then Vaeloria's darkness fell over everything.
Nia's grin turned feral, teeth too white in the absolute black.
"Heh… that fox."
She spun away from a thousand reflected cinder suns that now reflected nothing at all, winked at the furious princess, and licked a bead of royal blood from her lower lip.
"You know… Ashy may fancy you. Pretty face, nice eyes… ah, seems like you'll be the first to go."
Princess Eira's brows furrowed with confusion warring across her frost-crystal mask.
"Tsk, you lowly bugs. So, what if you're S-ranked? You're nothing but mongrels playing at power."
Prince Fenris dissolved half his body into a living blizzard, voice howling from every direction at once, cold enough to freeze sound itself.
"I'll freeze your blood before it touches the ground, mongrel."
|Obsidian Wick of Ever-Burning Calm|
FWOOSHHH!!!!
Black flame erupted across Nia's body like liquid midnight given hunger.
The fire did not illuminate; it devoured.
Every wisp of frost that brushed her skin turned to ash before it could bite. Her tricolor hair floated like burning midnight, strands writhing as though alive, and her eyes glowed the same depthless obsidian as the flame itself.
She raised her sword slowly, deliberately, smile sweet and terrible and utterly unhinged.
"Then come try..... I'll show you what real fire feels like when the sun is too ashamed to watch."