Hearing that Princess Eira and Prince Fenris wasted no more time in activating their soul brands as well.
|Eternal Mirror Apostate|
Above her head a perfect circle of pale-blue ice bloomed like a frozen halo, and the darkness itself screamed
Hundreds—no, thousands—of rifts tore open in the void. From each stepped an Eira: some younger, some blood-drenched, some still wearing the ceremonial gowns of long-forgotten coronations.
Every reflection that had ever captured her image across four thousand years now walked free, blades of glacial moonlight already raised.
This was her myth made flesh: the princess who was never truly there.
|Worldfreeze Heart|
Above Prince Fenris, a heart of pure black ice materialised—larger than a sky-island, almost invisible in Vaeloria's starless night.
BADUMP.
The first beat rolled out like the death knell of a dying star. Frost crawled across the darkness itself, turning the void brittle.
BADUMP.
The second beat came slower, heavier, and the concept of temperature began to forget it had ever meant warmth.
Nine beats. On the ninth, everything within 450 thousand kilometers would become a graveyard where even entropy froze. Nia's only answer was a smile.... a smile that was anything but nice.
Obsidian flame licked up her arms, wrapped her sword in living midnight, and she moved.
SHK!
The first clone raised a perfect ice shield. Nia's blade kissed it once—barely a scratch. But the scratch spread.... black fire crawled across glacial skin like veins of rot, devouring reflection itself.
The clone opened its mouth in a silent scream as its face melted into featureless glass, then ash, then nothing.
The others surged forward in perfect synchrony, a storm of pale-blue death.
Nia laughed, bright and delighted, and danced through them like a girl playing tag with ghosts.
BADUMP.
Eira's true body flickered into view for a fraction of a heartbeat—long enough to see Nia carving relentlessly through her past selves—and panic finally touched those royal eyes. She seized the floating mirror above her head and shattered it with both hands.
|Absolute Glacier Mirror| -40 % MP|
HUMMMMMMM!!!!!
The battlefield inverted.
The endless darkness became an infinite cathedral of pale-blue ice mirrors, every surface reflecting Nia a billion times over—yet none reflected Eira herself.
The princess vanished, a ghost inside her own myth.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Fists of glacial force hammered Nia from every direction at once. Mirrors shattered and re-formed faster than thought, each impact perfectly replicated across the domain. Blood bloomed on Nia's lip.
Frostbite crept up her arms in beautiful white fractals.
She licked the blood away, eyes glowing with savage intent, and grinned wider.
"Ah… finally, a real fight."
She spun once, hair flaring tricolor fire, and drove her sword straight into the nearest mirror—into her own reflection.
|Wick of the Unwritten|
Black flame didn't spread. It simply decided the mirrors had never existed.
Every reflection of Nia blinked out at once.
The domain didn't crack—it forgot.
The infinite cathedral dimmed, dulled, and went dark as if someone had switched off a light that was never turned on. Eira stumbled into visibility, mask shattered, eyes wide with the first real terror she had ever known.
Nine breaths had passed.
BADUMP.
BOOOOM!!!
Fenris's black-ice heart detonated.
A wave of absolute zero surged outward, cold enough to freeze blood, the flow of mana, and even thought....
But.....
Nia was already moving.
|Cinderlight Nova|
Her hair erupted into pure white-gold fire.
A sphere of stellar flame blossomed above her head, drinking the Worldfreeze nova like sweet wine.
She stepped in close—close enough to smell the frost on Eira's skin—and wrapped the princess in a gentle, sisterly hug.
"Hehe... Sorry, pretty... but my Ashy is waiting."
She turned Eira's body to face the incoming ice wave, shielding herself with royal flesh, and smiled over the princess's shoulder.
The nova hit.
A split-second later the sphere above Nia detonated into a perfect ring of white-gold annihilation.
BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!
When the light faded, there was no princess, no prince, no heart, no mirrors—only a slowly drifting cloud of black glass dust and grey snow that had once been two S-rank myths.
Nia floated untouched in the center, hair settling back to tricolor, not a single scratch on her skin.
She brushed imaginary dust from her sleeve and hummed.
"Two presents for Ashy~"
-----
Far below, Seris moved like a red comet through the dark. Guardian Maelis swung his glacial-star halberd in blind, desperate arcs, mana sense devoured by the endless night.
Seris let the blade whistle past her throat by a hair's breadth, then flicked both daggers forward.
They buried themselves in his shoulder blades with soft, wet sounds.
|Ashen Requiem|
Every speck of ash within four hundred thousand kilometers—cinders from destroyed buildings, cremated cannon fodder, even the dust on a child's windowsill—answered her call.
Even in this abyssal darkness.... Ash was something she could use as long as it was present....
They rose in a silent grey maelstrom, coalesced into a single colossal dagger of compressed ash and crimson flame, and fell.
It passed straight through Maelis's chest without resistance.
For one heartbeat, nothing.
Then the guardian screamed.
Fire that had no heat erupted inside his veins, his bones, his soul—burning him from the inside out while the darkness hid the horror from every eye but Seris's.
She didn't watch.
She was already diving toward the streets below, daggers flashing, carving a red path through the screaming fodder.
One by one they fell, precise, merciless, centuries of war distilled into every strike.
The darkness still clung to the ruins like a living thing when Seris's boots touched the blood-slick crystal of the central plaza. Guardian Maelis's final scream had already faded into wet gurgles somewhere behind her.
The colossal ash-dagger had long since dissolved into grey snow that drifted lazily between the corpses.
Seris flicked the last flecks of crimson from her daggers and exhaled.
Absolute silence answered.
Then Nia's voice cut through the black like a blade of pure sunlight.
"Hey, fox!"
She floated down beside Seris, tricolor hair still flickering with dying embers, lips curved in that familiar feral grin.
"Shouldn't you end the darkness now? Some of us want to admire our work."
A pause.
The darkness rippled, almost sulky.
"Fine."
The darkness didn't lift.
It simply… stopped being.
One heartbeat the kingdom was swallowed by starless void. The next, violet daylight poured down on a landscape of absolute ruin.
When the darkness finally disappeared, Vaeloria stood in the central square ankle-deep in blood, her sword dripping crimson. Bodies lay in perfect, silent rows—ninety percent of Crysend's army, ended not by skills but by a single fox walking with a sword.
Thalion descended from the sky, glasses glinting in the sudden light, utterly pristine.
"You individuals," he said, voice dry as old parchment, "are the most incomprehensible bunch I've ever had the misfortune of calculating for. Excluding His Majesty, of course."
Seris landed beside Nia, wiping blood from her cheek with the back of one hand.
"Well," she said, looking over the silent ruins of a once-ranked kingdom, "time to call Ash and tell him his new territory is ready."
Nia's smile was all teeth.
"And that his presents are wrapped in ash."