While Ash made his way to the Cyrsend Kingdom.... well, what remained of the land. Two women had finally left their cocoons. For the past month Queen Sonna and Yonna had been completely out of commission. The two both found the way to make their vow after a few weeks of stilling their minds.
Yonna was the first to complete her evolution, her path was perhaps the easiest and most straightforward between, the two. From the moment she awakened she was burdened with Goals and aspirations of their parents... then they died, but those goals never left her.
[Path of Never Failing - Your path is one of absolute certainty. To fully embrace it you must walk without ever faltering. Each goal you accomplish without fail will permanently multiply your strength by five each sub rank. When one thousand goals are fulfilled, the path ahead will open.
Current Goal: Remove the parasite.]
She exhaled once, a slow, deliberate breath that crystallized mid-air and fell as diamond dust.
The marble beneath her feet groaned, then spider-webbed outward in a perfect circle that spread twenty meters before it stopped, just thinking about what she would become after accomplishing her goals excited her.
Moments later, the second cocoon shattered into a thousand petals of rose-gold light that drifted upward like reverse snow.
Sonna descended gently through the falling petals, he long blacks' hair flowed down her shoulders as she landed in front of Yonna. The sharp, haunted lines that had once carved cruelty into her face were gone, smoothed away as though centuries of pain had been nothing more than frost melted by morning.
[Path of Eternal Blossom's Grace: Your path is one of grace. To fully embrace it you must return to the true self you buried beneath sorrow. Each genuine smile you restore to a broken heart will permanently increase your soul's radiance and authority over life and rebirth.
When two hundred thousand hearts remember how to hope because of you, the path ahead will bloom.]
The two women looked at this and smiled feeling the new power running through their cores. Although not much changed appearance wise.... they both had just become two people with a path. Something that was truly the beginning of the Road of Power.
""Sister.""
The word left their lips in perfect unison, soft as falling petals, warm as the first touch of morning.
Sonna tilted her head, letting Yonna speak first.
"How do you feel?"
Sonna closed her eyes, drawing the new lightness deep into her core where chains had once rattled.
"Great…" she whispered, voice trembling with wonder, tears sparkling on her lashes but never quite falling.
"For the first time in forever… I can finally see the steps ahead."
Yonna's chuckle was low and warm, already reaching to tug her big sister's hand.
"Then let's go. Your son is probably worried out of his mind by now."
Sonna's fingers tightened around Yonna's, stopping her mid-step.
"No," she said softly, eyes drifting westward toward a kingdom whose sky had just turned crimson and white.
"We'll see him soon enough. First… we go to Velora."
The name hung between them like a promise and a prayer.
'Back to that place?'
-----
Ash crossed the final thousand kilometers in a streak of rose-gold fire and landed soundlessly on the shattered crystal plaza of what had once been Crysend's capital. The air still reeked of blood and ozone. Floating sky-islands hung cracked and bleeding frost, their undersides scorched black by obsidian flame.
The ground was a mosaic of crimson ice and grey ash; corpses lay in perfect, silent rows where Vaeloria and Seris had walked.
He scratched the back of his head, tails swaying behind him like lazy banners.
"Uhh… you guys really didn't hold back, did you?"
Two blurs crashed into him before the words fully left his mouth.
Nia barreled into his chest first, tricolor hair whipping wildly, arms locking around his neck so tightly he felt ribs creak.
Vaeloria was half a heartbeat behind, ten tails flaring like black-white wings as she buried her face against his shoulder, inhaling his scent as though she'd been drowning for months.
"You're late, Ashy..." Nia mumbled into his collar, voice muffled but vibrating with leftover killing intent.
"I said two months, not 'reduce a ranked kingdom to modern art'," he laughed, fingers threading through her hair.
Vaeloria pulled back just enough for full-moon eyes to meet his.
"We left the palace intact," she said, deadpan. "You're welcome."
Seris strolled up a moment later, daggers still dripping with someone else's frost, a lazy smirk playing on blood-flecked lips.
"I only killed one guardian and a portion of the fodder. That hardly counts as excessive."
Thalion descended last, pristine as always, glasses glinting in the cold sun.
"Your Majesty," he said dryly, "next time you give us a playground, please specify the acceptable level of collateral damage.... I had to recalculate structural integrity seventeen times."
Ash snorted, disentangling himself from the two clingy disasters long enough to survey the ruined capital.
King Crysend's corpse sat frozen in an expression of permanent shock lay half-buried under a collapsed ice tower, the royal crown still clutched in rigid fingers. He stepped forward, pried the crown free, and the frozen body crumbled to glittering dust the instant the crown left it.
The crimson-white crown in his other hand hummed once, hungry.
Ash brought the two crowns together.
There was no resistance this time either—just a soft, wet sound like snow melting into spring water. Crysend's crown dissolved into threads of pale blue light that spiraled eagerly into Velora's circlet.
The moment the last thread vanished, the world exhaled.
Six hundred thousand kilometers away, the entire landmass of Velora shuddered.
Continental plates groaned.
Mountains rose higher to greet the sky.
Then, impossibly, the whole kingdom began to move.
The icy wasteland beneath their feet cracked along perfect crimson-white lines. Ash's Phoenix flames, gentle and warm, erupted from the fissures and raced outward in radiant chains, linking every broken sky-island like threads of living fire.
Ice sublimated into rose-gold mist.
Frozen rivers boiled, turned to steam, then re-froze into crystalline canals that reflected only crimson and white.
Dead trees burst into blossom mid-winter; petals of white fire drifted upward and became new floating islands.
In less than ten heartbeats the ruined Crysend territory was terraformed into a breathtaking extension of Velora—rolling hills of frost-glass grass, rivers of liquid starlight, and sky-islands now burning with eternal, gentle phoenix flame.
Every World Stele on the planet detonated with crimson-white fire at the exact same instant
VELORA KINGDOM HAS ENTERED THE WORLD RANKINGS!!!!!
Ash smiled seeing everything being completed. He then looked at the others and spoke.
"It's time for your gifts."
One thought, and the world folded.
They stood in the boundless greater chamber of the Ever-Calm Haven, floating above an endless sea of clouds lit by twin suns.
Below them, one hundred thousand of the Veloran elites sat in a perfect lotus, cultivating under crimson-white auroras.
Ash opened his palm.
In the center hovered a single seed no bigger than a teardrop, its surface swirled with every color that had ever existed and a few that hadn't yet been named.
"Y-your majesty... this seed is?" Thalion asked.
"A little something I created...." Ash
Four seeds came from the one floating in his hand, they flew to Nia, Vaeloria, Seris, and Thalion. The moment they touched skin, the seeds melted into their chests like warm wax, leaving behind a faint rose-gold sigil that pulsed once and vanished.
"In one year," Ash continued, voice carrying effortlessly across the chamber, "an SS-rank physique perfectly tailored to your soul will bloom..."
Then
He raised both hands.
Thousands upon thousands of identical seeds blossomed from his palms like cherry blossoms made of light, drifting down to every single soldier cultivating below.
The entire Haven lit up as one living constellation.
When the last seed-storm settled, Ash brought them all back to the newly settled Velora Kingdom, a flawless crimson-white paradise beneath a rose-gold sky.
"No need for the sentimental nonsense... What we need to do now, is organize the Kingdom... Once that's complete it will be a full race to the very top of this little ladder."
He said to them as his eyes looked upward faintly seeing the thousands of Kingdoms above them.