Chapter 145: The Cathedral of Flesh, the Necrotic Ice, and the Emperor's Decree
The silence in the lower levels of the colossal Morningstar Citadel was not peaceful; it was clinical, oppressive, and aseptic. It was the silence of an operating room where the patient has no right to wake up.
While on the surface of the ruins Dante Morningstar counted his hidden loot in the shadows and the Sequences ransacked the extinct sect's vault under Violeta's orders, miles above, in the floating heart of the obsidian fortress, the true act of divine desecration was taking place. In the Main Biomechanical Engineering Laboratory, Vexia, the Grand Marshal of the Void, was fulfilling with freezing devotion the first part of the System's implicit prophecy: evolution through the recycling of divinity.
The place was a heretical cathedral built of dark metal, blinking runic arrays, and reinforced green glass. The air did not smell of sacred incense or pure heaven and earth energy; it smelled of ionized ozone, burnt copper, and industrially processed blood. The lighting, a sickly cyan hue, reflected off the immaculate surgical steel floors.
Inside this immense technological vault, dominating the center of the room, stood six huge cylindrical cultivation tanks. Inside them, suspended in a luminescent amniotic fluid of high spiritual density, floated the remains of the Purple Light Sect's former dome of power: the four Supreme Guardians (Saints) and, in the two central tanks, the Two Ancestors (Great Saints).
Vexia walked slowly across a metal catwalk suspended in front of the tanks, the sound of her heels marking a mathematical beat that dictated the rhythm of the machines. She held a runic crystal tablet in her white silk-gloved hand, her voice resonating coldly as she dictated logs to the clan's central computing unit, connected directly to her Multithreaded Hive Mind.
"Assimilation log, entry 409," Vexia spoke, without looking at the naked, mutilated bodies floating in front of her. "Subject Alpha-1. Former identity: Ancestor Feng-Wu, self-proclaimed Sage of the Violet Flame. Base cultivation: Stage 4 Great Saint."
Vexia looked up at Feng-Wu's tank. The skeletal elder, whose chest had been opened hours earlier during the "War Lecture," was connected to hundreds of fiber-optic cables and infusion tubes. His biological heart had been replaced by a runic engine core that pulsed with a steady red light.
"The infusion and structural fusion with the Void Blood Steel in his skeleton is stable at ninety-nine point eight percent," Vexia continued, typing on the crystal. "The central nervous system has been completely rewritten. The original consciousness, the memories of his thousand years of life, his attachments, his ego, and his supposed divinity, have been purged and formatted. There is no residual 'soul' remaining that could interfere with operational commands."
Vexia approached the tank's glass, her expressionless face reflecting over the wrinkled face of the living corpse.
"The pain receptor centers in the parietal lobe have been excised and replaced with Divine Tungsten inhibitors. His body will no longer respond to physical damage with fatigue or recoil, but with an exponential increase in the production of alchemical adrenaline."
She looked at the elder's closed eyes, knowing that when they opened, there would no longer be violet will-o'-the-wisp fire or human pupils. There would only be two soulless optical lenses, lethal hunting cameras that would respond solely to Samael's voice and the Legion's directives.
"You are no longer a Great Saint of a third-rate sect, hiding on a mountain of dust," Vexia whispered, her tone devoid of mockery, merely stating facts. "You are now an Immortal Praetorian Captain of the Dead Blood Legion. Your loyalty is not a moral choice; it is literally encoded in your bone marrow and engraved in the chains of your restructured DNA. You will serve the Patriarch until the entropy of the universe consumes your last atom."
Beside him, in the adjacent tank, Subject Alpha-2, Ancestor Lian-Hua, was undergoing the same atrocious process. Her broken spine had been replaced by a segmented backbone of liquid silver and celestial carbon threads.
While Vexia oversaw the rebirth of the gods as biomechanical puppets, several dozen meters below, in the immense pit of the laboratory, the industrial furnaces and recycling arrays roared with deafening fury.
Thousands of gray mechanical puppets, faceless and voiceless, worked on an assembly line that would have frozen the blood of the most hardened warrior. They were methodically dismembering, sorting, and processing the 80,000 corpses of the disciples, deacons, and minor elders that Samael had ripped from the mountain with the Law of the Void.
"Separate the base fluids," Vexia ordered through her neural connection, without taking her eyes off her tablet. "The spiritual blood must be filtered, purified of emotional toxins, and channeled to the Botanical Sector. The Stellar World Tree is hungry, and its roots require constant watering to accelerate the maturation of the Void Fruits."
On the lower level, immense crystal tubes two meters in diameter began pumping hectoliters of bright red, Qi-laden blood, flowing like underground waterfalls toward the very core of the Citadel, where the colossal roots of the cosmic entity absorbed it greedily, pulsing with an increasingly intense green light.
"Isolate the bone structure," Vexia continued, marking parameters. "Extract the bone marrow and Qi cores of the cultivators from the Qi Sea Realm and Soul Realm. The marrow will be refined and synthesized in the alchemical reactors to produce Earth and Heaven Grade Bone Strengthening Pills for the regular infantry. The remaining bones will be crushed and converted into spiritual calcium powder; use it as an amalgam to repair the armor of our own damaged puppets. The muscle flesh will be decomposed and converted into concentrated fertilizer for the low-grade herb gardens."
It was industrial carnage on an incomprehensible scale. A systematic desecration of life itself.
However, there was no inherent malice, hatred, or sadism in Vexia's actions or Samael's directives. There was something far more terrifying: pure efficiency. To the Morningstar Clan, death was not the grand finale, nor a step toward reincarnation, nor a tragedy to be mourned. Death was, in strictly thermodynamic terms, merely a change in the state of matter. A transfer of energy from an inefficient container to a useful one.
"Everything will be ready for the Rewards Ceremony, Patriarch," Vexia whispered, closing her crystal tablet with a soft click that echoed in the immensity of the boiler and meat room. "Not a single drop of energy has been wasted. Your army will be eternal, for it feeds on the very foundations of its enemies."
The Fury of the Necrotic Ice (Territory of the Cryon Family)
Millions of kilometers to the North, across tempestuous oceans, impassable mountain ranges, and borders of forgotten empires, rose the immensity of the Northern Continent, home to the Ice Star Empire. And in the heart of the Wastelands of Desolation, piercing the black clouds and perpetual blizzards, stood the Cryon Spire.
The atmosphere here was not one of reverential fear or clinical silence. It was of a volcanic fury, but contained and compressed beneath infinite layers of ice. This was the power base of THE FIFTH GREAT FAMILY: HOUSE CRYON, known in the terrified whispers of the capital as the Architects of the Black Ice.
Although they held the status of the 5th Great Family of the immense Empire, they were universally considered the "Black Sheep" of the court. All the nobles, ministers, and generals in the Empire secretly despised them for their amoral, heretical, and repulsive methods. But absolutely no one, not even the other Great Families, dared lift a finger to eradicate them. The terror instilled by their biological plagues and their legions of mutated beasts kept their enemies paralyzed in their castles. Their specialty was not martial honor, but Spiritual Bio-Technology, forced Bloodline Mutation, and, above all, the manipulation of the terrifying "Black Ice" or Necrotic Ice, an element capable of freezing and rotting matter simultaneously.
At the pinnacle of the Spire, inside the colossal Dome of the main Laboratory, the cold was so extreme that the nitrogen in the air liquefied and fell like small raindrops at the foot of the throne.
There sat the Patriarch: Lord Viktor Cryon, the "Surgeon of the Abyss." His cultivation base was astounding, a Saint King (Stage 8), but physically, Viktor looked nothing like a traditional cultivator of flowing robes and wise appearance. He wore an immaculate white coat, made of glacial spider silk, over a hermetic, black armor that looked like a life-support exoskeleton.
The left half of his original human body had completely disappeared, replaced by grotesque yet highly advanced prostheses of Stellar Steel and Eternal Ice. Transparent conduits ran along his neck, chest, and mechanical arm, visibly pumping a bright cyan liquid Qi, which acted as his blood and fuel. His left eye was a spherical gem of runic obsidian that spun and focused with a mechanical whir. Viktor was a clinical psychopath; a brilliant and twisted mind that saw humans, Saints, and divine beasts not as sentient beings, but as mere "spare parts" and defective test subjects waiting to be corrected by his scalpel.
CRACK!
The immense black ice throne on which Viktor sat cracked violently under the pressure of his human and mechanical fingers.
In front of him, kneeling on the frozen floor, three of his generals trembled visibly. Their armor creaked from the cold, but they dared not use their Qi to warm themselves. The report they had just delivered had caused the cracking of the throne.
"Good..." Viktor's voice was a hissing whisper, accompanied by the hum of his mechanical lungs. "So the rumor was true. Samael Morningstar... the bastard of the south. You haven't disappointed me, boy."
Viktor stood up, his heavy metallic body crushing the frost beneath his boots. His single human eye, bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, shone with a sickly, euphoric light.
"Keep it up, Demon King," Viktor whispered to the air, as if Samael could hear him millions of kilometers away. "I want to dissect you even more now. I want to open your chest on this very table. I want to see how your core works. I want to know exactly what makes you so absurdly strong to be able to crush a millennial sect overnight."
The Patriarch walked toward the immense runic glass window that overlooked the frozen wastelands outside. Below, on the plains swept by the deadly blizzard, there were no armies of living men. There were endless rows and rows of his "White Walkers": corpses of cultivators from enemy sects, perfectly preserved in Black Ice and reanimated with necromantic arts and Qi parasites, waiting motionless in the snow, their eyes glowing a pale blue, ready to march to the end of the world if he ordered it.
"Tch..." Viktor clicked his tongue, showing a hint of genuine annoyance. "It's true that losing the Purple Light Sect is a nuisance. They were mediocre vassals, but they sent good tribute. They brought excellent specimens from the south: geniuses with special constitutions, virgins with yin blood, rare mutant beasts... They were useful for my experiments in the Necrosis Tanks."
Viktor turned sharply toward his kneeling generals, making them shrink in terror. The tube in his neck furiously pumped cyan liquid to his cybernetic brain.
"But well, broken vessels are replaced. Now, the question is who we'll look for to fill that supply gap. Although... that can wait."
Viktor walked back to his broken throne, his mind scheming at the speed of his stellar processor. A macabre smile, which stretched the scars on the human side of his face, formed on his lips.
"The Emperor," Viktor said, tasting the word like poison. "The great Kaiser wants his 'spectacle' at the upcoming Tournament of the Hundred Empires. He has tolerated House Morningstar following the death of my General Krow. He wants to see if the wild dog of the south really bites the nobles of the north, or if it only barks in its own backyard."
The eyes of the Surgeon of the Abyss gleamed with pure malice.
"Fine. If he wants a spectacle, we will give him the stellar performance of the end of the world."
He leaned over his generals, his voice dropping an octave, sounding more like a beast than a man.
"If we cannot march directly south with our armies and lay siege to the Citadel because the Throne forbids it... then the Citadel will come to us."
Viktor extended his cybernetic arm, pointing toward the unfathomable depths of the Cryon Spire.
"Go to the lowest levels. Awaken the Ancestors of the Deep Crypt. Thaw the black incubators and prepare Project Zero. Sacrifice the ten thousand southern slaves to feed the biomass of the scions."
The generals paled. Project Zero was a secret so dark that even members of House Cryon were forbidden to speak of it. They were abominations. Beings that defied heaven, created by fusing the blood of fallen deities with the densest Necrotic Ice of the abyss.
"When Samael Morningstar steps foot in the Imperial Capital for the Tournament of the Hundred Empires..." Viktor murmured, a raspy laugh escaping his mechanical lips, "...he will realize that the Emperor's kind invitation wasn't an opportunity for glory. It was his fucking death sentence. I want his biological body intact. His children, his women, and his Legion... feed them to the Walkers."
III. The Memory of the Sword (House Varian)
Closer to the beating heart of the Empire, in the domains of the First Great Family: House Varian, the atmosphere was so different from the Cryons' that they seemed to exist in another universe.
There were no screams of horror here, no necrotic cold, no blasphemous experiments. In the immense valley of House Varian, a silent, martial, and majestic affirmation reigned. A place where sword and spirit were in perfect and terrifying harmony.
Lord Varian Magnar, the supreme Patriarch, the man who had personally visited the Morningstar Citadel months ago, sat in his sacred meditation garden.
He was not a Saint King. His cultivation base was something the mortals of the south couldn't even dream of: an Emperor (Stage 1).
The presence of an Emperor required no vulgar displays of power. Varian did not emit murderous auras or smash furniture. His mere existence, sitting with closed eyes drinking lotus tea beneath a silver cherry tree, forced the natural laws of the garden to stabilize around him. The wind blew exactly as he wished; the leaves fell in symmetrical patterns, and the earth's Qi flowed toward him in a peaceful, absolute, and unconditional reverence.
In front of him, kneeling on the spiritual bamboo tatami, was his daughter, Saira Varian.
The young genius, the jewel of the empire with silver hair and an indomitable gaze, held a jade scroll containing the intelligence report leaked by her spies in the south. Her hands, resting on her knees, didn't tremble at all. Her blue eyes, sharp as the edge of an ancestral sword, looked past the scroll, remembering.
"They did it," Saira said softly, breaking the silence of the garden. Her voice was firm, but it contained a trace of astonishment. "They literally erased the Purple Light Sect from history. Sources say they didn't leave a single brick standing. They have conquered the entire mountain range in a single night."
"Does it surprise you, little wolf?" asked Lord Varian, taking a sip from his porcelain cup without opening his eyes.
Saira shook her head and lowered her gaze to her own sword, which rested sheathed by her side. She brushed the sapphire hilt.
"No. When I was there... when I crossed the threshold of that floating Citadel and fought in its arena... I felt that something was deeply and viscerally wrong with that clan."
Saira closed her eyes, and the memories of her exhibition match flooded her mind. She remembered the clash of steel against Aylin's spear. But, more vividly, she remembered the overwhelming, suffocating pressure emanating from the dark stands where that red-haired boy sat. She remembered her subsequent fight against Kael Morningstar, Sequence 1. The clash of their sword intents. The brutality, the savagery, and the clarity of purpose in the crimson dragon's golden eyes. A match that, ironically, had pushed her to the limit and helped her further awaken her own dormant bloodline.
"They aren't normal cultivators, father," Saira said, opening her eyes and staring intently at Lord Varian. "The geniuses of our Imperial Academy, the princes and heirs of the Great Families... they fight for pride. They fight to prove their superiority or to win resources that are handed to them. They are paper tigers raised in golden cages. But the Morningstars... they are hungry. An abyssal hunger I haven't seen anywhere else."
Saira clenched her fists softly.
"Kael, Violeta, Eris, Cedric... they aren't young talents. They were veteran monsters disguised with young faces. They had seen hell before they met us. And that Patriarch... Samael..."
"Samael is a King who has not yet found a crown his size," Lord Varian completed, finally opening his eyes, which shone with the depth of a galactic ocean. "I saw it in his eyes that day in his throne room. He didn't look at me or the imperial envoy as his superiors from the Empire. He felt no reverence. He looked at us as... possible obstacles, or worse yet, as resources waiting to be exploited."
Lord Varian set down his teacup with a soft clink and stood up. His immense stature and stoic bearing dominated the garden.
"Emperor Kaiser Valerius was absolutely right to send that invitation in secret months ago, after the incident with the Cryons. He knew this would happen. He knew a dragon cannot fall asleep in a southern puddle forever. By inviting them to the Tournament, the Emperor has forced the hand of destiny."
"Do you think they will come to the Tournament of the Hundred Empires, father?" asked Saira, standing up reverently before him. "Knowing that House Cryon and other factions will demand their blood the moment they cross the Northern borders?"
"They will come," Varian assured, his tone denoting absolute certainty. "Their pride, their arrogance, and that same hunger you speak of will not allow them to refuse the call to the world's main stage. And when they do, when they cross our borders and the rules of the Tournament are activated..."
Lord Varian extended a large, calloused hand, placing it firmly on his daughter's shoulder.
"Saira. Look at me."
The young woman raised her face, meeting her father's steely gaze.
"Train," Lord Varian decreed, each word laden with the weight of the Emperor's Law. "Train as if your very soul were on fire and your life depended on it with every exhalation. Because in that Tournament of the Hundred Empires, you will no longer be the 'guest of honor' protected by my status, as you were last time in their Citadel. They will come to the North to hunt. And if you are not strong enough, if you hesitate for a single second before that red-haired boy's sword or before any of your Sequences... you will be the prey."
Saira gripped the handle of her sword so tightly her knuckles turned white. Fear did not take hold of her. Instead, a competitive smile—sharp as perpetual ice and burning like the will of a true warrior—crossed her beautiful face.
"Let them come," Saira replied, her sword aura erupting for a second, cutting the cherry leaves falling around her before they touched the ground. "The last time I saw Kael, I was inexperienced. I underestimated his savagery. This time... when I face him in the imperial arena, I want to see firsthand if the 'Dragon of the South' can bleed. And I will be the one to mark his skin."
The Decree of the Ice Throne
Back in the far South of the continent, the night was coming to an end.
Over the desolate, empty, and completely ransacked ruins of what was once the majestic Purple Light Mountain Range, the immense Morningstar Citadel still floated, majestic and imposing, barely visible against the firmament just before beginning its retreat.
Samael Morningstar stood alone on the grand balcony of the throne room, arms crossed behind his back, observing the silent crater his will had left upon the world. The breeze caressed his heavy raven-feather mantle.
"System, final report on the state of the harvest," Samael said, his deep voice resonating in the stillness of the heights.
«[Harvest at 100%. Storage vaults at maximum capacity. Treasury expanded. Corpses and biomass secured and integrated into the recycling cycle. Risk of enemy survivors in the area: Null.]»
"Good. The south is pacified," Samael murmured, turning around. "Let's go home."
Samael was about to raise his hand to order the activation of the Mantle of the Void and disappear into the invisibility of the stratosphere, when a massive energy fluctuation, incomprehensibly powerful, tore the fabric of the sky on the distant northern horizon.
It wasn't an incoming attack. It wasn't an offensive array activating. It was a Royal Presence. The manifestation of a will that crossed entire continents.
A beam of freezing golden light pierced the dense purple clouds at a speed that surpassed divine understanding. On the lower decks of the Citadel, Kael, Eris, Violeta, and the other Sequences who were being treated by medics, felt the crushing pressure. Desperate, they unsheathed their bloodied weapons, forcing their broken bodies to stand guard, alarmed by the oppressive force that had just invaded their airspace.
"Wait!" ordered Samael's voice, projecting telepathically into the minds of the entire Legion like a protective shield that mitigated the overwhelming foreign gravity. "Lower your weapons. Do not attack. Nobody moves."
The golden light decelerated abruptly and stopped, floating a few meters in front of the Citadel's invisible barrier, right at the level of the balcony where Samael stood.
The light condensed, taking shape. It was an immense Golden Ice Qilin, almost translucent, majestic and unreal. It was a construct of pure energy, an avatar created and sent by the will of someone who sat at the true pinnacle of the cultivation world. The heat of its golden presence and the extreme cold of its ice clashed, creating a glittering snowstorm around it.
The divine beast held a golden scroll firmly clamped in its celestial jaws.
The Qilin did not roar. It showed no hostility nor tried to break the Citadel's barrier. It simply fixed its deep immortal eyes on Samael's figure on the upper balcony and, with a slowness that denoted peer-to-peer respect, bowed its enormous, horned head slightly.
Samael did not retreat a single millimeter. The immense pressure of the creature, which would have forced an ordinary Saint to kneel vomiting blood, slipped over the Monarch's Law of the Void like water off glass. Samael immediately recognized the Qilin's unmistakable energy signature. It was the same distant, immense, and cold pressure he had vaguely felt watching him from the North on previous occasions, evaluating his moves from the capital of the world.
Samael extended his right hand beyond the balcony railing.
The Golden Ice Qilin opened its jaws. The scroll floated gently, crossing the Citadel's protective barrier without resistance, until it rested delicately in Samael's gloved palm.
Having fulfilled its continental mission, the immense beast dissolved into billions of golden light and frost particles that rained harmlessly over the fortress's shields, disappearing into the night.
Samael weighed the object. It was remarkably heavy. It was crafted from the tanned hide of some Saint King-level divine beast and sealed with deep blue magical wax bearing the unmistakable emblem of the Empire: A snowflake pierced by a stellar crown.
Samael broke the ice seal with his thumb. The scroll unrolled on its own.
It was the official invitation the Emperor had decreed to be sent months ago in the utmost secrecy of his throne room, shortly after Samael and his clan had annihilated General Krow of House Cryon. The wheels of destiny had turned slowly, but finally, the message had reached his hands, delivered right at the climax of his victory in the south.
The text, written in calligraphy that radiated imperial authority and arrogance, revealed itself to Samael's violet eyes.
[ABSOLUTE DECREE OF THE ICE THRONE]
To Patriarch Samael, Sovereign of the Morningstar Clan.
The North has observed your rise. The death of the expeditionary forces of the Fifth Family, House Cryon, in your lands, was considered an atrocious miscalculation on your part... or perhaps, a deliberate and bloody demonstration of force. Know, Patriarch, that the Cryon Family clamors for your head, for your blood, and for the total eradication of your bloodline. However, the Stellar Throne is just and impartial. I will not send my imperial legions to your door in the south to avenge the incompetence of my vassals.
Instead, I offer you a much larger stage. The only stage that matters.
By the present decree, House Morningstar is officially and formally summoned to the Tournament of the Hundred Empires, to be held in the Continental Capital, Frostholm, in exactly 2 years from the signing of this document.
Bring your geniuses. Bring your elite. Bring your steel and your arrogance. Prove in the world's arena if you are truly worthy to exist, rule, and claim a place on my continent, or if you are merely a band of lucky bandits playing god in a southern puddle.
If you do not present yourselves to the summons within the stipulated timeframe, the Throne's tenuous diplomatic protection will be immediately and permanently withdrawn, and House Cryon, along with the rest of your enemies, will have absolute and legal freedom to hunt upon your Citadel.
Survive the wait. I await you in the ice.
Signed and Sealed: Kaiser Valerius Frost - Emperor of Stellar Ice, Sovereign of the North.
Samael read the letter in absolute silence. The stratospheric wind furiously whipped his black hair and the feathers of his mantle, but his posture remained immovable, like a mountain anchored in the abyss.
Below, in the Citadel's central courtyard, Kael, holding his injured arm, looked up at the highest balcony, sensing that the clan's destiny had just been written.
"Patriarch?" yelled Kael, his hoarse voice managing to reach the top. "That divine message... Is it the Empire? Is it war?"
Samael lowered his gaze from the scroll and smiled.
It was a dark, predatory smile, so vast and terrifying that it made the air around the entire Citadel immediately heavy, charged with violent anticipation. The same smile of the devil when the gates of heaven are finally opened for him.
"Kaiser Valerius..." Samael murmured in a whisper that only the night heard. "Arrogant Emperor. You think you are calling me to a trial in your court. You think that from the height of your throne you are giving me a generous opportunity to survive and prove my worth to your conceited nobles."
Black flames, born from the bowels of the Void, sprouted from Samael's palm, instantly enveloping the priceless scroll of divine skin.
"You have no idea," Samael continued, watching as the Emperor's words turned into dead ashes that fell over the balcony, "that you've just invited a fucking disaster to sit in the main hall of your own home."
Samael turned around, turning his back on the destroyed south and looking toward the heart of his fortress. He placed both hands on the balcony railing.
"ATTENTION TO THE ENTIRE MORNINGSTAR LEGION!" His voice, infused with the Law of Void and Space, resonated like apocalyptic thunder in every corridor, every medical ward, every barracks, and every forge of the colossal Citadel, forcing everyone, healthy and dying, to pay total attention. "We have received an invitation! In exactly two terrestrial years, the Northern Empire will celebrate the greatest event of our era."
Samael extended his arms, embracing his clan, his family, his army.
"The Emperor has questioned our right to exist. He has called us bandits from the south. So we are going to go to his house. You will have two years. Two years of hell. Two years to rebuild your bodies, to absorb the treasures we just looted, and to forge yourselves into something that will make the gods of the capital tremble."
The Patriarch's aura expanded, dyeing the impending dawn a dark violet and gray color.
"In two years, we will march to the North! And we are going to remind the Emperors, the Great Families, and the whole damn continent why the name Morningstar is always written in blood!"
The roar of the disciples and the Sequences, despite their injuries and exhaustion, rose from the Citadel's courtyards, a unified, fanatical, and unbreakable war cry that shook the clouds. They were going to march to the end of the world for him.
Samael lowered his arms and turned toward the throne controls.
"Mantle of the Void: Activated!"
BOOOOOOM!
The physical reality around the gigantic Morningstar Citadel distorted extremely. Space warped, and the immense fortress, miles wide, began to blur. The obsidian walls became translucent, then completely transparent, blending with the dawn clouds, and finally, they disappeared from the mortal world's sight.
With a dull hum that vibrated the mountains below, the Citadel departed toward the distant horizon at an incomprehensible speed. It left the south behind, carrying in its vaults the immense loot of an apocalyptic war, and in the hearts of its inhabitants, the burning promise of a much larger continental conflagration.
Below, the ruins of the Purple Light Sect were left behind, empty, cold, and plunged into eternal silence, serving as a horrifying warning carved in stone of what irrevocably awaited anyone who had the audacity to challenge the Dawn Dragon.
The prelude was over. The curtain of the true world war had just been raised.