Luciana's gaze was fixed on the being before her, her breath shallow. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came. The figure sat unmoving, wreathed in red and white mist that pulsed like a living creature. Then, through the haze, two crimson eyes ignited, cold, patient, all-seeing.
"You…" Her voice trembled. "You're the one who gave Elna that power. That's why she's growing stronger so fast."
"Indeed," the voice answered, calm and absolute.
Luciana hesitated, her brow furrowing. "Are you… offering the same thing to me?"
"I made a promise to the Moon Goddess, to end the Dimont bloodline," the Creator said. "But I am giving you a chance."
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You promised the Goddess herself. What will she say if you don't kill me?"
"I," the voice thundered softly, each word echoing like a bell in her bones, "am the one who decides how your bloodline ends. Pledge yourself to me, and you are a Dimont no longer."
The confidence, the sheer defiance in those words, made her chest tighten. The Creator spoke of the Moon Goddess as though she were no more than an equal.
Luciana lowered her gaze, a shadow crossing her face. "My hands are stained with the blood of thousands. No one can forgive that."
The mist brightened, the air itself vibrating with divine power. "I can."
Her eyes widened, the words striking her like a blade through the heart.
Before she could respond, a parchment appeared before her, floating in the air, glowing faintly, a black quill resting beside it.
She stared at it for a long moment. Then her trembling hand reached for the pen.
She had accepted death long ago. After all this, Leo would have every reason to kill her. She had made peace with that. Yet… these past months, the laughter, the battles, the strange sense of belonging, had cracked the shell she'd built around herself. For the first time, she didn't want to die.
Her hand steadied. She looked up at the Creator, who waited in silence, as if he already knew what she would choose.
Luciana closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and signed her name.
The parchment ignited with a white flame. Agony tore through her body, every nerve set ablaze. She fell to her knees, gasping as light crawled beneath her skin like molten metal, burning away something old, leaving behind something… new.
…
After shaking off the daze of everything that had just unfolded within a single minute, Edgarth's focus snapped back to Elna. She was standing firm in the chaos, both of her items of power blazing with light as she poured everything she had into halting the advance of the vampire monarch. Her mana was burning away faster than her body could handle it, but she didn't stop.
To his right, Luciana was still staring upward, her half-healed arm glowing faintly with traces of blood magic. But something about her was… off. Her eyes, once sharp and alive, were now hollow, distant, as though part of her wasn't truly there anymore.
Edgarth didn't have time to wonder why. Elna was faltering, and the blood tide was pushing forward again. He clenched his jaw, mind racing, then reached into his belt and pulled out a vial filled with a yellow, crackling liquid. Without hesitation, he downed it.
A surge of energy tore through his body. His veins lit up faintly, glowing beneath his skin. It wasn't much, but it would be enough for one last attack.
Two doors shimmered into existence before him, their edges outlined in pale light. He drew out a larger vial next, its contents flickering with the light of blue fire, and whispered an incantation under his breath. The potion pulsed, almost alive, unstable.
At the same moment, his Boots of the Wind Walker flared to life, wind gathering around his legs and making his movements blur. He hurled the vial into one door and thrust his arm through the other.
His hand emerged behind Elna. Without warning, he grabbed her and yanked her backward toward him.
A heartbeat later, the blue-fire vial emerged from another door, this one opening just above the ground, where the blood had pooled thick and dark.
The doors vanished. Edgarth didn't waste a second. He unfurled a glowing scroll in his free hand and poured his mana into it. A transparent dome spread out from the parchment, wrapping around him, Elna, and Luciana.
Then—
Boom.
The world ignited. The explosion erupted like a newborn sun, engulfing everything in a sea of blue flame. The shockwave tore through the ground, vaporizing the blood pools, climbing skyward toward Lecia's hovering form. Even at their distance, the pressure of it slammed against the shield, making it ripple and shriek under the strain.
Cracks spidered across its surface.
Edgarth gritted his teeth, sweat streaming down his face. He knew this was coming, the Azure Ember Vial, one of his most dangerous creations. It had taken him months to make after their fight with the Icethrone Empress, and even then, he'd sworn never to use it unless he had no other choice.
Now, that choice had come. And he didn't know if they'd survive it.
The barrier groaned, then began to fracture.
But before it could shatter completely, Luciana moved.
She stood tall, her wounds gone, her arm whole again. Her eyes, no longer hollow, now glowed crimson, burning with divine vitality. With one graceful motion, she raised her hand, and a dome of blood materialized over the fading shield. It pulsed once, solidified, and held firm against the roaring flames.
When the explosion finally died down, the three stood within a quiet crater of ash and smoke.
Edgarth turned to her, breathing hard. "What happened to you?"
Elna stared too, eyes wide, but her expression slowly softened into understanding. "The Creator…?"
Luciana nodded once, her voice calm and steady. "I'm no longer a Dimont. He gave me a new name." She looked upward, toward the burning sky where her mother should be.
"My name," she said softly, "is Luciana Dracule."
…
Luciana didn't wait for the smoke to clear. From her back, two vast wings of blood unfolded, each stretching nearly five meters wide. They shimmered like molten crimson glass, dripping faintly before solidifying into form. The air around her trembled with their emergence.
She turned her gaze downward toward Edgarth. He was pale, his body thin and trembling, sweat streaming down his face from the toll of his overused mana.
"You should rest," she said softly, her voice steadier than before, gentle, almost comforting. "Leave the rest to us."
There was a warmth in her smile that none of them had ever seen before, a lightness foreign to the once cold and calculating Luciana Dimont.
Without another word, her wings beating once, as she flow away. "Elna, cover me."
Elna nodded, her own pair of smaller blood wings spreading from her back in a burst of energy. The crimson glow around her pulsed in rhythm with Luciana's. She followed, soaring upward beside her until they both hovered high above the burning ruins.
For a moment, they stayed still in the smoky haze. Then Luciana flapped her wings once, hard. The force of it ripped the smoke apart, sending waves of hot air outward and clearing the battlefield below.
Through the dispersing ash, Lecia's figure emerged, wounded but unbowed. Her once regal form was scorched, her dress burned away in places, and deep black burns marked her flesh. But her body was already mending, flesh knitting together under the power of her domain, though most of her domain was gone, The blood on the ground faded completely.
"It's over, Lecia Dimont," Luciana said, her voice calm but laced with authority. The tone wasn't of a daughter speaking to her mother.
Lecia's expression twisted from composure to pure rage. From her back, hundreds of threads of blood lashed out like serpents, hissing through the air. Luciana didn't flinch. From her own wings, equally fierce streams of blood erupted to meet them. The two forces clashed in midair, twisting and snapping, exploding into a storm of crimson droplets that rained down like blood-soaked snow.
"I'll hold her off," Luciana called, her hands glowing red as she manipulated the serpents around her. "Elna, finish this."
Elna nodded once, her eyes glowing with determination. Her blood wings flicked sharply, propelling her forward like a crimson arrow. The space between her and Lecia vanished in seconds, her movements blurred with the fusion of shadow and speed, almost impossible to follow.
Lecia's blood serpents moved to intercept, snapping and coiling around her. But Elna weaved through them with inhuman precision, her shadow blending with the chaos. When she was within a meter of Lecia, her sword of condensed shadow magic ignited with a violet glow, ready to strike.
But Lecia's eyes flashed blue, and one massive serpent, far denser and faster than the rest, tore through the air and slammed into Elna's chest. The impact sent her flying backward as blood burst from her mouth.
Lecia's lips curled into a cruel smile, until the bleeding Elna in front of her flickered, then shattered into wisps of shadow.
Her eyes widened. "An illusion?"
From within the dissolving form, a small door appeared.
Far away, barely conscious and drenched in sweat, Edgarth managed to lift his hand. A matching small door floated beside him. With the last of his strength, he pulled out a vial filled with golden liquid and tossed it through. The effort made him collapse to the ground as the door closed behind it.
The vial emerged from the door in front of Lecia and exploded in a blinding eruption of golden light. Lecia instinctively raised her arm to shield her eyes, realizing too late what had happened.
Her expression shifted to horror, then pain, as Elna's real form stepped out of the shadows behind her, her blade cutting through the light. The sword sliced clean through Lecia's neck.
For a heartbeat, everything went still. Then the Monarch's head fell.
Elna leapt into her shadow and emerged beside Luciana, both of them gasping for air. Their mana was gone, completely drained.
For a moment, silence blanketed the battlefield. Lecia's head was still falling, a trail of blood marking its descent, then, suddenly, it stopped midair. The crimson liquid pouring from her neck froze, then reversed course, weaving itself into fine threads that pulled her head slowly back toward her body.
Elna's breath caught. "No… that's impossible."
The head hovered, not fully reattached, suspended just above the neck. Lecia's eyes snapped open, glowing with searing light. Her mouth opened, and a scream erupted, one that wasn't just sound, but pure mana.
The force slammed into them like a wave. Both Luciana and Elna were thrown to the ground, hands pressed against the ground, their wings trembling under the crushing pressure.
"Do not underestimate my power!" Lecia's voice echoed through the air, distorted and godlike, shaking the city around them.
Elna gritted her teeth. "How… how is she still alive? Where is that power coming from?"
Luciana, barely holding herself upright, answered between strained breaths. "We have the strength, but compare to her, our domain is nothing. Every breath she takes draws power from it."
The air thickened as blood began to whirl around Lecia, rising in a storm that twisted with divine intensity.
Then her body began to change.
Her spine arched unnaturally, bones lengthening and reshaping beneath her skin like molten glass. A faint red light pulsed in her chest, steady, rhythmic, unnervingly alive. From her back, tendrils of blood and crimson light erupted, writhing like roots clawing into the air. Along their lengths, crimson orbs glowed and dripped faint sparks of living blood, each one burning with mana so dense it warped the space around it.
Her face vanished beneath a radiant crown of blood and flame, its halo spinning slowly above her head. The light it cast was sharp and divine, yet cold, merciless. Beneath it, her features blurred, caught between beauty and monstrosity, divinity and despair.
The ground itself trembled with her heartbeat. Every motion she made left behind a shimmering trail of crimson haze, and the mana in the air twisted around her like she was rewriting the laws of the world.
What stood before them now was something else entirely,
a being born of reverence and ruin, her form poised between goddess and nightmare.
…
After his last sword shattered, Arthur walked back beside the barely conscious Ryan, both gasping for breath. Ed's burned and broken body lay motionless on the ground, smoke rising from his charred skin.
For a few long seconds, nothing happened, just the sound of their own labored breathing. Then the ground began to tremble again, faintly at first, then stronger.
Arthur's instincts screamed. "No…" he whispered as Ed's fingers twitched.
With a sickening crack, his body began to move. Bones popped and shifted beneath his skin, his chest caving in and then swelling again as if something monstrous was forcing its way out. His spine arched backward with a wet snap, and coarse black fur tore through his burned flesh, spreading rapidly across his body.
His hands twisted into claws, long and jagged, and his jaw split wider than any human's could, rows of sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight. Every breath he took came out as a deep, snarling growl, steam hissing from his mouth like smoke from a furnace.
The air thickened with mana, trembling with primal energy. His eyes ignited into glowing blue orbs, feral, unrestrained, alive with bloodlust.
He rose to his full height, towering over Arthur and Ryan, his muscles pulsing with raw power under the moon's glow. The last remnants of his humanity vanished in that moment.
A blue fire began to flicker across Ed's body, spreading like living veins of flame beneath his dark fur. The heat shimmered in the air around him, warping the moonlight and painting his monstrous form in an otherworldly glow.
Then came his roar, deafening, earth-shattering, filled with both agony and absolute dominance.
The blue fire flared brighter with each pulse of his rage, wrapping him in a blazing aura that made him look less like a beast and more like a demon born from the moonlight itself.