Chapter 43: The Names That Mark the Era (Part 4)
The sound of the ice fracturing on a structural level was deafening.
The walls of the immense subterranean amphitheater, the Pit of Laments, began to yield under a gravitational and spiritual pressure that defied the comprehension of ordinary cultivators. Thousands of mercenaries, criminals, and nobles who seconds ago were screaming in euphoria, now lay flattened against the floor, their lungs collapsed and their eyeballs on the verge of bursting.
They were not being physically attacked. They were being suppressed by the simple presence of a being in the Saint Realm.
The glacier roof, composed of hundreds of meters of black ice and permafrost rock, shattered. Pieces of debris the size of houses fell onto the stands, crushing dozens of spectators in an instant. Through the massive hole, the pale moonlight and the violent gusts of the blizzard outside penetrated the cavern.
And floating in the center of that storm, descending slowly like a vengeful deity, appeared the source of the pressure.
It was a majestic-looking old man. He wore armor forged of stellar ice crystal that reflected the moonlight, and a heavy white wolf skin cloak billowed behind him. His hair and beard were the color of frost, and his blue eyes radiated a millennial arrogance, the gaze of someone who has ruled over the life and death of millions for centuries.
He was the Blood General Boreas, one of the three supreme Saints of House Valois.
Boreas stopped his descent about fifty meters above the blood-stained floor of the arena. His gaze swept over the massacre: the gutted Chimera, the twenty charred elite soldiers of the Purple Light, and the headless body of his Commander. Finally, his eyes settled on the seven youths in black cloaks and the white-haired boy.
"The scum of the desert," General Boreas's voice was not a shout, but it resonated in the mind of every person present, amplified by the Laws of the World that a Saint could manipulate at will. "Alaric warned us that the monster of the South was getting insolent after assimilating the tribulation. But sending his own cubs into our territory to steal our livestock... that is not insolence. It is suicide provoked by ignorance."
In the arena, the golden-eyed young man, nicknamed "Ghost," felt his legs threaten to give out. He had fought Transcendent beasts and Origin assassins, but the gap between those realms and the Saint Realm was an unbridgeable abyss. A Saint did not fight using Qi; a Saint fought by manipulating the very concepts of reality.
"Flee," croaked the white-haired boy, addressing Kael and the girls surrounding him. "You can't kill him. His domain freezes killing intent itself. If you stay, you will freeze to death before you can raise your swords. Go and leave me here. I'm already dead anyway."
Kael Morningstar, Sequence 1, did not step back a single millimeter. Even though the pressure from General Boreas was making the bones in his legs creak, the Vanguard kept his chin up and his golden eyes fixed on the ice deity.
"We do not flee," Kael replied, his voice firm, resting the Whisper of the North on his shoulder. "And you are coming with us, little wolf. That was the Patriarch's order."
Boreas let out a dry laugh, a sound that dropped the temperature another ten degrees. "Your Patriarch's order? Samael Morningstar is an upstart hiding behind a stolen title. Today, I will cut off his heirs' heads, freeze them in stellar amber, and send them to him in a silver box. Let's see if his void can devour the pain of losing his entire future generation."
The Blood General raised a hand to the sky. The Qi of the entire world seemed to obey him. Thousands of ice spears, a hundred meters long, materialized in the air above the arena, pointing directly at the Morningstar group. Each spear possessed the destructive power to erase a small mountain.
"Die, insects," sentenced Boreas, lowering his hand.
The spears fell like final judgment.
The golden-eyed young man closed his eyes, preparing for the final impact. But the impact never came.
A shadow, darker than the void and colder than death, materialized in the air ten meters above the heads of the Morningstar Elite.
Malak.
The leader of the Shadows, the Patriarch's Shinigami, did not deliver a speech. He did not let out a battle roar. He simply raised his immense obsidian scythe. Malak's aura, compressed at Stage 4 of the Semi-Saint Realm, burst forth with an intensity that eclipsed the starlight. Although he was not a Saint, Malak had been forged by Samael for one thing only: to assassinate anything that breathed.
The scythe traced a perfect horizontal arc.
A wave of purely black force, composed of corrosive mist and conceptual death, shot upwards, crashing head-on into the rain of giant ice spears. The roar was apocalyptic. The crystal spears did not break; they rotted. The power of Malak's scythe withered the ice Qi, turning a Saint's divine attack into a shower of harmless dirty water and black dust that rained down on Cedric's shields.
General Boreas frowned, his expression of absolute arrogance cracking for the first time. He looked at the hooded figure floating between him and the youths.
"A Semi-Saint... and one with a very unusual domain of death," murmured Boreas, evaluating Malak. "You have talent, shadow. You are powerful. In any other era, you would be revered. But the difference between the Semi-Saint Realm and the Saint Realm is the difference between a mortal imitating God, and God himself. Your resistance will only prolong the agony of your wards."
Malak tilted his head, his face completely hidden beneath the smooth mask. And then, to everyone's surprise, the taciturn assassin spoke. His voice was like the grinding of two ancient tombstones in a cemetery.
"I am not here to resist, old man," Malak whispered. "I am here to secure the perimeter."
Boreas blinked, confused by the statement. And at that precise moment, the Blood General's sense of danger—an instinct that had not been activated in three hundred years—howled in his mind with the force of a hurricane.
The night sky visible through the hole in the ceiling darkened completely. The stars disappeared, blocked by a figure falling from the clouds at a speed that defied the laws of aerodynamics.
There was no time for Boreas to raise a barrier. There was no time to invoke his domains.
The Stage 1 Saint Protector impacted directly against the Valois General's back.
The sound of the blow was not that of an ordinary punch. It sounded like a continent splitting in half. Boreas's stellar ice crystal armor, a supreme defensive artifact that could withstand a dragon's breath, shattered into a million tiny pieces that rained down on the arena.
Boreas spat a cascade of golden blood, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets from the massive concussive impact. He was launched downward like a meteor, crashing against the glacier wall of the Pit of Laments with such violence that the entire cavern threatened to collapse.
In the arena, the Morningstar Elite and the white-haired young man stared in astonishment at the figure that had descended.
The Saint Protector was two meters tall. Its body was forged of an alloy of unknown, dark metals, crisscrossed by lines of crimson energy. Its face had no human features, only a smooth, black visor in which two expressionless, dead, and absolutely terrifying red crystal eyes shone. It did not emit a single fluctuation of emotion, pain, anger, or arrogance.
It was the culmination of Samael Morningstar's paranoia and genius: a Saint-level killing machine designed with the sole purpose of protecting his blood.
General Boreas emerged from the rubble of the ice wall, coughing blood and pieces of his own frozen lungs. His majestic face was disfigured by rage and terror. "A puppet?!" bellowed Boreas, his voice cracking with hysteria as he realized what had hit him. "A BASTARD FROM THE SOUTH HAS A PUPPET IN THE SAINT REALM?! IMPOSSIBLE!"
Boreas channeled every drop of his millennial Qi. His body began to glow with a blinding blue light. He was going to invoke his [Absolute Zero Domain], a suicidal technique designed to freeze blood, time, and space within a five-kilometer radius. He was going to wipe the City of Broken Frost off the map just to destroy that monstrosity.
But the puppet didn't give him the chance to finish his hand seals.
The Protector disappeared. Literally. Its speed surpassed the perception of anyone in the room. It reappeared in front of Boreas, less than a hand's breadth away.
The puppet raised its right hand, imbued with pure kinetic energy and raw spatial laws, and plunged it directly into the center of the Blood General's chest.
Boreas's bones, flesh, and spiritual core were pierced without the slightest resistance.
General Valois, a god among men in the North, stood paralyzed, staring with empty eyes at the dark metal arm protruding from his back, holding his beating heart in its hand.
"The North... will remember... this..." babbled Boreas, blood welling from his lips.
The puppet's red eyes shone intensely. Its metal hand clenched, crushing the Saint's heart to a pulp, simultaneously destroying his soul to prevent any possibility of reincarnation or possession.
The sound of the ice fracturing on a structural level was deafening.
The lifeless body of General Boreas, one of the three supreme Saints of House Valois, fell limp onto the blood-stained sand of the Pit of Laments. He had lasted exactly five seconds against Samael's puppet.
The silence that followed was the most absolute ever experienced in the history of the border city. The mercenaries and survivors in the stands were paralyzed, their minds unable to process the one-sided death of a deity of the Purple Light at the hands of a soulless doll.
The Saint Protector yanked its arm from the General's corpse. Without making a sound or showing emotion, it shot into the sky through the hole in the glacier roof, disappearing into the storm outside to resume its satellite watch position. In the shadows of the stands, Malak lowered his immense scythe and dissolved into black mist. The Saint-level threat had been eradicated.
In the center of the arena, Kael Morningstar sheathed the Whisper of the North and walked toward the white-haired young man, followed closely by the other six sequences.
The golden-eyed boy was kneeling in front of the Chimera's corpse, trembling uncontrollably. His broken sword lay on the ice beside him. His breathing was shallow, agonizing.
Kael stopped a meter away. He extended his hand, remembering the Patriarch's words. "The monsters hunting you are dead," said the Vanguard, his voice firm. "And the Valois can no longer touch you. You are not alone. You have blood in your veins, and that blood belongs to us. We came to bring you home."
The boy slowly raised his head.
Kael felt a chill run down his spine. Something was terribly wrong. The young man's eyes were no longer the incandescent, defiant gold of his lineage. The vertical pupil had dilated until it consumed almost the entire iris, and the veins around his sockets pulsed with a dark, sickly, corrupted purple color.
The mental impact of seeing the invincible Blood General crushed like an insect had not brought him relief. For a mind that had endured years of torture, isolation, extreme cold, and the constant pursuit of the Purple Light Sect, the revelation that even worse monsters existed was the final blow. His psyche, which had walked a razor's edge for years, shattered.
The boy's unstable Qi Sea detonated internally. The golden scars on his body turned black. The corrupted frost and the pain merged with the Morningstar essence, creating an aberration.
"Dead..." whispered the boy, his voice sounding like two stones scraping. "All dead... There is no home. There are only hunters. You are worse! You are worse monsters!"
The boy didn't take Kael's hand. He gripped the hilt of his broken sword with both hands. His aura flared, but it was no longer light; it was a dark, frigid fire, a suicidal distortion that burned his own soul to generate brute power.
He lunged forward with the speed of a rabid beast, tracing an upward slash straight at Kael's throat.
The Vanguard reacted on pure instinct, drawing his sword in a millisecond to block the blow. The clash of metals produced a shockwave that kicked up blocks of bloody ice around them.
"Calm down!" roared Kael, pushing him back. "We are not the Valois!"
"YOU ALL WANT MY BLOOD!" bellowed the young man, spitting a clot of black blood. His face was contorted, crying tears stained with karmic filth. "YOU WON'T TAKE ME TO ANOTHER CAGE!"
He charged again, completely ignoring any notion of defense, launching thrusts and slashes at breakneck speed.
Eris raised her spear, wreathing it in the Flame of Ruin, and Elowen readied her paralyzing needles, prepared to intervene. "He's possessed by ice madness! His meridians are rotting!" Elowen warned, horrified to see the boy's vitality being consumed like paper in a fire. "Kael, step aside, we have to subdue him together!"
"No!"
Kael's shout stopped the other sequences dead in their tracks. The Vanguard blocked another suicidal attack from the boy, receiving a shallow cut on his cheek when the rusted blade broke his Qi guard. Kael took two steps back, looking into the empty, maddened, tormented eyes of the boy who shared his blood.
Samael's words echoed in Kael's mind with prophetic cruelty: "But if the ice and madness have consumed him completely... if he has become corrupted beyond all salvation and attacks his own family... then you will have to give him the rest the North denied him."
Kael gritted his teeth, feeling his heart clench. He had just lost Clara a year ago. And now, destiny spat in his face, forcing him to kill a brother who never had the chance to know the sunlight.
"Fall back. This is my burden as Sequence 1," Kael ordered his companions, his voice dropping to a frigid whisper that brooked no argument. "His mind is gone. The North murdered him long before we arrived."
The white-haired young man let out an animalistic shriek and launched himself into the attack again, this time wrapping his sword in a whirlwind of corrupted Qi that threatened to freeze the air around him.
Kael Morningstar closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his golden pupils were cold, devoid of compassion, and filled with an absolute sense of duty. His Stage 1 Origin Realm aura condensed around the edge of the Whisper of the North.
"I'm sorry, brother," murmured Kael.
The boy launched a lethal thrust toward Kael's heart. The Vanguard did not block. He took a millimeter side-step, allowing the rusted blade to graze his armor, and used the momentum of his rival's suicidal attack. With a fluid, perfect movement of his sword art, Kael traced a flawless horizontal cut.
The silver steel blade sliced through the boy's rusted sword, shattering it into a thousand pieces, and sank cleanly into the center of his chest, piercing his corrupted heart.
Time stopped in the arena.
The white-haired young man stood motionless, skewered on Kael's sword. His black, frigid aura dissipated instantly, like a candle that had just been blown out. The inhuman tension that held his body collapsed.
Kael caught him by the shoulders to prevent him from falling to the frozen floor.
For a brief moment, the corruption in the boy's eyes disappeared. The golden vertical pupil shone again, weak, but lucid. He looked Kael in the eyes, feeling the warmth of the swordsman's body, a warmth he had longed for throughout his entire tortuous life in the prisons of the Purple Light.
A small smile, tired and peaceful, formed on his bloody lips. "Thank you..." whispered the boy, his breath caressing Kael's face. "At... last... the cold is gone..."
His eyes lost their shine, and his head fell onto Kael's shoulder. He was dead.
Kael stood still for a long moment, holding the lifeless body. He closed his eyes tightly, absorbing the weight of the life he had just extinguished. Being the sword of an empire didn't just mean killing enemies; sometimes it meant bearing the sin of freeing your own from hell.
Violeta approached silently and placed a gentle hand on Kael's shoulder. Cedric, Eris, Lyra, Elowen, and Xylia surrounded him, lowering their heads in a solemn bow toward the fallen.
"You fulfilled the Crown's mandate," Cedric said quietly. "You gave him peace."
Kael carefully withdrew his sword and took the boy's body in his arms, lifting him firmly. His expression had hardened, leaving behind any trace of doubt. The blood of House Valois and the Purple Light would not be enough to pay this debt. "Xylia. Open the way. We're going home."
The Sequence of Imperial Thunder nodded. Her hands became covered in white electricity, and with a deafening roar, she fired a pillar of lightning that blasted through the rubble of the stands, opening a direct escape tunnel to the upper levels of the metropolis.
The Elite team, led by Kael carrying the corpse of his fallen kin, left the Pit of Laments. No one in the City of Broken Frost tried to stop them. The forces of House Valois had just lost a Blood General; the chaos that would devour the border region was guaranteed.
The Memory of Blood
Four days later, the Void Herald descended upon the docks of Skull Rock.
There were no fanfares or loud celebrations. The clan had felt the heaviness in the Soul Nexus. The mission had been a tactical success: an enemy Saint dead and the zone destabilized, but the price had been high.
In the dark, vast Throne Room of the Obsidian Palace, Samael Morningstar stood waiting. Seraphina sat on the ice throne, her face an inscrutable mask.
The massive doors opened. Kael walked in with a heavy step, followed by Cedric, Violeta, Eris, Xylia, Elowen, and Lyra. The Vanguard advanced to the center of the room and, with reverential care, deposited the lifeless body of the white-haired young man onto a stone altar prepared for the occasion.
The seven heirs dropped to one knee.
"The North corrupted him, Patriarch," Kael reported, his voice devoid of emotion, recounting the events with the coldness of a soldier. "His meridians were shattered. His mind broke after the death of General Boreas. He attacked us using his life force. I granted him rest, as you ordered."
Samael descended the steps of the dais and walked toward the altar. He looked at the serene, scarred face of the boy, now free from the madness that had consumed him. The Patriarch showed no sadness or disappointment; in his violet eyes there was only absolute recognition of another's suffering.
Samael extended his pale hand and placed it gently on the corpse's chest, right over the lethal wound Kael had inflicted.
"You did the right thing, Kael. You didn't fail him. You saved him from the worst possible fate," Samael said, his deep voice resonating in the room.
The Void Sovereign channeled his own law of blood. His dark Qi penetrated the corpse. The boy's body began to glow faintly with a golden light. The dead blood stirred, responding to the call of the supreme ruler of his lineage.
Samael closed his fist slowly, pulling upward.
From the boy's chest, a sphere of purely golden, brilliant light, the size of a fist, emerged floating. It was not a Qi core, nor was it a soul. It was the Hidden Memory of the Ancestral Blood. The fragmented heritage of the clan's era of decadence, preserved in the marrow of this young man through years of torture, finally released.
Samael held the glowing sphere in his palm. "The Purple Light Sect kept him alive for years in misery, waiting for his core to mature to extract this and steal the original secrets of our blood," Samael murmured, his eyes distilling a killing intent that made the obsidian walls tremble. "The Valois wanted the Morningstar fire."
Samael looked at his seven kneeling heirs. His aura expanded, enveloping them in the heavy, oppressive crown of his tyranny. "Take the body. Bury him with full honors in the Crystal Garden, beneath the roots of the Star Tree, next to Clara. He is family. His name will not be forgotten."
"Yes, Patriarch," the seven replied in unison.
Samael turned, walking back toward his throne, the Ancestral Memory shining in his hand. "You have twenty-six days before the Great Sequence Tournament," Samael announced, without looking back. "You have just seen what the ice and cruelty of House Valois are capable of. Train. Bleed in the Heritage Palace. Break your limits. Because when this tournament ends, we will unleash a storm upon the North that will make General Boreas look like only the beginning of their punishment."
The Morningstar Elite rose. Kael took the body of his fallen brother in his arms. They had gone to the North and had felt the breath of death, corruption, and the true terror of millennial empires. But they did not return afraid; they returned forged.
The game board was set. Blood had been spilled, secrets claimed, and the Morningstar Empire was only waiting for the days to pass to crown its champions and bathe the entire continent in the chaos of absolute war.
END OF CHAPTER 43