Chapter 83: The Throne Against Omission
Skull Rock shone under the morning sun with an unnatural splendor. The jade slabs of the arena, newly forged overnight by the clan's earth masters, were immaculate, hiding the blood spilled the day before. But the five thousand disciples crowding the stands had not forgotten. The air vibrated with a fanatical anticipation, a collective hunger to witness how the monsters that had survived the first round would devour each other.
In the VIP box, the temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees. Lord Magnar Varian, the Chained Wolf, sat on his temporary obsidian throne. His immense figure, with shoulders broad as mountains and steel-gray hair, cast an ominous shadow. He had not unsheathed The Fang of Winter, but his mere posture was that of a general about to order a charge.
By his side, Saira Varian kept her gaze fixed on the center of the arena. Her silver and sapphire armor flashed under the light, and her eyes, of pure ice blue, evaluated the terrain. They had witnessed the lethality of this legion. Their arrogance had not disappeared—they were the blood of the Star Ice Empire, forged in wars of attrition—but now it was tempered by a glacial pragmatism. They knew the youths who would step into that arena were no simple cadets; they were weapons of mass destruction with their own will.
"The internal purge begins, father," said Saira, her breath forming a fine mist in the air. "The ten remaining have no obvious weaknesses."
Magnar crossed his arms, his scars hidden beneath his heavy cloak.
"There is always a weakness, Saira. Sometimes it is pride. Sometimes it is reliance on an element. Watch closely. Today we will see if this empire has a solid foundation or if it is just a nest of rabid beasts."
On the main balcony, elevated above all others, the ruling family imposed its law without needing to utter a word.
Samael Morningstar stood, radiating a spatial tyranny that subtly distorted the light around him. In his left arm, he held little Celeste. The heiress of the void and the lotus looked toward the arena with an attention unbecoming of her age. Her silver-blue hair swayed gently in the breeze. Her face was a canvas of primordial power: her left eye shone with an absolute, frigid blue, like the core of a millennial glacier, while her right eye was dark violet, bright and predatory. Even from that distance, the dormant aura of the child intimidated the beasts of burden in the lower stables.
Seraphina, to Samael's right, leaned in slightly. Her inscrutable beauty and majestic presence anchored the storm of her husband's power.
"The first match-up is cruel, husband," Seraphina whispered, her voice a soft melody that only reached the ears of her inner circle. "Kael is forged to lead armies in open fields. Joren is forged to assassinate leaders before the battle even begins."
Great Elder Lilith, standing tall with her majestic figure completely unsupported, nodded slowly. Her dark red eyes shone with a wisdom forged in blood.
"It is the perfect balance to open this round. Kael relies on his fire and his nobility. But you cannot burn a shadow that makes no sound. Joren will test him to the very limit of his patience."
The herald stepped forward to the announcement balcony. His hands trembled slightly as he unrolled the runic scroll containing the quarterfinal pairings.
BOOOOOMMM!
The bone horn bellowed, marking the beginning of the end.
"Destiny has spoken!" shouted the herald, his amplified voice sweeping the circular arena. "The first match of the quarterfinals! The King of the Vanguard against the Assassin of the Vacuum! Sequence 1, Kael Morningstar, against Sequence 17, Joren Morningstar!"
A volcanic roar shook the stands. The crowd idolized Kael, but after seeing Joren's soundless mastery the day before, no one dared to blindly bet on Rank 1.
The north doors opened with a metallic crash.
Kael Morningstar advanced. His dark red hair seemed to burn under the sun. His golden eyes were fixed on the center of the arena. He wore his dark red and black combat robes, and in his right hand, he held Whisper of the North, his sword seed. There were no traces of the lethal wound Nylas had inflicted on him the day prior; the healers and his own vitality had done their job. Kael emanated a fierce nobility, a critical calm mixed with the impulsive eagerness of a predator about to pounce.
The south doors opened, but there was no sound whatsoever.
Joren Morningstar appeared in the arena. Medium height, light brown hair, dull brown eyes devoid of any emotional spark. His athletic build was hidden beneath tight gray clothes. Joren didn't walk; he simply glided over the jade slabs without his boots emitting the slightest scrape. His Stage 4 Origin Realm aura was contained to such a degree that, if someone closed their eyes, Joren ceased to exist. He emanated no murderous intent. He was lethal professionalism turned into flesh.
They both stopped thirty meters apart. The contrast was absolute: a volcano about to erupt facing a void that absorbed all light.
"You make no sound when you breathe, Joren," Kael said, his voice firm, resting the tip of his scabbard on the ground. "Yesterday you proved that pure speed is useless against you. But I don't run. I crush."
Joren unsheathed his two matte steel daggers. The metal did not shine. There was no heroic "schwing."
"Fire makes too much noise, Kael. It tells me exactly where you are, what you are going to do, and how much it's going to hurt you."
DOOONG!
The gong resonated across the mountain.
In the blink of an eye, Joren disappeared.
There was no sonic boom. Applying the [Shadow of the Hundred Steps], Joren nullified his own weight and the air currents around him. The physical world seemed to forget him. He left behind three translucent wind silhouettes that mimicked his running posture, scattering in random directions.
Kael didn't move his head searching for his enemy by sight. He knew eyes were useless against a refraction illusion. He closed his golden eyes, trusting his Qi perception and his battle instincts.
But he felt nothing.
Joren had activated the [Silence of the Soul]. His killing intent was at absolute zero. Kael was standing in the center of an immense coliseum and, according to his spiritual senses, he was completely alone.
Left, screamed Kael's primal instinct.
The King of the Vanguard spun his body, drawing Whisper of the North in a flaming horizontal arc.
But his sword only cut air. A whirlwind of dust formed two meters from his position—a wind feint left by Joren to trick his reflexes.
In that millisecond of Kael's overextension, Joren appeared falling from above, directly into the swordsman's blind spot. His daggers aimed at the base of Kael's neck. Joren had created solid wind platforms in the air to jump soundlessly.
Joren's daggers were not surrounded by cutting wind; they were enveloped in low-pressure vortexes. They were the [Fangs of the Reverse Breeze].
Kael tried to step back, but felt an unnatural pull. The vortex of Joren's daggers acted like a vacuum magnet, sucking Kael's tunic and flesh toward the matte gray edge. It was impossible to dodge cleanly; the vacuum demanded its toll.
The cold steel grazed Kael's collarbone, cutting the fabric and opening a thin line of blood.
Before Joren could deepen the lethal cut, Kael reacted with the brutality of a cornered sovereign. He didn't try to block with his sword. Instead, he detonated his Stage 4 aura in a deflagration of pure magma.
The volcanic heat expanded from Kael's body in a spherical wave. The laws of thermodynamics clashed violently against Joren's vacuum vortexes. The extreme heat expanded the compressed air, breaking the suction of the Fangs of the Reverse Breeze.
Joren was pushed backward by the thermal repulsion, landing softly ten meters away without emitting a single sound, his brown eyes analyzing the damage.
"Excellent repulsive heat," Joren whispered, his voice traveling through fine air currents straight into Kael's ears, bypassing the roar of the fire. "But you just gave away your exact position to every air current in the arena."
Kael touched his bloody collarbone. His golden eyes burned with ferocity.
"I don't need to hide, Joren."
Kael lowered his center of gravity, gripping his sword's hilt. He was going to fight silence with silence.
He activated his own ultimate drawing technique: the [Phantom Gale Cut].
Kael propelled himself forward. His speed was so terrifying that the jade floor cracked under his boots, but around him, a bubble of acoustic vacuum enveloped the scabbard of his sword. The "click" of the draw vanished. The roar of his magma was muted. Kael became a blur of mute fire that crossed the distance in a blink, the blade of his sword aimed at Joren's throat without emitting a single sonic vibration.
In the VIP box, Lord Magnar Varian nodded approvingly.
"Interesting. The fire warrior has copied the assassin's principle. A sonic attack that nullifies sound. If the boy in gray cannot hear the blade, he will be decapitated."
But Joren didn't rely on hearing. The wind was an extension of his nervous system.
Feeling the atmospheric pressure in front of him collapse from the vacuum of Kael's sword, Joren didn't retreat. He rotated his body on his own axis at supersonic speeds and activated his absolute defense.
[Heart of the Unstoppable Hurricane].
A dome of furious, dark winds erupted around Joren. The air spun so fast that the center became an opaque tornado eye. Emerald green static lightning leaped between the gusts due to molecular friction.
Kael's silent sword crashed against the hurricane.
The immense kinetic force of Rank 1 clashed against the assassin's centrifugal force. Whisper of the North was violently deflected upward, its trajectory altered by the hurricane winds. The wind's friction tried to tear Kael's arm apart, but the layer of magma covering his skin resisted the damage, melting the air currents into boiling steam.
Kael withdrew his sword with a backward leap, his chest heaving up and down.
Joren dispelled the hurricane, remaining impassive. His breathing was slightly heavier; maintaining an acoustic vacuum against a mass of magma was exhausting.
"You can't break the hurricane with a frontal slash, Kael," said Joren. "Your fire is strong, but the wind has no shape that you can cut. You will exhaust yourself striking a storm."
Kael drove the tip of his sword into the jade, smiling. A savage smile, devoid of protocolary nobility, the smile of a battle addict.
"If I can't cut the storm, Joren... then I will burn all the oxygen in the arena. Let's see what wind you control in a pure vacuum."
Kael let go of his sword's hilt. He let the weapon float by his side, sustained by his Qi. He brought both palms together in front of his chest, and the golden color of his eyes was replaced by a burning red.
The temperature in Skull Rock skyrocketed to critical levels.
Kael was pushing his Stage 4 core to the limit. Instead of concentrating the magma into his weapon, he injected his energy into the ground itself and the air around him.
The jade slabs beneath his feet began to melt, turning into a bubbling puddle of molten stone. But the worst wasn't the ground. The air in a fifty-meter radius distorted violently from the extreme heat. The oxygen began to incinerate. The cold air currents Joren used to hide his weight and manipulate his stealth were converted into chaotic, ascending convective currents.
Joren's ordered and cold battlefield turned into the inside of an infernal boiler.
Joren felt his lungs burn. His Shadow of the Hundred Steps technique failed; the air around him was too unstable and turbulent to create wind platforms or muffle sound. Suddenly, Joren's boots crunched slightly against the hot jade.
He had lost absolute silence.
Kael heard it.
"I've got you!" roared Kael.
The Sovereign grabbed Whisper of the North and lunged at the assassin with fiery fury. The sword, now bathed in boiling magma, traced arcs of destruction that threatened to melt Joren with every pass.
Joren, stripped of his sensory intangibility, was forced into close-quarters combat, dodging by millimeters using the [Dance of the Silent Wake]. His daggers clashed against Kael's sword in a flurry of sparks and steam, but the difference in muscle mass and brute strength was overwhelming. Each impact numbed Joren's arms. The heat was cooking his skin through his tactical clothing.
If I keep backing up, he'll melt me, Joren's cold mind calculated. I have to cut him from the inside.
Joren channeled all his remaining Qi into a single lethal move. He ducked under a horizontal slash from Kael, evading the heat wave by a centimeter. He planted the palm of his left hand on the molten ground, ignoring the third-degree burns that instantly roasted his skin, and detonated the [Ascending Gale Burst].
An immense column of hyper-compressed air erupted right beneath Kael's feet.
The King of the Vanguard, despite his weight and firm stance, was violently launched three meters into the air, his center of gravity completely broken. Kael hung suspended, defenseless against an aerial attack.
Joren, using the same upward momentum, leaped after him.
In mid-air, Joren crossed his twin daggers. He concentrated all his wind Qi onto the edge of both weapons, emptying his lungs completely.
[Dawn Sky Cut].
It wasn't a blade of wind. It was two lines of sky-blue light crossed in an "X" shape that sliced through reality itself. Joren's daggers parted the air, creating a cut of pure vacuum aimed directly at Kael's chest. It was a strike designed to bypass mid-grade armors and suck the internal organs outward.
In the VIP box, Saira Varian muffled a gasp.
"He caught him in the air! The vacuum cut is going to split him in four!"
But on the main balcony, Samael Morningstar didn't even blink, while Celeste laughed upon seeing the flash of blue light.
Suspended in the air, with death in the form of a vacuum approaching his heart at supersonic speed, Kael showed no panic. His noble face hardened with unbreakable resolve.
He was the Sovereign. And a sovereign does not back down before nothingness.
Kael didn't try to block the vacuum blades with his magma sword. He knew the vacuum would swallow the heat.
Instead, Kael closed his eyes, gripped Whisper of the North with both hands, and channeled the purest, most abstract form of his sword art.
[Sovereign's Cut].
The blade of his sword stopped glowing with magma and turned an absolute, blinding gold. This technique did not concentrate fire; it concentrated will. It concentrated the arrogance and the divine right to ignore any law imposed by an enemy of the same level.
Kael launched a brutal vertical slash, smashing his golden sword directly against Joren's two "X" shaped vacuum blades.
The clash in the middle of the arena's sky was apocalyptic.
There was no sound. The vacuum of Joren's attack and Kael's rule nullification created a zone of absolute silence that expanded throughout Skull Rock, temporarily deafening the ten thousand spectators.
On the conceptual plane, Kael's unbreakable will collided with Joren's physical separation of space. Kael's golden sword cut "nothingness". The Sovereign's Cut imposed its law: where Joren tried to create a vacuum, Kael imposed the existence of his own overwhelming force.
The two lines of sky-blue light cracked like glass under the impact of the golden sword and shattered into a thousand pieces of harmless wind.
Kael broke through the assassin's ultimate technique.
Whisper of the North, descending with the force of a meteorite, struck Joren squarely in the chest.
Kael subtly twisted his wrist at the last millisecond. He didn't cut Joren with the edge; he struck him with the broad flat of the incandescent blade.
The impact was devastating. Joren spat a cloud of blood and was launched toward the arena floor like a ragdoll.
BOOM!
Joren crashed into the jade slabs, opening a crater five meters in diameter. The impact kicked up an immense cloud of dust and stone splinters. Kael landed heavily a few meters away, his boots digging into the molten rock.
The absolute silence broke, and the roar of the air rushing to fill the vacuum exploded in everyone's ears like deafening thunder.
The smoke and dust began to clear in the center of the arena.
Kael stood, leaning slightly on his sword. His chest heaved violently, and blood oozed from the cut on his collarbone, but his aura continued to burn with the intensity of an enraged sun.
In the center of the crater, Joren lay flat on his back. His matte steel daggers lay several meters away, nicked from the impact. The soundless assassin coughed, blood staining his lips and his gray clothes, which now bore severe heat burns. His chest was caved in from the force of the sword's blunt strike.
Joren tried to get up, but his body, which had operated at the limit of negative pressure and supersonic evasion, finally collapsed. The Sovereign's will had shattered his physical and mental defenses.
Despite the agony, Joren's brown eyes remained devoid of panic. He looked at Kael with the cold respect of a professional acknowledging he had been bested.
"Your will..." Joren whispered, his voice barely audible, coughing up another clot of blood. "It cut the vacuum. An excellent... tyrant, Kael. I yield."
Joren let his head fall back, losing consciousness.
The entire arena erupted in a clamor that shook the mountain. Shouts of "Kael! Sovereign!" filled the air. Rank 1 had proven that, no matter how perfect the shadows were, the light of his authority would always eventually find and burn them.
In the VIP box, Lord Magnar Varian stroked his bearded chin. His Emperor's gaze was fixed on Kael's upright figure.
"He cut the concept of the void with pure intention," Magnar murmured, not addressing Saira, speaking to himself. "He didn't use fire to win. He used his right to exist over that of his enemy. That boy isn't just going to be a great general, Saira. If he survives his own ego, he will be an Emperor of the sword."
Saira, her heart still racing from the tension of the mid-air clash, nodded. The Star Ice Empire had brutal warriors, but the determination to impose one's own will over the laws of the world at such a young age was something she had rarely witnessed.
On the main balcony, Seraphina looked at her husband.
"The first quarterfinal has purged the shadows. Kael remains the unbreakable wall of your legion, husband."
Samael nodded slightly. His attention shifted to little Celeste, who had stopped laughing to watch with her two-colored eyes as the healers carried away Joren's unconscious body.
"Kael rules the vanguard, but now the coliseum belongs to the anomalies. Tell the herald not to wait for the stone to cool."
The herald, catching his lord's telepathic command, rushed to the balcony, ignoring the incomplete repairs of the crater.
BOOOOOMMM!
"The King keeps his crown!" bellowed the herald. "But destruction does not sleep! Prepare yourselves for the second clash of the quarterfinals! The Empress of the Void against the Frost Ghost! Sequence 2, Violeta Morningstar, against the First Disciple, Elara Morningstar!"
A literal and metaphorical shiver ran through the stands. Fire and nobility had just left the arena, and now, absolute cold and sadistic cruelty would take their place. The two masters of silent annihilation were about to collide, and no one in Skull Rock, not even Lord Magnar Varian, knew whether space or mist would prevail.