Author's Note: This prelude is dedicated to all mothers, even if it arrives a couple of days late. In the ruthless world of cultivation, absolute power is everything, but even the coldest and cruelest Sovereign of the universe draws his unbreakable strength from the memory and love of a mother. Happy Mother's Day!
Chapter 160: The Reflection of Perfection and the Blood BellPrelude: The Pinky Promise and the Birth of the Monster
Under the colossal shadow of the Stellar World Tree, the air itself seemed to breathe with reverential stillness. After its drastic metamorphosis, the Forest King had left its crystalline fragility behind. Its trunk was now made of dark, ancient, striated wood, as indestructible as cosmic iron, rising like the absolute pillar that held up the sky of the newborn Realm of the Eternal Dawn.
Its monstrous roots formed a living nervous system that pierced the void to hold the floating islands together. High above, millions of imperial violet leaves with crimson edges filtered the light of the Eternal Aurora, casting shadows upon the ground that were not dark patches, but exact replicas of slowly turning constellations.
But amidst all that geological violence and apocalyptic majesty, the Tree's will—and that of reality itself—showed absolute reverence for a small corner at its base.
Right at the foot of the immense black trunk lay Clara's small grave.
During the violent genesis of the world, the stellar wood had parted from that patch of earth with incomprehensible delicacy. The roots did not disturb a single speck of dust. On the contrary, the black bark grew carefully around it, embracing the headstone to form a beautiful, concave natural sanctuary, protecting it eternally from the winds of change.
There, the small sleeping dragon of silver and obsidian still hung, unaltered. The gift that had cost her life gleamed softly under the starlight. Beside it, the humble wooden practice sword, sheathed in the shining fire beast leather the little girl had bought, remained planted firmly in the earth, standing tall like a brave little sentinel refusing to abandon its post.
Sensing Samael's profound emotional anchor to that place, the Tree had reacted. From the dark wood sprouted tiny blue crystal lotuses, golden light orchids, and stellar lilies, twining around the headstone in a perpetual spring that would never wither. The very fabric of space-time had folded over the grave, weaving an invisible but absolute barrier. Neither the force of an Emperor nor the punishment of the Heavens could disturb Clara's rest.
Samael stood before the grave.
A dark, suffocating mixture of guilt, sorrow, and unfathomable homicidal rage boiled in his chest. The memory of Clara—just a scared, lost little girl, cornered in a disgusting alley by drunken scum, beaten, broken, and then hung like a macabre trophy on the gates of the City of the Red Sand—still haunted him. It was a wound that did not bleed, but never closed.
I hope those bastards are rotting in the most painful corner of hell, Samael thought, his jaw clenched until it cracked.
And like a cursed spiral, his mind traveled to the darkest places. He thought of Violeta. He thought of the rebellious Eris. His thoughts flew to sweet, innocent Celeste, and to the two lives growing in Seraphina's womb. What would happen if the world dared to touch any of them? What if history repeated itself?
The mere mental image fractured Samael's sanity for a second. He would become a mindless monster. The entire world would drown in a sea of black blood, leaving not even the ashes of creation. He clenched his fists so tightly that his own claws pierced his palms. Dark blood dripped onto the ground, hissing.
A soft sound behind him pulled him from the abyss.
He turned slowly. Little Celeste stood there, holding Seraphina's hand.
"What are you doing here all alone, Papa?" Celeste asked, tilting her head.
Samael looked at her. His normally cold eyes were now two violet and crimson whirlpools overflowing with contained violence, irrational terror, and turbulent thoughts. Seraphina noticed it instantly. The Empress let go of the girl's hand, closed the distance in a breath, and wrapped her arms around Samael's neck, holding him with warm, comforting strength. Celeste, not understanding the gravity of the moment but sensing the need for love, ran up and hugged her father's leg, resting her cheek against him.
Samael closed his eyes and let out a long, trembling sigh. The touch of his wife and the weight of his daughter drained the madness from his chest. He hugged them back, sinking into that warmth.
I need to become stronger... even stronger. No one, absolutely no one, will take this from me.
And then, the scent of rain and flowers triggered the memory that grounded his entire existence.
A holiday in the distant past. Lanterns illuminated the clan's courtyard. Little Samael, barely five years old, sat in the lap of a woman of divine beauty, whose long white hair cascaded like silk. Her face, in his memory, was blurred by the light, but her warmth was absolute.
In the distance, a very young Violeta and Eris danced clumsily and laughed out loud. Little Samael smiled devotedly as his mother stroked his short white hair.
"My son... are you happy?" his mother asked, her voice like a soft melody.
"Of course I am, Mother!" the boy replied, puffing out his chest. "Look at our clan. I have Father and you. I have my little sisters, and of course, Aunt Lilith."
The woman let out a small laugh that made her chest vibrate.
"And will you always protect them, my little dragon?"
Samael lifted his chin with that unmistakable arrogance and pride that would define him his entire life.
"Of course I will! I will protect everyone. My sisters, Auntie, Father, and you. I will be the strongest man in the whole world!"
His mother smiled sweetly, but there was a shadow of infinite sadness in her expression.
"But... what if there comes a day when your father and I disappear? What if something happens to us, will you still protect them?"
The boy turned around, confused. Fear crept into his childish eyes, and small tears threatened to spill over.
"Why would anything happen to you? You are strong. You'll never disappear... right, Mother?"
She carefully wiped her son's tears away with her thumb.
"The world is very vast, my love. And everything in it is unpredictable. It is better to prepare the heart for any storm. But don't cry... we don't plan on disappearing."
The boy, desperate to cling to that certainty, pulled out his small wooden practice sword, made a tiny cut on his finger, and offered it to her.
"Blood promise. Soul oath."
His mother hesitated for a second, as if she knew something the boy didn't, but finally, she intertwined her finger with his.
"I promise."
The memory fractured like a mirror struck by a hammer. It grew dark. Cold rain. Samael, a couple of years older, was in the courtyard practicing his sword stances. The doors burst open. Lilith walked in, soaked.
Samael stopped. Something was wrong. Aunt Lilith didn't have her dazzling smile. Her gaze was shattered, empty.
When she got close enough, Lilith's lips trembled. She fell to her knees in the mud and, breaking into a harrowing sob, told him the words that would destroy his childhood: the carriage was found. The guards were massacred. There had been a battle of terrifying scale. His parents had disappeared. They were dead.
The sound of the wooden sword falling into a puddle was the only thing heard before Samael's world collapsed.
The boy clutched his head, falling to his knees, the mud staining his clothes. He cried, screamed, and howled in pain. "Why?! No, no, no!" he sobbed, looking up at the gray sky. "You promised me! You broke your oath!"
Lilith's soul shattered. Seeing the arrogant, brilliant, and proud young master of the Morningstar clan reduced to a terrified, broken child was too much. Ignoring her own wounds, Lilith crawled through the mud and hugged him with all her might, pressing him to her chest.
"I'm so sorry, Samael... I'm so sorry..." she whispered to him, while the boy cried until exhaustion overcame him, falling asleep on her shoulder.
When Samael woke up hours later, the rain was still falling. He saw his aunt still kneeling on the cold ground, refusing to let him go despite the pain.
The boy swallowed hard. He forced his tears back, forcefully building a wall around his heart. With a hoarse, trembling voice, he asked:
"Do my sisters know?"
Lilith slowly shook her head.
Samael stood up from the mud, his childish eyes already hardened by tragedy.
"I will go to their rooms... I'll tell them."
Lilith watched the back of that little boy walk alone down the hallway, carrying the weight of a destroyed world. When Samael reached the door to Violeta and Eris's rooms, he heard their childish laughter from inside. He stopped. He rested his forehead against the wood of the door and cried a river again, in total and absolute silence, not knowing how to destroy the lives of the two people he loved most.
He opened the door slowly. Violeta and Eris stood up smiling, ready to run and hug him, but upon seeing their older brother soaked, trembling, and with bloodshot eyes, their little hearts froze.
Samael stepped forward slowly, fell to his knees, and hugged them both, burying his face in his sisters' hair. The silence lasted ten agonizing minutes. And then, with a broken voice, he told them.
The shock was so great that the two girls fainted in his small arms. When they woke up, the palace echoed with their inconsolable weeping. Samael had no words left. He had no tears left. He only offered them his shoulders and his broken chest to cling to.
The funeral was a bitter farce. It rained mercilessly on two empty coffins. When the crowd dispersed, only Lilith, the girls, and he remained.
"You can go back," Samael said, turning his back to them, his gaze fixed on the headstone. "I'll stay a little longer."
They left, leaving him alone. When the footsteps faded, Samael collapsed. He pounded the wet earth with his little fists until they bled, roaring at the dark sky until he lost his voice, cursing the gods, the world, and his own weakness.
Hours passed. The cold moon rose. Samael remained kneeling, trembling. It was then that a little girl with silvery-blue hair and eyes deep as the ocean quietly approached. She didn't tell him everything would be alright. She didn't offer empty words. Seraphina simply knelt beside him, draped a dry blanket over his shoulders, and tightly held his wounded hand.
Samael turned; his violet and crimson eyes, already completely devoid of innocence, looked at her. She returned his gaze in silence. And he knew he would never let her go again.
The memory dissipated with the breeze of the present beneath the World Tree.
Samael looked at his wife and daughter, who were still hugging him. He stroked Celeste's hair and kissed Seraphina's forehead.
Mother... I am keeping my promise, the Emperor thought, his gaze sharpening with ruthless determination. They will have to step over my dead body before they touch them. My sisters, my daughters, my wife, my aunt. I will protect them all.
Samael looked up at the stars through the Tree's leaves.
And I hope, at some distant point in eternity, to be reunited with you and Father. To tell you everything that has happened. To introduce you to your beautiful granddaughters. For you to see the majestic ice woman Violeta has become, and the insufferable, wonderful headache that Eris is. I miss you both so much.
High above, the light of the Eternal Aurora filtered capriciously through the violet and crimson leaves of the Forest King. For a single, fleeting second, the shadows cast on the black bark did not form random constellations.
They drew the perfect silhouette of a tall man and a long-haired woman embracing three small children, while a smiling aunt ruffled the eldest's hair, and a shy little girl held his hand from the side.
The World Tree gently rustled its leaves, as if singing an old lullaby, while the man who carried the destiny of the universe turned around, ready to march to war.
At the pinnacle of the Upper Palace, settled in the cold majesty of the Obsidian Throne, Samael Morningstar rested with a deceptively relaxed posture. His unfathomable violet eyes denoted the pure calculation of an emperor about to move his master pieces. His passive control over the Law of Space and the Law of the Void distorted the light around the heavy armrests, creating tiny black holes that were born and died in milliseconds, silently devouring reality. The thick metallic scent of the Law of Blood, intertwined with the latent edge of his Sword Intent, was a lethal promise of death that permeated every particle of air in the hall.
To his right, standing with an elegance that offended mortal comprehension, was Seraphina. The First Wife and the Patriarch's right hand floated a millimeter off the ground, draped in an ethereal gown of divine frost. Her skin looked as if carved from the purest lunar porcelain, and her eyes lacked normal pupils, containing entire constellations slowly turning within. Her understanding of the Law of Ice was now absolute; with a single capricious thought, she could freeze biological and physical time in a radius around her.
Samael didn't need to turn his head to know what she was thinking. Since the beginning of their brutal journey, the System's primordial skill, the [Soul Nexus], kept them irrevocably connected. Through that telepathic and spiritual bridge, Samael could feel the comforting, eternal cold of Seraphina's soul, and she could nestle into the boiling abyss of her husband's power.
They are very arrogant, Seraphina transmitted through the Nexus, her mental voice sounding like clinking ice crystals, as she watched the bloody holographic screens Vexia projected. The Imperials have the vast power reserves of Saints, but in their hubris, they believe brute force solves everything.
They'll learn the hard way very soon, Samael replied through the link, flashing a sharp smile that bared his fangs. Sienna is about to strip away their comfortable shields.
Beside the immense monitors, Vexia adjusted her glasses, her face illuminated by the flickering combat metrics.
"The labyrinth has fully stabilized at the times-three threat multiplier," the Grand Marshal reported, her tone strictly military. "The Void Sequences are finding out the hard way that divine concepts aren't enough if you don't have the strength to pierce."
In the suffocating depths of the Infinite Mirror, the chaos was deafening.
Dante, the lethal Assassin Phantom of the Void, slid across the slippery crystal floor, dodging the devastating slash of a Dead Prism Knight by a millimeter. Dante's Asura Eye burned brightly in the dark, reading with absolute clarity the conceptual "lines of death" on the beast's thick armor.
The young assassin leaped, spinning in the air with deadly grace, and slid his blackened [Fang of the Fallen Asura] exactly through the weakest, most vulnerable joint at the nape of the inorganic knight's neck. His Slaughter Intent was perfect. The angle was flawless and surgical.
CLANG! The black dagger rebounded with a violent spark, emitting a high-pitched screech. The brutal recoil impact numbed Dante's arm up to the shoulder, fracturing his wrist bones on the spot.
He hadn't cut the beast. It wasn't a flaw in his weapon; the Fang of the Fallen Asura was a supreme artifact of terrifying rank. The problem was the crushing reality of cultivation. Dante was at the absolute peak of the Transcendent Realm (Stage 9). But between him and the monster in front of him stretched two unbridgeable abysses: the nine stages of the Origin Realm, and the nine stages of the Half-Saint Realm.
The dense, passive layer of Saint-Level Qi surrounding the Knight was a conceptual wall of energy so overwhelmingly heavy that a Transcendent's physical strength simply couldn't pierce it. The technique was immaculate, but a mortal cannot split an ocean in half with technique alone; the blade bounced off the infinite density of the enemy's aura.
The Prism Knight twisted its faceless torso and launched a lethal thrust that would have erased Dante from existence in a blink.
"Get down, Phantom!" a thunderous voice roared.
Bren, the Imperial Seismic Behemoth, landed in front of Dante like a burning meteorite. The giant used no weapons. He threw a straight punch imbued with the obscene brute force of a Peak Half-Saint, activating his immense seismic resonance. The physical impact collided head-on with the Knight's Qi shield. The air erupted with a deafening sound, cracking the beast's barrier and sending it flying twenty meters backward, dragging its boots across the crystal.
Dante rolled on the ground to regain his balance, cradling his broken wrist and glaring at the beast with pure tactical frustration.
"Our attacks bounce off their skin," Dante grunted, spitting black blood. "Their base Qi density is too high. We don't have the driving force."
"That's why we're here, kid!" Bren laughed uproariously, ripping his tunic as his immense muscles expanded, overflowing with Half-Saint energy. "You have the technique of the damn gods, but we have the weight! Just tell me where to hit!"
In another room of the simulation, the same bitter dynamic was playing out.
Cassius tried to drive his ravenous Ironwood roots into the neck of a Saint Leviathan, but the wooden tips snapped and splintered upon striking the scales imbued with oppressive magic. Elowen, the Imperial Healer, had to intervene by summoning a massive forest of thick, Half-Saint level thorns to physically trap the creature and crush its aura with sheer brute force. Only then, through the breaches torn by Elowen, did Cassius manage to infect the beast's organs and steal its vital, necessary Qi.
The Void Sequences had realized their bitter, humiliating reality: in the open war of Saints, they were still mortals. Their concepts could kill gods, but their muscles couldn't even scratch them.
However, the Imperial Sequences were also facing a crisis. They were expending massive, unsustainable amounts of Qi to destroy heavy armor that, if they knew exactly the weakest structural point, would fall with half the effort.
Kael Morningstar, decapitating another crystal boss with a lethal arc of his sword, landed gracefully beside Dante and Cedric, the Emperor of Seals.
"This is inefficient and suicidal," Kael dictated, watching the edge of his Magma Fang smoke from overexertion.
Cedric nodded gravely, unweaving a complex golden matrix in the air. "They are designed to wear us down. Their shields regenerate with the environment. If we keep attacking blindly like barbarians, our Dantians will empty completely in less than twelve hours, even with our reserves."
Dante silently sheathed his dagger. His dark Asura Eye tirelessly scanned the energy flows of the battlefield.
"Kael. Cedric," Dante called out, his tone devoid of all pride. "My eyes can see the exact cracks in their Qi shields. Ren can hear the tension in their muscles a second before they attack. Iris can calculate the perfect coordinates of their barriers' refraction. If we guide you..."
"We will be the fucking cannon, and you our divine targeting system," Kael finished, an arrogant, predatory smile appearing on his face. "I like the sound of that."
The Morningstar war machine began to organize and interlock.
The proud groups merged, erasing the lines between Imperials and the Void. Aylin violently pierced the underground to destabilize the crystal giants' center of gravity, while Aion crushingly increased the gravitational pressure on their legs to anchor them to the floor. Once the beasts were immobilized and their shields flickered, Xylia didn't waste energy on an area-of-effect attack; she dropped a colossal, piercing lightning bolt exactly into the tiny fissure Iris's analytical mind had calculated.
The battlefield changed radically. The indestructible x3 Difficulty monsters began dropping like flies caught in a perfect trap. The forty-five elites had found the lethal, beautiful harmony between Absolute Concept and Overwhelming Power.
Suddenly, the entire labyrinth was plunged into an absolute, terrifying silence.
The violent crystal beasts that were a millimeter away from attacking simply dissolved into harmless dust. The furious storms in the rooms were snuffed out like blown candles. Hundreds of fractured dimensions of the labyrinth merged rapidly and violently, collapsing to form a single, immense, colossal flat arena: an infinite dome of dark, polished mirrors.
The forty-five warriors, disoriented but on guard, were abruptly regrouped in the center of the vast expanse. Kael stepped forward instinctively, his heavy sword raised high. Dante positioned himself to his left, crouching.
Sienna's voice echoed throughout the dome, icy, perfect, and omnipresent, drifting down from the dark mirror sky.
"You have learned to use one another. The elders protect the young from the storm, and the young guide the elders' swords in the dark. How touching. How marvelously tactical."
In the Throne Room, Vexia smiled. "Here it comes."
Samael leaned forward on his throne, his eyes gleaming with dark anticipation.
"But in your little epiphany, you have forgotten the fundamental rule of my sanctuary," Sienna's relentless voice continued. "Those beasts were just the warm-up. They were simple sacks of inorganic, mindless meat. You genuinely believe you are the apex of the food chain because your Dantians are full and your technique is refined. Let's see, then, how you fare against true perfection."
The solid black crystal floor began to ripple beneath their boots, behaving like a dark lake disturbed by rain.
"The reflection does not lie. The reflection feels no pain or compassion. The reflection is, and always will be, what you should be."
Forty-five figures emerged slowly from the liquid crystal floor.
They were not amorphous monsters or giant golems. They were Them.
The terrifying Karmic Clones had returned. But this time, the hell had expanded. It wasn't just the 24 copies of the Void Sequences. The labyrinth had given birth to the 21 immaculate Imperial Clones.
Kael Morningstar tensed, staring intently at his own reflection. Kael's Dark Clone held an exact burning crystal replica of his Magma Fang. It emitted the same, overwhelming, and exact level of cultivation: Stage 1 Saint.
A few meters away, Violeta looked at her own clone, who twirled her lethal rapier with a mathematical coldness that disturbingly surpassed her own. Eris growled like a cornered animal, watching her perfect clone wreathed in the indomitable Flame of Ruin.
"It's the damn clones!" Voltar yelled, taking an instinctive step back, the trauma of his bloody first days in the labyrinth resurfacing. "Listen to me, don't attack them head-on! They have our exact abilities, the same strength, but with clinical, perfect technique!"
"No stupid cheap crystal copy is going to scare me!" roared Draven, the Imperial colossus, taking an aggressive step forward and pounding his broad, icy chest.
Ignoring the warning, Draven charged with all the fury of his Blue Ice Dragon bloodline straight at his own clone. The giant summoned his immense glacial wall to crush the copy with thousands of tons of frost.
But Draven's Clone did not summon a wall to defend itself.
The copy processed the threat in a nanosecond. It took a millimeter sidestep, evading the thunderous ice charge by a hair's breadth, and extended a single finger. Imbuing that finger with Absolute Ice Saint Qi, the clone touched an exposed vital point in the armpit of the original Draven's armor with terrifying precision.
The clone's freezing ice instantly penetrated Draven's thick meridians, masterfully reversing the biological flow of his own regeneration.
"GAAAH!" Draven dropped sharply to his knees, his eyes wide with shock, coughing up shards of blue ice and blood. His immense right arm froze completely and shattered with a dull snap. The war veteran had been humiliated and defeated by his own strength in exactly two seconds.
The silence that fell over the Imperial Sequences was absolute and terrifying.
"They are... mathematically perfect," muttered Cedric, the Emperor of Seals, a cold sweat running down his back upon seeing Draven's Clone execute the devastating counterattack without expending even one percent of its energy reserve.
"Survive yourselves," Sienna's voice whispered from the sky. "And maybe, just maybe, you will be worthy of earning the right to face me."
Absolute hell broke loose in the dome.
Kael lunged with a roar at his own Clone. The Imperial leader executed a perfect slash, the air turning to ash as he sought to annihilate the copy's causality. But Kael's Clone didn't use fire to counter. It raised its crystal sword and executed exactly the same technique, but with a millimeter angle of refraction that the original Kael hadn't foreseen in his rage.
The copy's sword absorbed Kael's lethal intent and fluidly redirected it downward, sweeping the Imperial leader's legs. Kael had to jump desperately to dodge his own lethal attack, but the Clone was already waiting for him in the air, kicking him violently in the center of the chest with the force of a meteorite and smashing him mercilessly against the mirror floor.
A few meters away, Violeta traced a black ice lotus in the air to trap her copy in the absolute immobility of Absolute Zero. But her Clone, processing space at the incomprehensible speed of light, teleported a microsecond before the dome sealed shut. It appeared directly behind the original Violeta and, without hesitation, stabbed her in the back. Violeta barely managed to teleport away, leaving half her torn tunic and a dangerous streak of blood on her own clone's invisible blade.
Eris and Lirael were being brutally cornered by their copies. Their clones felt no anger, no passion, no bloodlust. Their fearsome, usually wild destructive powers were being used as clinical, surgical tools.
"Damn it!" Eris blocked a crushing blow from her clone's halberd that numbed both her arms, black fire licking her face. "They have my exact same fucking strength, but they don't make a single damn mistake!"
The exhausted Void Sequences, who had already suffered this psychological and physical torment for the equivalent of a year of simulated deaths and dismemberments, watched the scene with a mix of horror and macabre déjà vu.
Dante, dodging a lethal slash to the neck from his own Asura Clone—which still surpassed him in machine-like coldness, though no longer in concept comprehension—yelled over the apocalyptic din of battle:
"Kael! Cedric! Listen to me, you can't fight yourselves! It's statistical suicide! They know every muscle, every stupid habit, and every weakness you have!"
Cedric, who was desperately trying to weave defensive seals while his own expressionless Clone undid his intricate matrices much faster than he could create them, grasped the crushing logic instantly.
"A mirror can only perfectly reflect what's in front of it!" the intelligent Emperor of Seals shouted, dodging a deadly beam that scorched his cheek. "If we drastically switch matchups, their damn predictive calculations break!"
Kael, spitting a thick clot of blood as he crossed swords with the overwhelming force of his own reflection, nodded vigorously.
"SWITCH TARGETS!" Kael roared, his powerful commanding voice amplified by his immense Saint Qi. "From this second on, absolutely no one attacks their own reflection! Hunt as a pack!"
The chaotic chessboard reconfigured itself amidst the carnage.
Kael didn't launch another slash at his clone. Instead, he used his zero-friction movement to flow like liquid magma and brutally intercept Violeta's Clone, which was about to decapitate the exhausted ice girl. Violeta's Clone was programmed to react to spatial magic and extreme cold, not Kael's ultra-heavy, annihilating fire. The Imperial leader shattered the copy's ice rapier in a burst of sparks with the thick edge of the Magma Fang.
At the exact same time, the real Violeta used her teleportation to silently appear behind Bren's immense Clone. She summoned her lethal Absolute Zero and deeply froze the legs of the earth and magma giant before the imposing copy could crush the skull of the original Bren lying on the ground.
But Sienna's egoless Clones adapted frighteningly fast to the new strategy.
Seeing the originals crossing attacks, the 45 perfect copies abandoned their individual duels and also began operating as a team. Kael's Clone and Xylia's Clone, in a macabre display of synergy, combined Nirvana flames and divine lightning into a lethal annihilation matrix that had been calculated in real-time by the cold mind of Iris's Clone.
"It's still not enough!" shouted Varian, the Sky Hunter, firing dozens of curved arrows with impossible trajectories to keep the relentless clones at bay. "Switching targets isn't enough, they still have Saint-level power reserves and impeccable technique!"
Dante, his face smeared with blood and his slitted Asura Eye observing the dense enemy defenses, stared intensely at Kael through the chaos.
"Our conceptual technique against their crushing cultivation level," Dante said, his voice sounding strangely calm and deadly amidst the apocalypse of light and explosions. "Those of us in the Void are the only ones in this damn room who possess Intents purified and stripped of ego by this labyrinth. Their shields cannot calculate our void. We will nullify their perfect defenses. You will provide the fucking lethal force to split them in half."
Kael nodded curtly, his golden eyes burning. The proud Imperial hierarchy had completely disappeared into the flames. They were all just soldiers fighting to breathe in the mud now.
Draven's inorganic Clone (Stage 1 Saint) charged brutally at them, encased in a colossal glacial armor that looked impenetrable.
"Eira!" Dante yelled.
The White Witch of the Void didn't prepare an attack. She knelt nimbly on the crystal and absorbed all the heat from the area, creating an instant, gigantic Absolute Zero vacuum directly in Draven's Clone's path. The beast's dense ice armor, colliding violently with Eira's extreme thermal vacuum, became microscopically and critically brittle, its molecules coming to a dead halt.
"Ignis!"
Ignis, the Void's Pyromaniac, condensed the immensity of his Yang fire into a single white spark and shot it like a bullet into the frozen zone. The overwhelming thermodynamic clash between absolute cold and heat failed to kill the Clone due to its monstrous Saint Qi reserve, but the physical paradox shattered its immaculate glacial armor to pieces and threw its immense stance off balance.
"Now, Kael!" Dante ordered, sounding not like a young rookie, but with the authority of a commander-in-chief.
Kael Morningstar did not hesitate. With his sword burning wildly in the Flame of Ruin—kindly lent by Eris via an efficient connecting seal from Cedric—the leader executed a brutal, heavy horizontal cut. The broad blade cleanly decapitated Draven's enormous Clone before the machine could even attempt to reform its thick frost.
The first Saint Clone of the simulation had fallen.
"It's working, damn it!" Lyra cheered. The dream dragoness began ringing her Requiem Bell furiously, spreading dense mists of psychosomatic illusions over the field. She made the cold Void Clones believe they were being burned or dismembered alive. The illusion was so flawlessly solid that the inorganic clones reacted to the phantom pain, lowering their guard, allowing Ciro and Joren to teleport into their blind spots and stab their cores simultaneously.
In the center of the room, Aion and Aia, the Twins of the Void's Paradox, intertwined their hands and created an immense, destructive black hole of eclipse. The heavy Clones tried to resist the gravitational pull by anchoring themselves to the floor, but Elian suddenly flooded the entire room with an abyssal tide of his thick, crushing black mercury. The ultra-heavy liquid soaked the Clones, increasing their body weight to absurd levels, making them clumsy, slow, and turning them into inescapable prey for the twins' overwhelming gravitational suction, which disintegrated them in the dark core.
In the rearguard, Cassius ruthlessly impaled the remains of the fallen clones, stealing their immense, pure, artificial Saint-level Qi and pumping it restlessly, like a dark heart, straight into the fatigued Imperial Sequences to keep them fighting. Elowen took that raw energy and refined it into instant light elixirs that healed amputated limbs and closed mortal wounds in a heartbeat.
It was a spectacle of sublime, divine violence. The sacred Laws of the World were being bent and broken. The crushing Brute Force of the Kings and the sharp Divine Concept of the Shadows had irremediably merged. The forty-five were no longer frightened or prideful individuals; they were the bloodied gears, the different, lethal organs of a single, vast, perfect predator, designed explicitly to hunt and tear Saints apart.
In the imposing safety of the Throne Room, the massive screens showed the final fall of the last black crystal Clone.
Kael and Dante stood in the center of the dome, leaning on each other over the pulverized remains of the horde. Both breathed with painful difficulty, covered in sweat, superficial wounds, and thick blood, but their eyes shone with unbreakable determination and ferocity. Around them, scattered across the smooth crystal, the other 43 warriors celebrated in exhausted silence. They healed their wounds, bandaged each other, and patted each other on the back. The Imperials' opulent, immaculate red tunics were now irreversibly stained and mixed with the gloomy black tunics of the Void.
Samael nodded very slowly from his throne.
Seraphina smiled with genuine warmth, her deep aura of constellations pulsing with immense pride for the young ones they had forged.
"They have managed to survive the perfect mirror," she said softly, her voice like a winter breeze. "They have mastered the oppression of the times-three Difficulty and overcome the Trial of the Reflection without breaking."
Vexia deactivated the vast majority of the peripheral screens with a wave of her hand, leaving only one massive main projection on in the exact center of the hall.
"Patriarch. They have completed the parameters. They are ready for the extraction protocol."
Samael stood up slowly from the Obsidian Throne. The simple act of standing made the thick marble foundations of the Upper Hall tremble beneath his boots.
"Not yet. They have defeated the cold machines. They have defeated the monstrous beasts. They have even defeated their own stupid, fragile pride." Samael's voice, amplified by the immense power of the Soul Nexus and channeled through Vexia's intricate communication matrices, violently pierced the dimensional barriers and resonated directly, like divine thunder, in the fake sky of the Labyrinth of the Infinite Mirror.
Down below, in the stillness of the labyrinth ruins, the forty-five exhausted warriors snapped their heads up, feeling the oppressive authority of their Sovereign.
"My Kings and my Shadows," the Patriarch spoke, his overwhelming voice simultaneously injecting adrenaline and the purest, iciest terror into their veins. "You have forged the unbreakable brotherhood of this clan in the baptism of your own blood. But I regret to inform you that the exit door to this hell has no handle."
A shudder shook the dimension's reality.
The suffocating dome of dark mirrors surrounding them began to creak horrifyingly, cracking and shattering into immense fragments that fell into the void. The gloomy illusion of the torture room completely vanished, revealing an unnatural, breathtaking beauty: a vast, infinite sky of darkness studded with brilliant stars, and a smooth floor made of pristine, still black water that sharply reflected the glow of an enormous illusory moon.
In the exact center of that overwhelming immensity of stillness, Sienna descended.
The architect of horror was no longer floating bored on a throne of energy, nor drinking tea on her platform. The Guardian landed with unsettling softness, placing her delicate, pale bare feet directly on the water's surface without breaking the surface tension in the slightest.
She wore an immaculate, beautiful white silk qipao that glowed with a faint, ethereal spectral light, contrasting with her dark black hair cut rigidly at jaw level. In her right hand, resting casually at her side, she held a very thin, transparent crystal sword, devoid of a guard or ornaments. Her terrifying eyes, completely lacking irises or pupils, were two perfect silver mirrors that coldly reflected death.
The only sound in the vastness of the dimension was the sharp, cheerful, and profoundly eerie tinkling of a small golden bell tied to her left wrist with a thin, worn, lone red thread.
"There is only one toll to return alive to the Morningstar Citadel," Samael's relentless voice continued from above. "Snatch the bell from the Maiden of the Mirror. You have at your entire disposal forty-five of the deadliest elites of my Empire. Sienna will fight completely alone."
Sienna's blind, silver pupils slowly locked onto the figures of Kael and Dante, who remained paralyzed in the vanguard.
A sharp, sadistic, deep smile, devoid of all the serene courtly calm she had displayed from her throne until now, slowly split her extremely pale face. The heavy, incomprehensible Intent of her own absolute Law of the Mirror made the oxygen in the dimension freeze in the warriors' lungs.
Sienna languidly raised her lethal crystal sword, lazily pointing at the immense army a few meters away.
"Come get me, my fragile little dragons," Sienna whispered, her melodic voice sounding like freezing water rushing over cemetery stones. "If you are so brave."
The true climax of the infernal training arc had just begun. Samael's formidable, undefeated monsters, finally united into a single, perfect pack, would face off in a death match against the Clan's coldest, most powerful, and sadistic deity.