Vescrutia: Legacy

[Continued From Here]

The emerald light of Evant's Oath Magic erupted, coalescing around him not as a simple cloak of energy, but as the spectral form of a colossal, roaring grizzly bear. The air vibrated with a low hum, and the glass-encrusted ground beneath his feet cracked further under the sheer pressure of his conviction. His transformed body, now a masterpiece of honed muscle and primal power, was wreathed in arcs of green-blue lightning. It is common lore to know that a fragment of the Emerald King's power rests within the blood and soul of every Denkou. However, through a specific pact, binding of the soul known as the Oath, one can be endowed with a generous amount of the Emerald Ocean, the overall pool of the Emerald King's font.

Myos watched, his menacing grin unwavering. "A fine trick, little bear. You've learned how to truly beg for your master's power. It is… pathetic."

He heaved his greatsword from the earth, the blade screaming as it scraped against vitrified stone. He swung it in a wide, horizontal arc, a wave of corrupted blue-black lightning tearing through the air towards Evant. It was the kind of attack that could cleave a fortress wall.

But Evant was no longer just a man. He was the embodiment of his vow. Instead of dodging, he met the attack head-on. He slammed his fists together, catching the wave of energy between his gauntleted hands. The impact sent a shockwave outwards that pulverized the glassy terrain for fifty feet in every direction, but Evant held firm. The raw lightning of Myos's attack was absorbed, tamed, and then dissipated by the pure, loyalist light of the Urso's magic.

Myos's grin faltered for the first time.

"My king bore the scorn of a kingdom," Evant's voice boomed, deeper and more resonant than before, laced with the rumble of thunder. "He bled for his people when they did not even want him. Your power is born of ego. Mine is forged in sacrifice!"

With a roar that was more beast than man, Evant charged. He was impossibly fast for his new size, an emerald blur of muscle and light. Myos brought his greatsword up to defend, but Evant didn't attack the blade. He ducked under the swing, his shoulder ramming into Myos's center of mass with the force of a battering ram. The Tyrant King's armor groaned in protest as he was sent stumbling backward, his feet skidding across the glass.

Evant gave him no quarter. He pressed the attack, his fists flying like granite pistons. The first blow caught Myos on the pauldron, cracking the enchanted steel. The second slammed into his side, the impact echoing like a thunderclap. Myos tried to counter, swinging his massive sword in a desperate, close-quarters uppercut, but Evant was inside his guard. He caught the king's sword arm by the wrist, his grip like a vise. Lightning, raw and untamed, surged from Evant's palm, scorching Myos's vambrace and forcing a pained grunt from his lips.

With a tremendous wrenching motion, Evant twisted. There was a sickening crack of metal and bone as he dislocated Myos's shoulder, ripping the greatsword from his grasp. The lightning-stained blade went spinning through the air, embedding itself in the ground a dozen yards away.

Disarmed and injured, Myos staggered back. For the first time, a flicker of something other than arrogance entered his eyes: surprise, mingled with fury.

"You speak of what he's endured," Evant snarled, advancing slowly, each step a tremor. "You, who have sat on a throne of lies, know nothing of endurance."

This was it. The turning point. The brutal struggle began. Myos, robbed of his primary weapon, became a cornered predator. He laughed, a harsh, grating sound, and spat a glob of blood onto the glass. "You think a sword makes the king?"

He lunged, not with a strike, but with a tackle. He slammed into Evant, his free hand clawing for Evant's face. They crashed to the ground, a chaotic tangle of limbs and crackling energy. Myos was vicious, headbutting Evant with his helmeted crown, his teeth bared in a snarl. He grabbed a large, sharp shard of the vitrified earth and drove it towards Evant's throat.

Evant caught his wrist just inches from his neck, the razor-sharp glass pressing against his skin. The two men strained, muscle against muscle, will against will. The emerald aura of Evant's Oath Magic warred against the fainter, darker energy still clinging to Myos. It was a contest of raw, agonizing strength. Gritting his teeth, Evant channeled his power not into a blast, but into pure physical force. His muscles bulged further, the spectral bear around him roaring in defiance. With a final, guttural shout, he overpowered the Tyrant King, snapping the shard of glass and slamming Myos's back into the ground.

Evant rose, straddling the fallen king. He raised a fist, lightning gathering around it, so bright it bleached the world white. This was the final blow. The end of a tyrant.

"The age of tyrants is over!" Evant roared, ready to bring his fist down. "For the true king, Dalazar!"

At the mention of his brother's name, something in Myos broke. But it was not his spirit. It was a seal.

His arrogant smirk returned, but it was different now. It was wider, emptier, utterly devoid of humanity. The heinous aura Evant had felt before was a flickering candle compared to the supernova that now ignited from Myos's core.

"True… king?" Myos whispered, and the sound itself seemed to drink the light from the air.

The world went silent.

Evant's descending fist, crackling with the power to level a mountain, stopped dead. It didn't hit an invisible barrier. It was simply… held. The lightning around it fizzled and died, not defeated, but consumed. Devoured.

" You concerned yourself with a throne of lies...when your very blood, the entire legacy of your people, is something forged from stolen life...."

The air, which had grown dense before, now became a physical weight. A pressure so immense that the glass-encrusted ground didn't just crack; it turned to fine, black dust. Evant's spectral grizzly bear aura flickered violently, then was extinguished as if it had never existed. His amplified muscles seemed to shrink, the divine strength of his Oath Magic draining out of him like water from a sieve. He felt his connection to Dalazar, that brilliant beacon of light and loyalty, being smothered by an oppressive, absolute darkness.

From Myos, a new energy bled into reality. It wasn't lightning. It was not magic as Evant understood it. It was pure, unfiltered dominion. A dark, sinister royal blue malice, shot through with veins of deep cerulian that looked like bleeding wounds in the fabric of space, swirled around the Tyrant King in the form of flame. Above his head, a crown of this solidified burning magic, like molten metal, flickered into existence, pulsating with terrifying power.

"You prattle on about worthiness," Myos said, his voice now a layered chorus of command and despair, echoing from everywhere at once. He effortlessly pushed Evant's fist aside and rose to his feet, not with physical strength, but by the sheer force of his presence. Evant was thrown back, tumbling across the dust-covered ground, his body suddenly feeling fragile and broken.

Myos looked at his own dislocated shoulder. With a casual shrug, bone and sinew snapped back into place, the sound sickeningly loud in the crushing silence. He glanced at his sword, still embedded in the ground yards away. He simply crooked a finger. The greatsword ripped itself from the earth and flew into his hand, the blade now weeping with the same black and blue energy that formed his crown.

"Your ancestors tore my land from me, slaughtered my people, their blood that fed your vegetation, that you cattle sustained themselves on, all of it sired from their extinction," the Tyrant King declared, his voice a cataclysm. "Loyalty is a chain for dogs. A king is not a title to be earned. It is a state of being. It is the power to make reality itself… kneel."

He took a single step forward. The universe bent around him. Evant, the Scion of the Urso, hero of the resistance, felt his very soul tremble. The tonnage of genuine fear he'd felt before was a fond memory. This was not fear. This was the hopeless, instinctual certainty of utter annihilation. He was looking at a man who had not just unlocked a new power, but had become a fundamental, terrifying law of nature.

The cobalt fire of the Tyrant’s Dominion did not burn like a normal flame. It consumed less magic. It was barely being contained by the barrier placed in order to keep the attendees of the event safe. The ground around Myos, a wasteland of shattered glass, began to warp. Shards lifted into the air, not scattering, but slowly revolving around him like the beginnings of an accretion disk, their edges glowing with the same malevolent blue. The air itself seemed to bend, distorting the horizon into a sickening curve centered entirely on him.

Evant felt his oath, the very core of his being, being actively dismantled. It was a terrifying, intimate violation. The golden sigils etched on his skin flickered and died, leaving behind faint, pink scars. The memory of his power was a phantom limb, an ache for a strength that was no longer his. He was just a man again—a large, grievously wounded man, facing a law of nature.

Myos took a slow, deliberate step, the ground groaning under his boot. The sound was no longer just a footstep; it was a tectonic plate shifting to his will.

“Oath Magic,” Myos’s layered voice rasped, the sound scraping at the inside of Evant’s skull. “It is a child’s fantasy. It feeds on belief, on loyalty, on… love.” He said the word as if it were a disease. “Pretty, fragile things. You believe your king is worthy, and so the world grants you a spark. A little golden temper tantrum.”

He raised a hand, not toward Evant, but to the sky. The oppressive blue aura flared, and the very air around Evant began to crystallize, forming invisible walls that pressed in, groaning under an impossible pressure.

“Dominion is not a belief,” the Tyrant continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried with the force of a hurricane. “It is the fundamental truth. It is the principle that a boot exists to crush a throat. That the strong are, and the weak are not. I do not need to believe. I simply… am. And will never not be...”

The pressure intensified. Evant’s bones creaked, and he fell to one knee, the simple act of breathing a monumental effort. The fear was no longer an emotion; it was his entire environment. It was the air he breathed, the ground he knelt on, the light that blinded him.

Myos lowered his hand and pointed a single, gauntleted finger at Evant. “Your oath gave you the strength to break my armor and my bones. A commendable feat. But my Dominion will break your soul. It will show you the truth.”

A beam of pure cobalt nothingness, silent and absolute, shot from his fingertip. It didn't strike Evant’s body; it struck his mind.

Pain, white-hot and absolute, was the lesser part of it. The real agony was the corruption. The image of Dalazar, his noble king, burned in his mind's eye—but it was twisting. He saw Dalazar not standing tall, but kneeling, his quiet dignity replaced by sniveling fear. He saw Dalazar offering his crown to Myos, begging for a merciful death. He saw the years of quiet suffering not as resilience, but as pathetic weakness.

"No," Evant gasped, blood and saliva drooling from his lips. The golden light of his conviction was a single, guttering ember now, about to be extinguished by an ocean of despair. His oath was a lie. His loyalty was a fool’s errand. His king was weak.

The thought almost broke him. The ember almost died.

But then, through the haze of psychic torment, another memory surfaced. Not a grand vision of kingship, but a small, simple moment. Years ago, a younger Evant, then just a squire, had tripped and sent a platter of priceless royal dishes crashing to the floor. He had expected a tongue-lashing, disgrace. Instead, Dalazar, then a prince, had knelt beside him, helped him pick up the shards, and said with a small, weary smile, "It is the intent, not the vessel, that holds the true value, Evant."

It was a small kindness. Insignificant. Weak.

And yet… it was true.

The truth of that kindness, of that quiet, unyielding decency, was a shield. A tiny, imperfect shield against an infinite storm, but it was his.

"No," Evant repeated, his voice no longer a gasp but a raw, grating growl. He forced his head up, his eyes meeting the abyssal pits of the Tyrant. The corrupted images of his king shattered like glass. He saw Dalazar as he truly was: a man who bore the weight of a broken kingdom with a spine of gentle steel.

Even if he was weak, he was good. And that was enough.

Myos’s smirk faltered, replaced by a flicker of genuine rage. That this insect, stripped of his power, his body broken, could still resist? It was an insult to the very concept of Dominion.

"Stubborn little bear," the Tyrant’s voice boomed, the cacophony rising in volume. "I'll break you...and then this entire Kingdom will burn!"

He drew his greatsword, the lightning-stained blade now wreathed in the same cobalt fire as his being. He raised it high for the final, world-ending blow.

But as the blade began its descent, a new light pierced the oppressive blue gloom.

It was not the fierce, roaring gold of Evant’s oath. It was a soft, gentle silver, like moonlight on calm water. The coming of sunrise after a brutal hurricane. It manifested not as a storm, but as a quiet, unshakeable pillar that descended from the grey sky, striking the ground between Evant and Myos like a bolt of white lightning. The cobalt fire hissed and recoiled where it touched the light, not with the violence of warring elements, but as darkness naturally flees a dawn.

It was then that Myos's eyes narrowed into seething slits. As if every bone in his body became aware of the energy source....

He was slender, dressed in a simple, travel-worn royal blue cloak, his face etched with a chronic weariness that could not entirely hide its handsome lines. Upon his person, he donned the ancestral King's thread of the First King. It was Dalazar. His garment was etched with runes of ancient power. The entire Kingdom seemed to hold its breath. Onohall rose from her seated position, her hands covering her mouth in shock. He had changed, grown so much in the years since his escape...yet she knew without a doubt at first glance.

"Da..Dalazar, my son," were the only words she could utter under the weight of relief that washed over her.

He stopped, his gaze falling first on Evant’s crumpled form. A flicker of immense pain crossed his features, but a resolve banked it as deep and quiet as the night sky. Then, he looked up at the god-like figure of Myos, whose blade was still frozen in the air. The other members of the royal houses stood in awe. The same boy whom they once believed to be a failure, a magicless whelp sullying the Ri'ore name, now stood as the only thing between them and total ruin at the hands of his brother.

“That is enough, Myos,” Dalazar said. His voice was not loud, not filled with power or rage. It was calm, clear, and carried an authority that had nothing to do with Dominion and everything to do with right.

"Or should I say...Azzar?"

Myos slowly lowered his greatsword, a true, predatory smile spreading across his horrifying face. The layered voices spoke with a chilling, singular glee.

“Dalazar. I was wondering when the lamb would come looking for his lost guard dog.” He gestured with his blade toward the kneeling, bleeding Evant. “He fought for you. He broke my bones for you. A truly loyal creature.”

Dalazar’s silver aura pulsed gently, a quiet heartbeat in the face of the Tyrant’s raging blue sun. He looked past the monster, his eyes finding Evant’s.

“He did more than that,” Dalazar said, his voice soft but resonant. “He showed you that a king is not the source of his subjects’ strength.” He took another step forward, placing himself fully between his knight and the Tyrant. “He is a reflection of it.”

Myos laughed, a sound like grinding worlds. “Words. The weapons of the weak. Your knight is broken. Your kingdom is mine. What do you have left to fight with, ‘King’ Dalazar?”

He forged a magic barrier around Evant, sending him out of the arena. Through their bond, he instructed Evant to secure the others.

Dalazar met his gaze without flinching.

"I am The Emerald Sea..."

That simple utterance forced the magic seeping into him to bloom into a blossom of lightning aura. The currents of white lightning danced around him like a willful spirit. Evant, still gripping with his rage and frustration, his heart thick with worry. He had to, though; he had to have faith in the one who would inherit the future of his people.

"Spark behind the artist's eyes, Laugh that lightens PAIN!"

A thick mystical aura mingled with the silver as the crackling lightning intensified, shaking the ground beneath them. Myos's eyes narrowed at the words of his now departed father. Words once taught to him to see if he possessed the Emerald Soul... a mantra that reminded him of his failure.

"I am the Union! My dream CONNECTS, not divides."

Dalazar's magic bubbled around him like ocellated motes of lightning, becoming more vital and more profound as his convictions rose. His words echoed in the hearts of every Denkou around. Each feeling the unity of spirit that bound them to their King. The nobles of each house stood to their feet in observance of the dialect of Kings not observed since the inauguration of the Fifth king himself, many centuries ago.

"Words that flare, Inspire! The courage to resist desire."

The mantra passed from Ains, the first King, to Nivian, the Second; Valerius, the Third; Roric the Fourth, Dracovis the Fifth, and now by Dalazar, the sixth heir. But as he spoke these words, their ancient creed filling his body with The Emerald King's flare, the cursed spirit of Azar dwelling in Myos became disturbed, irritated as if the mere sight of Dalazr's White lightning burned at its core, forcing Myos to stumble back, gritting his teeth.

"I am summer rain. Cloudburst onto the barren."

His magic began thickening like spiraling cumulous clouds as they swirled around him like a furious tornado of valorous jade. His words, embellished with the backing of thunder, boomed with primal fury, its erratic maelstrom of fury spelling into the sky, busting through the roof like a sprouting tree of verdant lightning, saturating the clouds above with its retribution. The storm that had stood vigil over the Denkou Kingdom over the mountains of the Emerald Ascension for eons was now his to command.

His birthright.

"The Bud"

The skies boomed

"The Seed"

The winds wailed

The Hope"

Lightning flashed thickly through the skies, and a massive bolt of green lightning cascaded down upon Dalazar, baptizing him in the fullness of the Emerald Soul. His eyes glared brightly with a golden flare that softened into a perlescent white, and the black tone of his hair seemed to evaporate, replaced by a silvery hue.

"I Am Dalazar Ain's Ri'ore, The Sixth Emerald King!"

As Dalazar stood before Myos, gleaming with a divine glare that could only be attained by the chosen, not the demanding, his eyes were simmering pits of malice.

“Myos,” Dalazar’s voice cut through the crackle, “you cling to the idea of salvation while you wound the very flesh you claim to protect.”

“Dalazar… even now you remain a thorn in my side… can’t any of you understand that I am trying to save our home?!” Myos’s tone was a strained echo of the arrogance that had once driven him, now softened by an undercurrent of desperation.

In that single moment, Dalazar saw a flicker of the brother he once knew, a ghost of camaraderie beneath the tyrant’s hardened mask. It vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a cold resolve.

“Somehow… I don’t doubt that it began. You’ve always upheld the law set in stone by the Third King. Laws that once saw our Kingdom stand near the pinnacle of Madeiran might… And yet… they forced us further into isolation. We were once a unit united by the desire to prosper… titles, status… somewhere along the line these things became more important.”

“My brother, the danger is not merely from outside. Right now, in this very moment, YOU are the biggest threat to the very place you swear you wish to protect. Can you not see the lunacy in this… You are killing your kin!”

“Enough!” Myos roared, a sound not of flesh but of collapsing stars and tortured dimensions. The cursed spirit Azzar recoiled from the Emerald Soul’s light like a forge‑fire brand. The ground shuddered as the monstrous fusion of man and entity surged forward, cracking beneath the sheer malice of its advance.

"I will not be swayed from what I know shall bring peace....and unyielding fist from an unyielding King...an Eternal King!"

The layered voices bellowed. Myos’s obsidian greatsword cleaved the air, birthing a screaming rift in reality—a wave of raw, blazing annihilation that threatened to scorch the very concept of existence.

Dalazar did not retreat. He stood as a pillar amidst the tide, a living conduit of the storm. With a fluid motion, he unsheathed Umina using only his left hand, the jade blade, forged from Illuminte, catching the torrent of lightning that rose from his fingertips. The blade’s edge was etched with runes that glimmered like rain‑kissed glass, each line a conduit for the raw, esoteric currents he could summon at will. The air itself seemed to part, a lattice of electric filaments weaving around the blade, each strand a living thread of thunder. In the same motion he used to draw his blade, he cleaved the flames in twain, the divergent waves of flames clashing against the barrier. He settled into the Royal Sword stance, and the nobles gathered, shuddered. It had been ages since they witnessed the inherited sword form of the Kings.

Myoas growled in fury before releasing an onslaught of jagged, flaming tendrils from his back. It was then that Dalazar's eyes flared.

"First Dance: Stride of Valor!"

The Royal Sword Style was not just about the blade; it was about the body, the soul, and the lightning that bound them. Dalazar’s first step was an explosion. Not of sound, but of motion. He didn’t run; he arrived. A crackle of ozone was the only testament to his movement. The tendrils stabbed at the space he had occupied, chewing through the stone floor with corrosive energy.

His first cut was a low, rising diagonal slash aimed at Myos’s leading leg. Myos, with Azzar’s preternatural senses, brought the obsidian greatsword down in a brutal, intercepting block. The clang wasn't metal on metal; it was a thunderclap that shook the very foundations of the arena. But Dalazar was already gone.

He flowed into his second step, the momentum of the blocked first strike coiling in his hips and shoulders. A burst of kinetic lightning erupted from his heels, propelling him in a tight arc around Myos’s guard. The second strike was a horizontal slash aimed at the ribs. Again, Myos reacted, the massive blade a blur of black fire, but he was a fraction too slow. Umina’s jade edge didn't meet the block; it slid past it, scoring a shallow but sizzling line across Myos's cursed armor. Emerald lightning flared, eating at the Tyrant-blue energy.

Myos roared in frustration, a sound of grinding tectonic plates. He swung wildly, a desperate attempt to catch the phantom that assailed him. But Dalazar’s Stride was a relentless crescendo. Third step, a thrust straight for the heart, forcing a panicked parry. Fourth step, a spinning backhand slash that forced Myos to stumble back. Each strike was faster, harder, more precise than the last. He wasn't just attacking; he was dictating the rhythm of the battle, forcing the lumbering power of the Tyrant King into a desperate, reactive dance.

“Stand still and DIE!” the layered voices bellowed. Myos planted his feet, anchoring himself, and unleashed a nova of blue-black fire from his body, a thirty-foot sphere of raw annihilation.

The Stride of Valor, for all its aggression, could not break through such an absolute defense. So, Dalazar changed his song.

"Second Dance: Weave of the Serpent!"

As the wave of fire washed over him, Dalazar’s form became insubstantial. He didn’t dodge it; he yielded to it, his body dissolving into a stream of lightning that flowed through the gaps in the energy, like water through a net. He solidified just at the edge of the blast, Umina already tracing a new path.

Myos, his energy spent in the outburst, charged. The greatsword fell in a series of earth-shattering blows—vertical chops that split the flagstones, horizontal sweeps that carved gouges into the arena walls, and powerful thrusts that punched holes in reality itself.

Dalazar met none of them. He became an apparition of green lightning and steel. He flowed backwards, sideways, his footwork a mesmerizing, impossible pattern. The edge of the greatsword missed his throat by less than an inch, the wind of its passage stirring his silver hair. He ducked under a sweep so low his cloak brushed the floor, the blade screaming over his head.

But he was not merely evading. As he weaved, Umina was a serpent’s fang. A flick of the wrist, and the tip of the blade darted out, striking the joint of Myos's gauntlet, a spark of lightning disrupting his grip for a microsecond. A subtle shift in angle, and the blade glided along the flat of the descending greatsword, not to block, but to bleed off its force, ending with a precise prick to the wrist beneath. These were not killing blows. They were annoyances, distractions, a thousand paper cuts to a raging bear. They were designed to frustrate, to madden, to make his brother over-commit.

And it worked.

“Tricks! Cowardly TRICKS!” Myos screamed, his frustration boiling over. He abandoned all pretense of form, channeling Azzar’s full might into a single, all-encompassing spinning attack, turning himself into a whirlwind of obsidian and Tyrant-fire, a vortex of death meant to shred anything within its radius.

He had invited the whirlwind. Dalazar was happy to answer.

"Third Dance: Whirlwind's Reprise!"

Instead of retreating from the spinning doom, Dalazar moved into it. He began to spin in the opposite direction, a tight, controlled pirouette. Umina was no longer a weapon of offense or evasion; it was a conductor.

The first impact came. The flat of Myos’s greatsword met Dalazar’s katana. But there was no jarring block. Dalazar angled Umina perfectly. The force of Myos’s blow didn’t stop; it was caught, guided along the curve of Dalazar’s own spin, and redirected. Myos’s own momentum tried to pull him off balance, while Dalazar’s spin accelerated.

Another strike came, and another. Each time, Dalazar’s blade intercepted, not with force, but with flawless geometry and esoteric physics. He became the calm eye of his brother’s storm. The shriek of metal on metal became a rising, harmonic hum. Sparks of blue and green flew in a dazzling, deadly shower. He was stealing every ounce of kinetic energy from Myos’s frantic assault, channeling it, coiling it within his own body and blade. The air around Dalazar grew thick, charged with an impossible amount of power. The jade steel of Umina began to glow with the intensity of a young star. He was a dynamo, converting his brother’s hatred into raw, usable power.

Myos, feeling his own strength being siphoned away, faltered. His spin slowed, his movements becoming sluggish, confused. He had thrown a hurricane at his brother, and his brother had simply caught it. In that moment of hesitation, the dance shifted for the final time.

"Fourth Dance: Dragon's Ascent!"

All the stolen momentum. All the coiled lightning. All the pain in Dalazar’s heart for the brother he had lost. It all surged into this final, singular moment.

Dalazar’s spin stopped instantly. He dropped into a crouch so low his knees nearly touched the ground, a predatory stillness that was more terrifying than any motion before it. The light in Umina condensed, no longer a glow but a solid, incandescent blade of pure, emerald lightning.

Then, he exploded upwards.

It wasn't a jump; it was a launch. A vertical surge of impossible speed and power. He didn't rise in a straight line but in a graceful, devastating arc, mirroring the mythical dragons of their kingdom’s lore. Umina led the way, carving a trail of blinding green light through the air. Erupting into a cataclysmic burst of lightning in the form of a dragon.

It was the ultimate expression of the Royal Sword Style—the culmination of the Stride’s aggression, the Weave’s precision, and the Whirlwind’s accumulated power.

Myos looked up, his eyes wide with a flicker of his old self, a hint of awe and terror. He tried to raise his greatsword, but it felt as heavy as a mountain. He was off-balance, drained, and utterly exposed.

The Dragon’s Ascent connected.

Dalazar’s blade struck the obsidian greatsword not to shatter it, but to use it as a conduit. The sound was not a clang, but the resonant chime of a cosmic bell. A wave of purified, concentrated lightning surged down Umina, through the cursed greatsword, and directly into Myos’s body.

The Tyrant-blue fire that wreathed him was snuffed out in an instant, replaced by a blinding flash of emerald. The layered voices of Myos and Azzar cried out in a single, unified shriek of agony and disbelief. The shadowy tendrils convulsed and dissolved into black smoke. The cursed spirit of Azzar was being violently, excruciatingly exorcised by the pure, unyielding light of the Emerald Soul.

Myos was thrown backwards, tumbling end over end until he crashed against the far barrier of the arena. The obsidian greatsword clattered from his grasp, its dark fire extinguished. The monstrous aura of the Tyrant King was gone.

Lying in the rubble, bruised and smoking, was just a man. His brother.

Dalazar landed silently, the light from Umina receding, the battle’s thunderous symphony fading into a heavy silence. He stood over Myos, his chest heaving, the tip of his katana resting gently on the stone beside his brother’s throat. The fight was over. The kingdom was safe from the Tyrant. But as he looked at the broken form of his brother, Dalazar felt no victory, only the profound, aching weight of what had been lost.

The storm was a shroud, and the silence within it was a tomb.

Rain, thick as tears, lashed the Grand Arena of Denkou, washing blood from the cobblestones in spiraling rivulets. The entire kingdom’s breath was frozen; collectively, the tension was as pervasive as the very tempest around them. They had witnessed a clash that would be sung of in dirges and epics for a thousand years. It was not merely a battle between the princes, Dalazar and Myos. It was a schism of the soul, two halves of a whole, each embodying the sacred ideal of king—the warrior’s spirit—battling for the right to rule, for what they believed was the salvation of their people.

Myos, the Tyrant King, champion of rule by absolute might. Dalazar, the returned exile, claimant by birthright and a gentler code. It was a collision of wills that defied Denkou history, shattered tradition, and instilled a deep, primal fear of the unknown. Yet, amidst that fear, a fragile hope had begun to bud—the hope of a realm restored to its rich glory.

Confusion, however, was a venom in their veins. Myos’s final, desperate speech before the duel’s crescendo echoed in the minds of the people. He had spoken of land stolen, of a kingdom built on the bones of his true people.

“Trembling of a mad king, surely,” one merchant had whispered to his wife, clutching her tight. “Is he not of the same soil?” another had asked, his loyalty wavering like a candle in the wind.

Even the nobles, now being ushered away from the arena by the Royal Guard, were bewildered. But one among them, Lord Evant, felt a cold dread settle in his stomach. His eyes, narrowed against the rain, remained fixed on the two figures in the center of the ring. He and he alone knew the terrible truth of Myos’s “ramblings.”

With the Tyrant King battered and bruised, the threat was finally over. Or so they thought.

Dalazar’s eyes, the color of a stormy sea, shifted with a weight he had never known. He thought he was prepared for this. This battle was a fated inevitability, a prophecy written the moment he fled Denkou and found asylum in Neovia. Yet as he stood over his elder brother’s broken body, he felt no vindication. There was no glee, no relief that the nightmare had ended. There was only a deep-rooted grief, a seeping sorrow that poisoned his victory and loosened the grip on his blade, Umina.

Myos’s chest rose and fell with the slowed cadence of a dying man. A bloody grin stretched his lips. "Do it, Dal…" The words rasped from his throat, a sound like stone grinding stone. He struggled to turn his head, to meet his brother’s gaze. "There… cannot be two kings… Please… free me of this, brother…"

Dalazar’s eyes widened. The plea was not one of defiance, but of exhaustion. Of surrender. In that moment, a memory surfaced, sharp and clear: his father, on the day his birthright was revealed to him back in the hidden sanctuary of Uran.

“Remember my son… You chose love.”

That statement. It was the core of him. It was a reminder of who Dalazar had always been, even with the cruel, murderous intent of his ancestors—the blood of the Denkoushi—singing a siren song in his veins. He was the man who would throw himself before a blade for those he loved, not the one who would turn that blade upon them. He chose love. He would always choose it.

That, to him, was what it meant to be King.

"No," he said, the word a quiet decree against the howling wind. He slid Umina into its sheath with a final, resonant click. "I will not stain myself with the sin of Kinslayer. I have lost one brother to madness already. I will not lose another to my own hand."

Myos’s broken grin faltered. "But you, Azar…"

The name hung in the air, a discordant note. Dalazar’s eyes simmered, his pupils narrowing to slits, like the serpent totem of his clan. "You can no longer be permitted in MY kingdom," he declared, his voice imbued with the authority he now claimed. "Not while you burn like a furnace of fury."

A low chuckle escaped Myos’s lips. It started small, a guttural rattle, then grew. Hehehehe.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The laughter was not Myos’s. It was ancient, hollow, and scarred the very air. A torrent of blazing blue flames, hotter and more intense than any smith’s forge, erupted from Myos’s body. The earth trembled catastrophically, fissuring and cracking as if an azure volcano were clawing its way from the depths. A veil of magnetic force, a remnant of Dalazar's power, manifested before him, a desperate shield against the searing heat.

"I have had enough of this farce," a new voice boomed, carrying the tonnage of a seething, splenetic god. It was a voice that had festered in darkness for millennia, now finally let loose. "This fool, fumbling in his fetted ego, made for a poor excuse for a vessel."

The flames were no longer fire; they were a scalding sapphire magma, burning away the flesh of their host. They solidified, reshaping Myos's form into a towering avatar of pure, burning hatred. Its eyes were blackened voids with retinas of crimson that wept embers. This was Azar, the Djinn of Flames, reborn.

The arcane barrier protecting the arena shattered like glass, unable to contain the sheer pressure of such a being's existence. The last of the fleeing nobles caught a glimpse of the monstrosity being born, and the storm swallowed their screams.

It was a living totem of hate. The amalgamated horror of Azar's people, the Azeri, who were slaughtered to the last by Ains, the First King of Denkou. Their malice, their pain, their centuries of resentment for the throne built upon their graves—it was all blended, creating the burning manifestation that now stood before Dalazar.

"This is it," the entity sneered, its voice a symphony of a thousand screaming souls. "The true battle finally begins." It looked down at the last vestiges of its host, a flicker of something almost like pity in its burning gaze. "This…"

It was then that Dalazar’s own power responded. The emerald lightning that had always crackled around his fists began to shift, to purify. It coalesced, brightening from the green of the earth to a righteous, blinding white, the color of a star’s heart. The electrical pulse of his radiant magic intrically coiled around him, seemingly ebbing with his very pulse. For the power of the storm, the essence of lightning was as intrinsic to his being as breath itself.

"Father...Mother...Nalumere...I will fulfill my promise to you all here...and now..."

He stood tall, the rain evaporating into steam before it could touch him, his sorrow forged into an unshakeable resolve.

"I will save you both!" Dalazar proclaimed, his voice ringing with the clarity of a thunderclap, a promise made not to a monster, but to the brother trapped within and the soul of the deity suffering alongside him.

The air rumbled, a deep, thoracic thrum that vibrated through the very firmament. It was the sound of Dalazar's lightning, a magic that did not crackle but gurgled like the voice of giants, bending the realm to its will. In opposition, a behemoth of blaze stood—or rather, hovered—before him. Azar, flame incarnate, an obstinate and righteous vengeance made manifest.

Their wills, in retrospect, were mirrors of one another: two rulers fiercely dedicated to their people. But while Azar refused to acknowledge this tragic union, this shared threat, Dalazar could do nothing but. He, the once wayward prince born with a pittance of magical blessing, had clawed his way to power not for glory, but to shield his family, his kin. And Azar, the passionate chieftain born with incomprehensible power, had used it only in defense of the Azeri and the land they loved so dearly.

Dalazar twisted through the blackened sky, a comet of white electricity. Azar, a harbinger of sapphire destruction, was hot on his trail. Only when the glittering spires of the Denkou kingdom were a distant memory did Dalazar halt, his black coat stilling in the turbulent air. Azar, however, offered no such reprieve.

Within the azure-skinned palm of Azar, a glint occurred, the sole, subtle tell of a spell's activation. From its center, a plume of sapphire flame manifested, a miniature sun burning with the incandescent rage of a cosmos. It roared forth, not merely traveling through the air but devouring it, leaving a vacuum of scorched atmosphere in its wake. As this enkilded star raged toward him, Dalazar's single arm grew bright. Lightning, raw and untamed, answered his call. Leagues of storm clouds bent to his will in an instant, the electrical potential folding, compressing, and solidifying into a wall of pure, white energy.

The fire made contact. Instead of exploding, its consistency shifted. The static charge of the wall became a cage, tendrils of lightning wrapping around the captured star, constricting it. Dalazar gripped his fist tight. With a silent command, the captive flame and its electrical prison smoldered into nothingness, leaving only the smell of ozone and ash.

Azar gritted his fangs, a sound like grinding stone. He did not relent. Soaring through the sky, he had just scarred, and he raised both hands. In the air around him, dozens, then hundreds, of magic sigils burned themselves into existence. They were glyphs of ancient power, clawing Azar's definitive dogma onto the fabric of the realm, glimmering like cerulean motes of starlight against the canvas of the bruised sky.

Dalazar's eyes shifted rapidly, tracking each sigil as it appeared. His magic sense, an innate ability to perceive and understand magical phenomena, screamed a dire warning. The ambient mana was being woven into a spell of terrifying complexity and scale.

"Flame Magic: Cradle Of Azar!!"

The name echoed in Dalazar’s memory, a phantom pain from a time the cursed flames of the Djynn had briefly possessed him. He recalled the devastation his own, minor display of the spell had caused, the scorched earth and weeping families. But to see it now, unleashed by its creator on such a majestic scale, was both awe-inspiring and a death sentence.

From the hundreds of sigils, beams of coiled flame, thin as spun thread, spewed forth. They were not mere jets of fire; they were hyper-condensed lasers of soul-burning energy, weaving a nexus of scathing and slicing light. They converged on him, a celestial loom stitching a tapestry of annihilation with him as its centerpiece. There was no room to evade, no quarter to be found. Only his lone sword arm remained.

"Lightning Soul Magic..." The mere utterance of the invocation sent shockwaves through the unseen realms. Currents of power ebbed from Dalazar, ripples in an ocean that swelled from gentle perturbations to tsunamis of palpable magical pressure. He gripped the hilt of his katana, Umina, and its jade runes blossomed with vigorous, emerald life as white lightning cloaked the blade.

"Endless Waltz of the Emerald Ocean..."

Just as the first thread was about to kiss his skin, Dalazar’s eyes flared. The thread met not flesh, but a nearly imperceptible slash from Umina. From that single stroke, a thousand others manifested in the same instant. Each phantom slash carried the force to sever the heavens, cleaving through the threaded lasers with a grace and precision only one who understood the soul of the blade could muster. He was a storm of steel contained in a single point, his movements an impossible dance of deflection and destruction.

As the last incandescent beam was thwarted by a final, definitive stroke, Dalazar spoke, his voice cutting through the din. "Azar... You were once a King whose blaze burned only those who threatened his people. Yours was a conflagration not of conquest, but of cultivation. You must remember who you were... what you were before..."

"Before your founder came and destroyed all that I cared for?" Azar snarled, his form already coiling for another assault. "Millennia, upon millennia, I watched over these mountains. In his flagrant disregard and yearning for power, Ains of Denkou tore the throat from my people and left me a ghost haunting my own grave!"

"What Ains did... was beyond foul. There are no words that could ever mend such a wound," Dalazar responded, his voice laden with a genuine, ancestral sorrow, even after all the horror Azar had inflicted while wearing his brother Myos's body. "And yet, look at what you have become! A flame of life and rebirth, sullied into an ember of enmity! Valor was once your brightest star! Now you feed on mired misery!"

"ENOUGH!" Azar's magical aura enkindled around his fist as he vanished, reappearing less than an inch from Dalazar’s face. Instinct, honed by countless battles, took over. Dalazar’s scarf, a simple strip of black cloth, jumped to life. Hardened to the strength of diamond by lightning-like reflexes, it whipped up, deflecting the killing blow. The sound was a sharp crack, like a mountain breaking. The momentary defense gave Dalazar just enough time to release his blade, letting it hang in the air, and slip into the fluid stances of his martial art. The Orochi Mage Style.

Azar followed with a sweeping kick, a scythe of blue flame that Dalazar nimbly ducked under. The lingering blaze singed his cheek as he returned the strike with a palm blow to Azar's chest, a contained burst of lightning that sent his opponent reeling back.

"You do not get to lecture me about purpose!" Azar roared, recovering instantly. "Not when this boy's hatred you feel exists because of your own lack of self-control! It is the nature of you Denkou to act so superior, your noses scraping the clouds while you treat those beneath you not as people, but as pets to be coddled!"

Their flurry of attacks intensified. It was a maelstrom of hand-to-hand combat, each clash of lightning and fire creating pockets of thermal devastation that warped the very air around them. The sound of their myriad strikes became too loud for words. So, as they fought, Dalazar’s mind reached out.

It's interesting, his soft but assertive voice rang in Azar's consciousness, a calm island in the storm of their battle. How two birds can fly in the same sky… for you are both correct and wrong about Ains.

Azar’s next punch, aimed at Dalazar’s head, faltered for a microsecond. It was enough. Dalazar parried, twisting his body around the blow.

When he first came here, it was under the guidance of Fulgora, the God of your old home, Edo, Dalazar’s thoughts continued, weaving through the violent dance. Fulgora promised a defeated and exiled Ains a new land for his people. He told him he needed only to defeat an evil king bequeathed with blue flames. It was only after he struck you down that Ains realized the heinous nature of Fulgora's intentions.

He had been lied to, manipulated into thinking he was being given a chance to start his blood-soaked life anew. But Fulgora used him. After absorbing you, Fulgora tried to absorb Ains as well. Only then did my ancestor see his folly.

Dalazar caught Azar's fiery wrist, his own hand crackling with white energy, neutralizing the flame. Their eyes locked, one pair burning with millennia of rage, the other with a profound, aching compassion.

Did you ever wonder why Ains did not recreate the life of war he lived on Edo here in Maidera? Did you ever stop to think what might have changed him?

Azar tried to wrench his arm free, but Dalazar’s grip was absolute.

It was you, Azar. Your soul, fragmented and absorbed, showed him what it was to love a people, to lead with a cultivator's hand instead of a conqueror's fist. Because of you, he understood the terrible sin he had committed. Your valor infected his ambition.

The rage in Azar’s eyes flickered, for the first time, with confusion. His inferno of hatred, so long his only fuel, was being doused by the cold, clear water of truth. A fissure of doubt cracked through his certainty.

In that moment of hesitation, Dalazar released him, placing a hand over his own heart. "He spent his life trying to atone. We all have. This kingdom was built on your ideals, not his."

"Zincara," he whispered.

And the universe shifted. The white lightning that defined Dalazar softened, its chaotic crackle smoothing into a rhythmic, serpentine flow. A brilliant, emerald light bled from his very being, washing over him. Behind him, a colossal form of pure order and light manifested—a great serpent, its scales shimmering with the laws of creation, its eyes holding the calm of an undisturbed ocean its presence just as vast and encompassing. Zincara, the Serpent Djynn of Order and Light, the primordial source from which all Djynn, including Azar, had sprung.

"My errant flame," a voice echoed, not through the air or the mind, but through the soul itself. It was the sound of cosmic balance, of stars being born. Zincara, speaking through Dalazar, reached out. It was not a hand of combat, but of reunion.

The blazing azure aura around Azar—around Myos’s body—recoiled. The fury fought against the encroaching calm, the chaos against the absolute order.

"You have burned long enough in the prison of another's sin," Zincara's voice soothed. "Your valor was fractured, your purpose perverted. Let go. Return to the whole. Be what you were meant to be."

A cool, silver-emerald light washed over Azar. It was not an attack; it was an embrace. It did not seek to extinguish his fire but to purify it, to strip away the millennia of accumulated grief, hatred, and vengeful purpose. The raging sapphire flames, born of righteous fury, began to soften. They swirled, their color lightening from a vindictive azure to a gentle, golden-orange, the color of a hearth fire, of a sunrise.

A final, agonized roar tore from Myos's throat, but it was not a roar of anger. It was a release of pain held for eons. The fiery aura receded, pulled back into the body it possessed, and then, with a final, gentle sigh, it vanished.

Myos's body, no longer suspended by magic, fell. Dalazar, his own power returning to him, caught his elder brother, cradling him gently. The storm they had created subsided. The blackened sky began to clear, revealing the first, tentative stars. Azar's spirit knew peace one more time. time. He had been returned to his origin, his essence of Valor restored, no longer a specter of vengeance but a dormant seed of virtue once more. The war was over. Dalazar looked down at his sleeping brother, then up at the peaceful sky, knowing the long, arduous work of healing was just beginning. But that finally....finally...

"It's....finally over."

The victory song of the Emerald Ascension was a raw, throbbing thing, born of exhaustion and the desperate joy of survival. It echoed through the crystalline spires of the Denkou Kingdom, a melody of cheers and weeping, of menders tending to the wounded and soldiers embracing atop lightning-scorched battlements. They had held. Against the latest, most brutal assault, they had held the line. The Storm, their eternal guardian, still churned in the sky, a furious emerald maelstrom that had, for centuries, rendered their mountaintop home impregnable.

But the song of victory was a fragile thing, and it was shattered by a new sound, a dissonant chord that vibrated through the very stone of the Ascension.

It was the thrum of engines and the pounding of war drums.

High above, where the Storm should have been an impassable wall of wind and lethal lightning, a fissure had been torn. A B’halian dreadnought, a vessel of cold, grey iron, hovered impossibly in the temporary calm. They had not broken the Storm; their empire’s greatest minds had merely bent it, just enough, for just long enough.

At the open hatch of the aircraft, Captain Kilik stared down at the kingdom below. The wind whipped at her hair, but she stood immovable, a statue of vengeance given form. Her hand pressed against her side, where, beneath her uniform, a bandage soaked with poultice covered a wound that had not yet finished knitting. The pain was a distant throb, a petty annoyance compared to the cold fire in her cherry blossom eyes. That she should be the one to lead this assault was, to her, the purest form of poetic justice. The Denkou, these self-proclaimed masters of the storm, the very people who had long ago slaughtered her aquatic ancestors for defending their waters against colonizers. This was not a conquest. It was divine retribution.

Her exosuit, a sleek, form-fitting marvel of B’halian engineering, was woven with a special electricity-retardant substance. A necessary precaution against a kingdom of lightning-wielders. But Kilik was the inheritor of forces that bypassed such mundane laws. She was a creature of the deep, a humanoid water dragon, and today, she would be the tsunami that washed this blight from the mountain.

“I…have a bad feeling about this, Kilik.” The voice was a whisper in her mind, ethereal and layered with the weight of ages: Orvyn, the dragon spirit bound to her soul. “The commander barely gave you time to heal from your last fight. To throw you into a battle of this scale… with only fifty soldiers? It is madness.”

Kilik’s gaze did not waver from the quarry below. A young soldier, clutching a data pad, approached her cautiously.

“Of this scale? They may be potent spell casters,” she thought, her mental voice a sharp counterpoint to Orvyn’s concern. “But in the end… they are only human.”

“Ma’am,” the soldier saluted, his voice steady despite the churning abyss below. “All functions are in the green. The Kor, Goblin Tinkerers, and Vulqin Salamanders are all in position; we are ready to engage on your command.”

Kilik inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to draw in the very essence of the moment. The world seemed to freeze. In that suspended second, she mourned. She mourned the children who would never see another dawn, the mothers torn from their families, the fathers who would die bravely, pointlessly, in defense of a legacy of violence. She saw the weight of every life she was about to extinguish.

But it was only a second.

Upon her exhale, the moment shattered. The delicate scales that traced her temples and the backs of her hands ignited with a fiery, coral-pink light, the visual manifestation of her immense power.

“Pierce the veil…” she commanded, her voice clear and cold.

A separate hangar bay on the dreadnought irised open, unveiling a colossal cannon. It hummed to life, its core swelling with a baleful energy capable of scouring a town from the map. It fired, not at the kingdom, but at the Storm itself. The beam struck the emerald chaos, and where it hit, the rampaging gales softened, the lethal lightning faltered, creating a temporary, slitted passage.

“For the glory… Of Vescrutia…” Kilik whispered.

“For the Empire!” The cry came from the ship, and the invasion began.

Pods were ejected, streaking through the slit in the storm like falling stars, crashing into the heart of the celebrating city.

Chaos, precise and calculated, erupted.

From one pod emerged the Goblin Tinkerers, small, green, and impossibly resourceful. They cackled, not with joy, but with the glee of perfect sabotage. With clever devices and alchemical bundles, they targeted support structures and power conduits. The explosions that followed were not mere blasts of fire, but symphonies of collapse, bringing towers and walkways down upon the heads of the bewildered Denkou.

From another pod came the Vulqin Salamanders, their skin glowing with inner heat, their breaths leaving trails of smoke in the air. They were the arsonists. They did not simply set fires; they unleashed conflagrations. With a touch, homes became furnaces, streets became rivers of magma, and the very air shimmered with unbearable heat, trapping and consuming those within.

And from the shadows, the Kor arachnids moved. Eight-legged horrors of chitin and venom, they were the silent reapers. They skittered up walls and across ceilings, weaving webs not of silk, but of solidified magic and paralytic toxin. Denkou soldiers, their lightning bolts fizzling against the Kor’s natural armor, were ensnared mid-stride, left helpless as venomous fangs delivered a swift and silent end.

Then came the final pod. It did not crash; it dissolved around Kilik as she fell from the sky, a vengeful goddess descending. A magic sigil, complex and swirling like a tidal chart, blazed to life beneath her. She raised her hands, and the very moisture of the atmosphere answered her call. Water vapor condensed, pulled from the clouds and the air itself, coalescing into a massive, oscillating sphere around her. It grew with every foot she dropped, a miniature moon of terrifying potential.

“Noa Sozu!” she invoked, her draconic nature surging forth. Her scales blazed with coral light, channeling her power into the aquatic titan she commanded.

“Cascading Meteor!!!”

The colossal sphere of water broke from her grip and fell. It aimed to slam into the Royal District with the force of a falling star. The impact would not be an explosion, but an obliteration. Stone and crystal would dissolve into a slurry under the immense pressure. Should it hit, a colossal crater would be born in an instant, and from it, a tsunami of unleashed water would radiate outwards, tearing through the heart of the kingdom like papier-mache. The sound was a world-ending roar, drowning out the screams of the thousands who perished in the flash flood.

The victory songs of the Denkou were gone, replaced by the crackle of Salamander fires, the distant cackle of Goblins, and the dreadful silence of utter devastation. She stood alone, a single, scale-gleaming figure in a wasteland of her own making, the blade of the empire finally buried in the heart of her enemy. The Storm above, recovering its fury, could only bear witness. It was too late. The veil had been pierced.

The people wept, not only for the lives lost under the reign of fear, but for the sins of their forefathers that the flame Djynn Azar had laid bare. The fire spirit’s pale light had danced across the Irirbrium, the mental nexus that linked every Denkou, and there, in the shimmering web of memory, the ancient transgressions of the royal line had been exposed. Regret settled like ash upon the crowd, yet the relief of survival—of breathing after years of oppression—filled the air with a fierce, humming hope.

When the Emerald King stepped forward, the courtyard swelled with a tide of tears and cheers. The emerald banner that had once hung deserted on the highest tower now unfolded in a torrent of green silk, its color a promise of renewal. Dalazar—sixth of his name, the true heir—felt the absence of love that had haunted him for two long years dissolve into the warm weight of his subjects’ gratitude. “Gods, how I have missed you,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the clamor, “my family, my people.”

A sudden cry cut through the celebration.

“My Lord!”

Evant, his stalwart knight, staggered forward, blood staining his armor. The healers swarmed, but even bruised, his eyes burned bright. Dalazar’s own heart clenched; pride steadied his trembling gaze.

“My Knight…you live.”

“Fate herself would have a hard time keeping me down,” Evant rasped, grasping the king’s forearm.

The two men embraced, a brief, fierce collision of weight and relief. For a heartbeat, Dalazar let the centuries of responsibility spill onto Evant’s shoulders, and Evant bore them without protest. The moment was shattered by another voice, high and urgent as a sparrow’s song.

“Sir Evant, might I have a moment with the pri‑no… with the King?”

The crowd shifted, parting like a sea before the tide. Onohall, Dalazar’s mother, moved through the throng with a regal grace honed by years of hidden counsel. Each step whispered of forgotten battles and whispered prayers. Yet when she saw her youngest son, the composure of a queen cracked, and she rushed to him.

“M‑mother…,” Dalazar managed, his throat raw after two years of silence. The words felt forbidden, as though speaking them might summon the very exile he had endured.

She threw her arms around him, a hug that seemed to draw the sun’s own heat into his bones. The world narrowed to the feel of her breath, her pulse, the steady thrum of life that had survived the tyrant’s shadow.

“You… you’ve come back to me… to us,” she breathed, eyes glittering with a tangled palette of pride, grief, and fierce joy. “You’re a king amongst kings now.”

Dalazar pressed his palms to her cheeks, feeling the tremor of the woman who had erased his true name, who had hidden the memory of his twin brother’s death to shield him from the world’s cruelty.

“Mother… I forgive you,” he whispered, and her shoulders shuddered as tears—both of guilt and relief—cascaded down her face.

A contingent of soldiers approached, cradling the chained figure of Myos, unconscious and gaunt. The crowd’s roar fell to a hushed gasp.

“What would you have us do with him?” A guard asked, eyes flicking between the fallen tyrant and the newly crowned king.

Dalazar’s mind swirled with the echo of his father’s dying words: “Justice is a blade that must be tempered, not plunged.” He lifted his gaze to the sea of faces—nobles, civilians, children—each waiting for his judgment, each a mirror of the kingdom’s soul.

“Take him to the infirmary. Tend his wounds. When he can speak, we will hear his confession,” Dalazar commanded, voice resonant through the Irirbrium, the mental thread binding every Denkou.

Murmurs rose, but no objection could find a foothold; the people had little patience for further bloodshed. As the guards turned, a deafening screech split the sky, a sound like the world itself tearing apart.

From the clouds descended a single, ominous aircraft—its insignia.

B’halia had come.

The ship shuddered, and the storm‑forged barrier that had shielded the Denkou for ages cracked, splitting asunder. Pods burst from its belly, spilling nightmare upon the kingdom.

First, the Goblin Tinkerers leapt out, green and wiry, their eyes alight with manic glee. They hurled alchemical devices at the city’s power conduits; bolts of arcane energy snapped, and towers collapsed in a symphony of crushing stone and shrieking metal. The streets were filled with the shrill clang of broken gears.

Next, the Vulqin Salamanders erupted, their scales glowing like embers. With a single breath, they ignited thatched roofs; flames rose like rivers of molten gold, swallowing homes and casting the city in a hellish glow. The air thickened, a choking veil of smoke that stung every lung.

From the shadows, the Kor arachnids descended, eight‑legged horrors cloaked in venomous silk. Their webs were not mere threads but hardened magic, snapping shut on soldiers and civilians alike. Their hearts fell silent, their cries strangled by poison.

“They’ve breached the barrier!” Evant shouted, eyes wild.

“This should be impossible!” Onohall cried, clutching her son’s arm.

Dalazar, already bruised from the duel with his brother, felt the weight of the world settle upon his shoulders once more. He raised his hand, and through the Irirbrium his thought rippled: “Noble houses, defend your districts! Protect the civilians!” The call resonated like a drumbeat across the city, spurring men and women into fierce, desperate defense.

Above the maelstrom, a massive azure mass loomed—a meteor of compressed water, a damning promise of cataclysm. Lightning arced about Dalazar, crackling along Umina’s edge, as if the blade itself begged for release. He vaulted into the sky, the wind tearing at his cloak, and with a roar of thunder, he slashed at the descending sphere. Each strike sent arcs of pure energy spiraling through the meteor, shattering it into a torrent of rain that hammered the battlefield, dousing flames and cooling the scorching heat of the salamanders.

In the heart of the storm, a figure hovered, radiant as a sunrise frozen in crystal. Her eyes burned like twin cherry stars; hair cascaded in a serene blue river, and scales of nebular light rippled across her form. She was the architect of the water mass, the commander of the B’halian fleet.

Dalazar’s voice thundered, hoarse and fierce, as lightning crackled harder around him.

“I will ask you but once… leave my home.”
The woman’s smirk was a crescent of ice.

The battle raged on below—Denkou soldiers clashing with goblin devices, civilians fleeing the salamander‑wrought infernos, the Kor's webs tightening around the desperate. Yet Dalazar’s gaze never wavered from the enemy commander. He could feel the pulse of the Irirbrium, a heartbeat of every Denkou, urging him forward.

The Cascading Meteor, Kilik’s usual opening gambit, a celestial orb of oceanic fury capable of ending battles before they even began, met an unexpected, violent end. A flurry of impossibly swift slashes, a whirlwind of steel so precise it defied the very laws of physics, tore through its mass. What had been a hulking orb of devastation was now reduced to a showering downpour, its watery essence dissipating into the crisp mountain air.

As the transformed rain cascaded around her, Kilik was finally able to lay eyes upon her assailant. Before her stood a boy, who appeared at first glance to be little older than a teenager. He was clad in light, flowing robes, attire that seemed utterly incongruous with the ferocity of his attack, not befitting a warrior at all. An emerald scarf, the color of the very mountain peak they stood upon, sparkled vibrantly in the sunlight. As Kilik’s cosmic-nebula scales shifted, allowing her a closer look, she noticed he only had one arm. By all conventional standards, he should have registered as an unassuming, wounded civilian, a pedestrian warrior.

But Kilik was no fool. Even her immense pride and power, the very essence of her draconic nature, couldn’t blind her to the subtle prickling sensation that coursed through her scales. For, despite his youthful appearance and seemingly fragile build, Kilik’s finely honed senses, honed over millennia of draconic existence, could detect a potent current of magic coursing through him. Old, powerful, ancient magic. And though it was not of the elder dragonic nature that flowed through her own veins, it was reminiscent of something akin to the dragon blood within her.

“Be cautious, Kilik…” A voice, ancient and resonant, echoed not in her ears, but within the core of her being. It was Orvyn, the primordial spirit, the ancient dragon that had once possessed her grandmother and now resided within her.

Kilik’s hand instinctively tightened around the hilt of her blade, Vorpalion. Its aqueous matter, a fluid metal that shimmered like a thousand captured tides, gleamed in the twirling sunlight. “He’s strong,” she acknowledged, her cherry-pink eyes hardening.

Yet, the revelation of his power changed nothing about her purpose. No matter how potent her opponent, Kilik would not falter. She was divinely appointed to unleash every technique in her arsenal, to crush them beneath her might. It was the fate of all humans, and indeed, of all who dared to stand with them. For the honor of the B’halian Empire, for the well-being of the planet, the seas, and all those she was sworn to protect, she would be unwavering.

Then again, this particular battle held even deeper roots than her loyalty to B’halia. Several thousand years ago, a group of foreign settlers, the ancestors of this very kingdom, had traversed the seas from the east, from the land of Edo. The waters they had trespassed upon belonged to the Atlantians, Kilik’s people. The two forces had clashed in a cataclysmic conflict that became a historic and bloody moment in Madeiran legacy: The Clash of the Sky and Sea. It had ended with both sides having suffered grievous losses, teetering on the brink of mutual extinction. Only through a desperate, uneasy treaty had both parties managed to avert total annihilation.

But the scars carved by that war ran deep as the ocean’s bottomless black. And Orvyn, the draconic spirit within Kilik, its rage and millennia-old thirst for vengeance, born of her past vessel, Kilik’s grandmother, burned brighter this day than it had in countless ages. This invasion, led by Kilik, was more than just a conquest; it was a karmic adjustment, a universal alignment, a brutal rectification of a heinous wrong committed against the Atlantians. And Kilik would be its arbiter, holding nothing back.

“Your home?” she intoned, her voice laced with the ancient authority of her lineage. She unsheathed Vorpalion slowly, deliberately. Her aura began to manifest around her, blossoming from a soft cherry pink, the color of her eyes, into a deeper, more menacing hue, close to blood red.

“This land that you stole, trekking upon the bodies of the Atlantians your kind slaughtered to get here…” Her form tightened, the cosmic nebulae on her scales swirling with intensified energy. “You don’t have a home… nor a future.”

With a guttural cry, a primal roar that vibrated through the very stone of the mountain, Kilik invoked her power. “Noa Banyu; Hokostu!” In that singular instance, her remaining hand gripped Vorpalion firmly. When she unleashed her magic this time, there were no incantations, no hand signs to mitigate its raw power. Its release impressed her will upon the world around her, invigorating her very being. Her draconian magic, the essence of the primordial dragon of water, channeled into her feet before using them to propel herself off the glyph that had manifested upon her invocation, with an exhibit of uncanny force and speed. This was Kilik’s birthright: Wyrmspeech, the ability to command the elements and impress her will upon the world.

In the blink of an eye, Kilik accosted the boy before her. Vorpalion, now a gleaming arc of cherry pink and electric blue, was mere centimeters from his waist, aimed to cleave him in twain.