Searing fire burst outward, and Aphelia moved with the blaze like a swallow riding a gust.

Sparks fanned out like shrapnel; perfect cover in a storm of embers. The shadows guarding the middle-aged man stayed still, stone statues under moonlight.

She angled for a one-strike finish, eyes on the figure penned in the center. A burly shadow with a greataxe read the wind before she did. It hacked the flames apart, and the blood-splattered edge skimmed past her like a scythe through wheat.

“Ancient Martial Flow—”

She didn’t punch. She sank her hips, a willow bent by wind, and her slender leg snapped up at the axman whose swing hadn’t yet recovered.

“Bonebreaker!”

Her Arcane Power narrowed to a needlepoint, a spark driven into the joint’s husk. It slipped inside like a seed, then bloomed as thunder.

Without the bone plates as a shell, the unevolved joint powdered under her violent Arcane Power, sand in a rushing stream. The burly form lost its pillar. The greataxe and heavy bone armor turned into anchors, and he crashed down with a landslide thud.

“Flame Magic—”

Hands raised, she wove a scarlet array, red as a brand on fresh snow.

A note here matters, brief as a bell-strike: spells are the single strokes mages use; magic is a composite weave that binds several spells into a new one. Because it’s complex and fickle, mages don’t label it a spell. They call it magic.

The one she cast was her own long-forged composite—Wildfire Sweeps the Plains. It eats wide fronts like grassfire, which is why she aimed to slam it into the fallen axman.

“Wildfire Sweeps the Plains!”

Fire-rain still pattered like molten hail. Her array roared again, a furnace-breath that swallowed the burly shadow without pity.

And riding that roar, Aphelia surged forth—a comet in a night tide. The moment the axman fell, she chose her line. Seize the king first; the thieves scatter after.

Two biggest threats lay smoking. The last two were waves without a moon. Flames shaped into snarling ghost-faces circled her and rushed the middle-aged man poised to step through a portal.

“Stay!”

She threw a punch with unstoppable intent, a hammer to nail the horizon. Two keen blades crossed and caught it, steel rain against a cliff.

Teeth gritted, she stared at the man an arm’s length away. One more heartbeat, and she would crush the hand behind the curtain.

“Sorry. Come find me instead—preferably half-dead.”

His cold mask made heat surge behind her ribs, a lion’s growl trapped in a cage. She hammered out a flurry, but the twin blades didn’t give an inch.

Her deep-crimson flames licked the knife-screen and guttered. Near that man, fire died by itself, like waves swallowed by reef—no warning, no smoke.

He turned and walked off, never once looking back. He stepped through the portal like a gentleman crossing his garden and was gone.

“Insects, crawl aside!”

Crimson flame braided with vast Arcane Power. Her roar cracked like thunder, and a shockwave blew the two warding shadows away right as the portal began to close.

Demigod might detonated, and even these tuned shadows couldn’t cage a storm. Aphelia drove a fist after the retreating light without the slightest restraint.

Let space-time shear. Let the void cave in. If the mastermind died here, the roots would wither.

If those shadows formed a legion, before she became a True God, even she couldn’t outrun that tide.

Her punch neared the portal—then two blades crossed again, shears snapping for her forearm. Power surged along the edges, a river hitting bedrock, and her motion hit a hitch.

That single stutter cost her the kill. The pair reversed their grips and cut for her life—one rising, one falling, cold moons scissoring for a throat.

Frustration flashed, then burned away. She drew a breath, and time felt like a held note.

Her Bracer Gauntlets, wreathed in flame, flared white and flowed into a silver blade.

Arcane blades shimmered into being around her, crescent shields that caught the incoming steel at the rim of her world.

At the center, Aphelia stood unruffled, eyes closing like a lake at dusk. She lifted her sword with a motion quiet as snowfall.

A silver full moon descended, cold light heavy with the scent of graves.

“Ancient Martial Flow—”

Red lips parted. A white arc passed through the two shadows, a winter wind too sharp to see.

All killing intent gathered into that instant, a guillotine of silence.

They didn’t seem to notice. They kept their last motions, dolls on a string.

Their blades nearly kissed Aphelia’s skin—then stopped, pinned in the air like insects in glass.

She let out a soft sigh. The silver dissolved back into white light, then into the Bracer Gauntlets. Crimson fire leapt alive again.

“Ephemeral Bloom!”

Space itself seemed scored by a hidden chisel. Their blades froze mid-swing. Their bodies parted cleanly, drifting past Aphelia like petals on a black stream.

“Flame Spell—Blazing Impact!”

She snapped her fingers. Two crimson arrays unfolded over the passing shadows.

Flames erupted in an instant, kiln-hot and merciless, and the pair became honest ash.

“Hah... good. If they’d lingered, the hothead act I put on would’ve cracked.”

Watching the twin heaps burn down to soot, Aphelia exhaled and murmured to herself.

Truth be told, this had been her best disguise—playing herself. From the outset, she hadn’t planned to kill the middle-aged man.

The moment he arrived with his shadows, she knew this plain’s chaos braided back to him. The shadows’ devouring and evolution called to mind that twisted storm named the Plague of Beasts.

These things didn’t nullify magic, true. But their ability to evolve, and the cleverness inside those empty eyes, surpassed a simple Plague of Beasts by far.

Worse, something hung behind his portal like a knife behind a curtain—more refined shadows, honed and dangerous.

Even if she cut him down here, it would only pause the scheme. As long as shadows prowled this plain, they would split and swell, a tide fattening on night, until the scale turned monstrous. By then, there’d be no turning back.

So while his eyes fixed on her rage, Aphelia quietly borrowed the crimson sealing array at his feet. She left a mark on him, faint as breath on glass.

The fury was necessary theater. Only that would let him ease his guard and let the next move land.

“Even so... that was close. Another step, and I’d have been shut out by his pets. The man’s caution is a steel trap.”

She sent her senses out, a hawk’s gaze riding high wind, and chased the trace of her mark.

It didn’t take long. Her perception leapt the gap of space and found him.

Distance blurred the picture like rain on ink, but the temple lines were clear, and a nine-headed serpent carved the air. The place had to be the Hydra Clan’s temple.

“What you scour the earth for ends up right under your feet...”

The sigil slipped off his clothes and settled onto the hydra totem, a moth to a lantern. She’d use that as a beacon and head there.

Embarrassing truth—keen senses, yet on this plain she’d been a blind traveler. Without his appearance, she might’ve wandered until night grew old.

She gauged where she stood and how far the beacon lay. Surprise pricked—she wasn’t far. Less than a day’s push would reach it.

“The Hydra Clan’s temple... Nero did mention it. Looks like the Origin of this mess sits there. The Hydra Clan is neck-deep, that much is clear. But how deep...”

The deeper she dug, the colder her doubts ran. Did Nero really send her out just to save people?

Between the Plague of Beasts and these shadows, there was a taboo thread tying storm to shade.

She didn’t dare speak the guess in her heart. It was too terrible a shape. Only the truth, face to face, would let her name it.