The Rune‑armored soldiers didn’t strike. They leveled dangerous magitech weapons, closed from both flanks like grinding jaws, and sealed Aphelia in a perfect ring. On the walls, barriers unfolded; pitch‑black Arcane Power spilled like ink, draping the sky in a shroud and severing the city from the world.
As the dark canopy settled, their aura surged, a tide doubling back on itself, sharp and menacing. Yet facing Aphelia, they didn’t lunge; caution held their blades, their probing defense a tortoise shell under stormlight.
Amused, Aphelia let a soft laugh fall like a chime. Then she vanished. A pure‑white silhouette burst under the night‑veil like a falling star, and the encirclement blew apart like reeds before a flood.
In a heartbeat, the stout wall wore fresh canyons, raw stone like torn flesh. Several Rune‑armored men were hammered into the masonry; their tough plates turned paper‑thin before her pure‑white Bracer Gauntlets, and deep fist‑seals stamped their chests like brands.
They weren’t all for show, not tin spears in parade light. Under Aphelia’s heavy blows, not everyone crumpled; deep‑violet light speared out like thorns and raked at her while she hung in the air.
No matter how they fired, the violet beams only grazed her shadow, like rain missing a swallow’s wing. Mana Crystals clicked into magitech housings, power bled away like sand, and each shot found only a flicker of white in the sky, then a new mirage a hair’s breadth aside.
“Impressive firepower,” she called, voice cool as moonlight. “You’re a cut above your average army.”
Her white hands reached out, gentle as falling snow—and snapped a neck with a dry twig’s crack. She leapt; a fresh volley burned a comrade to ash, purple lances carving their own line like lightning striking a tree.
A blade flashed from her flank, cold as winter glass. Aphelia didn’t rush; she set one fingertip to the fully powered magitech edge, and the world slowed in her eyes, a pond gone still at dawn.
To the Rune‑armored soldiers, she never moved. The thrusting blade shattered segment by segment like ice under a boot; the deep‑violet Mana Crystal popped in the wielder’s grip, the blast tossing him off the wall like a rag in a gale.
She moved like a drifting specter, here, gone, a fox through fog. Their drilled tactics met an enemy no blade could touch and found nothing to bite.
Aphelia threaded the ranks, her Title’s power coiling around her like a halo, and danced with these so‑called “monsters,” treating their lethal magitech like straw in a kiln.
She hadn’t erased them at once because their earlier showing had startled her, a thorn in the palm—especially their fighting without drawing on Arcane Power at all.
So after that opening thunderbolt, she chose to bind and test, pressure rising like a tide, trying to force out a hidden card.
Yet aside from their magitech, the troops on the walls never showed the same teeth they’d bared hunting those inhuman beasts. Even compared to the Rune troops who’d tried to pen them in, these were only a touch better, like iron against tempered steel.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
Her speed spiked, words the spark, body the bolt. She vanished from their sight; before they could track her hands, several men were crushed under pure‑white radiance, snuffed like lamps in rain.
Then, from a sagging section of wall, a twisted tentacle punched out, a black whip from a nightmare. It ignored the nearby soldiers and snapped straight for Aphelia like a striking eel.
Good. Her taunt had pierced the shell. Her white light hardened into a spear; a searing beam hammered down like noon sun on ice. She stopped in the air, a star nailed above a storm, and drew a fresh frenzy of fire from the Rune‑armored line.
And still—wrong. Even under this storm, a grit of unease bit her. She wasn’t stalling them; they were stalling her, feeling the edge of her blade with gloves on.
Her light flared brighter at the thought. A crystal blossom unfurled before her, petal by petal; an ocean of Aether broke and rolled, crushing the patternless barrage like driftwood, and the tentacle that lunged from the rubble burned to ash, a moth in a furnace.
She rushed the fallen, wind in her teeth, and tore open their armor. Beneath the Rune‑etched plates lay no crushed meat, only machinery wound to maddening precision, clockwork guts gleaming like cold organs.
At the city’s heart, a heavy bell tolled, deep and iron‑rich, and the note seemed spell‑stung, needling even Aphelia’s ears. With it came shrieks, ragged and layered, rising from the once‑silent streets like wolves from winter pits.
Dead buildings blinked awake with dim lamps, not one, not ten, but hundreds—thousands—like a night forest sprouting eyes at once. It was as if a signal had gone out, and the city breathed in.
A chill crawled her back. The second bell struck, and even the Aether by her skin wavered like rippling water; since becoming a True God, this was only the second time she’d felt the Aether slip her grip, a hawk bucking the glove.
It passed quickly. She seized hold again. In the dark canopy above, something was descending—no, not the veil itself. Some nameless weight fell within it, arrowing for the city’s core like a black star.
A dragon’s roar answered, deafening as mountains cracking.
“Damn it… Lilo, don’t you dare be in trouble.”
Pure‑white Aether spread into wings; Aphelia streaked for the center like a meteor, because within that falling blackness she sensed things twisted and fatal enough to gut even her.
In the grand hall, Lilo’s hand locked on a crimson Mageblade. A quiet deep‑blue flame draped itself as robes, and her scarlet eyes slit into predatory gold, pupils narrowing like a cat before a strike.
The bell tolled. Around her, guests answered some hidden call, shrieking as if nets tightened. Under brocade and silk, twisted structures thrust free; high society tore off its mask in a breath and showed fangs.
She cut them down without blinking. The Mageblade’s deep‑blue fire was their bane; like a hot knife through butter, the flaming edge parted them clean, no snag, no pause.
“As expected… that lord is doing something rotten.”
A thunderous roar rolled out of her chest and smothered the beasts’ howls; draconic might surged like a falling mountain and nearly drowned the bell. The frenzied monsters writhed and crawled, palms crushing their own skulls, pinned under invisible weight.
But the roar won her little. The third bell came sudden as a hammer, and it hurled her back; the once‑shrill chime now carried force, slamming into her limbs and bones like invisible clubs.
She spat blood, spinning, and the monsters, freed from the roar’s pressure, rushed as one, eager to tear her to rags.
Shaken, she didn’t break. The dragonblood beneath her lush curves rose like a tide that wouldn’t bow; more scales shimmered up her skin like stars. Without sigils or song, a circle of power formed around her in a blink, and deep‑blue fire became the Reaper, scythe dropping in a cold arc.
Any monster that neared turned to ash inside the roar‑born spell, smoke on a windless night. More came, heedless of death, piling like waves on rocks, but this one breath was enough for her.
Her blood boiled like a kettle. Lilo could almost touch the purest fire in the air, a hidden vein of ore striking her pick; an instinct buried in her lineage woke at that roar.
Like a pattern carved into bone, she followed it. No circles. No chants. She simply caught the flame before her like seizing a serpent by the head.
“Scorch. Burn!”
Two hard syllables left her lips. Gold slit eyes flared, and deep‑blue fire bloomed from air like flowers after rain. The rags clinging to the monsters became perfect tinder; wild flames tore upward, and the hall heaved with a sea of blue.
The fire‑sea walled them off. Whenever they pressed, the flames rose like storm surf and swallowed them to ash. Seeing it hold, Lilo let the blood‑rush ebb; she drew ragged breaths and refused to mire in their swarm.
Her Mageblade turned like a wheeling swallow and carved open the hall wall. She was about to step through when pure‑white light cleaved the dark canopy and slammed toward the banquet like dawn’s spear.
“Aphelia, here!”
For a blink, the figure that descended like a Valkyrie made her doubt her own eyes. Of course she knew her; the instant the wall blew, they found each other like magnets snapping close.
Pure‑white Aether became spear after spear, nailing the flame‑charred monsters to the floor like butterflies on pins, leaving them no wriggle of life.
“We move first. This isn’t a place to talk.”
Aphelia stepped to Lilo’s side. Black mists had been falling like soot, and her instincts hissed danger; by the time she breached the hall, the mists had vanished, and a tide of unease rose in her chest like cold water.
