“Damn human, I’m right here—crawl to me!”

The sky splits like thin ice on a river. A shadow wreathed in black smoke limps out, voice rasping like rusted saws. A bone claw reaches for Aphelia, snatching at the air.

“You think that trick works on me?” Heat flares first in her chest, then her hands fly. An azure seal blooms. A circling array-pattern unfurls like a whirling tide pool, and it shoves the closing bone talons back.

Boom. The Ghoul Chieftain sees brute force fail and begins a guttural chant. Both skeletal hands press toward the ground like a beggar praying to a dead sea.

“You dare sing a forbidden curse in front of me? courting death.” Anger spikes, then Aphelia steps and becomes a lance of azure light. Four Sacred Beasts wheel at her flanks, dragging a grand tide of elements. They spear for the hovering Ghoul Chieftain.

His stiff face is a mask, no fear, no flinch. Aphelia streaks close—then the air shatters like a mirror. Countless black chains punch through the void, all aimed to skewer her. Blood-spattered links glimmer like night rivers that drowned a thousand lives.

Aphelia snorts. Her arms open. Thousands of strands of sword-qi surge like a meteor shower. They meet the onrushing chains, shriek and spark, then drive on for the Chieftain.

Starlit sword-qi webs the battlefield like frost on glass. The statuesque warrior-woman seizes her twin blades and clashes with the Ghoul Chieftain in midair. Power ripples down like a storm squall, buffeting the ground below, yet her strength pens every starlit blade within her orbit like a moon herding tides.

Escaping strands scythe into the ghoul ranks. Each star-sheen that kisses those dark creatures erupts like water flung into boiling oil. Starlit sword-qi becomes a string of chained explosions tearing through their lines.

“Useless. You won’t touch me, Long-Lived One. Your tricks don’t work. Lock.” The Chieftain stands firm. His staff belches black radiance. The void births a snarl of razor chains, clashing with the sword-qi, weaving a lattice of azure and jet.

Aphelia’s breath frosts cold, then steadies. Her palms blaze azure. More sword-qi spills from the grand tide of elements, a flood attacking from every quarter. She means to pin him here. The Four Sacred Beasts and that crown of starlight gather at her sides, shaping a divine array, a colossal spear of sword-qi that points at the Chieftain and bars his last road.

A flicker at last crosses his rigid face. Malice hardens his eyes. Iron chains coil around him like a steel cocoon, straining to dam ten thousand blades. He spits a swath of tar-black corpse miasma that pours downward like a falling night sea, surging for both armies.

The human host falters as if a winter wind hit summer grass. They fall back in a rolling wave. Ghouls plunge forward under the black fog like sharks scenting blood, eager to tear men apart.

“Hold the line—advance!” A few voices try to rally, but they drown in a tide of bodies. The humans look broken, unwilling to face the dark head-on.

Hercules’s thigh wound coils with red mist like creeping ivy, lending him a brittle strength. He retreats with clenched teeth; with no cultivation left, he can’t wade that black sea and live.

The Ghoul Chieftain smiles like a knife’s reflection. “Kill me, or save your army. Choose, Immortal. Kekeke.” A frown knots Aphelia’s brow; if the ghouls reach the human city, the army loses supply, and starves like a fire without wood.

“So what. I’ll cut you first. Let’s see how many centuries it takes you to birth another necromancer who can touch the human world.” Her eyes flash azure. The weather flips like a page. She strikes, a streak that drags an elemental tide in her wake.

“Kekeke—sneak attack? Don’t be—” His words choke. The azure surge roars like a storm tide. He can’t draw a single element from the space around him. To yank against that riot below Ascension tier is suicide.

A smile curves Aphelia’s lips like a knife’s moon. Azure lightning dances in her gaze, near solid, hungry for a head to take.

“East, the Azure Dragon. West, the White Tiger. South, the Vermilion Bird. North, the Black Tortoise. Four Spirits of Heaven—steady the quarters, seal the four winds.” Her chant is a bell in a storm. A pillar of azure light falls like rain, and a million threads of elemental essence pour into the four beast spirits at her side, giving them near flesh.

“Advance!” She howls, frenzy riding her voice like wildfire. The dragon coils up through cloud, churning sky like a whirlpool, and crashes for the Chieftain. The tiger’s roar is thunder; it flings azure wind-blades that braid with the dragon’s charge. The bird beats its wings; fire gleams between its feathers like dawn on coals, drawing nearby flame-essence to wreath the array. The tortoise’s shell glows dark teal; water-runes swirl under the Chieftain’s feet like river glyphs carving a bed.

Aphelia’s hands seal again. Blood rims her eyes. “Four Saints take their seats. Starlight crowns the world!”

Roar. All four spirits cry in unison. Elemental tides converge like four rivers into a sea. The falling azure pillar splits into countless law-chains that weave through the array and lash the Chieftain, binding him like a mountain’s roots.

“Tsk. Can’t slay you? Then I’ll—” A killing intent screams in from afar like a winter comet. It isn’t aimed at her, but dread pricks her skin. Reinforcements? Her fingers blur, seals stacking like falling leaves; she’ll suppress him for eight or ten centuries if she must.

A blood-light arcs across the sky, leaving a scent of iron like rain on rust. It spears the Ghoul Chieftain like a crimson rainbow.

“By the Ancestors—” Aphelia’s eyes hitch. The scarlet arc rips past her and drills the Chieftain. Her instinct to block comes a heartbeat too late.

“Ah—” The Chieftain’s scream is a saw on bone. The blood rainbow drinks him the instant it pierces, sucking his last life-mark. It erases lifespan like frost erased by noon sun.

“No—save me! I can grant you a supreme treasure—ah!” Panic cracks him. He’d rather be sealed for centuries than die like this. Aphelia only curls her lip; the array shudders, but his fate is sealed. She won’t lift a finger to pull him clear.

“Ah!!!” His voice shreds. He melts like snow under fiercest noon. The blood threads radiating from the rainbow drink him dry. He had already burned his years to cross the Blood-Sin Abyss into the human world; with his sands nearly gone, this last squeeze breaks him.

Far off, filaments of blood creep from Hercules’s heart like thorny vines. They wind his limbs, then burrow beneath his skin like hungry worms. Blood floods his veins until they glow black-red.

Pain twists his face into a snarl. His eyes bulge; his body knots like rope in a grinder. Unspeakable things swell within. Pale light seeps along the blood-threads and drifts toward his soul-flame, trying to merge. He teeters on the edge of blackout, yet a page of the Body-Tempering Canon unfurls in his mind like a banner in wind. It demands agony; only extremity can awaken the Rune within.

Hercules clamps his thoughts around the text, bites down on the pain, curls on the ground, and drags his mind elsewhere like a man hauling a net in storm.

“Twelve Trials. All things are source. Begin at the divine storehouse, sink into four anchors, manifest through the flesh…” His body spasms. The Canon runs like a millstone in fire. The pain doesn’t ebb; it doubles. Spit strings from the corner of his mouth; he can’t command his limbs.

“Ah!” The white light keeps seeping in. The Canon roars to life. His body lags a step behind. Skin splits with hairline cracks, ready to tear at a twitch, and he bellows like a beast caught in a snare.

“Fourth Trial—Sever the Self!” His eyes roll white. On the last scrap of lucid will, he completes the Twelve Trials’ tempering cycle.

The remnant white light refuses to scatter. At his roar, it finds a lodestar, then spears upward as a blinding pillar that drills the clouds.

“How interesting… How could that belong to this age…” Aphelia’s gaze locks on the sky-splitting beam. Desire glints there, edged with a predator’s hunger.

At the center of the distant field, the elf Isaac flicks blood from his bow like rain off a leaf. He doesn’t look at the beam. He keeps his back turned to the golden-haired man behind him, drenched in blood. “Vice-captain. Is it time?”

The vice-captain answers the light with silence. His mask hides his face like a moon behind cloud.

“Hmph. Got it. We wait, then.” Isaac snorts, and his figure blinks out, leaving a warp in the air like heat above stone.

In the great command tent at the heart of the border city, a woman behind a screen lets out a breath as light as falling ash. There’s no emotion in it, as if the sigh belonged to someone else.

“Fate…”