In a dark chamber sowhere, a group of cloaked figures stood around a central orb.
Multiple feeds played across its surface — footage from different regions of the Astral Heaven, each one showing Supremacist mbers at work.
Monster bodies being gathered, positions being held, operations running in parallel across several gates.
But every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on one feed.
Elizabeth, facing five of their agents in the Winterheart region.
"Why did the Lightning General enter the Astral Heaven today?" one of the figures said. "This isn’t her normal schedule."
Another sighed.
"Errors were always a possibility. As long as the other regions are producing results, a few agents is an acceptable cost." He turned toward the head of the room. "Initiate termination for Team Scorpio. Leave no evidence."
"Yes, your lordship."
Back in the Winterheart region, the base manager Edward had arrived at the edge of the battlefield with his officers and hadn’t moved since.
The three-kiloter radius around Elizabeth crackled with active lightning.
The sky above her had fractured into a constant web of discharge.
The five Supremacist agents were still standing — barely — their black robes in tatters, faces exposed and bloodied, eyes tracking Elizabeth with the specific kind of fear that ca from finally understanding what you had walked into.
"I cannot believe she is fighting five Paragons and making it look easy," one of the officers said quietly.
"Is this what the Valerians actually are?"
Edward said nothing. He had detected the energy disturbance from the base and moved imdiately, arriving to find the engagent already well underway. Elizabeth had it handled. Stepping in would have been an insult.
’I always forget what a battle beast she is.’
One of the Supremacists broke.
He scread sothing incoherent about Elizabeth being a monster and turned to flee — a bolt of lightning hit him instantly, dropping him from mid-air and driving him into the frozen ground without Elizabeth visibly moving at all.
The battlefield froze.
"What kind of spell is that?" the team leader demanded, voice tight.
"The lightning ca from nowhere—"
Another of his people tried to run. Another bolt. Sa result. This ti two more charged forward together, however two bolts struck them before they covered ten ters.
The leader worked it out.
"The air." His voice dropped. "You’ve supercharged the entire area. Any significant movent induces a strike."
Elizabeth smiled.
"Sharp."
That was all she gave him as his head detonated the next mont.
Elizabeth’s smile faded instantly, eyes going flat and cold. She looked at the remaining bodies — already dead, she knew it before she checked.
Remote termination. Soone had been watching this feed and had cut the thread the mont the operation beca unrecoverable.
"Those cowards."
Edward appeared beside her a mont later.
"Lady Elizabeth, are you—"
"Edward." She turned to him directly. "I need the entry logs for this team. What ti they ca through, what route they used to reach this position. Move fast — whoever sent them is already cleaning the trail."
Edward moved imdiately, pulling his communication device and issuing orders to the base’s entry logging team as he flew away.
Elizabeth stayed where she was and let her eyes drift upward.
A small bird was circling overhead. She hadn’t noticed it during the fight.
She appeared beside it in a spark, caught it cleanly, and let a controlled charge run through her grip, enough to lock the electrical field around the spell construct inside.
A sentient surveillance spell. Compact, well-disguised, designed to observe and transmit without drawing attention during high-energy combat scenarios.
Soone had been watching this entire ti.
In the dark chamber, the man monitoring the feed watched Elizabeth hold the bird up and look directly at the recording construct inside it.
He set down his device and turned away.
"Overconfidence will be the Valerians’ downfall eventually." He stepped forward and vanished in a column of smoke, leaving the chamber empty.
❖❖❖❖
Back at the Valerian estate, Winston opened his eyes and found himself staring at the training ground ceiling.
He had co back quickly this ti and luckily there was no extended unconsciousness or ergency.
Freya and Zelda were both watching him from a standing position, not crouched over him with panicked expressions.
He noted the improvent with quiet satisfaction.
’Would have been nice though.’
He kept that thought entirely to himself.
"Any success?" Freya asked.
Winston stood up and walked to the center of the training floor without answering imdiately. He stopped, closed his eyes, and exhaled once.
"Just watch."
His energy moved but this was not the familiar surge of Soul Burn flooding his Realization this was sothing different. Sothing Internal and condensed.
It rose without the usual external signature, pressing outward from sowhere closer to the core rather than expanding through his system in a wave.
Zelda’s eyes went wide.
"He didn’t activate his Realization. Why did his energy just spike?"
Freya’s senses were sharper. She tilted her head slightly, reading the output more carefully.
"It increased, but it’s different from Soul Burn. That form was expansive. This feels..." She searched for the word. "Alive."
Winston opened his eyes and looked at his hands.
’Not equivalent to Soul Burn. But when layered on top of it, it may beco another step entirely.’
A secondary thought arrived imdiately after.
’Good thing the Blood Emperor didn’t have its trait when we fought. Its arsenal was staggering as it was. Trait Concealnt would have been bad enough — but this, added on top of that, would have been a completely different story.’
Zelda broke the silence.
"What is this? We weren’t taught anything like it at Nightwing."
"We weren’t taught it because it doesn’t exist on Earth." Winston turned to face them both.
Winston was sure of this because the Blood Emperor was the one who created this technique.
It originated in the Astral Heaven with no record of it anywhere in human class holder history. Winston looked at the two ladies; he could practically taste their curiosity about the art’s na.
"The na is Trait Manifestation."
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