Celestia slowly withdrew every trace of her platinum aura back into her body. The brilliance that had illuminated the fractured sky monts ago faded until only the faintest sheen clung to her silhouette. She remained suspended in the air, posture straight, hands relaxed at her sides, expression composed. To an outside observer, she looked calm almost serene. A faint smile curved at the corner of her lips. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t mocking. It was calculating. Sothing had shifted in her mind. The hostility that had fueled her earlier strikes had been replaced by a quieter current of thoughts as whatever it was in her head.. She just stopped looking at sofia as enemy anymore.
Sofia, however, was nowhere near calm.
Her chest rose and fell sharply, fingers curling into tight fists. The disgust that churned in her stomach had not faded. If anything, it had deepened. Hearing Celestia reduce Razeal’s suffering to a "miscalculation" had scraped against sothing primal inside her. No wife no partner.. would accept that quietly. The idea that soone had discarded him because he was weak, because he failed to et a standard, because he was inconvenient to ambition made her vision blur with fury.
She did not say another word.
There was nothing left to debate.
Before the air could settle, Sofia vanished.
The space she occupied distorted violently as she moved no gradual acceleration, no visible wind-up. She simply disappeared and reappeared in front of Celestia in less than an instant, like a star tearing across the night sky. Her fist was already in motion, aid directly at Celestia’s face.
This was not the sa speed as before.
This was not the sa level of force.
Her entire presence had shifted.
Her aura though still not manifested as traditional mana.. felt heavier, denser, darker. Even her form seed altered. The lines of her movent sharpened; the blur she created through the air multiplied. She was no longer going to hold back..
She was trying to kill.
"Hey stop. I don’t want to fight anymore. Let’s talk," Celestia said evenly, not moving an inch as she saw Sofia erupt toward her with overwhelming killing intent. There was no panic in her voice. No urgency. She truly did not wish to continue the hostility. Not after what she had realized.
But Sofia was past negotiation.
Celestia sighed softly.
So be it.
If words won’t reach you, I’ll restrain you first.
She raised her hand slowly not hurriedly, not defensively, but with asured control. Her extended palm began to glow, deep platinum light gathering around her fingers. It wasn’t wild or explosive. It was condensed. Refined. The energy shimred into existence like white fire wrapping her skin pure, luminous, almost holy in appearance. It radiated outward in controlled waves, a dense platinum aura layered with sharp authority.
All of these thoughts, these movents, these escalating intentions occurred within less than a breath.
Celestia remained suspended, poised to receive the strike.
And then
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The sky detonated.
The explosion was colossal far greater than any prior collision between them. The shockwave burst outward like a compressed supernova, shaking the entire market district below. The ground cracked further. Debris flew in violent spirals. Several rooftops collapsed under the pressure. Windows shattered across multiple streets. People below were forced to brace themselves behind hastily erected barriers.
The sound echoed across the capital like thunder tearing the heavens open.
Yet
At the center of that explosion
Sofia’s fist had not reached Celestia.
The strike had been halted mid-air, inches from her face.
Ti seed to hesitate.
And then suddenly
Flap.
Flap.
The distinct, heavy sound of wings cutting through air reverberated in the epicenter of the impact.
Celestia’s eyes opened slightly up... not from fear, but from genuine surprise.
In front of her, blocking Sofia’s devastating blow, stood soone else.
Soone who had appeared in less than an instant.
Soone whose speed rivaled.. perhaps exceeded even Sofia’s.
The figure had their back to Celestia, shielding her from the attack. What drew her attention imdiately, however, was not the posture, not the intervention
But the wings.
They were enormous.
Elegant in shape, yet deeply unsettling.
Bat-like in structure, arched high and wide, stretching outward with terrifying grace. The mbranes were not feathered.. no soft plus of angelic light. Instead, they were smooth, taut, and disturbingly organic. Deep red. The color of fresh blood beneath dim light.
Not looking like fabric or magical constructs she knows of..
They looked almost alive.
Celestia frowned as she looked closely..
The thin skin of the wings stretched between elongated, protruding bones that extended outward like sharpened fingers. Each skeletal ridge was clearly defined beneath the mbrane, creating jagged silhouettes along the edges. The wings flapped once more, steady and powerful, dispersing the lingering shockwave around them as if cutting through air itself.
A faint demonic energy radiated from them subtle, but undeniable. It was not holy. It was not imperial. It was sothing older. Darker. Sothing that did not belong within the conventional hierarchies of power Celestia understood.. Or ever even heard about..
The very presence of it made the air feel heavier.
Warr.
More dangerous.
Celestia stared at the back of the figure in front of her, platinum eyes narrowing.
She did not recognize the wings.
That unsettled her more than she would ever admit aloud.
She had studied ancient bloodlines, forgotten races, divine beasts, Ancient magic beat remnants, celestial aberrations anything that might exist within or beyond the empire’s recorded history. Yet the wings spread before her did not align with anything she knew. They were not draconic. Not angelic. Not draconic in any docunted sense. They were sothing else sothing raw.
And at sa ti the mont she truly looked at them, a deep, instinctive revulsion rose from the pit of her being.
It was not rational.
It was not intellectual.
It was primal.
Her entire existence recoiled from it.
As if voice fom the bottom of her soul whispering.. sothing like.. This being should not exist.
A faint, eerie sensation crawled up her spine, as if her very blood rejected the presence standing in front of her. The platinum aura within her flickered faintly not in fear, but in instinctive rejection. There was sothing fundantally wrong about this energy. It felt... unclean. Corrupt. Not rely bad but disgusting in a way that predated structure.
But she still didn’t do anything..
She just narrowed her eyes, trying to identify the figure blocking Sofia’s strike, but the wings were too wide, too obstructive. Their span cast a red-tinted shadow across her face, the mbranous flesh catching the fractured light of the sky.
Then her gaze dropped slightly.
To the hair.
The familiar shade.
Recognition struck.
Her frown deepened instantly.
This person?
An image ford in her mind..
Sofia, anwhile, had reacted purely on instinct when her fist had been stopped. Even in her fury, even at that speed, she had felt the interception. Her guard shot up imdiately, muscles coiling to obliterate whoever had dared interfere.
But when she looked up
Her expression shifted.
"Maria?" she blurted instinctively.
Her voice still carried anger.
"Why the fuck are you stopping .."
The rest of the sentence died in her throat.
Because the person in front of her was Maria.
And not Maria at sa ti..
Her eyes narrowed slowly, confusion overtaking fury.
Maria’s back was turned slightly, her hand still clamped around Sofia’s fist holding it effortlessly in place.
But behind her
Two enormous bat-like wings flapped slowly, heavy and deliberate. They were deep crimson flesh-toned and disturbingly organic. The mbranes stretched taut between elongated, skeletal extensions that protruded like sharpened fingers. Bone ridges pressed visibly through the skin, giving the wings a jagged, predatory silhouette.
They were not decorative or looking ant projections.
They were real.
And if that wasn’t enough..
From the right side of Maria’s forehead, a jet-black horn curved upward goat-like, smooth yet sharp at the tip. It rose from her skin as if it had always belonged there.
One of her eyes had changed completely.
The familiar color was there but.. More deeper and intensified.
Extrely deep crimson iris that glowed faintly with internal light, like embers buried beneath ash. The sclera around it seed slightly darkened, faint veins visible like cracks spreading outward.
Strange markings ancient, intricate had also appeared across one side of her face. They trailed downward from temple to cheek, curved along her neck, and extended beneath her collarbone. The patterns resembled archaic inscriptions runes perhaps etched in faint black and dull red, pulsing softly as if alive.
The energy radiating from her was different now.
Demonic.
Old.
Terrifyingly composed.
Sofia stared.
"What... no... are you alright?" she asked, genuine concern overriding everything else for a brief mont. "What happened to you?"
She didn’t even think about the fact that Maria had just stopped her killing strike with one hand. She didn’t think about the fact that Maria had intercepted sothing that even Celestia hadn’t anticipated.
Even the fact that maria was holding her fist this casually.. Took her attack as if it had weighed nothing.
But on her query..Maria didn’t answer.
She didn’t even look at Sofia.
Her grip loosened slightly.
The motion looked gentle. Almost absentminded.
And yet
The instant her fingers released..
Sofia’s body was suddenly launched backward.
Not pushed.
Launched.
As if struck by an invisible cataclysmic force.
She shot through the sky like a teor, air screaming around her as she was hurled dozens of ters away. She crashed directly into a random house below, tearing through its roof and walls in one violent motion before vanishing into rubble. The building collapsed partially inward, dust erupting into a massive cloud.
It happened so fast that even Celestia’s eyes flickered with surprise...
Sofia, who had matched her blow-for-blow monts ago without budging an inch..
Had been sent flying like debris.
By a casual release.
And the most unsettling part
Maria did not appear to have intended that level of force.
It looked almost accidental.
Like she herself was not yet calibrated to her own strength.
Below, rubble shifted as dust rose into the air.
Above, Maria slowly turned.
The wings folded slightly behind her as she rotated to face Celestia.
Her expression was not enraged.
It was controlled.
Deadly serious.
Her crimson eye glowed faintly as it locked onto the princess.
"What did you just say?" Maria asked.
Her voice was low.. And.. Chilling.
Celestia felt the shift imdiately.
Actually, it was all going fine just a few seconds ago. Maria was downstairs, a little worried about stopping both Sofia and Celestia from clashing in the middle of the empire, anxious about how terribly things could go wrong.
But that was then.
She overheard the conversation between Sofia and Celestia.. and that was when everything changed.
That was when she suddenly heard the words she was never ant to hear.
Celestia seed to be admitting that it was their miscalculation when Sofia had asked why they did what they did to Razeal.
And obviously, Maria wasn’t that naive. Just from those words, she had already realized the truth. And at that very realization, she didn’t know what happened her emotions went uncontrolled. Before she knew it, she had suddenly transford into this strange kind of form, which seed to be giving her so utterly beyond kind of power.
And she hadn’t even realized she was in this form. Everything that happened was purely instinctive.
She did not consciously summon the power. She did not decide to transform. It was instinctive. Her emotions surged past containnt, past reason, past restraint, and her body responded before her mind could catch up. The wings had erupted from her back without permission. The horn had torn through her skin without warning. The crimson eye had ignited as if so buried inheritance had finally broken its chains.
She had not even realized she had changed.
All she knew was that the truth had hit her like a blade through the ribs.
She just stared with a blank expression on her face not a muscle moving looked at Celestia’s face. Obviously, with the realization she had just co to, she couldn’t believe it. It was hard for her to face the truth.
Celestia, anwhile, t Maria’s gaze without flinching. Beyond the monstrous form, beyond the demonic energy radiating from her, Celestia understood the question in Maria’s eyes automatically
And she did not answer it with words. She simply looked back. Silent. That silence was confirmation.
And that confirmation was unbearable. Maria’s crimson eye trembled first. Then her breath hitched. The wings behind her stilled mid-beat as if even they felt the weight crushing her chest.
Tears began to spill before she understood she was crying. They slid down her cheeks in silent streams at first, catching along the dark markings etched into her skin.
Her entire body seed to sag in midair, sadness flooding through her with such force that even the demonic energy flickered unstable around her. Razeal was innocent.
The thought ford slowly, horrifically. Innocent. The disgust she had once felt toward him every glare, every sharp word, every look of revulsion had been built on a lie.
Her stomach twisted violently. Everything she had believed. Everything she had said. It was wrong.
Suddenly, all the things she had done to him, said to him everything started appearing in front of her. The emotions welled up inside her.
She saw herself in the academy halls, looking at him with contempt. She heard her own voice calling him disgusting. She rembered the day she had stood before others and implied he was a danger to the female students, that he did not deserve to remain in that academy.
Rembered the duel. Rembered the coldness and disgust in her tone when he tried to speak. Her pupils began trembling visibly.
The images would not stop. Each scene replayed in agonizing detail. The way he had stood there, silent... Trying to look he doesn’t care.. But now thinking about it.. he qas definitely hurt..
"I called him disgusting..." she whispered aloud, her voice cracking in the open sky. The words felt poisonous in her mouth now. "I said he doesn’t deserve anything..." Her throat tightened so badly she struggled to breathe. The mory of her accusing him in front of others of suggesting he be expelled.. felt like acid burning through her chest.
How had he felt in that mont? Standing there, accused of sothing so vile. Punished socially, isolated, judged. And she.. she had been one of them. No. Worse. She had been soone who should have trusted him. She had owed him so much..
And still she had turned her back. Her tears ca harder now, no longer silent but accompanied by broken breaths. "I.. i was wrong..." The words barely ford through the sob building in her chest. "I did him wrong... I... I..." She could not finish the sentence. The weight of it crushed her. It felt like she had committed an unforgivable sin.
She hovered there in midair, monstrous wings extended, horn casting a jagged silhouette against the sky, yet inside she felt small smaller than she had ever felt in her life.
Celestia though just watched her with confusion now, unsure what had just unraveled inside Maria.
But Maria did not see her. Her vision had blurred from tears. Her mind was sowhere else back in every mont she had failed him. She imagined him standing alone after the accusations spread. The whispers. The stares. The doors that quietly closed.
The loneliness. The scars both physical and invisible. The broken, guarded version of him she had seen later. The distance in his eyes. And she had thought it was proof of guilt. When in truth, it had been the result of betrayal. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest as if trying to physically hold herself together. "I’m sorry..." she breathed, though he was nowhere near to hear it. "I should’ve trusted you..."
The regret tore through her with a ferocity no physical wound could match. She had loved him. Even when she was angry. Even when she misunderstood. She had loved him. And instead of offering him gentleness, she had given him judgnt.
Instead of defending him, she had joined the voices that condemned him. Instead of standing beside him, she had walked away. Because she believed others over him. Because she trusted the narrative rather than the person.
And now the truth stood naked in front of her. He had never been wrong. The realization made her cry harder, shoulders shaking despite the imnse power radiating from her transford body.
The irony was cruel this overwhelming, Demonic strength awakening inside her at the very mont she felt weakest. The demonic aura flickered unevenly as her emotions spiraled. "He was never wrong..." she murmured brokenly in her own mind, vision swimming.
"I... I hurt him... I hurt the one person who..." She could not finish it. The guilt was suffocating. She imagined how he must have felt accused of a cri he never committed, abandoned by those closest to him, forced to carry a stain that was never his.
She imagined him standing alone in that storm, and the thought ripped her heart into pieces. Floating there between the shattered rooftops and the fractured sky, Maria did not look like a monster in that mont. She looked like soone who had just realized the depth of her own failure. And it was breaking her apart from the inside.
"I.. I.." Maria did not know what to do.
That realization alone should have broken her.
It did.
But what ca after was worse.
Because once the grief reached its peak, once it hollowed her out completely, sothing else began to fill the emptiness. Sothing far more violent.
They hurt him.
The thought didn’t surface gently. It detonated inside her mind.
They destroyed his life.
They let him be humiliated, punished, abandoned.
And she had helped.
Her chest tightened, but this ti it was not sorrow compressing her lungs. It was fury. The kind that does not burn bright and fast but deep and consuming, like magma pressing upward beneath the earth’s crust.
Her demonic blood responded first.
It always did.
Maria did not consciously decide to transform. There was no ritual, no invocation. Her body reacted instinctively to her emotional rupture. The wings on her back stretched wider, their crimson mbranes quivering with restrained violence. The black horn curving from her temple pulsed faintly. The markings crawling across her skin glowed darker, as if inked in living shadow.
Heat spread through her veins not warmth, not fla, but hellfire. It did not flicker. It clung to her skin like a second pulse, wrapping her in an aura so dense it distorted the air around her. The more her anger rose, the more her power amplified. And the more her power amplified, the harder it beca to control the anger feeding it.
Her killing intent erupted without restraint.
It was not the disciplined aura of a trained noble.
It was not the controlled pressure of her royal bloodline.
It was raw.
Predatory.
Ancient.
Demonic
Even those miles away felt it. Guards in the capital stiffened mid-step. Civilians turned pale without understanding why. An instinct older as begining of creation.. and totally foreign to them whispered to them: sothing dangerous has awakened. Sothing that does not belong among humans.
Celestia felt it most clearly as she was the closest..
Her platinum aura flickered almost imperceptibly as she studied Maria’s expression. This was no longer the girl who had been crying seconds ago. The grief had collapsed inward and hardened. Maria’s crimson eye no longer trembled with regret. It burned with sothing else.. sothing cold and deliberate.
Celestia floated backward slightly, creating space, not out of fear but calculation. She was not foolish enough to ignore what her senses were telling her. Maria’s energy had spiked beyond its previous threshold. The density of that demonic aura was unnatural. It did not behave like mana or resonate like holy power. It felt... invasive.
Maria’s gaze locked onto her.
There was no warning.
Her wings flapped once.
And she disappeared.
Not blurred. Not streaked. Just.. Gone.
The air ruptured where she had been standing, compressed violently from the sudden displacent. Celestia reacted on instinct, her body honed by years of combat. Platinum energy flooded her fist as she swung toward the incoming presence, calculating interception angles in less than a heartbeat.
But mid-motion, her instincts scread.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
"Noooooooooooo."
She twisted left.. barely.
Sothing tore through the air beside her.
There was a ripping sound, not loud but disturbingly intimate, like flesh parting under steel.
Then warmth.
Then wetness.
Celestia’s breath hitched involuntarily.
She looked down.
Blood???
Her blood???
A deep gash carved along her upper arm, slicing through fabric and skin with surgical brutality. The cut was clean yet savage, deep enough that bone glimred faintly beneath torn muscle. Crimson droplets drifted downward through the air.
For a mont, she did not feel pain.
Only confusion... Confusion beyond anything..
She injured?? Herrrr?? Celestia Gwon Valentine?? Imperial pricess?? The strongest person of her generation? The current heir of strongest bloodline in the world?
She had sparred against In Imperial Knight’s, crushed elite knights, annihilated magical beasts. She had stood as the pride of the empire’s future. Opponents not even able to scratch her skin not to say.. leave scar on her skin??
Bleeding??
And that too by herr?? The one who she didn’t even see as in competition months ago? Didn’t even cared to look at??
Impossible she rejects to beleive thisss,
But it was all in front of her..
Her jaw tightened, and this ti the pain arrived sharp and humiliating.
It was not the wound itself that unsettled her most.
It was what it ant.
If she had not shifted when she did, that beam would not have grazed her.
It would have taken her arm entirely.
Perhaps worse.
The wound on Celestia’s arm did not remain for long.
The mont blood began trailing from her fingertips, a soft platinum radiance erged from beneath her skin, spreading outward like liquid light poured through her veins. The torn flesh knit itself together in slow, precise strands, muscle reweaving, skin sealing seamlessly as if ti itself had been reversed in that single location. Within seconds, the gash was gone, replaced by unblemished porcelain skin.
It was not hurried regeneration; it was automatic, refined, instinctive her body responding to damage as though injury itself were an inconvenience rather than a threat. Yet even as the wound vanished, her expression did not soften.
But still the healing did not calm her. Her face had turned rigid, jaw tight, platinum eyes narrowing as she slowly turned her head back toward where that red black streak she had barely evaded gone.
And when she saw it .. she halted completely. Just frozen in place..
Maria hovered in the air, no longer the trembling girl consud by guilt. Her wings had expanded to their full span now, vast and grotesquely majestic, the crimson mbranes stretched wide like the banners of a warlord claiming the sky.
They were not symbolic wings, not ethereal projections of magic.. they were physical, visceral, textured things, each vein visible beneath the dark red surface, the skeletal ridges sharp and bone-white along the edges. Her horn had grown longer, thicker, curving upward with an ancient severity that made her silhouette monstrous against the skyline.
And the markings on her skin those black, living runes had spread. They were no longer confined to one side of her face. They crawled down her neck, across her collarbone, down both arms in winding spirals of language no human empire had ever written.
The symbols shifted faintly as though alive, glowing intermittently with a deep infernal red that pulsed in ti with her heartbeat. It was not decoration. It was activation.
Maria did not look human anymore.
Her aura was suffocating.
The black flas coiling around her were not ordinary fire. They did not flicker upward like natural fla; they spiraled inward, folding around her like a vortex, devouring light rather than emitting it.
Even Celestia.. who had been raised among the strongest energies of the empire felt sothing profoundly wrong about it.
The sensation was not rely hostility. It was existential revulsion, like her very being rejected the presence before her. It was as if a creature from the oldest abyss had stepped into a world that was not ant to contain it.
Maria’s eyes were empty of hesitation.
The crimson one burned with raw, rciless intensity, while the other remained dark and shadowed beneath the runes. There was no grief left in her face. No trembling regret. Only singular purpose. Killing intent so dense it seed to thicken the air between them.
She looked horrifying.
Not dramatic. Not exaggerated.
Totally... Horrifying.
As if the deepest vault of hell had cracked open and sothing ancient had crawled free.
And it was.. True
Celestia’s platinum gaze hardened, but beneath that control her instincts were on full alert. This was not the Maria she had known since all before.
Actually this was not even the Maria who had hovered monts ago.. who was changed, crying in the sky.
This was sothing awakened by rupture by emotional collapse so severe it tore open whatever seal had kept this form restrained. Celestia understood power. She had spent her life asuring it, refining it, mastering it. But this.. But this felt untad. Not reckless, but primal and ancient.. And sothing bad.. More like energy she was sensing from her.. Dirty and corrupting.. More like as if total opposite of holy magic..
Which was the first ever ti of her feelings sothing like this
Maria’s wings beat slowly, each movent pushing waves of heated air outward. Then, without shifting her position, she raised one arm toward Celestia. Which also made her notice sothing which she hadn’t before.
Her hands.. Celestia nerrowed her eyes as trying to look better clearity..
The gesture was deliberate. Accusing. Her elongated nails..
No.. The claws were now extending grotesquely from her fingers, six to seven inches long, curved, black as obsidian with faint crimson light flickering along their edges. Celestia noticed sothing else then. At the tips of those claws, blood glistened which was Obiously her blood. It had not evaporated. It clung to Maria’s nails like a trophy.
Maria pointed.
"YOU... WILL PAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY."
Her voice did not sound entirely human. It was layered one tone over another, as if sothing deeper spoke in unison beneath her own. The words stretched unnaturally, each syllable dragged with venom and promise.
And then suddenly
The sky ruptured.
A thunderous explosion erupted from her center, not outward in one direction but in all directions simultaneously. The sound was not just heard; it was actually felt, vibrating through bone and stone alike.
Below them, the ground suddenly fractured in jagged lines, buildings trembling as shockwaves rippled through the capital like the pulse of a dying star. Windows shattered. Dust rose in violent spirals. Guards lost their footing. Civilians scread and scattered. The very land seed to recoil.
Maria’s demonic aura expanded violently, a spiraling inferno of red-black energy that surged upward into the sky and downward into the streets at once. It was not chaotic it radiated from her as a nucleus, perfectly centered, perfectly controlled in its expansion, yet utterly overwhelming in magnitude. The air turned hot and tallic. A faint scent of sulfur and blood perated the space between them.
The sky itself seed to have stained.
Her demonic powers going berserk.
Clouds above took on a faint red tint as if reflecting the fury below. The entire district glowed dimly under the illumination of her rising power, as though hell’s horizon had begun bleeding into the mortal world.
----
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