The sound of ice cracking echoed throughout the hall like the last gasp of a dying giant.
Colossal white plates collapsed upon one another, shattering into fragnts that crumbled before even touching the ground, evaporating into a cold mist. The chaotic glow that sustained that monstrous form flickered… once… twice… and then faded.
Silence.
This ti, a different silence.
Not heavy.
Not threatening.
A weary silence.
Kael remained kneeling, the crushed white heart still oozing between his fingers like thick snow that refused to disappear. His hand trembled—not from fear, but from utter exhaustion. Every muscle scread. Every bone felt dislocated. His breath ca in irregular gasps, as if the air had beco sothing hostile.
He parted his fingers.
What remained of the heart turned to dust.
The last physical trace of Seraphyne dissipated into thin air.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then, slowly, the hall began to react.
The white ice on the floor cracked and lost its unnatural shine, becoming opaque and brittle. The fissures actually closed with dry snaps, like bones realigning. The air, once dense and cutting, began to circulate almost normally again.
Kael took a deep breath.
This ti, the air entered.
He placed a hand on the floor and tried to stand.
He failed.
His body simply didn't respond.
A low groan escaped his throat, more of irritation than pain. He tried again, forcing himself to stand. The shadows moved to help him, enveloping his legs like living crutches.
He managed to stand—staggering, crooked, but standing.
Then he felt it.
Not an attack.
Not a hostile presence.
But… an echo.
Kael closed his eyes for a mont, concentrating.
The Chaos had ceased.
But sothing remained.
A mark.
Not on him.
In his place.
"The core…" he murmured, his voice hoarse.
He looked up at the center of the hall.
The core—that pulsating structure that had once served as an anchor for Seraphyne—was cracked. Not broken. Not destroyed. Just… damaged. An irregular fracture ran across its surface, leaking a faint, unstable light.
This was not pure Chaos.
It was residue.
Unstable.
Unpredictable.
Kael felt a shiver run down his spine.
"This is going to be trouble."
Hurry footsteps echoed behind him.
Sylphie was the first to arrive, almost slipping on the brittle ice. Her eyes were wide, her face pale.
"Kael!" She grabbed his arm before he could fall. "Are you crazy?! Look at yourself!"
Alia ca right behind, already conjuring healing magic with trembling hands, while Irelia instinctively positioned herself in front of them, sword raised, even knowing there was nothing left to fight.
"You almost died," Alia said, her voice choked. "Again."
Kael let out a short, dry laugh, which turned into a coughing fit.
"Almost… doesn't count."
Sylphie squeezed his arm tightly, irritated and relieved at the sa ti.
"You're an idiot," she murmured. "A living idiot."
Kael tilted his head slightly, accepting the insult as a complint.
He took another deep breath and then spoke, seriously:
"Seraphyne is finished. For real this ti."
The three stared at him.
"But," he continued, looking again at the cracked core, "the damage she left behind isn't."
The hall groaned.
Not like before—not in agony—but like an ancient structure reacting to its own internal collapse. Small tremors ran through the floor, causing fragnts of ice to fall from the ceiling.
Irelia frowned.
"The castle?"
"The kingdom," Kael corrected. "She ddled with things that shouldn't be forced. This here…" He pointed to the core. "It's like a poorly healed wound."
Sylphie swallowed hard.
"Can she co back?"
Kael thought for a mont before answering.
"Seraphyne? No." He closed his hand slowly. "But what she awakened… is still only half asleep."
Alia took a deep breath, trying to remain calm.
"So what do we do?"
Kael straightened his posture as much as he could. His body ached, his vision still flickering on the edges, but his mind was clear again—sharp.
"First, we get out of here," he said. "Then, we stop anything else from trying to occupy this empty space."
He gave one last look at the center of the hall, where the white ice finally lted completely, leaving only deep marks on the stone floor.
"And then," he finished, in a cold, resolute tone, "we go after the witches who thought this was a good idea."
The path out of the hall seed longer than when they had entered.
Not because the distance had changed—but because the entire castle was dying.
The walls groaned, columns cracked, fragnts of ice and stone plumted from the ceiling at irregular intervals. With each step, the floor vibrated beneath their feet, as if the palace itself were trying to decide whether to continue existing or simply collapse altogether.
Kael walked, partially supported by Sylphie, refusing to be carried despite the deplorable state of his own body. The shadows still moved around him, keeping him upright by sheer insistence, not by real strength.
When they finally reached the great exit arch—once majestic doors now crooked and broken—the world beyond revealed itself.
And it was there that the true dinsion of the disaster was laid bare.
The sky was at war.
There was no other way to describe it.
Dark clouds crashed against spirals of distorted mana, torn by beams of light, colorful explosions, and arcane symbols that ford and dissolved in the air like open wounds in reality. The sound was deafening: magical thunder, cries of pain, overlapping spell chants, impacts so violent that the air vibrated as if being beaten.
Hundreds of witches.
No—thousands.
Divided into two clear sides.
On one side, witches dressed in brightly colored cloaks, ancient symbols engraved in protective circles, wings of mana, giant roots sprouting from the ground, currents of light, spears of wind, ethereal walls protecting entire villages.
On the other, dark witches.
Living shadows, corrupted magic, spells that tore through bodies without even touching them, summoned creatures that seed made of condensed hatred, screams of ecstasy mixed with fury.
It was an organized massacre.
It was total war.
Sylphie stood motionless, her face pale.
"This…" she whispered. "This is… everything."
Alia felt her stomach churn.
Irelia tightened her grip on her sword.
Kael took a few steps forward, ignoring the blood that still trickled beneath his armor. His eyes scanned the battlefield rapidly—too fast for any of them to follow.
He was counting.
Analyzing.
Evaluating patterns.
"This isn't an improvised attack," he murmured. "This was planned. Every front. Every position."
An explosion shook the ground to the left.
A witch fell from the sky engulfed in black flas, hitting the ground with enough force to create a crater. Before she could rise, giant roots erged and trapped her, draining her mana until she scread—and then fell silent.
Another witch, on the allied side, was pierced in mid-air by an invisible blade and plumted, her body disintegrating into particles of light before it even touched the ground.
It was brutal.
No heroism.
No honor.
Just survival.
That's when Kael felt it.
A different kind of pressure.
It wasn't coming from across the battlefield.
It ca from a specific point.
His eyes narrowed.
"In the center," he said. "There."
They looked.
And saw.
In the midst of absolute chaos, where magical currents clashed with the most violence, there was a confrontation that distorted everything around it.
Exelia.
She was suspended in the air, her cloak torn, her hair loose like silver flas, ancient symbols swirling around her. Her magic was vast, precise, elegant—each of her gestures altered the flow of the battle around her, like a general shaping the battlefield with her own hands.
But she was fighting.
Truly.
Not commanding.
Not observing.
Fighting to survive.
Before her… was the most wrong thing Kael had ever seen since Seraphyne.
A witch—if she could still be called that—enveloped in a cloak of pure liquid darkness, with crimson markings pulsing beneath her skin like exposed veins. Her power didn't explode.
It didn't need to.
It crushed.
The space around her seed to yield slightly, as if reality were being compressed by her presence. Every movent she made caused other witches' spells to fail, to dissolve into thin air, like candles extinguished by the re act of existing near her.
Exelia cast a complex sequence of seals.
The other witch… ignored them.
She charged through them.
And struck Exelia with a direct hit, sending her dozens of ters back, piercing through an entire defensive formation.
Sylphie's eyes widened.
"She… she just bypassed Exelia's magic."
Alia swallowed hard.
"That's not possible."
Kael felt a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach.
Exelia rose into the air, visibly wounded, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Still, she smiled—a fierce, defiant smile—and attacked again.
But Kael was no longer looking at Exelia.
He was looking at the other one.
The unknown witch.
And then he understood.
A silent, cruel, inevitable click.
"…so that was it."
Irelia turned to him.
"What?"
Kael took a deep breath.
"Seraphyne was never the leader."
Sylphie felt a chill.
"What do you an…?"
Kael continued, his eyes fixed on the figure that dominated the center of the battlefield like a force of nature.
"She was a catalyst. An anchor. A disposable tool." He clenched his fist. "A way to clear a path."
Alia felt her heart race.
"Then who is she…?"
Kael didn't answer imdiately.
He watched.
Every movent.
Every reaction of the battlefield around that witch.
And the more he saw, the clearer the truth beca.
"Her power isn't unstable Chaos," he said slowly. "It's absolute control."
An explosion of white and black magic clashed in the air, creating a shockwave that swept away dozens of combatants.
The unknown witch remained motionless.
Exelia recoiled, breathing heavily.
Kael finally spoke the conclusion that had ford like a blade in his mind:
"Seraphyne was the alarm."
The sky roared again.
The war continued.
And Kael, for the first ti since entering that realm, perceived the true size of the enemy.
He gripped the hilt of his sword.
His body scread to stop.
But his mind had already decided.
"…So the true leader," he murmured, a cold smile slowly appearing on his tired face, "is still standing."
And, by the way that witch made the world bend around her…
The next fight wouldn't just be harder.
It would be worse.
User Comments
0 comments from readers