Chapter 466: • The Heart of The Storm Part Three
Alister’s claws dug into the Emperor’s face, golden light radiating from his grip as smoke hissed from the contact. The ancient tyrant writhed, his limbs twitching, but Alister held him firm, eyes narrowing into cold, predatory slits, the dragon skull crest in his eyes allowing his to peer into the emperor’s origins.
“You sought power immortality,” Alister growled, his voice like thunder echoing through a hollow void, “but all you’ve achieved is becoming a monunt to decay.”
He slamd the Emperor’s head into the ground, the impact cratering the earth, dust and shattered stone erupting outward in a deafening shockwave. Cracks webbed out in all directions like a spider’s web spun in agony.
The Emperor twitched, sputtering blood, his body trembling beneath the pressure of Alister’s overwhelming might. But even through the pain, his voice rasped out, hoarse and trembling.
“You… you dare lecture ? A whelp… a cursed beast playing god?”
Alister tilted his head, almost amused. “Cursed?” he repeated, then chuckled—a deep, unsettling sound that made the air tremble. “Don’t tell you use the actions of others to justify your own failings? I knew you were a fool but now you are just utterly pathetic.”
“But now you have curious, what exactly drove you to such madness?”
He raised a claw, golden lightning arcing between his fingers, and slashed downward—not at the Emperor, but the land itself. The slash tore through the ground, a crescent of light that split a ravine into the cursed city, sending half a temple toppling into its depths, and beneath were bones.
“You shackled your people. You devoured your gods. You polluted the skies and called it divinity.”
Alister leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper that sohow echoed louder than any shout. “You are no emperor. You are a tyrant clinging to power like a rotting corpse to its faded crown.”
The Emperor snarled, surging with energy, mana flaring as he tried to rally his strength. A crimson-black vortex burst beneath him, screaming with volatile power as he channeled every remaining ounce of his corrupted divinity.
But Alister didn’t move.
His aura simply expanded—an overwhelming do of golden light that washed over the battlefield. The vortex shriveled, its energy fizzling as if embarrassed to exist in his presence.
The Emperor scread in defiance, a last cry of desperation and pride fused into one. “I AM ETERNAL!”
“No,” Alister said, stepping forward, “you’re a monster.”
With one final strike, Alister raised his arm and brought it down like divine judgnt. His golden claw pierced through the Emperor’s chest, straight into the core of his corrupted soul.
Ti itself seed to pause.
The Emperor’s eyes widened as he stared into Alister’s unflinching gaze. There was no hate. No rcy.
Only truth.
“Perhaps you were once a benevolent king. A righteous ruler. But you lost that war the mont you let your greed cloud your sense of reason. You lost the right to rule the mont you forgot what it ant to protect, and you lost the right to wear the crown the mont you left your honor behind,” Alister whispered.
A thunderous pulse erupted from the contact—an explosion of gold and red. The Emperor’s body convulsed, his corrupted mana being pulled, siphoned, and consud by the radiant blaze.
Alister sneered, the cold glint in his eyes dimming any chance of rcy.
With a single brutal movent, he hurled the Emperor through the air again, his battered body crashing through the skeletal remains of crumbling buildings. Debris exploded with each impact, stone and steel yielding to the unstoppable force. By the ti the Emperor’s body ca to a stop, half-buried in the wreckage of his own palace walls, he could barely lift his head. His arms trembled, vision blurred. Blood pooled beneath him.
But Alister was already there.
With a deafening crack, his armored heel slamd into the Emperor’s chest, pinning him down like an insect beneath a god’s boot.
“Stay down,” Alister commanded, his voice absolute. “And take a look around you.”
The Emperor gasped for breath, his gaze slowly shifting past the dust and ruin—past the bones of soldiers, the remains of once-proud monunts now collapsed in disgrace. His eyes settled on the horizon, where the crimson mist still writhed. And within that mist… his people. No longer n, won, and children. Twisted limbs, fanged maws, soulless gazes.
Monsters.
They flinched and whimpered in the distance, recoiling not from the pain of their mutations—but from fear. Fear of the one who stood above their emperor.
Alister.
“This is what ca of the people who believed in you,” Alister said, his voice like thunder through a tomb. “Those who placed their fates in your hands.”
Then Alister raised his clawed hand, glowing with golden energy that turned black at the edges, void magic coiling and crackling like a serpent. With one sharp motion, he carved a line through the very air—Void Rend.
Space trembled. Reality slit.
A tear opened, revealing another section of the cursed world—where an Aberrant, a bloated, monstrous citizen twisted by red mist, lumbered. Alister reached in, uncaring of distance or laws of physics, and dragged it out.
The creature squealed, terrified. Its malford eyes widened in horror, flailing in the Dragon Lord’s grasp. It wasn’t resisting—it was begging. It was terrified.
“This…” Alister hissed, “is what beca of your people.”
The Emperor’s eyes widened, a flicker of grief—or perhaps guilt—dawning within them. “R-Release him!” he shouted. “This instant!”
Alister leaned down, pressure increasing on the Emperor’s chest until bones creaked. “Release him? What is this? A futile attempt at redemption?”
He dropped the Aberrant at the Emperor’s side. The creature whimpered and tried to back away—from Alister befue he suddenly crushed it with a flick of his tail, the blood splattering all over the emperor’s face.
“You brought a fate worse than death upon them,” Alister snarled. “Now you want to save them? What is there left to save when you took everything that mattered from them?”
The Emperor coughed, struggling to speak as pain wracked his body. “That… That isn’t what happened, Dragon. I won’t lay here and be falsely accused.”
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