The atmosphere inside the Queen's Chamber shifted instantly.
The air, already thick with the chilling pressure of Rizevim's presence, suddenly vibrated with a frequency that made the obsidian table hum.
The three leaders of both Heaven and the Carmilla Factions, Michael, Gabriel, and Queen Carmilla turned their gazes toward the windows on the grand balcony.
Confusion flickered across their faces.
They were attuned to the dualities of the world.
Michael and Gabriel resonated with the warm, steady hum of holy energy, a light that affirmed order and judgment. Queen Carmilla, by contrast, stood aligned with the cold edge of darkness, the darkness of shadow from which the vampire race had been born.
But the presence surging from the battlefield outside was neither.
It was neither of those two.
It was a raw, foreign divine weight that simply was.
Rizevim Livan Lucifer, however, did not look confused. For the first time, the insufferable, mocking smirk on his face faltered, replaced by a tight calculating line.
He narrowed his eyes as his gaze piercing through the stone walls.
'That boy is truly insane,' Rizevim thought, a rare spark of genuine wariness flickering in his hazel eyes.
'This is not a power a human should possess.' He thought.
Outside, the silence was absolute. It was the heavy suffocating quiet that precedes a tectonic shift.
Every soul on the battlefield from the Tepes Reinforced nobles, the Carmilla Vampires, and the Church Exorcists stood paralyzed.
High in the sky, Marius Tepes felt his heart hammer against his ribs.
The Sephiroth Graal in his hand pulsed rapidly, sensing a threat that it could not negate.
He looked up at the twin titans of lightning and storms, the gigantic presence of the Qilin and the Dragon and felt the first cold drop of sweat slide down his neck.
"What the fuck is that?" Marius hissed, his voice cracking. "It's a trick. It has to be an illusion!"
But his army knew better. The primal instincts of the vampires honed over centuries were screaming at them to run.
The reinforced nobles, who only moments ago were reveling in the rape and slaughter of the Carmilla line, suddenly found their legs failing them. Some dropped to their knees, their hands over their ears as the air itself began to scream with static vibration.
Others turned and fled, their wings beating frantically against an atmosphere that had turned as thick as lead.
Jay stand tall at one of the towers of Carmilla Castle, the wind whipping around him and tugging at his hair, his left hand still raised toward the sky.
His expression was solemn, devoid of the rage that fueled Dulio or the madness that drove Marius.
His hazel eyes had fully bled into a brilliant electric blue, crackling with arcs of silver lightning that danced along his eyelashes.
He looked out over the thousands of enemies below him, his primary targets the flocks of Tepes Reinforced Vampires, but also the scattered Carmilla vampires and Human Church exorcists who stood too close to the blast zone.
They broke into chaos.
Some tried to flee, dropping to their knees before scrambling forward on all fours, while others turned and ran outright, terror driving them faster than reason.
He did not intend to stop.
He was not a savior.
There is no one to be saved.
He lowered his hand.
And with that swing, he whispered a death sentence to the world.
"Skyfall."
The word broke the silence like a hammer shattering glass.
For a heartbeat, time seemed to decelerate. The fluttering of wings, the falling of debris, and the very beating of hearts slowed to a crawl.
Jay's figure was the only thing that remained sharp in a world of blurring motion.
Then, the Qilin and the Dragon uncoiled. They tore through the air, their descent creating a vacuum that pulled the very oxygen from the air around it.
The blueish-silver lightning of the Qilin and the greyish cloud of the Storms Dragon converged into a singular, blinding pillar of judgment. It slammed into the flocks of thousands of reinforced vampires, obliterating the Grail's golden protection on its way hitting it.
A flash of absolute white illuminated the world, bleaching the colors from the mountains and the sky alike. For a single, terrifying second, there was no sound, only the visual of a world being rewritten by light.
Then-
BOOM
The shockwave hit.
The earth buckled as the very foundations of the Carmilla fortress groaned with the sound of ten thousand thunderclaps arrived at once.
Announcing the arrival of the heavenly judgement.
Barrier magic shattered.
Bodies evaporated.
The shockwave followed the light with the weight of a collapsing moon.
It was a physical wall of pressure that ripped the battlements from the Carmilla fortress and pulverized the the gothic stone castles inside it.
When the dust finally settled and the blinding bluish white glare receded, the landscape had been irrevocably altered.
Nearly half of the Carmilla territory, a region that had stood for centuries as a gothic monument to vampire history, had been hollowed out in a single moment.
In its place lay a gargantuan crater, a jagged smoking basin of molten glass and pulverized stone that stretched toward the horizon while its edges still glowing with residual heat.
Almost half of the Tepes Reinforced Vampires who had once filled the sky like a black tide were simply gone.
Along with them vanished the Church exorcists and Carmilla vampires unfortunate enough to have been caught within the blast zone, erased without distinction or mercy.
Only scattered broken remnants survived at the far edges of the devastation, their wings torn, their bodies ruined, and their minds shattered by the sheer force of that attack.
It was a force of nature.
And though the Grail had stripped the Tepes vampires of their weakness to holy energy, it could not free them from the mother nature itself.
And then, the world fell silent once more.
The wind stopped.
The thunder ceased.
Even the fires seemed to hold their breath.
Dulio stared at the scene in stunned silence, while Griselda, who had stood rigid only moments before, let her sword slip from her grasp in disbelief.
Diethelm, Mirana, and the surviving Church exorcists stood in silence, staring into the vast crater where nearly half of their enemies had been erased, along with some of their own comrades. Words failed them. There was nothing left to say.
The Carmilla vampires were no different. They stood frozen amid the ruins of their homeland, struggling to comprehend that centuries of history had been torn apart in a single moment.
At the edges of the devastation, the remaining Tepes vampires looked on in horror as their so-called Immortal Legion had been reduced to drifting ash by the storm. What had once been an unstoppable tide was now nothing more than dust scattered by the wind.
High above them all, Marius widened his eyes. His body hovered in the sky, yet for the first time, it trembled.
Inside the Queen's Chamber, the silence was even heavier.
Michael and Gabriel stood motionless as their wings half-unfurled, staring at the crater where an entire legion had once been.
Queen Carmilla's hand had gone numb against the balcony stone looking at the destruction of her land.
Rizevim, standing in the shadows of the room finally let out a slow exhale. For once, the Son of Lucifer had nothing to say.
Meanwhile, Jay remained standing at the railing, his posture unchanged as he slowly lowered his left hand.
'So this is the power of Ame-no-Murakumo…' he thought.
He lifted his gaze to the sky as the storm clouds gradually dispersed, the violent vortex unraveling into silence.
The crackling lightning that had wrapped itself around Murakumo faded as well, leaving the blade still and quiet in his grasp.
It was clear enough now.
This was not a power meant to be used without limit, as the divine lightning energy from the runes etched on its blade needed some sort of cooldown time or charged.
He exhaled softly.
'I thought I could spam it,' Jay admitted to himself. 'Maybe Susanoo could...'
But he could not. He didn't have any divine power.
He was, is, and will always remain human.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
"I–Illya-san…" Dulio said, his voice faltering as the words refused to form.
His thoughts were a tangled mess.
"Why… why did you kill some of the Church exorcists? They were on our side."
Jay glanced back at him, his gaze calm and distant.
"I was never on your side, Mr. Gesualdo," Jay replied.
Before Dulio could respond, a new presence manifested behind him.
A figure clad in a dark purple robe appeared soundlessly and stepped onto the railing beside Jay, a wooden staff resting in her grasp.
Griselda stiffened as she recognized her.
"The Ice Princess of Grauzauberer…" she muttered under her breath.
Jay turned slightly toward the woman.
"Lavi...," he said. "Are Glenda, Gasper, and Valerie somewhere safe?"
Lavinia met his eyes, her expression composed but serious.
She nodded once.
"I placed layered protection runes around them. They should be safe for now," she answered.
Jay nodded.
After the battle against Rizevim and Euclid, he had returned to them first. He had found Lavinia with Glenda, Gasper, and Valerie before entrusted them to her care. She had sent them away to the city without hesitation.
Only then had he moved again to the Carmilla territory.
Following the thread of mana he had planted earlier, Jay had teleported straight to Griselda's position.
Jay then turned to Lavinia. Though his eyes were empty, a trace of worry still surfaced within them.
"Are you alright with this?" he asked quietly.
Lavinia paused, her expression softening. Then a gentle beautiful smile appeared on her face. She raised her hand and rested it against Jay's cheek, her touch cool and steady.
"Do not worry about me," she said softly. "I will handle the vampires here. You go and kill their king."
Jay held her gaze for a brief moment before nodded.
His hands tightened around the hilts of both swords, resolve settling in his posture.
"Thank you…" Jay murmured in a low voice.
Lavinia just smiled hearing that.
After that, then Jay dissapeared from his place in a flicker of purple ember as Lavinia expression hardened, and with a cold gaze scanned towards the remaining legions of Tepes Reinforced Vampires.
And then Lavinia remember why Jay worried about her, as the last time she used it is hurting her and it targeted to hurt innocent people by the Witch of the East.
But not this time.
Channeling all of her mana, as a flicker of white appeared on her eyes, Lavinia started floating in the sky as he targeted all of it to the flocks of Tepes Vampire in the horizen, and as the air started frozen and the temperature dropped. she whispered.
"Balance Breaker... "
And then the world turned white,
"Assolute Argento Mondo"
FWUOOSH
A blizzard of absolute frost erupted from Lavinia's position, surging outward in a roaring wave of ice and storm toward the Tepes vampires within the walls of Carmilla territory.
Wherever the frozen tempest passed, bodies were caught mid-motion and entombed instantly, transformed into lifeless statues of ice. Fangs, wings, and twisted expressions were preserved in crystalline silence.
Those fortunate enough to escape the heart of the storm fared little better. An unimaginable cold seeped into their bodies, freezing blood, numbing limbs, and stealing breath. Even those who survived the wind found themselves crippled, their movements sluggish, their senses dulled by searing frost that gnawed at their very existence.
Yet the most bizarre part of all was this.
Neither the Church exorcists nor the Carmilla vampires were affected.
The blizzard curved around them as if guided by will, sparing allies without fail. It was a storm that recognized its enemies and judged them alone.
Realizing the opening, shouts rang out across the battlefield.
"Charge!"
All at once, the allied forces surged forward, cutting down Tepes vampires who were frozen solid or weakened beyond resistance.
Dulio stared wide-eyed at the spectacle.
Then his expression hardened.
He drew in a deep breath and prepared himself once more. His Balance Breaker answered his resolve, activating again as storm clouds rapidly gathered overhead.
Thunder rolled across the sky, and the unmistakable roar of Zenith Tempest returned and shaking the battlefield to its core.
Griselda watched it all in silence. Two Longinus Balance Breakers stood against the enemy, their power bending the very world around them.
She exhaled softly.
"The tide of battle has shifted."
***
Meanwhile just on the outside of the Carmilla walls, witnessing nearly half of his army erased by a single strike and the rest of his Reinforced Vampires now being crushed between two Longinus users, Marius clenched his teeth in fury.
"What the fuck are they doing?!"
He roared the words, his voice tearing through the sky.
Then his body stiffened.
A sudden pressure bloomed nearby, sharp and unmistakable.
Marius's instincts screamed in warning as he turned his gaze.
Atop the massive walls surrounding Carmilla territory stood a lone man with two swords in both of his hands, calmly looking up at him.
'…A human?'
The realization sparked immediate irritation. Disbelief twisted into contempt.
A single human dared to face him.
Him, the God King of the Vampires.
"Kill him!" Marius bellowed, thrusting a finger toward the intruder.
At once, hundreds of the remaining Tepes legions surged forward, wings beating as they rushed toward the figure on the wall.
But the man, Jay did not move.
He simply stood there, eyes fixed on the oncoming horde.
As violet flames began to dance along the edge of his blade.