"What's going on?! Why is Asuma tainted by the Blood Primordial?!" Urillia shouted, her composed, calculating expression finally shattering.
The cold princess—who had faced a pillar and political betrayal without flinching—now felt something close to dread.
She had sensed something wrong when she tried to bind Asuma with the Phoenix Pact.
But this...
This was worse.
The crimson aura coiling around him was unmistakable.
Blood Monarch.
Yet layered beneath it—deeper, older—was another presence entirely.
Something even she could not measure.
Amira stared upward, breath caught in her throat.
"Asuma..."
This was the same chaotic magic she had felt in Bagon.
But different.
Back then, she could still feel him within it.
Now—
She couldn't tell where Asuma ended and the demon began.
Was he still human?
Or had he crossed that invisible line?
With a violent surge of aura, blood erupted from Asuma's back, forming massive crimson wings—each feather dripping liquid light.
He didn't hesitate.
He shot forward.
The air shattered behind him as he aimed his blade at the Noctyrix.
The windstorm from his acceleration alone tore rooftops free.
Lyra—no, the Noctyrix—snapped fully into awareness.
Her massive shadow-wings unfurled, eclipsing what little light remained.
She twisted midair, narrowly dodging his blade as it carved a black-red crescent through the sky.
The arc sliced a mountain peak clean in half.
She ascended higher.
Then raised one clawed hand.
Thousands of spears—formed from condensed shadow—manifested behind her like a storm of black stars.
She flicked her wrist.
They rained down.
Not at Asuma.
At the city.
She wasn't fighting him.
She was finishing what she started.
"Blood Magic: Bloodless Slash!"
Asuma spun midair and unleashed a massive crimson arc.
Hundreds of spears shattered.
But not all.
The rest plummeted into Talagra, detonating buildings and piercing streets. Screams echoed below.
Asuma clenched his teeth.
He shot upward again.
Lyra answered with a beam—pure concentrated abyss—fired straight from her mouth.
He slashed through it.
Split it.
But the divided beams detonated against the mountainside, causing twin explosions that flattened what little remained of the city's upper district.
Below—
Amira and Leon shielded Urillia from falling debris and collapsing stone.
The sky above them was no longer a battlefield.
It was annihilation made visible.
Asuma hurled slash after slash.
Crimson crescents ripped through the heavens.
Lyra countered with city-destroying beams and waves of shadow that tore open valleys.
He was keeping up.
But barely.
Because the blood magic resisted him.
It answered his call—
—but it disgusted him.
Camellia's power pulsed through his veins like a parasite.
He could wield it.
But not master it.
Every strike felt like swallowing poison.
Lyra suddenly stopped.
Her body hovered beneath the dying sun.
Then—
For the first time—
She spoke clearly.
Her voice layered—child and monster intertwined.
"From the place where light was first betrayed...
From the grave of forgotten kings...
Let the world kneel beneath the night eternal."
Her red eyes flared.
"Shadow Magic: Eclipse of the Fallen Sovereign."
The sun vanished.
Not dimmed.
Devoured.
An invisible sphere expanded from her body like a silent tidal wave.
Darkness swallowed the city whole.
The sky cracked.
Reality twisted.
Talagra was no longer Talagra.
The world shifted.
Buildings bent unnaturally.
Streets stretched and warped.
The sky became an endless void crowned only by a massive eclipsed sun bleeding crimson light.
Everything felt wrong.
"Heavy..." Amira whispered, gripping her spear.
Her aura flickered unstable.
"It feels like something is crawling inside my skin..."
Urillia's Draak Eyes burned bright gold as she scanned the domain.
"This is her Alter Reality," she said grimly. "A domain where she defines the laws."
Above them—
Lyra hovered like a sovereign of darkness.
She looked down at Asuma.
And whispered a single word.
"Kneel."
Gravity multiplied instantly.
Asuma was slammed from the sky like a meteor.
He crashed into the ruined city below, stone exploding outward from the impact.
The blood wings shattered.
He coughed violently.
Even his amplified body felt crushed under the weight.
Lyra extended her hand again.
"Rise."
Shadows poured from every crack in the earth.
From broken buildings.
From beneath corpses.
From within the domain itself.
"Shadows-born demons."
Thousands manifested.
An endless black tide.
Urillia's voice hardened.
"Now I remember..."
Her eyes tracked the army forming.
"The Noctyrix destroyed half of the Carja Republic because she commands an undying shadow legion."
The demons roared.
Their eyes burned red in the false eclipse.
Above them—
Lyra watched silently.
Queen of the void.
The city was no longer a battlefield.
It was her kingdom.
And Asuma—
Still pinned to the ground—
Had just declared war on a sovereign inside her own world.