At that same moment, in a desolate section of the kingdom, there was no life… only the aftermath of ruin. The air quivered under the strain of raw, untamed power, a storm where crystalline frost and shattered steel met in a relentless symphony of devastation. The streets were scarred with cracks, walls caved in on themselves, and the remnants of once-proud homes stood like broken teeth in a mouth of ruin.
In the midst of it, two figures moved with terrifying precision. Veyron and Sora, locked in a whirlwind of blades and ice, fought with a frenzy that bordered on madness. Their bodies twisted and struck as one, a dance of pure violence, their faces split with identical, savage smiles.
Sora's ice daggers gleamed with a pale, killing frost, each edge breathing cold into the air. They clashed against Veyron's desecrated blade in rapid succession, sparks of steel meeting bursts of icy mist. Every parry screamed through the air, the shriek of grinding metal and fracturing frost echoing like the kingdom itself cried out in agony.
Blood already streaked their skin, a dozen shallow wounds marking their arms and faces, but neither faltered. Their injuries were nothing more than fuel, intoxicating them, urging them deeper into frenzy.
Then, with a roar, Veyron struck. His blade met Sora's dagger with such force that the ice shattered, bursting into glittering shards that rained through the broken street like deadly snow. Sora barely blinked. She thrust her free hand forward, her fist encased in a sudden bloom of frozen mana, and drove it into Veyron's chest. The blow cracked like thunder, hurling him backward. His body tore through the façade of a derelict building, the walls collapsing around him in a hail of stone and dust.
The ruin had not even settled when Sora crashed into the debris after him, her movements a blur of wrath and single-minded determination. She landed atop him, her fist a piston of solid ice, hammering his face in a relentless rhythm. Each strike shook the rubble, blood splattering across her knuckles, the sound of bone crunching beneath her fury.
Veyron, his nose and mouth a fountain of blood, only laughed through the violence. His voice was guttural, half-mad. "Yes!" he roared, teeth painted crimson. "Yes! Give me more!"
With a sudden, vicious motion, his leg coiled like a serpent. From his supine position, he hooked behind her knees and yanked with inhuman force. Sora's body was wrenched from her stance, flung backward. She hurtled toward the jagged remnants of a shattered wall, the stone edges waiting like blades.
But instinct saved her. Twisting mid-air, her shoes caught the crumbling wall, turning her fall into a desperate run across its surface. Dust and rubble cascaded beneath her feet as Veyron surged forward, his blade cutting the air with a scream, aimed straight at her heart.
Her hand conjured an ice dagger in an instant, the blade so sharp it hissed against his steel. Their weapons collided, and the street erupted in a blinding flash of steam and frost, the impact rattling windows that somehow still clung to nearby ruins.
Veyron's grin widened. He released his sword with one hand and seized a fistful of her hair, yanking hard enough that strands cracked with frost. He slammed her head against the crumbling wall, the impact a wet, sickening thud that sent cracks spiderwebbing across the bricks.
They tumbled together into the open street, a tangled mess of limbs, blood, and steel. Veyron straddled her, his grip on her hair unyielding, his gaze alight with sadistic pleasure. "Come on, maid," he purred, voice dripping venom. "What happened? Is that all your strength amounts to?"
He raised his sword, slow and deliberate, savoring the torment. The blade descended toward her face like a cruel execution.
But Sora's hand shot upward. In an instant, a gauntlet of jagged frost encased her fist, and she caught the edge of the sword in her grip. The frost spread across the metal with a hiss, blooming over the blade like veins of ice. With a savage twist, she redirected it, the deadly point reversing toward Veyron's his neck.
Before he could react, she drove her forehead forward, their skulls colliding with an impact that sent a ripple through the air. The sound was like stone breaking against stone. Veyron's head snapped back, blood spraying in a fine mist.
The opening was small, but Sora seized it. Her arm coiled, and with a roar, she released a concentrated blast of frozen mana. The icy force slammed into Veyron's chest, the shockwave tearing across the broken street and scattering loose cobblestones like leaves in a storm.
He was hurled across the ground, skidding through sparks and stone until he came to a violent stop on the far side of the road.
For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the crackle of lingering frost and the groan of collapsing walls.
Then, slowly, impossibly, Veyron pushed himself to his feet. His body shook with blood loss, his jaw hung crooked, and yet his smile remained. His teeth glimmered red, his lips curled into a crimson slash of hunger. His eyes, burning with sadistic joy, fixed on Sora.
And he laughed.
Sora stood in the open now, her last dagger lost somewhere in the chaos. Her breath came in short, ragged bursts, each exhale frosting the air around her.
"Ah… don't tell me you are getting tired," Veyron taunted, his tone sharp and mocking, like a knife scraping against bone. His lips curled into a savage grin, daring her to falter.
But instead of faltering, Sora smiled back. It was not a smile of weakness, but one of cold, predatory resolve. The curve of her lips sent a chill deeper than her frost ever could.
In that instant, the world around them transformed. A Glacial Veil bloomed outward, a surge of raw, frozen mana that devoured the ruined street. Shattered stones, crumbling walls, and even the fractured air itself were consumed by a bloom of frost. Buildings became pale statues of ice, frozen mid-collapse. Even Veyron was caught mid-laugh, his body encased in a solid coffin of crystalline frost, his twisted expression preserved for a heartbeat in glimmering blue.
Sora did not wait. Her body blurred into motion, a Silent Frost Step that made her little more than a phantom. In her hand, ice crystallized into a deadly dagger, its tip aimed directly for Veyron's heart.
But Veyron was not so easily claimed.
With a sound like thunder splitting the earth, the ice around him exploded outward. Shards rained across the battlefield, slicing through walls and embedding into the stone ground. He broke free with impossible force, his laughter resuming, wild and triumphant, as he twisted aside and evaded the killing strike.
Sora pivoted sharply, the movement flowing like a dancer's turn. She thrust the ice dagger into his waist, but his hand was already upon her. His fingers tangled in her hair, yanking her forward, and his knee surged upward with bone-breaking speed. The impact shattered across her face.
The crack of bone echoed through the empty streets. Blood burst from her nose, staining her lips crimson. For a moment, everything spun around her, but Sora clenched her teeth against the haze.
Veyron did not relent. His blade arced high into the sky, spinning free from his grasp as his fists began their own assault. He became a storm of violence, his hands striking from every angle—ribs, jaw, temple—each blow driving her back a step, forcing her toward the collapsing ruins. The world narrowed to his relentless fists and the laughter that poured between them.
Overhead, his sword reached the apex of its arc, beginning its deadly descent. At the very moment his final strike crashed into Sora's gut, he snatched the falling blade from the air, spinning with merciless grace, the edge flashing toward her neck.
But Sora's fury ignited like a blizzard's heart. In her hand, a curved blade of pure ice formed, jagged and shimmering, and she swung it upward. Steel and frost collided.
The impact birthed a shockwave that tore the air apart, blasting rubble into the sky and sending both combatants reeling backward. The street cracked open beneath them, fragments of stone swallowed by the energy of their clash.
Sora refused to yield. She surged forward, her eyes blazing with fury. Her weapon melted and reshaped in an instant, her hand now encased in a jagged gauntlet of frost. She caught Veyron by the back of the head and slammed her fist into his face. The concussive strike rattled his skull, sending blood and broken teeth into the air.
He only laughed louder.
The two of them collided again, a whirlwind of ice and steel. Their strikes blurred into one another, fists and blades clashing faster than thought. There was no hesitation, no fear—only a shared, vicious joy in the violence, an unholy desire to end one another.
Then the everything itself began to break.
Veyron's blade bled light, a sickly, malevolent purple that hummed with twisted energy. Sora's ice gauntlet burned bright with a celestial blue, radiant and pure. As their weapons met again, the opposing powers tore against one another with unbearable strain.
The ground split apart. The street dissolved into dust, the cobblestones pulled into a spiraling void that formed at their feet. Buildings collapsed into the fissures as if the earth itself sought to escape their clash. The air shrieked as the fabric of mana began to unravel.
This was no longer a battle. It was a rupture.
The shockwave from their collision did not push back. It consumed. A yawning fissure bloomed outward, a vortex of raw, unbridled power that devoured rubble, ice, and even the very breath of the world around them.
And in the center of it, Sora and Veyron's eyes locked, both smiling with the madness of warriors who would rather tear reality itself apart than yield.
~~~~~~~
Meanwhile, at that same moment.
In a desolate corner of the kingdom, where the living had long since yielded to silence, a graveyard had become a sanctuary. The Royal Graveyard—its massive, ornate gate etched with solemn words—now stood as the last bastion of hope.
A tide of terrified civilians pressed toward the gate, their cries blending into a single, desperate chorus. Fathers clutched children, beastkin children sobbed into their parents' arms, and the elderly stumbled forward, driven only by raw fear. Knights struggled to hold order, their armor battered but gleaming faintly in the dying twilight, shields raised as they formed a fragile perimeter around the entrance.
At the forefront, Lucian fought like a man standing against the end itself.
His movements were precise, deliberate, like a grandmaster on a chessboard where every piece was a life. A Minotaur, a hulking brute of horn and fury, had cornered four knights against the broken edge of a crypt. Its stone axe rose high, a weapon forged for nothing but ruin.
Lucian's hand snapped forward. The air rippled, condensed, and hardened into a shimmering wall of arcane energy. The axe came crashing down with a boom that shook the earth, sparks and stone bursting outward. But the shield held. The shock reverberated outward, knocking the beast off balance.
"Now! Strike!" Lucian's voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
The knights obeyed with a roar, their blades carving through exposed flesh, severing tendons and rending muscle. The Minotaur collapsed in a heap, its axe falling with a thundering crash that rattled the stones of the graveyard.
There was no time to breathe.
Lucian's gaze snapped to a fresh threat: robed men at the edge of the horde, their hands glowing with twisted mana. Civilians huddled nearby, eyes wide, too frozen by terror to move. Fire and shadow swirled in the casters' palms, building into a deadly storm.
Lucian raised his arm again. A shimmering dome of pure mana enveloped the civilians, fireballs and shards crashing into it with explosive force. For a heartbeat the barrier quivered under the assault. Then it shifted, twisted, and flung the gathered magic back at its origin.
The casters had no chance to flee. Their own corrupted spells engulfed them, their screams cut short as fire devoured flesh and shadow consumed bone.
Still, Lucian's heart did not lift. His wards were slowing, his mana thinning, and all around him the line of knights was buckling. Minotaurs pressed in like a relentless tide, every fallen beast replaced by two more. The clang of steel on steel, the cries of the wounded, and the desperate sobs of civilians blended into a single, suffocating storm.
Lucian ducked beneath a hammer blow, his ward flaring as it deflected the strike. Stone exploded where the weapon landed. He retaliated with a precise bolt of arcane force, shattering the Minotaur's jaw, but his body trembled. Sweat streaked down his brow.
I cannot be everywhere at once. I cannot hold them all.
His eyes darted, searching the field—and froze.
A lone knight stood against a Minotaur, his shield shattered, his armor dented. In his arms, he clutched a small beastkin child, the boy's face buried in his chest, trembling. The Minotaur's massive club rose high, casting its shadow over them.
"Move!" Lucian shouted, his voice raw, but he knew the truth. He was too far. His wards too thin. The knight could not defend, not while protecting the child. For the first time in the battle, a hollow helplessness clawed into Lucian's chest.
Then salvation fell from the sky.
A small, black sphere cut through the air, striking the Minotaur squarely in the face. For a split second, it pulsed with light. Then came the blast.
The detonation split the night with a deafening crack, vaporizing the beast's head and chest in a blinding flare. The Minotaur's body toppled backward, crashing into the ground with a tremor that rattled loose stones from nearby tombs.
Lucian blinked, stunned, before seizing the moment to unleash his own strike, a razor of arcane light piercing through the skull of the Minotaur that bore down on him. Its massive body crumpled to the dirt, lifeless.
The knight, clutching the child, bolted for the safety of the gate.
Lucian turned, breath harsh, and his eyes caught a sight that pulled a grim smile to his bloodied face.
Mr. Kaito sprinted across the battlefield, satchel clutched tight in one hand. Behind him came the Countess, Rosette and Angelo, his pockets bulging with strange tools.
"About time," Lucian muttered under his breath, though his relief was real.
Mr. Kaito didn't pause. He hurled another black sphere deep into the horde. The resulting explosion tore through a cluster of Minotaurs, blasting bodies and weapons into the air. The shockwave rippled outward, buying the knights a heartbeat of precious breathing room.
"Keep pushing them back!" Mr. Kaito shouted, his voice ragged yet firm.
Angelo moved next, pulling smaller black orbs from his pockets with both hands. He hurled them into the nearest cluster of robed men. Each burst detonated with vicious force, knocking casters off their feet, their spells collapsing as they shrieked in pain.
And as the blasts lit the graveyard in flashes of fire and shadow, the knights found their voices again, rallying behind the unexpected reinforcement.
As they drew near, Lucian lifted his hand, weaving a shimmering barrier of light. For a moment the screams of the battlefield dimmed, leaving a fragile pocket of silence where words could be spoken without interruption.
His eyes found the Countess. He did not smile. His voice was a low, measured hum against the roar of combat. "Countess."
She returned his gaze, her face unreadable. "Lucian."
The barrier flickered as a Minotaur's hammer struck the edge, but Lucian's focus never wavered. His tone was cool, almost accusatory. "I was told you already had a safe place. Why are you here?"
Rosette, standing just behind her, felt her chest tighten at the tension between the two.
The Countess's reply came sharp, without hesitation. "We do not have time for questions. What is the situation here? How many civilians have been moved to safety?"
Lucian's composure faltered, the barest crack in his otherwise impenetrable mask. "…I don't know."
Her sigh cut sharper than any blade. "You don't know. And you do not know how to coordinate the knights, or how to guide the people?"
Rosette flinched at her words, her knuckles white around the ring pressed into her palm. She had seen the Countess stern before, but this was something else—this was cold fury held on a leash.
Lucian drew a slow breath, the corners of his jaw tightening. "Since you are here…"
The Countess's voice lashed out, severing his words. "We need to use the Transmission. The same one Eryndor used."
Lucian's answer came instantly, with no room for compromise. "No. That is too great a risk. If we use it, Zephyr will know exactly where we are."
Her composure cracked for the first time, a flash of raw frustration breaking through. "He should know! This place is already drowning with his henchmen." Her voice trembled with memory—of fire bursting from the explosive cache, of death nearly claiming her if not for Angelo's quick reflexes. This was not calculation. It was truth. Her mask slipped, if only for a heartbeat, and what Lucian saw was desperation. "This is not the moment to hesitate. Not the moment to debate. Do it, Lucian. Connect me to the knights."
For a long breath, Lucian's silence was heavy as stone. Then he saw it, the faint quiver in her eyes. Not weakness, but the unbearable weight of responsibility. The Countess who never faltered was begging him to act.
He lifted his hand. She took it without hesitation.
The world narrowed to a single point of agony. Mana surged between them like a river forced through the eye of a needle, threatening to tear both apart. Lucian clenched his teeth, veins bulging at his temples, every nerve aflame as he forced the torrent into shape.
"Start," he rasped, voice raw, eyes squeezed shut.
And then the Countess's voice was everywhere.
It filled the minds of every knight across the battlefield—cool, commanding, a steady flame burning against the darkness.
"Knights…This is your countess speaking…Cease fighting as scattered men. Form the shield. Move as one. Your task is not slaughter. Your task is to hold. Protect the civilians. Do not waste yourselves against their strongest. Be the wall. Not the blade."
Across the graveyard, knights froze mid-strike as her words sank into them. A heartbeat later, their desperation shifted into order.
Spearmen slammed shoulder to shoulder, shields interlocked, forming a wall of steel that blunted the Minotaurs' furious charge. Behind them, swordsmen darted in and out, cutting where openings appeared, creating pockets of safety. Step by step, the formation advanced, a living bulwark.
The people, seeing the sudden unity, surged forward in waves, their cries of terror meeting the rhythm of the knights' discipline. Where there had been chaos, there was now purpose.
Seeing her orders ripple through the battlefield with flawless precision, the Countess wrenched her hand back as if scorched. A searing, white-hot pain tore through her skull, and she staggered, clutching her temples. A low gasp escaped her lips, sharp and unguarded.
"What… was that?" Her voice trembled between outrage and genuine pain. "What did you do to me?"
Lucian, still hunched against the barrier he had conjured, dragged air into his lungs in ragged pulls. His chest rose and fell as though the act of breathing itself was a battle. "I… I did what you asked," he managed, his words hoarse. "Your mind… it is a storm of clashing currents. Untamed. You pulled too much, too fast. I had to force a path for you, hold it open with my will. Another heartbeat and it would have burned you out completely."
The Countess's narrowed eyes glinted with both disdain and the raw ache that throbbed behind them. "For a mage of your reputation… you truly are useless."
Lucian did not answer. His gaze, heavy and unflinching, fixed instead on the battlefield, as though her insult had already been drowned beneath the tide of war.
The Countess, despite the pounding in her head, followed his eyes. The knights were moving like one body now, their formations holding under her command. She caught sight of Mr. Kaito and Angelo, their black spheres cutting down waves of attackers with grim precision, buying seconds that felt like lifetimes. Her gaze shifted further, finding Rosette. The girl clung to the ring as if it were the last anchor in her world, her face pale and stricken, fear etched deep into every line.
"Rosette." The Countess's voice softened, rare warmth threading through the steel. "Go on. You will be safer, and you will serve better if you are not here."
Rosette's lips parted, her eyes wide with protest that never formed into words. At last, she only nodded, her throat working, and fled into the tide of civilians pressing into the Royal Graveyard. She vanished, swallowed by the desperate flood of bodies.
The Countess stood silent for a heartbeat, the throbbing in her skull refusing to relent. Useless, she thought, her lips curling faintly, utterly useless. Yet unbidden, another thought intruded, quiet and unwelcome. Although… perhaps not as useless as he should be.
"When you are done gasping for air," she said, her voice once more sharpened to command, "you will also raise a barrier around the entrance."
"That will not be necessary," Lucian replied. His tone was flat, stripped of the energy she sought to command.
Her eyes flashed. "What do you mean, not necessary? We are surrounded, and the graveyard gates are our only path inside. Do you mean to let them break through?" The sharp edge of her words carried more than frustration—it carried the ache of her pain and the bite of her fear.
Lucian's gaze remained fixed, distant, as if he were seeing something beyond the smoke and screams. "It will not be necessary," he said again, firmer this time. "There is already a barrier protecting the pathway."
The Countess's brow furrowed, her composure faltering for the briefest instant. "Already…?" Her lips pressed together, and something like intrigue sparked beneath her fatigue. "Hmmm. Interesting."
Before she could demand more, the ground itself trembled. A guttural roar tore across the battlefield, deep and earth-shaking, so primal it seemed to split the air itself. Every knight faltered. Every civilian screamed.
The sound did not belong to mere beasts. It was power, raw, hurtling closer.
The Countess froze. The color drained from her face, her control shattering for a flicker of a moment. She knew that sound.
"Lucian," she breathed, voice low and urgent. "I do not care how long you need to catch your breath. Do it fast." Her eyes darted to the panicked civilians surging through the gates. The knights were holding, but barely.
The roar came again, nearer, louder, a doom rolling toward them. And in her heart, a cold truth settled like stone.
And then, cold as frost, she said the words that cut through the panic like a blade.
"Some of them will have to be left behind."