Chapter 13: The Siege of Gold
The silence that followed the collapse of the 'Mana-Null' field was more terrifying than the explosion that had caused it. For a heartbeat, the only sound was the crackle of short-circuited pylons and the distant, rhythmic crashing of the Azure Sea against the cliffs. Then, the alarm bells of the Northern Heights began to wail—a dissonant, frantic chorus that signaled the arrival of the unthinkable to the city's elite.
Kael Light stood at the center of the scorched garden, his four golden-violet rings slowly rotating behind him. The air around him distorted with a shimmering haze of heat and shadow, the perfect white roses of Sam's garden curling into black ash before his feet even touched the soil. The 'Reforged Sun' on his finger glowed with a steady, fierce starlight, but beneath the Void-Iron cage, Kael could feel the God in his mind laughing. The entity was gorging itself on the proximity of the moon, which hung in the sky like a bloated, silver eye, watching the slaughter begin.
"HE IS IN THE GARDEN!" a voice screamed from the manor's balcony, high above.
The first wave of Royal Guards surged from the mahogany service doors. These were not the common thugs of the 'Gut' or the simple border patrolmen Kael had encountered months ago. They were 'Gold-Plated' veterans, their armor etched with deep-groove dampening runes and their shields massive slabs of mana-resistant alloys. They moved with a discipline born of years of training, forming a perfect phalanx—a wall of steel meant to crush any rebellion with the cold weight of the law.
Behind them, three Academy mages in deep purple robes appeared on the terrace. They were specialists in "Static Suppression," their eyes glowing with a cold, blue light as they synced their internal cores. They didn't offer a parley. They didn't ask for a surrender. They raised their obsidian staves in unison, their 5-Ring circles overlapping to create a massive, combined geometric structure in the air.
"Grand Rite: The Hammer of Judgement!"
A pillar of pure, concentrated blue mana descended from the clouds, a vertical strike of kinetic energy meant to pulverize Kael into the bedrock. The force of the spell was so immense that it shattered the marble fountain twenty feet away, sending shards of stone and freezing water whistling through the air like shrapnel. The ground groaned, the granite cliffside vibrating under the atmospheric pressure of the descent.
Kael didn't move. He didn't even look up at the sky.
As the blue pillar struck his position, he simply raised his bandaged left hand. The Stasis Ring pulsed once, a heavy heartbeat of black energy that met the blue mana. Instead of a collision, there was a consumption. The "Hammer" didn't explode; it was pulled into the gravitational shadow of Kael's ring, the energy drained and converted into raw fuel for his own core.
The mages on the terrace gasped, their staves vibrating with a violent, agonizing feedback. "He... he ate the spell? That's impossible! A 5-Ring composite cannot be absorbed!"
Kael took a step forward, his boot grinding into the white marble path. The stone cracked under the weight of his aura. "Modern magic is built on rules," Kael said, his voice resonant and hollow, carrying over the din of the alarms. "Rules are for those who are afraid of the source. My mother taught me that the source has no rules. It only has truth."
He flicked his wrist. A single, razor-thin arc of white fire—the "White Sun" at its most concentrated—slashed through the air. It ignored the shields of the Royal Guards. It ignored their dampening runes as if they were nothing more than ink on paper. The arc passed through the phalanx like a hot wire through silk, cleaving the steel and the stone behind them in a perfect, glowing line. The guards weren't killed instantly, but their armor was slagged, their weapons reduced to useless puddles of molten metal.
The air was suddenly filled with the scent of ozone and burnt hair. The guards fell back, their discipline breaking as they looked at their severed shields.
"FORM UP!" the Captain of the Guard roared, though his own voice was shaking. "HE IS JUST ONE MAGE! ARCHERS, RELEASE!"
A rain of mana-tipped arrows erupted from the manor's windows. Each arrowhead was coated in a paralytic toxin and etched with a 'Shield-Breaker' rune. Kael didn't bother to deflect them. He allowed the arrows to strike him. As they hit his grey cloak, the 'Stable Agony' in his body reacted. His toxic, violet-marbled blood began to seep from the small punctures, and the arrows simply dissolved, the wood rotting and the metal rusting in a matter of seconds.
Kael felt his ribs beginning to shift—the pre-moon cycle was intensifying, spurred on by his use of the Ancient Arts. Every breath was a symphony of dull thud-cracks within his chest. He embraced the pain. It was the only thing that felt real in this house of lies.
He tapped into the God's shadow, allowing his form to blur.
"Ancient Art: The Weeping Shadow."
He disappeared from the garden path, leaving only a faint cloud of blood-mist behind. He reappeared on the terrace, directly in front of the three Academy mages.
Up close, the horror of the "Blood Weeper" was undeniable. Fresh droplets of dark blood were already trailing down his cheeks like crimson tears. His eyes were no longer the soft gold of the jungle; they were glowing orbs of violet-marbled starlight that seemed to peer into the mages' very marrow. The pressure he radiated was so dense that the mages found their own mana cores seizing up, their internal circuits overloaded by the mere proximity of a Primordial Vessel.
"You... you shouldn't exist," one of the mages stammered, his stave falling from his nerveless fingers.
Kael didn't use a spell to finish them. He simply walked past them. The sheer density of his aura was enough to shatter their mana-vessels, their rings dissolving into sparks as they collapsed to the floor, gasping for air that felt as heavy as lead.
He stood before the grand glass doors of the manor. Beyond them, he could see the silhouette of the foyer—a cathedral of gold-leaf and crystal. But he also felt the presence of something else. Sam had not just hired guards; he had turned the manor into a living trap.
A group of elite mercenaries—the 'Silver-Tongued Killers'—dropped from the vaulted ceiling of the terrace. They were faster than the guards, their movements fluid and silent, their bodies wrapped in 'Void-Silk' to hide their heat and mana. They didn't use staves; they used dual-bladed daggers coated in a "Mage-Slayer" venom.
Kael didn't slow down. He embraced the horror of his condition. He allowed the blood to flow more freely from his eyes, his mask of gore becoming complete as he stepped into the foyer. He used his Healing Art in reverse—not to mend, but to sense the biological weaknesses of his attackers, the pulse points where their life-force was most fragile.
One killer lunged from the shadows of a marble pillar. Kael caught the blade with his bare hand. The poison hissed against his skin, a burning sensation that would have killed a normal man in seconds, but Kael's regeneration was a furnace that consumed the toxin. He twisted the blade, the high-grade steel snapping like a dry twig, and drove the jagged shard into the killer's shoulder.
"Tell the Merchant I've arrived," Kael whispered, his voice vibrating through the foyer.
The interior of the manor was a maze of opulence and death. Every chandelier was a mana-battery, every painting a potential hidden turret. Kael could feel the "Little Suns" in the city below, their distant embers giving him a sense of the layout. Sam was not on the ground floor. He was not in the ballroom. He was hiding at the very top, in the penthouse vault, surrounded by the gold he had bought with Kael's life.
Kael reached the base of the grand staircase. At the top stood the final line of defense for the lower floors—the High Overseer of the Academy's Blackwall branch. He was an old man with a long beard and eyes that had seen centuries of history. He held a staff made of white ash, and seven glowing rings appeared around him—a Grandmaster, the highest rank a modern mage could achieve.
"Stop, boy," the Overseer said, his voice calm despite the carnage in the garden. "You are a walking catastrophe. If you continue this ascent, you will unleash the Dark God fully. Do you have any idea what that will do to this city? Thousands will die in the mana-burst."
"Then move," Kael said, his voice a low, dangerous thrum. "I am not here for the city. I am here for the debt."
"I cannot let you pass," the Overseer said, his seven rings spinning with a hum that made the crystal chandeliers shatter. "The laws of the kingdom and the stability of the Academy demand your execution."
Kael looked at the Overseer, then at the Stasis Ring on his finger. He felt the moon pulling at his bones, the first true rib-crack of the night echoing through the silent hall.
"The laws of the kingdom are written in Sam Willer's gold," Kael said, his eyes flashing with a sudden, violent violet light. "And I have come to melt the currency."
Kael took the first step onto the grand staircase. The Overseer raised his staff, and the air in the foyer began to solidify into a thousand glowing spears of blue light.
The Siege of Gold had only just begun. Kael was at the bottom of the mountain, and Sam Willer was at the top, watching the mirrors of his manor as the Blood Weeper began the climb.