The summit was no longer just a battlefield; it was a crumbling reality. The golden light radiating from Vaelora had intensified until it turned the very air into searing, liquid fire. Draeven, desperate and cornered, was tearing open rifts in the fabric of the mountain to pull out more shadow-beasts, but they were being vaporized the moment they touched the golden aura surrounding the Princess.
"You cannot win, girl!" Draeven screamed, his voice sounding thin and distorted. He summoned a massive, swirling cyclone of black, necrotic energy—a final, desperate attempt to swallow the summit whole.
Vaelora didn't flinch. She sprinted directlyinto the eye of the storm.
Her Midnight Daggers were glowing so intensely they were turning white-hot, vibrating with an unstable, ancient power. She slashed through the dark vortex, her blades severing the threads of shadow magic. Each strike caused a shockwave that sent tremors down the mountain, causing avalanches to trigger in the valley far below.
CLANG! SNAP!
The sounds were unmistakable. As Vaelora channeled the sheer force of her ancestral bloodline into her daggers to deliver a final, crushing blow against Draeven's staff, the magical strain became too much for the steel to endure.
The Midnight Daggers, forged by drazhin hands, simply disintegrated.
The golden energy that had been contained within the blades exploded outward in a blinding, concussive wave. The force of the backlash threw Vaelora backward. She tumbled across the sharp, jagged ice, her palms shredded, her armor cracked open, and her primary weapons reduced to nothing but glowing, molten dust on the ground.
She gasped for air, her body trembling, her strength rapidly waning from the magical exhaustion and the side wound Draeven had inflicted earlier.
Draeven stopped. He watched the glowing dust settle around the Princess. A twisted, triumphant cackle escaped his lips as he realized she was unarmed.
"The blood of the Queen is potent," Draeven sneered, his shadow-staff reforming in his hand, pulsating with a dark, hungry light. "But your steel is weak. You are just a child playing with forces she cannot control."
He began to walk toward her, slowly, savoring the moment. "No weapons. No army. No father to catch you when you fall. How does it feel, Vaelora? To realize that the light you serve is as fragile as your own bones?"
Vaelora struggled to rise, her breath hitching. She looked at her empty, bleeding hands, then toward the mud where Azeal lay motionless. She had failed to protect him with her blades.
But then, her gaze shifted. Just a few feet away from Azeal's limp hand, the StarFireSword lay in the dirt, its blue light flickering, waiting for a hand to claim it.
The realization hit her like a whisper from the past: the power wasn't in the steel of the daggers. It was in the blood of the Sovereign. And that sword... it was calling to her.