(Author's Note: I plan to make this battle historical. It should be my best yet. I hope you'll all bear with me. Thank you for reading! :).
Best regards; RealmWeaver. )
Silence.
An intense, deafening silence gripped the forest as Atticus's words echoed through the air.
Atticus hadn't said anything new. In fact, except for a few word changes, he had essentially repeated the exact same threat Grand Elder Yorowin had uttered mere moments ago.
But to everyone present, the content of the words wasn't what sent a wave of disbelief through their ranks.
No.
It was the audacity.
The arrogance.
The sheer, unshakable denial radiating from the 17 year old boy.
None of them could fathom how overwhelming those qualities must be for someone so young to hurl such words at Yorowin.
A Grand Elder of the Vampyros race.
The Vampyros had many paragons, but they could be divided into two categories: the strong and the truly strong.
There was no such thing as a weak paragon. Ascending to the paragon rank was a monumental achievement, granting unimaginable power and strength to said individual.
The strong paragons of the Vampyros race were typically newly ascended. They had mastered their abilities to extraordinary levels, enough to reach the paragon rank, but they were far from the peak of their potential. They were still learning, still discovering the full extent of their powers.
But the truly strong paragons were different. These were paragons who had existed in their rank for over a century. They had fought countless battles, accumulated vast experience, and discovered ways to wield their abilities with world ending efficiency.
There were only nine such paragons in the Vampyros race, excluding the Blood Queen herself.
These paragons were the stuff of legends. Their importance to the Vampyros and the alliance was immeasurable. They were beings so powerful and feared that their standing was akin to kings and queens of Eldoralth.
Grand Elder Yorowin was one of these paragons.
He was a king.
And for the majority of his long life, he had been treated as such.
The humans trapped by Yorowin's powers knew this all too well.
The blood shadows surrounding Atticus once more knew it as well.
Every single person in the Vampyros race, the human domain, and across all of Eldoralth knew it.
Which was why those who had heard Atticus's words couldn't comprehend them.
The sheer magnitude of his audacity…
It wasn't just planetary, it eclipsed the stars themselves. It was the kind of arrogance that could challenge the heavens, the kind of confidence that could crush nations beneath its weight.
The humans, held motionless by Yorowin's power high in the air, couldn't fathom it.
The blood shadows, circling Atticus like a pack of ravenous wolves, couldn't fathom it.
The Vampyros race, with all their pride and power, wouldn't fathom it.
Even Eldoralth itself, a world bathed in blood and war since its inception, seemed too small to contain the enormity of what this 17 year old had just declared.
In the entire forest, there was only silence.
It lingered for a moment, as if everyone present needed time to fully digest his words.
Even Yorowin, a paragon, took a second longer than usual to grasp the implications of what he had just heard.
And when he did, his lips shifted.
A frown appeared on his face.
Yorowin was not the kind of person to be provoked by mere words. He was a being who had lived for centuries, his mind refined to a point of absolute control over his emotions and actions. To him, as long as his goals were achieved, his enemies could insult him all they wanted.
But even centuries of life could not change what he was at his core.
A natural born predator.
Insults from those he considered true enemies didn't faze him. He was above such trivialities.
But this boy?
Yorowin was a Grand Elder of the Vampyros race. To even entertain the notion of placing that boy, that child, in the same realm as his enemies was absurd.
It was like the ocean acknowledging a raindrop as its rival. Like a mountain recognizing the challenge of a pebble.
It was an ant screaming fury at a giant, daring to insult a being whose mere footstep could obliterate its entire existence.
It was ridiculous.
It was impossible.
And it was an insult. An insult to everything Yorowin was, to everything he stood for.
Which was why, despite being centuries old and possessing perfect control over his mind and actions, the moment he heard Atticus's words, he cast that control aside. He didn't just lose it, he obliterated it.
Then came the cold.
It wasn't the chill of ice or water.
It was the coldness of pure, unrelenting bloodlust, intense and suffocating.
It crawled across the forest like a creeping shadow, saturating the air with a malice so thick that breathing felt like inhaling razors.
Yorowin's eyes flared an intense, searing crimson, glowing like molten embers against the encroaching dark.
There was no grand eruption of power, no earth-shattering explosion.
It came like a whisper, subtle, insidious, but it carried the weight of a collapsing world.
Every living thing within kilometers of the forest froze, their bodies locked in place.
Birds fell from the sky. Beasts cowered in their dens. Even the trees seemed to shrink away, their leaves curling inward as if in fear.
The metallic scent of blood thickened in the air, so overwhelming it felt as though it seeped into the very soil, staining the earth itself.
The blood shadows who had burned with rage at Atticus's words, ready to attack, stopped in their tracks.
Their fury evaporated, replaced by something primal: terror.
They didn't just freeze, they recoiled. Trembled.
In the presence of Yorowin's suffocating power, their very essence felt eclipsed.
And then his voice came.
It wasn't a roar or a shout.
It was quiet, like a loud whisper, and yet it slithered into the minds of everyone present like a venomous serpent.
"I dare you to repeat that, boy."