Seeing two quick deaths made the Phantom finally take the situation seriously. His aura expanded in a heavy wave and aimed itself directly at Primus and Steve. They ignored it as if it were nothing and moved toward the next abominations waiting to be slaughtered.
The demons below erupted into loud cheers as the bodies of the fallen abominations crashed into the streets.
Dorian roared and clashed with the strongest one in the enemy group. None of the demons, including him, knew our real plan. I wanted Primus to stand at the center of this battle as the hero. Offcourse, Primus... and the humans who fought beside him.
A smile touched my face when I saw North finally move.
North didn’t charge forward like Primus or flash ahead like Steve. She slipped into the battlefield with quiet precision, choosing not to engage any abomination head-on.
Her target was the chaos itself. An abomination locked in a clash with a mid-level Bloodreaver raised its arm for a killing blow, but a sharp white arc suddenly traced across the air.
The creature blinked in confusion as its forearm separated and fell away. Before it processed the pain, a second cut blurred across its neck, shallow but crippling, forcing it to stumble back.
The Bloodreaver demon didn’t understand what had happened, only seeing North drift past him like a gust.
Another abomination spotted her and rushed in with a roar, but she was already gone, stepping lightly across compressed layers of air. Her dual blades spun once, gathering thin spirals of wind around their edges.
She appeared beside a second monster struggling against two demons and sliced through its knee in a single precise motion. The abomination collapsed, howling, and she followed with a clean horizontal arc that removed half its head.
Two kills. Neither took more than two seconds.
She continued weaving through the battlefield, cutting into fights she never stayed in. One abomination trying to overpower a Bloodreaver suddenly lost its right leg from the thigh down.
Another had both eyes carved out before it even felt the wind shift. A third reached for her and lost its entire hand to her returning blade. Each movement was measured, intentional, and done before the target realized she had ever stood near them.
Her class was Vortex Lamina and she evolved beautifully with it.
By the time she passed behind Steve again, six abominations were crippled, missing arms, legs, eyes, or pieces of their faces. Two were dead. None understood what had hit them.
And watching all three of them tear through monsters meant to terrify entire cities, I felt a quiet thrill. My hands were trembling to taste some of that action but I held myself back.
While the fight raged above the city, the grandmaster who had been sent to summon the ancestor finally reached the sealed chamber at the far end of the palace grounds. He waved his hand and pulled out a token and just as he raised his hand to put the token in place, only for two silhouettes to drop behind him.
He froze, confused for a heartbeat. Both demons were grandmasters of the Bloodreaver line, older men with hard faces and the same fire affinity blazing faintly around their skin. They weren’t supposed to be here. They should have been in the sky, helping Dorian.
"Luo. Revie. Why are you two not out there fighting?" he asked.
Neither answered.
Their expressions were serious with jaws clenched.
Revie moved first, stepping forward with his blade raised. The grandmaster barely brought his forearms up in time to block. Flames burst out as their weapons collided, the impact echoing across the stone courtyard.
"What are you doing?" he shouted, staggering back. "Have you both lost your minds?"
Revie slashed again, faster this time. Luo circled behind, his palm heating with blood-red flame. The grandmaster ducked one strike, kicked off the ground, and spun midair to avoid the second. He swung his own blade in a wide arc, forcing Revie to retreat a step.
Luo lunged. Revie followed a second later.
The grandmaster gritted his teeth and hurled a burst of fire to force space between them. He backed toward the chamber door, trying to understand what was happening.
"Have you betrayed your family?" he roared, voice echoing. "What the hell are you two doing?"
They still didn’t speak.
Revie’s eyes stayed calm as he raised his burning blade toward the grandmaster’s neck. The grandmaster lifted his own sword to defend, but he was half a heartbeat too slow.
Before the strike connected, space rippled.
A shadowy arm reached out of the distortion. Knight materialized from the warped air like he had been hiding between the layers of reality. A blade of condensed darkness slammed into the grandmaster’s head, knocking him unconscious before he could even register the appearance.
Luo turned, confused by the sudden shift, but Knight’s second blow hit him in the throat, dropping him instantly. Revie tried to step back, but black tendrils shot out of Knight’s shadow and pinned him to the ground. A moment later, he joined the others in unconscious silence.
He didn’t stay outside. He flashed inside the ancestor chamber with a twist of space and disappeared from sight, sinking into the shadows along the edges of the room.
The air inside the chamber was heavy with the scent of blood. Suspended above the pool floated a wooden plank. The Bloodreaver ancestor sat cross-legged on it, deep in meditation.
Knight hid near the pocket space in the far wall.
Counting the seconds, I remained still. Knight remained still. The ancestor continued meditating, unaware of the danger moving closer through the layers of space.
Finally, the pocket space buzzed.
The surface rippled like water touched by wind, and a figure stepped out. Tall, dressed in white and silver robes, with hair flowing behind him like pale smoke. The ancestor of the Del Reys.
He didn’t announce himself. Of course he wouldn’t. He had come here for one purpose, kill the Bloodreaver ancestor quietly and get out.
He moved like a whisper, glancing once at the meditating Bloodreaver before drawing out a thin blade wrapped in cold blue light. He stepped forward, silent, composed, ready to strike from behind.
He never got the chance.
Before he completed the second step, the shadows on the floor shifted, extending into long tentacles of darkness that wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso in one swift motion. The ancestor’s eyes widened right before Knight emerged from the shadow behind him and slammed his knee into the back of his head.
Then the shadows surged and bound him completely into a cocoon.
The Del Rey ancestor collapsed instantly, unconscious before he hit the ground, bound so tightly by the shadow tentacles that even waking up wouldn’t help him.
Knight didn’t even breathe loudly. He simply pulled the ancestor deeper into the shadows and remained there, waiting.
And in the pool above the blood-soaked plank, the Bloodreaver ancestor meditated on, unaware that the entire shape of the war had just turned in our favor.