Chapter 125: The Symphony of Void and Ice (The Stellar Ice War - Part XIV - The Judgment of the Morning Star)
The command bridge of the Cryon family's flagship Super-Dreadnought had ceased to be a marvel of aerospace engineering, becoming a slaughterhouse of twisted metal and black-tinged frost. The freezing wind of the stratosphere howled through the immense breaches torn into the Stellar Steel hull, carrying with it the residual ash from the carnage being waged thousands of meters below.
At the center of this desolation, kneeling among the shattered bulkheads and the crystallized bodies of his own crew, was Supreme General Varkov Cryon.
The Stage 7 Saint Realm colossus, a conqueror who had purged entire planets in the name of the Surgeon of the Abyss, was broken. A colossal gash, traced by the Odachi of the Voracious Eclipse, crossed his chest diagonally, slicing open his Aegis of the Stellar Leviathan as if it were parchment paper. From the immense wound, clean blood did not flow; a blackish, bubbling sludge poured out. Samael's Slaughter Poison was devouring his tissues, gnawing at the walls of his meridians, and blocking any attempt at regeneration.
Varkov raised his bloodshot gaze, primal terror overflowing from his dilated pupils. Ten meters in front of him, Samael Morningstar's 1.90-meter figure stood with a tranquility that insulted the very essence of the universe. The Obsidian Throne worn by the Patriarch absorbed the little starlight that managed to filter through the torn ceiling. The immense Wings of the Primordial Void fluttered at his back, each flap altering the gravitational pressure of the surroundings.
The Cryon General knew, with a clinical and absolute certainty, that he was going to die.
His ground troops had been reduced to dust, mist, and crystal. His Overseers and Directors were dead. His Stage 7 Saint power had been treated like child's play by the monster standing before him.
But a cornered animal is twice as dangerous when it assumes there is no way out.
If he was going to descend into the underworld, Varkov would make sure that the entire Southern Continent, the Morningstar Citadel, and this false violet-eyed god accompanied him into the eternal fire.
"You haven't won yet, scum," Varkov bellowed, his voice gurgling with rotten blood, despair injecting a suicidal adrenaline into his agonizing core. "This world is a chessboard, and I have the piece that breaks the table!"
With his trembling left hand, Varkov ignored the excruciating pain in his chest and reached into the deepest, sealed inter-spatial compartment of his armor. When he pulled his hand out, he held an object that caused the air temperature, already plunged into absolute zero, to drop into a cold that was not physical, but spiritual.
It was a scroll.
It was not made of paper or papyrus. It was crafted from the tanned, flayed skin of a fallen Immortal, written entirely with the boiling blood of a Corrupted Dragon, and sealed with a black aura that pulsed like a diseased heart. It was the Supreme Authority of the Empire.
[ABSOLUTE TRUMP CARD: Talisman of the Holy King's Edict]
"By the will of the Surgeon of the Abyss!" roared Varkov, crushing the scroll between his gloved hands, injecting the entirety of his Stage 7 Qi, burning his own lifespan to satisfy the toll of the invocation.
The scroll did not burn; it erupted into a pillar of black light that pierced the dreadnought's ceiling and shot into deep space.
The universe reacted instantly. The planet's upper atmosphere stopped flowing. The storm clouds, the necrotic snow, the howling wind... everything was paralyzed under the weight of a force that exceeded the limits of mortal comprehension.
The Talisman of the Holy King's Edict was not a simple artifact that granted passive power to the wielder. It was a beacon of divine invocation. It summoned a single, devastating direct attack that possessed the mass, the weight, the Law, and the Authority of a Holy King Realm cultivator. A stage so overwhelmingly superior to the Saint Realm that the difference was not measured in power, but in existential dimensions.
The night sky over the continent, which had just cleared after Lilith's explosion, tore open.
Literally.
A colossal spatial fissure, kilometers long, opened in the stratosphere like a festering wound on the body of a god. From that wound, neither a beam of light nor a meteor emerged.
The "Finger of the Abyss's Punishment" emerged.
It was a physical manifestation of demented proportions. A giant finger, the size of a mountain range, composed entirely of super-dense Black Ice, dark matter, and dead stardust. The fingerprint of the limb was formed by cosmic craters and void whirlpools.
The instant the finger peeked through the rift, the gravity over the Morningstar Citadel and the Super-Dreadnought multiplied by ten thousand. On solid ground, thousands of meters away, the soldiers of the Sequences fell to their knees, coughing blood, unable to withstand the immense pressure of a Holy King. The air became solid. The finger was not only aimed at the ship; it was aimed at the entire citadel. It was designed to crush the area with a force capable of erasing a whole country from the face of the star maps. The Holy King's Law declared that any defense from the Saint level downward was null and void. The land's destiny was to be turned into sub-atomic dust.
Varkov, crushed against the ship's floor by the pressure of his own invocation, laughed hysterically, his blood splattering the Stellar Steel.
"Behold a true God, Samael! Behold the annihilation of your bloodline!"
Samael Morningstar looked up at the torn sky. Through the breaches in the ceiling, he observed the mountain of dead stars and black ice slowly descending, warping the light around it due to its colossal density.
The Crown of the Eternal Dawn on his head gleamed, the Arcane Flow Processing calculating the inertia, mass, and Authority of the attack in microseconds.
Samael felt no fear. His primordial Dragon bloodline knew no terror. However, his tactical reasoning was impeccable. The Patriarch knew perfectly well that, with his current cultivation in the Saint Realm and his Laws of Void, Space, Blood, and Destiny still in their initial stages of development, he could not directly block the punishment of a Holy King without sacrificing a large part of the citadel and risking the lives of his family in the shockwave. His body might withstand it, but the blast would erase the Sequences from existence.
That was not an option.
Samael lowered his gaze, ignoring the apocalyptic mass falling from the sky, and focused his violet eyes toward the earth, piercing through space to the depths of the Morningstar Citadel's heart.
Through his soul connection as Sovereign, his voice crossed dimensions, resonating in the core of the Stellar World Tree and in the shadows of the most hidden sanctuary of his empire.
"Abaddon," Samael ordered, his mental transmission devoid of urgency, but heavy with the weight of the crown. "The sky is contaminated. Destroy that garbage."
On the ground, the Sequences, the Elders, Lilith, and Seraphina watched the sky with tension. They knew that something of that caliber required an intervention that exceeded conventional combat.
And then, from the core of the Morningstar Citadel, the answer arrived.
It was not a dazzling beam of light or an explosion of energy. It was the manifestation of an epistemological anomaly.
The Eternal Guardian Spirit, the supreme system invocation tied to the protection of the Citadel's perimeter.
Abaddon. The Executioner of the Event Horizon.
The Pillar of Silence.
Abaddon was not a cultivator, neither human nor demon. He was an incarnate Spirit of Primordial Law, a creature whose range of action was strictly limited to the Citadel's perimeter, but who, within those domains, wielded an authority that rivaled the very foundations of creation.
From the central courtyard of the citadel, a colossal figure, clad in unadorned gray plate armor, rose up. Abaddon had no face beneath his heavy meteorite-forged helm, only a void that consumed light. In his hands, he wielded a black greatsword—a weapon so large, disproportionate, and crude that it seemed like a block of lead designed solely to break, not to cut.
Abaddon raised his head toward the "Finger of the Abyss's Punishment" threatening to pulverize his home.
And The Preparation began: "The Eclipse of the Greatsword."
Abaddon activated his technique. The black greatsword didn't just stop reflecting the scarce moonlight or the fires; it began to actively suck it in. As if a microscopic black hole had opened on the blade, the area around the Eternal Guardian, within a three-meter radius, lost all its color. The green of the Stellar Tree, the red of the blood on the ground, the gold of Lys's armor... everything that entered that sphere of influence turned a sepulchral black and white, a monochromatic plane devoid of vitality.
Roots began to sprout from the hilt of the crude greatsword. But they weren't plant roots like Livia's. They were roots of pure, translucent silver light—filaments of conceptual energy that coiled like hungry snakes along Abaddon's enormous gray arms, connecting him spiritually and ontologically to the weapon, fusing the Executioner with his guillotine.
Abaddon bent his knees, the obsidian of the citadel floor crunching beneath his weight.
The Finger of the Holy King was a few thousand meters from the atmosphere, cosmic friction creating a halo of black fire around it.
Abaddon leaped—not toward the sky, but anchoring his feet into the earth. He raised the light-devouring greatsword and launched a slash toward the firmament.
[Ultimate Execution: Cut of the Absolute End (Conceptual Annihilation)]
When the Guardian launched the strike, the unthinkable happened.
The weapon disappeared from physical sight.
There was no supersonic movement of metal cutting the air. There was no visible energy arc or clash of powers. Abaddon's greatsword was not designed to wound matter; it was designed to extract and erase.
In place of the weapon, in the sky, right in the direct path of the Finger of the Holy King, a crack in reality appeared.
It was an immense tear in the tapestry of the universe. Through that crack, the spectators did not see the starry blue sky. They saw the interior of the "Stellar Void." An infinite backdrop of vibrant violet nebulas and dying stars flickering within the cut—a terrifying glimpse into a dimension beyond the laws of the Divine Realm.
The "Slash that Does Not Exist" collided with the immense "Finger of the Abyss's Punishment."
And there was no impact.
There was no colossal explosion, nor a shockwave that destroyed nearby cities. There was absolute silence.
A silence so dense, so heavy, and so unnatural that it momentarily deafened everyone present in the citadel and on the Super-Dreadnought.
It was a sound of "absence."
The Holy King's Law dictated absolute destruction. But Abaddon's technique dictated Conceptual Annihilation.
The giant finger of Black Ice, dead stars, and dark matter touched the crack of purple nebulas and simply... ceased to be. It was not blocked; it was erased. The Cut of the Absolute End separated the "concept of the attack" from the "energy that composed it."
In a fraction of a millisecond, the colossal physical manifestation of the Holy King was sucked into the Stellar Void of the crack. The immense mass of frozen and dark energy, the oppressive will, the pure stellar ice—all of it was extracted from three-dimensional reality and channeled through the guardian spirit's bond directly into the roots of the Stellar World Tree at the center of the citadel.
The Stellar Tree shone with a dazzling intensity, its crimson leaves trembling with ecstasy as it processed the colossal amount of pure energy from a Holy King, assimilating it as celestial fertilizer for the clan.
In the sky, the crack closed with a blink, as if it had never existed.
The Finger of the Holy King had disappeared. The sky returned to being a sky. The stars shone once more. And the silence, once deafening, was replaced by the soft whisper of the polar wind.
On the ruined command bridge of the Super-Dreadnought, General Varkov Cryon observed the sky through the open roof.
His mind, forged in a thousand battles, trained to process the death of solar systems, suffered a total cognitive collapse.
His Absolute Trump Card, the power of his leading deity, the attack that ignored any defense and guaranteed annihilation... had been evaporated without the slightest effort. A clan from the southern region didn't just have a Saint capable of playing with him, it didn't just have lesser monsters capable of massacring his elite. They had primordial entities hidden in their backyard capable of treating a Holy King's attacks as an appetizer.
Varkov trembled. Not from the cold, but from a terror that gnawed at the very essence of his soul.
"What... what the hell are you?" Varkov whispered, his eyes fixed on Samael, drool mixed with blood falling from his lips. "This is not a clan! This is a cosmic abomination!"
The Supreme General turned his head, staring into the void, his mind fracturing.
"Boreas!" Varkov yelled at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing through the ruins of his own ship. "Boreas, you damn bastard! You deceived me! You sent us to die in a meat grinder of gods for the whim of your spoiled brat! If I descend to hell today, I swear by the Surgeon of the Abyss that my ghost will drag you down with me! I will torment you every second of your miserable—!"
Samael, still floating above the metallic floor with his void wings pulsing, interrupted him with an anesthetic coldness.
"The dead have no right to make promises."
Samael's tone was not a threat. It was a factual sentence.
But Varkov's madness had surpassed his despair. He understood there was no escape, no victory, no redemption. Only mutually assured destruction remained.
"If I am to die in this southern mass grave, I will not go alone!" Varkov roared, his eyes rolling back until they were completely white.
With a brutal and ruthless movement, Varkov raised his right fist, covered in the Stellar Steel of his gauntlet, and smashed it with all his Stage 7 strength directly into his own chest, plunging his fingers through the open wound Samael had inflicted upon him.
His fingers searched inside his own ribcage, tearing through frozen ribs and muscles, until he found his second Trump Card, the darkest of all.
[Minor Card: Leviathan's Sacrificial Core]
Varkov punctured the alien biological organ grafted over his own heart.
The result was instantaneous and catastrophic. The Supreme General's body convulsed violently. His veins bulged, turning a sickly, luminescent blue. The Sacrificial Core began to detonate, initiating a chain reaction of sub-atomic compression.
Varkov was becoming a living Absolute Zero bomb. The expansion wave he was about to release was designed not to cause physical damage, but to paralyze and eternally freeze quantum vibration in an immense radius, dragging his killer with him into the abyss of ice.
Varkov's body, propelled by the Leviathan's suicidal energy, was launched like a missile of flesh and frost straight at Samael. It was an unstoppable charge, the momentum of a dead man who had nothing to lose.
Samael watched him charge. The expansive glow of the imminent detonation was already illuminating the walls of the command bridge.
To an ordinary cultivator, the distance of ten meters would seem impossible to evade at the speed Varkov was charging.
But Samael was the King of the Void.
[Space Defensive Skill: Veil of the Infinite Horizon]
Samael did not retreat. He did not step aside. He did not create walls of stone or iron.
He lightly raised his left hand. The subtle blue energy threads of his Crown of the Eternal Dawn flickered, synchronizing with his soul's command.
Samael applied his Law of Space to conceptually "stretch" the fabric of reality.
He took the ten meters separating him from Varkov and, through the mastery of dimensional anomaly, folded and multiplied that space exponentially.
Varkov charged with the force of a meteorite. To his eyes, Samael was only three steps away. The General took the first step.
But the distance did not shorten.
Varkov took a second step, breaking the sound barrier, the ice of his detonation oozing from his mouth. To his eyes, Samael was still three steps away.
To any outside observer, the scene would have been absurd, hypnotic, and terrifying. Varkov was sprinting at thousands of kilometers per hour, his heavy boots destroying the ship's metal beneath his feet, but visually and spatially, he appeared to be running on an invisible treadmill.
The Veil of the Infinite Horizon had turned that fraction of a meter into a metric abyss. Even though the enemy seemed to be an arm's length away, Varkov's attack was traveling through an "infinite" space created by the distortion of Samael's Law.
Samael's unreachable mirage remained impassive.
Varkov, consumed by the bomb in his chest, kept running in the void, trying to reach the infinite horizon.
While the colossus ran futilely in his spatial loop, Samael decided it was time to draw the curtain.
Samael opened his eyes.
And the universe changed.
[Eyes of the Crimson Abyss (The Neon/Violet Eyes)]
Normally a deep, serene violet, the Patriarch's eyes underwent a violent metamorphosis upon entering the apex of his fury and concentration. They shone with an intense crimson neon, a red so dark and deep that his pupils seemed to contain the fractal image of entire galaxies being devoured by the immensity of supermassive black holes.
The [Gaze of Primordial Truth] (its passive effect) activated, dissecting Varkov's physical reality.
Through the red of his pupils, Samael saw beyond the ice armor, beyond the mutated skin. He saw the exact flow of Varkov's black blood and, more importantly, he saw the precise accumulation of the Leviathan Core's suicidal energy in the center of his chest. He saw the networks of frozen meridians about to collapse into the absolute zero detonation.
Samael fixed his crimson gaze directly on the unstable core.
[Active Effect (Space/Void): Sovereign Lockdown]
Samael channeled the gravitational force of his Law of Space through his gaze, anchoring it to the exact three-dimensional coordinates that Varkov's body occupied in its infinite sprint.
The Patriarch "froze" space.
It was not a thermal freeze like the Cryon's. It was a solidification of the universe's architecture.
Varkov, who was sprinting at terminal velocity, crashed against a wall that did not exist. His body was paralyzed in mid-motion, immobilized in an invisible and unbreakable prison. His arms remained fixed in the air, his legs frozen mid-stride. The Sovereign Lockdown enveloped him like a block of cosmic diamond.
The pressure of the spatial block was so absolute that, when Varkov attempted to force his way out using the Leviathan's immense muscular strength, space itself fractured millimetrically, inflicting hundreds of micro-cuts at the molecular level upon his armor and his skin, forcing him to stop under penalty of being flayed alive by the laws of physics.
Varkov was paralyzed, his time bomb pulsating in his chest, a prisoner of Samael's scarlet gaze.
Samael raised his right hand into the air, palm open.
The Dragon Heart on the breastplate of his Imperial Void Dragon Armor beat with a deafening roar. The Wings of the Primordial Void at his back folded slightly, concentrating his immense cosmic energy into the Patriarch's hand.
It was the moment of final judgment.
Samael invoked the apex of his Law of Blood combined with the inscrutable weight of the Void.
Thousands of liters of blood, spilled across the command bridge by the dead crew and by Varkov himself, began to levitate. The red and black drops levitated, ignoring gravity, and converged violently into Samael's open palm.
[Ultimate Execution Technique: Spear of Longinus - Judgment of the Morning Star]
The immense amount of blood and pure slaughter energy was super-compressed under the iron will of Samael's Law of Blood.
In his hand, a spear took shape.
It was not a physical weapon that could be forged on an anvil. It was a pure vector of annihilation. The spear was a dark red color, almost black, dense and opaque like the coagulated blood of an ancient god. It vibrated. It vibrated with a frequency so high and destructive, imbued with the power of the void, that the air around the spear crackled and split into tiny two-dimensional fissures.
The Spear of Longinus was not a weapon to be thrown hoping to hit. Its mechanics dictated a cosmic truth: this spear never misses.
Samael held the vibrating crimson death in his hand. The red light of the spear illuminated his porcelain face, outlining the features of a relentless monarch, his galaxy eyes burning in the gloom.
Samael looked at Varkov through the spatial prison. The Supreme General was trapped, the core in his chest shining with the blinding white of the imminent absolute zero burst, his bulging eyes reflecting the red spear.
"Send my regards to King Yama," Samael declared, his deep voice a low vibration that resonated within Varkov's skull.
Varkov, in the final microsecond of his existence, knew with a devouring and absolute certainty that he had messed with the wrong people. He had not invaded a city; he had stepped on the tail of the sleeping leviathan.
Samael did not throw the spear with a ballistic movement. He simply closed his fingers and pushed the spear forward, integrating the action with his Law of Space.
The Spear of Longinus disappeared from Samael's hand.
It did not travel through the air. It tore the three-dimensional fabric and rewrote the physical coordinates.
The very next instant, the dark red tip of the spear materialized directly inside the spatial prison, embedding itself fully and with abyssal brutality into the exact center of Varkov Cryon's chest.
The spear of compressed blood and void pierced the Aegis of the Stellar Leviathan, punctured the petrified bones, and impaled perfectly through the Leviathan's Sacrificial Core, shattering the sub-atomic detonator of the Absolute Zero bomb.
The impact abruptly interrupted the detonation.
Varkov opened his mouth in a soundless scream.
The mechanics of the Judgment of the Morning Star Spear activated. Once embedded, the spear was not a simple armor-piercing projectile; it was a divine leech.
In a matter of milliseconds, the vibrating spear began to drain all the vital essence, blood, Stage 7 Saint Qi, and residual energy of the Leviathan core from the General's body. Varkov felt his strength, his memories, his cultivation, and his very existence being sucked away as if by a black hole located in his own chest.
His immense physical mass withered violently, his corpulent body collapsing in on itself.
The massive amount of energy was returned through the spear's dimensional connection directly to Samael, revitalizing his core and feeding his draconic bloodline.
Overloaded by the massive drain and the internal destruction of the suicidal core, Varkov Cryon's dried, collapsed body could resist no longer.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The spatial prison of the Sovereign Lockdown and the Supreme General's body exploded simultaneously. It was not an explosion of fire or ice, but a burst of pure void pressure tinged with red mist.
The shockwave blew out what remained of the command bridge, scattering metallic dust and necrotic ash into the immensity of the stratosphere.
When the red smoke and mist dissipated, Supreme General Varkov Cryon, pride of the Stellar Ice Empire and scourge of the north, no longer existed. Only a smoking crater remained on the floor of the immobilized Super-Dreadnought.
The war in the sky was over.
Samael Morningstar remained floating in the gloom. His void wings dissipated softly, melting into his Imperial Armor. His neon crimson eyes gradually dimmed, returning to their deep and serene violet hue.
With a lazy wave of his obsidian-gloved hand, the Patriarch's silence was interrupted by a familiar sound, a crystalline chime that resonated within his mind. The system activated, balancing the books at the end of the slaughter.
A holographic screen, visible only to him, unfolded with glowing runes.
[System: Main Quest "The Baptism of the Empire" Activated.]
[Status: COMPLETED]
[Objective: Total annihilation of House Cryon's Invading Fleet.]
[Predicted Reward: Stellar Ice Law Fragment, Saint Grade Loot, and Official Clan Rank Promotion in the Continental Hierarchy.]
Samael nodded slightly. With a second flick of his finger, the system proceeded to harvest the fruits of the abyss.
[System: Battlefield Looting Completed]
Acquired Rewards:
Stage 7 Saint Core (Fragmented): (Supreme energy usable for forging or cultivation). "Absolute Zero" Greatsword (Mid Heaven Grade): (Purified version of the remains of the Dead Nebula). Map of Commercial and Military Routes of the Stellar Ice Empire: (Strategic information)
The Patriarch looked away from the screen. The Super-Dreadnought he was on, like the other two in the sky, began to lose altitude, their engines and runic arrays completely shut down. They were now simply floating tombs, giant coffins of twisted metal and shattered steel.
Silence returned to the obsidian desert on the ground, but it was a different silence. It wasn't the calm before the storm; it was the deep breath of a world that had just witnessed the birth of a new order.
The air on the battlefield in front of the Morningstar Citadel smelled of ozone, coagulated blood, burnt metal, and the residual fragrance of Seraphina's lotus.
The five thousand elite soldiers of House Cryon lay scattered across the sand and stone. Infantry, chimeras, assassins, Semi-Saint Overseers, and one Saint.
None left alive. Winter had not conquered the south; the south had purged winter.
Samael descended from the torn bridge of the dreadnought toward the earth. His Imperial Void Dragon Armor receded back into his body, revealing once again his immaculate black and white robes with gold accents.
He landed softly, without making the slightest sound, on the main plain in front of the great obsidian gates of his home.
They were waiting for him there.
Kael Morningstar, with his sword resting in the sand, and Altair Ashborne, with the colossal Greatsword Ash's Lament resting on his smoking, grayish shoulder. Around them, the rest of the Sequences congregated. Lirael, Bren, Elian, Varian, Joren, Maren, Nylas, Lys, Violeta, Draven.
The young ones' armor was stained with black blood, ash, and dust. Their breathing was heavy, their muscles trembling from the colossal exhaustion of having faced an imperial army. But their eyes... their eyes shone with a feverish intensity, with the pure and intoxicating certainty of total victory. They had crossed through fire and ice, and they had not broken.
Seeing their Patriarch descend, without the need for an order, all the Sequences dropped to one knee on the frozen earth. They bowed their heads in a sign of submission and absolute respect.
Samael looked at them. Pride slightly swelled the dragon's chest. Not only had they survived; they had dominated.
Grand Elder Lilith and Empress Seraphina descended gracefully to his flanks, taking their place to the right and left of Samael's invisible throne—immaculate, lethal, and perfect.
"Elder Marcus," called Samael, his voice projecting with calm and authority.
The heavy gates of the citadel opened. Marcus, the First Elder, immense and coppery, emerged from within, followed closely by the sharp Torian, Livia, Sela, and the other Clan Pillars.
"Here, Patriarch," Marcus replied, his voice rumbling like subterranean thunder, bowing his massive head.
Samael pointed toward the sky, where the three immense skeletons of twisted metal from the Cryon Super-Dreadnoughts were slowly beginning to crash in the distance amidst the desert dunes, kicking up plumes of dust that blotted out the stars.
"Collect the steel from those ships," Samael ordered. "Have Altair and the forge disciples take it to the blast furnaces. I want us to use the stellar metal of our fallen enemies to reinforce our outer walls. Let every inch of this citadel be a physical reminder of their absolute and pathetic failure."
"It will be done with the fury of magma, my lord," Marcus affirmed, clenching his enormous fists in anticipation.
Samael nodded, and his violet gaze settled upon the kneeling Sequences.
"Enter the city," the Patriarch declared, his tone growing slightly warmer. "Today the banquet in the Main Hall will be massive. And it will be in honor of the Tenth Sequence."
Altair looked up, surprised. His eyes, gray as ash and ringed in fire, locked onto Samael.
"Altair," Samael said, looking him straight in the eyes, recognizing the hell of the Stage 5 Transcendent Realm that the youth had crossed in his baptism of blood. "Today you have ceased to be a survivor of the slave arenas, to become an unbreakable pillar of my empire."
Altair felt a lump in his throat, an emotion that slavery had tried to kill for years. He bowed deeply, striking his armored chest with his massive fist.
"For the Morningstar Clan, Patriarch," Altair swore, his hoarse voice full of absolute devotion. "Until only ash remains."
Behind everyone, rising above the high domes of the citadel and reaching the torn skies, the Stellar World Tree shone.
Having devoured the colossal essences of the Semi-Saints, the enemy troops, and the annihilation of the Holy King's attack extracted by Abaddon, the cosmic tree radiated an unusual intensity. Its crimson leaves vibrated violently, sending waves of pure Qi and vitality through every stone and crystal of the sanctuary.
The tree vibrated in perfect harmony with the heartbeat of a clan that had crossed the line of no return. A clan that, finally, bathed in the blood and steel of the northern empires, was no longer afraid to look toward the skies. Because they knew the skies now belonged to them.