CHAPTER 430: ETHAN IN ANGER

The morning in Anbord was quiet. Too quiet.

Ethan sat alone on the balcony of his private quarters, hair ruffled by the gentle hum of the floating gardens surrounding the imperial spire. For once, peace had lasted more than a day. The sun overhead pulsed with warmth, and the skies shimmered faintly with the reflection of the empire’s barrier dome.

He exhaled deeply, his eyes half-closed, feeling the lazy hum of the day beneath his skin. Then his communicator flickered.

A faint chime echoed in his mind, a priority signal. It was low-grade at first, almost a false alarm. Then it came again. Louder. Urgent.

Ethan frowned. "Hmm?"

He reached out mentally, pulling the feed into his vision. What he saw made his expression freeze.

A section of the northern outskirts, approximately eighty kilometers from the capital, had gone dark. The map displayed a blue-white field expanding outward, swallowing energy readings, life signatures, and digital signals alike. It wasn’t a blackout. It was erasure.

The moment he expanded the view, static flooded the projection. Then, a single frame stabilized.

Aerial footage from a satellite drone. Towns frozen mid-motion. People turned to crystalline statues. And above it all, a shimmering glyph etched into the sky, rotating slowly in icy brilliance, emitting a pulse that cracked the feed.

The glyph wasn’t random. Ethan recognized the pattern. It was ancient, predating the empire, predating even his first rebirth.

"...Impossible," he muttered, his voice low and edged. He zoomed in further, forcing the sensors to extract whatever data remained. Temperature: minus 238 degrees Celsius. Mana concentration: unknown. Origin: Localized rift anomaly detected, untraceable source.

Then the system played the last surviving audio log from the patrol mech.

"Emperor... of Ice..."

The rest was silence.

Ethan leaned back slowly, golden-silver eyes glowing faintly as he processed the data. The floor beneath him vibrated, faint but perceptible. Reality around him rippled like water for a brief instant, reacting to his rising emotion.

A cold breeze brushed past him, though the balcony was sealed. Frost began to form along the glass railing, reacting instinctively to the presence he had just witnessed through the recording.

"Who dares..." he whispered.

Asteria’s presence brushed lightly against his mind." Ethan, I’m sensing a spike of energy north of the capital. Did you?"

"I saw it," he cut in, standing. The air around him shifted as invisible currents of power began to converge around his form. "Dispatch the Imperial Knights. Evacuate any nearby settlements. No one enters that region until I say so."

"What about you?"

"I’m going to see it myself."

The line went dead.

He turned toward the horizon, toward the faint shimmer of blue light painting the edge of the empire. His pupils narrowed slightly as the mark of his authority lit up faintly on his hand. Even weakened, he still had more than enough to crush anyone foolish enough to challenge him.

Yet deep within, there was an unease. A name echoing from the farthest corner of his mind. Something he thought he’d erased long ago.

He stepped off the balcony, and space folded around him. The sound of his teleportation tore through the silence, a low hum, like the breath of reality itself.

A few seconds later, the balcony was empty, except for the frost still clinging to the glass, shaped eerily like a sigil. The same sigil he’d just seen over the frozen towns.

...

The teleport dropped Ethan into silence.

No wind.No cries.No movement.

Only a still world drowned in frost.

He hovered a few meters above the ground, boots just barely brushing against the frozen air. Below him, the small town he remembered passing through weeks ago was unrecognizable. Buildings encased in jagged glaciers. Hover-cars shattered into icy mosaics. Human silhouettes trapped mid-run, expressions of terror preserved like grotesque art.

The very mana in the air was dead.

Ethan descended slowly, boots landing atop a frozen roadway. The mere touch of his heat cracked the ice beneath him, but the world remained mute. His breath formed steam in the frigid air, not from weakness, but from the intensity simmering inside his chest.

He walked through the remains of a marketplace.

A woman holding a child, frozen.A patrol bot reaching for its weapon, frozen.A man screaming, ice ripped the sound straight from his throat.

Ethan’s hand clenched.His jaw tightened.

Then he saw it.

A perfectly carved snowflake etched into the ground. Gleaming silver-blue, pulsing like a heartbeat. Its six arms spiraled outward into sigils older than civilization itself.

His blood ran hot.

No.Not this.Not him.

Ethan knelt and placed his palm near the mark. The mana radiating from it crawled up his arm, familiar, loathsome, unforgettable. A cold that gnawed into the soul, not the body.

His pupils sharpened.

"...You’ve got to be kidding me."

The temperature around him plummeted further, not from the sigil, but from Ethan’s own rage, amplifying the lingering ice mana. The air cracked like glass.

He forced himself to breathe. The memories began to surface, memories he buried deep. The worst mistake he made when he got power.

A name escaped through his teeth.

"Leon."

The title followed, dripping with venom.

The Tyrant of Ice.

His former schoolmate.His rival.A monster.

Ethan rose, fists trembling. The ice under his feet fractured for kilometers, exploding outward like a shattering mirror. Frozen corpses toppled and cracked, breaking into countless shards.

"How dare you show your face again in my world..."

The horizon pulsed with a distant blue flare, another town being erased. And along that icy wind, a whisper carried through the air:

"...Ethan."

Ethan’s skin prickled. In that instant, all control snapped.

His aura detonated.

The frost covering the street vaporized in a ringing shockwave as Ethan’s Saintly power surged far beyond what his weakened state should permit. The sky itself quivered, clouds spiraling into a vortex directly above him.

He bared his teeth.

"LEON!!!"

His roar cracked the frozen plains, a promise of retribution.

Without another word, Ethan shot forward, ripping through space like a spear of fury and intent, streaking toward the source of the blue light.

If Leon wanted a war of ice...Ethan would answer with annihilation.