CHAPTER 360: PILLARS TO THE END

The world cracked beneath their feet.

The heavens above pulsed with the wrath of the Celestials.

A golden light—pure, ancient, and absolute—descended like judgment itself, threatening to erase everything it touched.

Carmilia, Vlahović, and Bowen stood in its path. Alone. Proud. Unyielding.

Far in the distance, beyond the withering trees and fractured rocks, Charlotte could be seen vanishing through the mist alongside Neana. Lila was barely conscious, her seer’s aura faint and flickering like a candle resisting the wind. The last glance Carmilia gave them wasn’t one of fear. It was a silent vow.

"We hold," Carmilia whispered, her breath fogging the air in front of her face, already shimmering with frost. "We hold... until the end."

She slammed her palm on the fractured ground, and with a scream of will, her Solidified Mana Domain erupted—a sphere of absolute zero, a world of eternal frost encased in liquid mana. Giant ice blossoms spread across the land, sealing everything they touched in dense layers of glacial energy.

The temperature dropped in a heartbeat. Even time itself seemed to shudder.

Vlahović stepped forward, gripping his spear tighter, as if drawing strength from it. His spear’s shaft was cracked, coated in his blood, but he raised it high regardless.

"Then let us become legends."

With a growl, he invoked the Peak Way of the Spear—a culmination of movement, power, and will. He spun once, the tip of his spear drawing a sigil in midair. His mana surged, liquid and burning, merging with Carmilia’s cold in a sharp, contrasting dance.

Bowen’s body began to disintegrate into black feathers that twisted and reformed, soaked in dark mana. His eyes, always distant, became painfully present.

"Kelvin..." he muttered under his breath, his dark robes fluttering like a crow’s wings as his heart is at the heaviest. "If you can’t forgive me in this life, then I hope you will in the next."

As Carmilia took another breath, the frost crawling up her limbs, Carmilia’s heart flickered, and suddenly, a memory surged.

She was eleven. Alone. Sitting on the ice-licked balcony of her family’s northern fortress. Her hands were blue from the cold, but she didn’t care.

"I’m fine," she had told the maids.

No one ever came to her birthday.

She was too distant. Too powerful. Her magic had frozen her favorite cat when she was a child, and since then, everything she touched turned cold—both literally and emotionally.

And so, the children stayed away. The servants avoided eye contact. Even her parents eventually focused on her brother.

That was when Castaneda, the future Chancellor, found her and knelt beside her.

"There’s no shame in being different," he said. "But there’s grief in being alone. So find those worth freezing the world for."

As soon as she remembered those words, her skin cracked from the overwhelming power pressing against her domain as she smiled.

She had found them.

Kaelen. Lila. Bowen. Vlahović. Even Charlotte.

And they were worth it.

Boom!!!

A beam of divine energy tore through the horizon.

Carmilia let it come. With a last whisper, she pressed her palms together.

"Frozen Requiem: Final Waltz."

The entire battlefield screamed in icy protest as a dome of sharpened frost burst forth. It tore through a Celestial’s wing, slowed another’s step, and buried three hybrids in an instant.

But it was not enough.

BANG!!!!

A golden arrow, glowing with the authority of the Seven Concepts, punched through the sky.

It pierced her chest.

She exhaled. Her lips turned to white vapor.

And just then, the renowned Ice Queen shattered into frozen mist—her expression soft, her last breath peaceful.

"Carmilia!!" Bowen’s scream was unlike anything he had ever let out before. Rage and grief twisted together as his Dark Domain exploded outward—turning light into ink, space into shadow. The very sun dimmed above them.

Vlahović growled like a wounded beast. He did not mourn with words.

He charged forward, spear spinning, creating a whirlwind that carved through the Celestials with precision and wild beauty. His body was already broken, skin bruised and torn. But he danced with death like an old partner.

"Come on then!" he roared. "Let’s see if gods can bleed!"

A Celestial in gold, bearing a crown of radiant horns, met him in a blinding clash. Their powers collided in a thunderstorm of raw force.

Meanwhile, Bowen was already on his knees.

His mana was burning him alive. The dark arts were not meant to protect. They consumed. And he was giving everything.

He looked to where Carmilia had once stood. Then to the heavens.

His shadow spread wider.

"Black Omen: Ender’s Grasp."

A pitch-black claw surged from the ground, dragging three Celestials into it with a howl. They screamed, and for a moment—just a moment—the battlefield leaned in the humans’ favor.

But the golden sky never cracked. The Celestials never stopped coming.

---

Far away, as Charlotte and Neana sprinted across shifting terrain, they paused once.

Lila had woken briefly, eyes trembling.

"Charlotte..." she whispered.

Charlotte turned. Behind them, she could see it: golden explosions, icy storms, black tendrils flaring like dying stars.

She gritted her teeth. Tears welled up.

"They’re doing it for you," Neana said, never slowing her pace.

Charlotte bowed her head and ran faster.

Behind her, the pillars were dying.

But ahead, Lila still breathed.

---

Several minutes has gone by since then

And currently, the battlefield is now a mangled orchestra of energy bursts, blood, and dying screams. The Celestials’ golden glow burned through the charred remnants of the shattered terrain, their calm expressions untainted by the ruin they wrought. Their forms barely looked human anymore—divine, celestial, and monstrous.

A stretch of scorched earth separated two warriors from the others.

Vlahoviç, covered in gashes and cracked armor, leaned on his spear as blood trailed from his mouth. Beside him stood Bowen, now cloaked in dark fog that pulsed like a living shadow, his left arm torn off from the shoulder and dripping with corrupted blood. His black eyes remained fixated on the Celestials floating above them, radiating golden contempt.

Vlahoviç gritted his teeth. His mana domain—once proud and radiant like a dawn battlefield—was now crumbling. The spear that once split mountains now quivered in his grasp.

"I never wanted to be here," he muttered under his breath. "I just wanted to... be strong enough."

As the wind howled past him, he heard it—not the Celestials, not the battle cries—but the faint echoes of Castaneda’s voice from years ago.

"Talent doesn’t define you, Vlahoviç. Tenacity does. Hold the spear long enough, and even the world will have to acknowledge your grip."

He remembered.

He remembered being the laughingstock of his entire class, a boy born with zero affinity for magic, deemed trash by both peers and tutors. The sneers. The taunts. The deliberate exclusions. For years, he had trained in secret—day, night, and dawn—breaking bones and enduring silence, until Castaneda, the Pacesetters’ Chancellor, had seen the rage behind his eyes.

That rage had led him to the peak of the Way of the Spear, beyond magic. He had done the impossible. And now...

"I suppose this... is enough."

He raised his cracked spear—its shaft glowing with fading liquid mana—and let out a cry as he charged straight toward the Celestials, even as they raised a divine lance to meet him.

"FOR PACESETTERS!!"

A deafening golden flash exploded.

His body was incinerated mid-air—his soul, it seemed, scattering into the wind like shards of a broken star.

---

Bowen fell to his knees in the scorched earth, panting heavily, the dying fog of his dark domain barely clinging to him.

He had watched Vlahoviç disintegrate like paper in a fire.

"...Damn idiot," he muttered, looking up at the Celestials with loathing, but no energy to follow.

He closed his eyes.

And for the first time in decades... he heard Kelvin’s voice again.

"You’re never around, dad. When you are, you hurt me."

The words echoed with more force than the Celestials’ magic.

He saw the boy’s face in his mind—angry, tearful, defiant. Always walking with a lowered head but clenched fists. Always distant.

Bowen clenched what remained of his right fist as he thought regrettably.

’I was cruel to him. Cold. I thought it was the right way. I thought pain would shape him. But I was wrong.’

His lips trembled.

"I’m sorry, Kelvin..."

The Celestials descended like radiant reapers, blades of light forming above them.

"...I was too proud to say it then. But maybe you’ll hear me now, somehow. Maybe..."

The blade came down.

A whisper.

"...you can forgive me."

Bowen didn’t scream. He didn’t resist. He simply accepted the light, the same way he once accepted the darkness, and faded with a peaceful breath.

---

Above them, the battle still raged.

But now... that last two pillars of Pacesetters Academy—Vlahoviç the Fleeting Spear and Bowen the Dark Saint—had fallen.

And the world was darker for it.

But the Celestials didn’t seem to be bothered by this phenomenon as the leader immediately shifted his gaze towards the direction Neana and Charlotte flew off too. And without wasting a single second, he commanded.

"Get them."