CHAPTER 198: CHAPTER 199: AURORA

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Veil growled.

The night pulsed with his hunger. A beastly, viscous aura slid across the broken battlefield, threading itself into the shattered stones, the blood-soaked mud, the groans of injured men, and the dying warmth of the Empress’s throne. His shadow expanded—not outward like a wave, but downward like a root, digging into the cracks of the world.

He knew now.

From that one clash—just a push—they had revealed too much. Too much resistance. Too much purity. Too much light.

So he adapted.

Veil no longer fought like a man. He moved like an infection, tendrils of darkness worming their way around the arena, seeping past defenses, circling the two Primes still standing over their Empress.

And still she breathed—barely. Her wounds from the fall were deep, her ribs crushed beneath golden armor, her lungs heaving shallow gasps as the healers behind her poured in whatever remained of their mana, fingers trembling over her warped flesh.

"...It’s been a while since I stretched this long..." Veil’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Not spoken, not echoed, but felt—a cold exhale in the spine, a whisper in the marrow. His body thinned, elongated, draped like smoke around the figures below. "Or rather.....spread?....}

The darkness deepened until there was no more battlefield—only them. Eli. Atlas. The two Primes. A single circle of survivors within a cocoon of black.

Veil sealed them in.

"...Use light magic," Eli commanded hoarsely, each word a small wound torn in her throat.

Number Two obeyed first. Then the other.

Two swords glowed. Not with divine wrath, but with something older—refined. Pale ivory flames burst along their edges, leaving trails in the dark like ink bleeding backward.

{"Eli...Eli...Eli..."} Veil whispered, almost mockingly. {"The light hurts because it came from the Fruit. The life fruit. That wound...still bleeds. But this..."}

The darkness shifted, and the weight of it increased—clamping like teeth.

{"...This measly light? It can’t harm me."}}

Suddenly the entire shadow convulsed, and from it emerged a colossal mouth. Jaws the size of siege towers gnashed with gleaming fangs, all black and wet and old. They opened above them, ready to swallow—no, digest.

He would keep Eli and Atlas alive. Just barely.

But the Primes? He would dissolve them. Bit by bit. Until they were marrow dust.

And yet...he hesitated. The assumption convulating his thoughts.

Fairy dust.

He knew the scent now—like burnt honey and broken springtime. It clung to the blade of the one who bled. It mixed with iron. It lingered in defiance.

So Veil changed form again. Collapsing himself inward. Shrinking. Contracting.

Tens of thousands of spikes shot inward instead, like the bones of a dead god turned outward.

They slashed the air.

They missed nothing.

They meant to kill.

One passed near number two’s neck. Another drove toward number three’s ribs.

But they were faster.

Swords moved.

Light flashed.

And then—Veil hissed.

Pain. Real pain. Sharp and contaminated.

The blood.

His gaze turned. One of them—Prime three—was slicing open his own forearm, just enough to let the blood spill down the edge of his sword.

"...I was right..." the Prime muttered.

"Fairy dust. It works."

His tone was steady. Not surprised. Confirmed.

"If we can’t touch you...we’ll just infect you."

Veil’s shriek rattled the dark. His form twitched, fracturing at the edges, smoke becoming bone, then smoke again. {{"You know it’s forbidden...you know what it costs..."}

And still they used it.

Veil’s shriek was no longer rage.

It was worry.

{{{"The consequences...are going to be lethal."}}}

The battlefield outside had become a painting of chaos. But within Veil’s cocoon, there was no wind. No sky. No war. Just death suspended in slow motion. And within it all—Eli.

She breathed.

Her lungs felt too large for her chest, her heart beating with a rhythm that wasn’t hers. The fruit inside her—the life fruit she injected with atlas, ripped from a sacred grove—had healed her too well. Not just bones. Not just organs. But memories. Traumas. Things she thought long buried.

She couldn’t control it.

Every nerve twitched like a harp string out of tune. Her vision flickered in colorless waves. A part of her wanted to scream. The other part whispered: Get up.

But her limbs wouldn’t obey.

Not yet.

Above them—movement.

Eli turned his head, his Truth Eyes pulsing faintly gold in the darkness. Veil’s cocoon dimmed. And just beyond it—roaring engines. The aircrafts.

The Empire’s aerial division.

They’d arrived.

Healers wept. Soldiers cheered from afar.

Dozens of mages stood shoulder to shoulder on the upper decks of the imperial skycraft, their long robes billowing in the high-altitude wind, each one surrounded by a radiant aura. Their staffs thrummed with power—pure mana drawn from reservoirs older than kingdoms—pulsing in violent harmony. Circles of light spun beneath their feet, their runes crawling upward like serpents around their bodies. From a distance, it might’ve looked beautiful—an orchestra of light preparing to sing.

But below them, the command had already been issued.

Total annihilation.

No hesitations. No mercy. No regard for who stood in the blast zone. The ground was to be reduced to ruin—friend or foe alike. Even their own soldiers, still locked in melee on the fields beneath, had been written off as acceptable losses. The Empress had issued no counter-order. She remained alone below, somewhere in the side of chaos, and the commanders had decided: the only path forward was fire.

And so the mages obeyed.

The air began to charge, thickening with raw magic. Sparks split through the clouds. The light from their staves surged upward and outward, painting the sky in a kaleidoscope of color—crimson, violet, gold, obsidian. Each mage bore a different elemental signature, and together, they looked like the night sky cracking open, preparing to rain death.

Even the winds held still.

Below, on the bloodstained plains, soldiers turned their heads up in dread, faces ghost-white beneath steel helms. Many stopped moving altogether. They had seen this kind of sky before. Not all would survive it.

The silence before the storm was sacred.

And then... it happened.

One by one, the glowing heads of their staffs began to dim.

Faintly, at first—just a flicker, like a candle struggling in a draft. But then the light collapsed entirely. The spells, once vibrant and crackling with lethal energy, stuttered and died.

The colors in the sky... vanished.

It was as though a great hand reached across the heavens and snuffed the stars out, one by one.

And then—

Everything stopped.

One ripple.

One silent twist in the air.

And all the mages froze.

Not physically—but magically. Their spells flickered out. Their energy spiraled and collapsed.

Something had interrupted the weave.

A spell. Not of this era.

Merlin felt it first.

The old mage now stood near Eli for her protection..his face battered for some reason, eyes narrowed. "No..." he muttered.

Someone had intercepted every aerial channel of magic. A spell only two people in the world could perform.

And one of them—was standing beside Eli.

"She’s here," Merlin said grimly.

Eli stirred.

"Who?"

He didn’t answer right away.

His shoulders fell with the weight of a thousand regrets.

"The one student I was proud of. And the one I failed."

"...Aurora."

And from the sky, cutting through the rupture like a blade of starlight, she came.

Aurora hovered slowly, flanked by two figures—one radiant, one lethal.

Lara. And David the Storm.

Lara’s crimson cloak flapped violently, her eyes like fire. David, the military’s storm tactician, held Denish’s sigil—and his head.

Aurora smiled as she met Merlin’s eyes.

The smile wasn’t warm. It was...personal.

"Still standing eh.... Master..." she asked softly.