Primordial Heir: Nine Stars

The goblin village was successfully cleared, and the source of the ghosts was eradicated. Ultimately, the mission was deemed a complete and unequivocal success. The remaining sounds comprised the moans of the freed villagers and the crackling of extinguishing goblin campfires.

The atmosphere on the return journey to Oakhaven should have been one of wearied triumph. The rescued villagers, despite their frailty and fear, proceeded with renewed hope. The trio moved in quiet satisfaction, acknowledging a task well executed.

However, the sky unexpectedly betrayed them.

It did not merely cloud over; it darkened suddenly. The vivid afternoon sun was swiftly obscured, not by rain clouds, but by a profound, unnatural twilight that felt dense and oppressive.

The atmosphere became still and silent, with the birdsong ceasing abruptly. An approaching storm was imminent, yet it was a storm bereft of wind and thunder—a storm akin to that of a predator.

”Defensive Formation!” Nero barked, his voice cutting through the eerie silence. All fatigue vanished, replaced by razor-sharp alertness. The feeling of being watched had been a constant itch. Now, it was a claw on their necks.

The villagers huddled together, whimpering. Khione and Elreth moved instantly, placing themselves between the civilians and the darkened forest flanking the path. Their backs were to Nero, who faced the direction of the vanished sun.

From the unnatural gloom, two figures materialized. They didn’t step out from behind trees; they seemed to condense from the shadows themselves. They were clad in form-fitting black combat gear, their faces hidden behind featureless silver masks. They carried no grand weapons, only sleek, unadorned longswords. They moved with a silent, lethal grace that spoke of elite training. Their auras, when they released them, were solid, dense, and sharp—Peak Red Knights.

And the air around their blades shimmered. The Law of Wind, not for flight or grandeur, but for pure, cutting speed.

They attacked without a word, without a sound. They became blurs, streaking towards Nero from two different angles, their swords humming with a high-pitched whine as they cut through the air.

Nero met them head-on. He ignited his sword with Lightning, the golden crackle a stark contrast to the oppressive dark. He couldn’t fight them both standing still. He used his own lightning speed to match their wind-enhanced agility. It was a dizzying dance of after-images and clashing blades.

Clang-spark! Shing-crackle!

He parried a thrust from the left, feeling the wind blade try to saw through his energy, and had to immediately pivot to avoid a decapitating sweep from the right. These weren’t brawlers or monsters. They were duelists. Precise, efficient, and working in perfect, silent tandem. He was on the defensive, forced to give ground.

While Nero held the two knights at bay, the ”storm” revealed its second wave. From the darkened woods around Khione and Elreth, monsters emerged. But these weren’t forest creatures. They were twisted things—wolves with too many eyes, boars with jagged, crystalline growths on their hides, hawks whose feathers were edged like metal. They moved with a jerky, unnatural aggression, their eyes glazed with the same malevolent intelligence. They had been corrupted, puppeteered for this ambush.

The rescued villagers screamed, pressing back against Khione and Elreth.

Khione didn’t hesitate. ”Glacial Ring: Wall!”

She stamped her foot, and a circular wall of thick, jagged ice erupted from the ground, enclosing the villagers and creating a defensible perimeter. It wasn’t meant to last forever, but it would stop the first rush.

Elreth stood before a gap in the wall, the killing ground. Her spear was a line of blazing fire.

”Come on then!” she snarled at the corrupted beasts.

The monsters charged. Elreth became a moving fire storm. She couldn’t use area blasts without risking the ice wall or the villagers, so she used pinpoint control. A thrust burned through a wolf’s heart. A sweep severed a boar’s legs. She was a fiery gatekeeper, and nothing was getting past her.

Khione supported from within the ring. She couldn’t use wide-area ice without freezing Elreth or the villagers, so she used precision shots.

”Ice Darts!”

Tiny, hyper-focused spikes of ice shot from her wand, each one striking a monster’s eye, a leg joint, the inside of an open mouth. She didn’t kill them all, but she crippled them, slowed them, made them easy prey for Elreth’s spear.

Back in the clearing, Nero was fighting with a smile himself didn’t know he wore. The two wind knights were a perfect unit. One would press a high-speed flurry of attacks, forcing Nero to block and dodge, while the other would reposition, waiting for the slightest opening. They used the wind to augment not just their speed, but the cutting power of their blows. A parry that would normally stop a sword now sent a slicing gust of air past his guard, drawing a thin line of blood on his cheek.

He realized he couldn’t beat them at their own game of speed. He needed to change the rules. He feigned a stumble under a combined attack, dropping to one knee. Both knights took the bait, lunging in for the kill from opposite sides.

Nero exploded upward, but not with Lightning. With Fire.

”Inferno Eruption!”

He channeled a massive, circular burst of flame from his entire body, not aimed at them, but at the ground and air around him.

The sudden, violent heat created a thermal shockwave. It disrupted the carefully controlled wind currents the knights were using for their speed and balance. For just a second, they staggered, their graceful movements turning clumsy.

A second was all Nero needed. He switched back to Lightning. He didn’t aim for both. He picked the knight on his left.

”Lightning Bind!”

He shot a focused, continuous bolt of electricity, not to damage, but to arc. The lightning hit the knight’s sword and, using the conductive metal, jumped to his body, locking his muscles in a paralyzing seizure.

With one foe temporarily incapacitated, Nero turned all his fury on the other. It was one-on-one now. Knight of Wind versus Knight of Lightning and Fire.

The clash intensified, a storm of clashing elements on the darkened path, while behind them, the fiery princess and the ice mage held the line against a tide of corrupted beasts. The ambush was in full, terrible swing.

Meanwhile, the mastermind behind this attack was watching in shadow, shrouded in wind to completely erase her presence,her golden eyes focused intensively on the ongoing fight as she ran countless calculation in her mind.