House of Blood

The northern valley near Bergis was a broken, bleeding crater.

While the Blood Shadow Legion methodically purged the last remnants of the mutated horde outside the gates, the sky three miles north was an apocalyptic storm of dust, dark mana, and shattered earth.

The Granite World-Eater bellowed—a sound so deep it fractured the granite bedrock beneath Bergis—and swung a mountain-sized limb. Thousands of tons of solid rock whistled through the air, aimed directly at the city walls.

”Not while I breathe!” Inquisitor Charles roared.

The Holy Knight leaped onto the highest parapet, his cracked silver armor igniting with every remaining drop of his sacred mana. Beside him, Saintess Seraphina raised her glowing scriptures, her voice ringing out in an ancient, ethereal chant that resonated with pure, divine resonance.

”Sacred Citadel: Aegis of the Sun!” Seraphina cried, blood trickling down her chin as a blinding, golden barrier of holy force expanded over the northern wall.

Charles plunged his broadsword into the stone ledge, acting as the physical conduit for her divine spell.

The massive mountain-debris slammed into the golden barrier with a deafening BOOM!

The barrier cracked, and Charles coughed up a spray of crimson, his knees buckling, but the holy wall held.

The falling rock shattered into harmless dust, saving the city beneath them.

”Now, half-dragon!” Charles wheezed, his gauntleted hand trembling on his sword hilt. ”Take its eye!”

”Don’t have to tell me twice, big guy!” Wren barked, her golden eyes flashing with lethal brilliance.

With an explosive burst of red dragon-flame, Wren launched herself off the battlements like a crimson missile.

Using spatial micro-steps, she glided across the sky, stepping on the airborne fragments of shattered rock. She flickered past the towering shoulder of the mountain-beast, appearing directly in front of the titan’s colossal, golden eye.

Her twin dragon-skin daggers hummed with condensed, liquid flame.

”Dragon-Art: Twin Scythes of the Sunburst!”

Wren spun in mid-air, a whirlwind of crimson fire trailing her blades.

She plunged both daggers straight into the pupil of the mountain beast’s colossal eye.

ROAAAAAAAAAAAR!

The World-Eater shrieked in agony as black, liquid stone and molten blood erupted from its eye.

It thrashed its massive head, sending shockwaves across the valley, but the blinding blow rendered the right side of its vision completely dark.

”Castor! Pollux!” Wren yelled as she fell back toward the earth. ”Grave it!”

”On it, Lady Wren!” the deranged twins squealed in unhinged unison.

Castor and Pollux stepped through the shadows cast by the titan’s thrashing limbs, reappearing atop the beast’s colossal lower jaw.

Abandoning all sanity, the twins unleashed their shadow-bound chitin daggers, driving them directly into the joint gaps of the creature’s rocky neck.

”Slice the joint, brother!” Castor giggled, dragging his dark blade through petrified tendons.

”Dismantle the rock, brother!” Pollux cackled, dropping dark spatial mines directly into the exposed flesh beneath the stone armor.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Explosions of dark mana tore through the titan’s neck, forcing the colossal monster to drop its massive head toward the earth.

Far above the chaos, Nox’Aethel’s true primordial shadow form hovered in the sky like an eclipse of pure darkness.

The ancient titan raised all four of his colossal void-iron arms, wrapping them around the World-Eater’s horns, pinning the struggling mountain-beast against the broken earth.

”Now, Lord Valerian!” Nox’Aethel’s voice boomed across the sky like rolling thunder. ”Strike its core!”

At the front of the army, Invictus—the newly baptized Blood Shadow Commander—raised his heavy broadsword, pointing it at the pinned titan.

”LEGION! FOCUS ALL ARCANA UPON THE LIEGE!” Invictus bellowed.

The five hundred Blood Shadow soldiers and mages raised their hands toward the sky.

Five hundred streams of condensed crimson mana and dark shadow-blood erupted from the legion, shooting into the sky and converging directly into the weapon held by the young sovereign standing atop the gate.

Valerian raised his obsidian war-spear with both hands.

The sheer volume of mana pouring into his body made his dragon core throb like a war drum.

His silver-laced dark hair whipped wildly in the violent gale, his slitted crimson eyes glowing with an absolute, terrifying divinity.

The ten-foot war spear extended, transforming into a colossal, seventy-foot blade of pure, compressed spatial dragon-fire and dark blood arcana.

Valerian stepped off the battlements into open air.

He didn’t fall.

He rode the spatial currents, descending upon the titan like a falling star.

”Sovereign’s Art: Absolute World-Sever!”

Valerian swung the colossal blade downward.

SILENCE.

For a fraction of a second, sound and color vanished from the valley.

A thin, horizontal line of silver-black light cut cleanly through the mountain titan’s neck, extending three miles into the northern peaks behind it.

A beat later, the sky detonated.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The mountain-sized head of the Granite World-Eater severed cleanly from its shoulders, tumbling down into the northern valley with a crash that shook the entire province.

The colossal body collapsed, its mountain-like frame crumbling back into inert stone and dark, bubbling blood.

The beast tide was over.

Bergis was saved.

Silence settled over the devastated battlefield like a heavy blanket.

The soldiers of Bergis, the Holy Knights, and the militia watched in stunned, breathless awe as the smoke slowly cleared.

Standing atop the severed, mountain-sized skull of the slain World-Eater was Valerian.

His dark silk coat was shredded, his pale skin covered in blood, and his chest heaving violently with extreme exhaustion.

The vast ocean of dark blood pouring from the slain titan began to pool around the base of the skull, bubbling violently.

Valerian looked down at the massive, mountain-sized corpse.

His vision was turning dark around the edges, his mana core running on complete emptiness, but his cold, absolute ambition refused to let the titan’s ancient essence fade into dust.

He raised his right hand, his fingers trembling, and thrust his clawed hand directly into his own chest, drawing out a palmful of his boiling, crimson dragon blood.

He let his blood drip down onto the titan’s rocky skull.

Plip.

Valerian closed his burning crimson eyes, his voice dropping into a slow, quiet, and terrifyingly resonant whisper that echoed across the silent valley.

”Answer my blood...”

The ocean of titan blood and mountain-dust beneath his feet began to swirl into a massive, violent vortex.

Black shadow-mana and crimson dragon-blood mixed together, wrapping around the mountain-sized corpse of the beast.

”Your Liege calls.”

THUUUUUUMP!

The mountain-sized body of the World-Eater did not rot.

It began to collapse inward, compressing at terrifying speed.

Tens of thousands of tons of ancient granite, mountain-flesh, and primordial core energy were crushed by Valerian’s dark blood shadow technique, shrinking down from a continent-sized titan into a singular, dense sphere of dark crimson energy.

The sphere burned brightly before slowly reshaping itself.

The stone, blood, and shadow melted away, forging a new form out of the titan’s corpse.

When the blinding light faded, the mountain-sized monster was gone.

Standing atop the skull, where the titan’s core had been, was a tall, imposing man.

He possessed rugged, granite-like skin, broad shoulders encased in dark, earthen-plate armor, and eyes that burned with a deep, subterranean golden glow.

The creature still possessed the absolute, terrifying physical durability of the World-Eater, but ninety percent of its world-ending titan mana was sealed deep within its new soul core—held back because Valerian’s current mortal cultivation was not yet strong enough to fully empower a titan-rank shadow.

The newly forged titan-human dropped heavily to one knee before Valerian, bowing his head in absolute submission.

”My strength... my stone... and my life belong to you, my Liege,” the man rasped, his voice sounding like grinding granite plates.

Valerian looked down at his new shadow warrior, a subtle, cold satisfaction touching his pale lips.

”You... shall be known as Atlas,” Valerian whispered softly.

The moment the name left his lips, the absolute strain on Valerian’s body reached its breaking point.

The realm of shadow closed, Invictus and the legion dissolving back into his shadow, while Nox’Aethel returned to his dormant mantle form beside him.

Valerian’s crimson eyes fluttered shut.

His knees buckled, his dark coat fluttering as his body swayed forward, tumbling off the edge of the skull into the open air.

SWOOSH.

Before his body could hit the stone ground below, a streak of crimson dragon-flame flashed across the space.

Wren caught him cleanly mid-air, landing softly on the blood-stained grass of the courtyard.

She held the unconscious young noble securely in her arms, resting his silver-laced head against her leather shoulder armor.

Valerian was completely silent, his breathing slow and steady, his dark blindfold long gone, revealing the peaceful, resting face of a fifteen-year-old boy who had just slayed a mountain and conquered a legion.

Wren looked down at his pale, blood-streaked face.

The sharp, predatory smirk on her lips softened into a rare, breathtakingly warm smile.

She gently brushed a lock of silver-laced dark hair out of his eyes, her golden gaze filled with deep, unspoken pride.

”You crazy kid...” Wren whispered softly, her voice carrying a quiet tenderness as the soldiers of Bergis began to cheer in the distance.

”...you’ve done enough. Sleep now.”