Bloodline: Sovereign's Awakening - Chapter 40

Chapter 40: When Radiance Breeds Ruin V

The world spun.

Virelio’s chest heaved, his breath ragged, throat raw from the force of the last clash.

His body ached and screamed as each wound felt like a burning ember searing into his nerves. Blood seeped from gashes along his arms, staining the torn remnants of his tunic.

The protective enchantments woven into the fabric had faded, their glow extinguished in the wake of overwhelming force.

He lay sprawled on the cracked earth, his fingers twitching against the cold, dust-laden ground. The scent of scorched stone and acrid iron filled the air, mingling with the distant echoes of battle beyond the veil of his pain.

A guttural screech split the silence.

His vision refocused just in time to see the monster staggering upright, its grotesque form twisting unnaturally as it regenerated. Its chitinous hide cracked apart, revealing a gaping wound in its chest as a hollow cavity where Virelio’s Diwa had torn through it, but even that victory was fleeting.

The void pulsed, sinew knitting together, muscles realigning as if the damage was nothing more than an inconvenience.

Then it spoke.

A language not meant for mortal ears.

The sound slithered through the air, guttural yet resonant, like the grinding of ancient stone. The words clawed at his mind, incomprehensible yet weighted with malevolence. A tremor passed through the earth as if the land itself recoiled at its utterance.

Virelio gritted his teeth, pushing against the numbness threatening to overtake him. Move. He needed to move. But his limbs felt heavy, his energy sapped after summoning his Diwa. The phantom form of his spirit companion had long dissipated, forcibly retracted after sustaining too much damage.

The monster’s sunken eyes locked onto him, a twisted sneer forming beneath its tattered maw. The once-paralyzed beast flexed its grotesque limbs, claws raking against the earth with a shuddering screech.

It was toying with him.

The air twisted with malice.

Virelio’s legs barely held him up, his body a hollow husk drained of all strength. The last dregs of power had long since faded, leaving him with nothing, not even a single thread of power left to weave, not even the faintest whisper of energy to defend himself.

The monster knew of his vulnerability and loomed before him, its grotesque form shifting like ink spilled over water.

Then, the corners of its fractured mouth curled upward, twisting into something nightmarishly human—an elated grin. Its sunken eyes gleamed, reveling in his helplessness, in the certainty of its impending feast.

Then—it vanished.

Like mist dispersing in the wind.

Virelio’s breath hitched. Instinct screamed at him to react, but there was nothing he could do to stop it as it reappeared half a meter away. The sheer speed of its movement sent a shudder through the air, displacing dust and debris as it materialized just before him, and yet he didn’t panic.

Instead, he laughed. A dry, tired chuckle.

“I did the best I could,” he muttered, his voice hoarse but oddly calm. “I guess everyone’s already done with their preparations… Gotta give it to my age, dulling me like this.”

The monster’s grin widened, fangs glinting under the dim light.

“There is no hope for you,” it intoned, its voice slithering with dark amusement.

Then it spoke again—but not in any language Virelio recognized.

The words shattered the air.

Above the beast’s outstretched hands, reality itself cracked. Jagged fissures spiderwebbed outward, and from within those fractures, something unnatural took shape.

Maws.

Dozens. Twisting, writhing, gnashing.

They wove into existence with grotesque fluidity, each one drooling with an insatiable hunger, their putrid breath tainting the air. A surge of malice pulsed through the battlefield as the monstrous mouths coiled toward him, a void of teeth and darkness, ready to consume him whole.

Virelio exhaled, letting exhaustion settle over him like a heavy shroud. There was no resisting this. It was over.

The monster lunged.

With unrestrained joy, it hovered slightly off the ground, savoring the moment. This wasn’t just a kill—it was a triumph. A feast upon a worthy prey. As the maws descended, the creature watched, anticipating the rush of power, the intoxicating surge of strength from devouring a formidable foe.

Then—

Agony.

A violent shock tore through its body.

The monster’s entire form jerked midair, limbs convulsing as something like an electric current surged through its essence. A guttural snarl erupted from its throat as a searing pain blossomed near its shoulder.

Greenish blood spewed from one of the gaping mouths.

The monster recoiled, twisting in confusion, and it raised its clawed hand to touch the wound—an open gash where one of its maws had been torn apart.

Its gaze snapped toward Virelio.

He was no longer there.

It immediately realized that something had gone wrong.

All the ravenous mouths it had summoned had met violent resistance. Something more than just stopping them had occurred. Something obliterated them. Shredded. Dispersed into a mist. The pain lingered on its body and didn’t stop even as it tried to heal itself.

The destruction of those maws rippled through its entire body, like an unseen force severing something intrinsic to its being. The wound wouldn’t heal instantly. Something within it struggled against a lingering, insidious force hindering its regeneration.

The monster’s gaze darted around, searching—until it realized.

It wasn’t unknown to everyone.

From within the towering Celestial Seal Castle, hidden behind its sacred walls, the Grand Matriarch had already begun moving.

She had been waiting, watching the battle unfold, and weaving her grand spell in the silence of her domain.

And the moment she saw Virelio collapse, the moment she knew he could no longer resist, she acted.

With a last motion, she enclosed her intricate weave with the last thread.

The heavens responded.

Something like a divine force purified the air over the battlefield instantly, as though it pressed down on reality itself. A celestial pulse coalesced above Virelio’s fallen form, threading into the space he occupied.

Then—

Time stopped.

For just a fraction of a second, an infinitesimal sliver of eternity, everything stood still.

And in that breath of halted time, the Grand Weave completed. Virelio’s body vanished.

An unseen current pulled his battered form away from the battlefield, weaving it into a protective flow of starlit threads.

In his place, a luminous ball of light materialized.

The monster barely had time to react before the sphere of celestial energy burst.

A radiant explosion tore through the space where Virelio once stood, unleashing an unrelenting wave of pure, lethal force. A light not meant for monsters.

The creature shrieked as the energy ripped through its form, searing its flesh and embedding itself deep within its core. This wasn’t just a simple counter but a lethal attack, marking the monstrosity with its lingering purifying curse. A divine affliction that would continue to fester, preventing the wounds from healing, and forcing the monster to endure the pain for far longer than it ever had to.

And as it reeled from the searing impact, as the remnants of that celestial light flickered across the battlefield—

Virelio was gone.

Safe within the Celestial Seal Castle.

The monster’s grin had long since vanished.

The Tala Domain was shifting.

The skies, already choked in darkness, deepened into an abyssal void. What was once mere miasma had now thickened into something far worse as a suffocating malignance that devoured the light and seeped into the bones of the very land. The contrast was unnerving. Outside the domain, the sky retained its natural dark hues, but within, the heavens themselves seemed to fold inward, a cosmic wound manifesting above.

The Sovereign Wraith had claimed this realm as its own.

It no longer moved like a beast of flesh, nor a spirit of wandering malice. It had become something in between, its form woven seamlessly into the shadows, its presence flickering like an ephemeral nightmare, there yet not there, shifting like spilled ink across existence. The mere act of looking at it was unsettling, as though the mind itself struggled to define its shape—a contradiction between corporeal and spectral, a horror neither fully alive nor truly dead.

And it’s malice…

A force so great it was as if the air itself recoiled. The stationed elite weavers outside the Tala Residence could feel the ground tremble, the tremors pulsing like a heart beating too fast, too violently, too wrong. The wind had turned treacherous, no longer mere air but something bladed, slicing through the space it touched.

Yet the Ethereal Wards held.

Then came the harrowing realization that the lesser monsters that the weaver guards had restrained suddenly ceased to be.

Fled not. Not dispersed. Not slain.

They simply…vanished.

Their disembodied forms dissipated in eerie silence, devoured by the unseen threads of the Sovereign Wraith’s essence. It had finally reassembled itself fully, and every last lingering fragment was drawn back into its core, reforging its complete and undivided will.

The horror of it settled upon the defenders like a slow, creeping poison.

The twisted, afflicted, and barely sentient beings who had succumbed to the Wraith’s influence still lingered inside the Tala Residence, their hollow eyes turned toward the exit, compelled by something beyond rational thought.

Their hands scraped against the ethereal wards, trying and desperate to force their way out. A frenzied need drove them, their movements erratic, their whispering voices nothing but hollow remnants of their former selves.

Yet they did not turn against the Wraith.

They did not react to the fading of the lesser creatures.

For them, the Sovereign Wraith was not the enemy.

It was their god.

The Weaver Guards stationed outside the residence held them at bay, their movements precise, each thread of their defense seamlessly woven to maintain control.

Above them, Harmonic General Eli raised the alarm.

“All platoons! Maintain positions and prepare for a full-scale mind attack. Spiral Adept Captains—activate your Diwa immediately. We must fortify our defenses against its next assault!”

His voice rang sharp and absolute across the battlefield, his tone commanding not just authority but urgency.

There was no room for hesitation.

Farther along the southern perimeter, Captain Durias received the message.

His orders were explicit.

“Elhara, Jeno, Reigo, Corin—assemble at the strongest Ethereal Ward immediately. The monster has reached its full strength. We hold our ground. We weave.”

His tone was resolute, but within it was a razor-thin thread of tension.

The four members of Platoon Ten, already uneasy from the sudden absence of the lesser monsters, exchanged glances. It wasn’t fear that flickered in their eyes—but calculated concern.

“Captain,” Corin spoke first, “we still have Shroudfiend-level corrupted loose in the town. If we don’t eliminate them now, they could destabilize the defense once the mind attack begins.”

Durias didn’t hesitate.

“I understand your concerns, Corin, but we don’t move without the general’s order. The battlefield will decide our priorities. Right now, our orders are to defend.”

Elhara clicked her tongue, rolling her shoulders. “Tch. Fine. But if those things try to flank us mid-defense, I’m not waiting for permission.”

Durias smirked. “Good. I expect nothing less from you.”

With that, Platoon Ten moved.

They converged on the strongest Ethereal Ward in the southern perimeter, where the barrier gleamed brightest, pulsing with layered protections woven by some of the strongest defensive Weavers in the city.

Their formation was seamless.

Jeno and Corin immediately reinforced the perimeter, their combined threads interlacing to create a radiant, spiraling lattice of defense. A Protection Weave designed to absorb impact in layers, dissipating force through concentric pulses.

Reigo extended his threads into the ground, anchoring the weave to the battlefield’s very fabric, making it nearly impossible to uproot or shatter in one strike.

Elhara twisted her threads into a separate formation—a secondary shield within the first, a kinetic-reflective aegis. The impact would rebound on the assailant, disrupting their attack before the inner defenses were breached, if the outer barrier fell.

It was a formation they had practiced relentlessly.

And yet, despite their preparation, despite their precision—they all felt it.

Then the world turned still.

The winds halted.

The shaking earth stopped.

Even the distant sounds of battle outside the domain fell into absolute silence.

For a moment, it was as if reality itself had been muted—an unnatural, suffocating quiet.

And then—

The Wards Exploded.

A shockwave tore through the battlefield as the ethereal wards convulsed violently, their structures warping in agony, resisting something immense—something wrong.

Then came the shriek.

A sound not meant for mortal ears.

A frequency so impossibly high, so discordant, so utterly alien, that it paralyzed reality itself.

It was not just a sound

It was a force.

A devourer of existence.

The protective layers of Pagadianara—the city-wide defense—echoed a desperate counter-frequency, weaving a reverberation to contain the resonance before it could consume the city whole. But within Tala Domain, the resonance could not be fully blocked.

It tore through the barriers, twisting the air into serrated blades, sending invisible lances of force crashing against the defenders.

Even through their layers of protection, Durias and his team felt it.

A mind-breaking wail that crawled into their bones, unraveling their thoughts like frayed silk. Their defenses held.

The Weave absorbed the worst of it, dampening the shriek into something just barely bearable and enough to remain standing, enough to think, enough to resist.

Still, Durias could see the strain on his team’s faces.

He inhaled steadily.

Exhaled, firm.

Then he spoke, his voice cutting through the oppressive weight of the air.

“Do not falter. If we show even a single crack in our defense, it will break us. Hold.”

Elhara let out a sharp breath. “Like hell, I’m breaking.”

Jeno gritted his teeth. “If we die, I’m blaming you for making me stand here instead of blasting something.”

Reigo and Corin exchanged silent nods, their focus unwavering.

And beyond the barriers—

The Sovereign Wraith loomed and wove its genuine attack.

As the Sovereign Wraith’s dreadful shriek faded, an eerie stillness settled over the battlefield. The Empyrean Shield, the Weaver Pillars, and the Negation Obelisks—their rhythmic hums had ceased. A dreadful silence took their place, unnatural and heavy, pressing upon the air like a storm waiting to break.

The miasma, which had smothered the Tala Territory like a funeral shroud, was gone. Already absorbed entirely by the monstrosity. The land, though momentarily cleared of its choking fog, felt no lighter. If anything, the very absence of the haze only made the monstrous presence more tangible. Its malice had not diminished. It had only condensed and focused into something far more terrible.

Durias clenched his fists, his ether-threaded armor humming against his skin as his platoon gathered itself.

They had survived. Their barrier had held, though cracks had webbed along its surface. The scent of seared air and shattered magic lingered. Sweat clung to their foreheads, but they were still standing.

A flicker of blue light traced through his vision—General Eli’s transmission.

“All platoons, status report!”

Durias exhaled sharply and tapped into the Spiral Weave, linking his voice to the command network.

“Platoon Ten is still standing, General. No casualties.”

The response came in waves. Of the twelve elite platoons, only eight had endured the impact of falling. The other four, though still alive, had been paralyzed where they stood, their threads tangled by the monstrous resonance.

“Platoon Seven is down, southernmost perimeter.”

Durias’s heart pounded. They were closest to that point.

“Captain Durias, take your team and extract them. Do not engage the entity. Reinforcements will follow. Move now.”

“Understood, General.”

He spun, his commanding presence anchoring the shaken warriors of his team.

“Elhara, Jeno, Reigo, Corin—form up! We’re moving to the rightmost perimeter. Platoon Seven is down, and we’re pulling them out.”

The four warriors gave sharp nods, their ether-imbued weapons pulsing faintly in response.

Reigo’s brow furrowed. “Are we sure the Wraith won’t strike while we’re exposed?”

Durias’s voice was steel. “If it does, then we’ll fight it to death. Now move!”