Bloodline: Sovereign's Awakening - Chapter 41

Chapter 41: When Radiance Breeds Ruin VI
As Platoon Ten made their way toward Platoon Seven’s position, a sudden change in the air halted their steps.

A melody so soft yet resonant bloomed through the battlefield.

A trumpet’s call, rich and solemn, echoed through the ruins, its tone neither triumphant nor mournful. A force beyond mere sound. It threaded through their bodies, easing the tension in their frayed nerves and healing their physical and mental fatigue slowly.

Then, a lyre’s melody followed, weaving into the trumpet’s solemn hymn. Its notes curled through the air like a gentle tide, calm yet unyielding, carrying an unspoken command that is not of power but of stillness, like an assurance that transcended words.

Durias exhaled, feeling the melody seep into his very core. His fingers clenched tight around his weapon and loosened involuntarily.

“What is this…?” Reigo muttered, his voice unsteady.

“It’s not meant for us,” Elhara whispered. “It’s… calming something far worse.”

Their gazes shifted directly towards the Tala Residence, where the monstrous presence had stirred moments ago.

Then they saw them.

Beyond the innermost perimeter, standing just outside Tala Territory’s sacred boundary, four figures draped in white robes hovered in the air.

Sacred garments veiled and obscured their faces, and yet their presence was undeniable. They neither moved nor spoke, yet the very air around them trembled with silent authority.

The four figures in white stood unmoving, yet the battlefield seemed to tremble around them. The dust that swirled in the air before them refused to touch their robes as if repelled by an unseen force.

Durias’s heart pounded as a realization sank in. These were no ordinary priests. They were of the Order of Liwanag.

Reports about the battlefield showed the same figures encircling the Tala Residence from all sides.

“They’re sealing it in,” Jeno murmured.

Durias’s grip tightened. The Order had moved not as observers but as arbiters.

The lyre and trumpet hymn swelled, its harmony suffusing the battlefield in waves.

Whatever awakened within Tala Territory, whatever monstrous force had absorbed the miasma, it had grown to an alarming level that the Order had to intervene. And now, the Order of Liwanag had begun its divine intervention.

At the heart of Sandigsal, within the Main Church of the Order of Liwanag, a disturbance rippled through the sacred halls. The golden braziers that lined the inner sanctum flickered erratically as though sensing the unseen force stirring far beyond the capital’s reach.

At the very core of the church, within the Celestial Chamber, High Priest Dalim, the Sentinel of the Dawn, strode toward a floating, luminous orb. The sphere pulsed with ethereal light, a beacon of the divine, connected to the will of the Radiant Oracle, Aurela.

Suddenly, the orb flared, its glow intensifying as Aurela’s voice resonated through the chamber.

A Titan, possibly an Eclipse Devourer, is awakening in Pagadianara. Their protective measures won’t hold. Deployment is required—immediately. Our prediction did not foresee this.

Her voice carried both urgency and an otherworldly calm, the kind that could command an empire with no force.

Dalim, unwavering, bowed his head. “As the Oracle wills it.”

Aurela’s presence pulsed through the orb once more.

“I will come—but not yet. You must contain it. There is something I must tend to first.”

And with that, the light dimmed. The connection was severed.

Dalim wasted no time. With a wave of his hand, he sent forth a command through the Order’s sacred channels, his voice carried by divine resonance to the churches within Pagadianara.

“The Exorcists shall rise. The arch-priests planned a movement. The sacred light must stand against the abyss.”

Across the grand city, in every sanctuary of the Order, robed priests stirred from their meditation, their eyes glowing with purpose. The Arch Priests of each quarter of Pagadianara responded with immediate action, gathering their forces and preparing to mobilize against the encroaching catastrophe.

As the divine decree echoed through Pagadianara, the Order moved.

Back to the scene, within Tala Territory, the battlefield was now an orchestral tapestry, the sacred melody woven into the very air.

The sacred melody rose, not from a single voice, but from many. At four cardinal points surrounding Tala Residence, the Priests of the Order of Liwanag performed their divine intervention.

To the Southern area, the priests bore lyres and trumpets, their harmonies deep and solemn, resonating with the earth’s very foundation. On the West side, they played flutes and harps, their notes light and fleeting, twisting through the wind like silver threads, wrapping around unseen darkness. In the Northern zone, sounds of violin and drum rumbled in unison, an elegant but unrelenting pulse, like the heartbeat of the heavens themselves. Onto the East section, no instruments, only voices. The priests chanted in an ancient tongue, their words unfathomable, unrecorded in any known scripture. The language served a purpose beyond mortal comprehension; it was a prayer older than time itself.

Each corner contributed its thread to the symphony, their notes weaving into a greater whole—a vast and intricate barrier of divine resonance.

From the sky, it looked like an orchestra of light and shadow battling for dominion over reality itself. The very barrier above the city shifted, the heavens reflecting the conflict. Dark storm clouds churned against an emerging aurora, an ethereal glow piercing through the abyss like celestial spears.

The Sovereign Wraith convulsed as the melody grasped at its essence.

The Wraith did not simply suffer. It resented. A jagged, distorted wail rippled through the battlefield, a twisted mimicry of the sacred melody—as if it sought to unmake it, to weave discord into the very harmony that bound it.

The surrounding air twisted as its form pulled in all directions, as though unseen hands were plucking at the very strands of its being.

It writhed, disdain and rage twisting its face, as though it had been subjected to the worst sound imaginable.

A shriek, low and guttural, reverberated across the battlefield.

A violent, unnatural spasm that sent ripples across its malformed body.

Its limbs continued stretching and recoiling as if tearing against invisible threads. Its jaw widened far beyond what flesh should allow until another haunting shriek bled through the air, warping the very space around it.

Durias and his platoon pushed forward from the central area of the outermost zone of the southern perimeter, their boots pounding against the war-torn ground. Smoke and residual miasma lingered, the remnants of the monstrous presence that had devoured Tala Territory’s defenses. They had no time to dwell on it, and Platoon Seven was still out there in the inner area.

General Eli’s voice crackled through their communicators.

“Platoon Seven’s last position was at the rightmost side of the southern perimeter. Move now!”

“Understood,” Durias responded, signaling his team to advance.

They navigated through the ruins, stepping over shattered ethereal wards and abandoned defenses.

Something else entirely, not another monstrous roar, suddenly interrupted the eerie silence of the battlefield.

The sacred symphony had reached its crescendo. The very air shimmered, pulling at reality’s seams as the Sovereign Wraith convulsed against unseen bindings. Yet, within the maelstrom, they spotted movement—Platoon Seven.

First, the solemn call of trumpets and not a cry of war, nor a lament, but something that reached beyond mortal comprehension. It unraveled the tension, loosening the weight of exhaustion from their limbs.

Then came the lyres, flutes, and harps, weaving a tide of calm, a command of stillness not through power but through assurance.

The battlefield itself seemed to waver beneath the melody’s influence.

Durias clenched his jaw, forcing himself to push past the mesmerizing pull of the sacred hymn. They had a mission.

Then the movement.

Through the smoke and broken defenses, they spotted them. Platoon Seven.

Bodies scattered, some half-buried beneath the rubble, others slumped against fallen barricades. Among them, a figure stirred, and it was Captain Mack.

He was alive, barely conscious, his breaths shallow.

“Move!” Durias ordered, his voice cutting through the melody’s ethereal weight.

His team sprang into action, lifting the wounded and securing the unconscious. Two soldiers moved to Mack’s side, hauling him onto their shoulders as he let out a strained breath, barely able to open his eyes.

Durias activated his comms.

“General, Platoon Seven secured. Captain Mack is alive but unresponsive. Requesting further orders!”

A brief pause. Then General Eli’s voice returned, firm and decisive.

“All rescue teams withdraw immediately with the wounded. Platoons without a rescue task, move into the city and purge the corrupted who escaped the Tala Domain!”

“Understood!” Durias affirmed.

With renewed urgency, Platoon Ten began their retreat while carrying their rescued wounded comrades, stepping through a battlefield that still trembled under the clash of sacred harmony and abyssal rage.

A fracture in reality. A sound that was never meant to be heard.

The Sovereign Wraith’s violent shriek did not merely echo; it tore through existence itself. It was a frequency that did not belong, a discordant wail that could splinter minds and unravel the very weave of magic that bound the world.

Within the Celestial Seal Castle, the effect was instantaneous.

The Kalasag Shield, the divine barrier woven into the castle’s very foundation, flared to life, not as a mere defense but as an instinctive response to an existential threat. Its protective light, an intricate lattice of woven celestial inscriptions, rippled outward like a living thing, absorbing the monstrous shriek’s brutal force.

But even that was not enough.

The walls of the Celestial Seal Castle shuddered under the unseen weight of the sound. The very air warped, as if existence itself was fraying at the edges. Ornate chandeliers overhead swayed violently, their golden fixtures ringing like unseen hands had struck them with furious force. Stained-glass murals depicting the Tala Matriarchs of the Past fractured with hairline cracks, their once-pristine visages trembling beneath the onslaught.

A suffocating pressure settled upon those within. A force that was neither wind nor magic, but it was a crushing, mind-breaking resonance, something that threatened to sink its claws into their very spirits and pull them apart.

Then—a counterforce.

The Grand Matriarch moved.

She had already anticipated this.

Before the Wraith had even stirred, she had woven her Celestial Weaving, a spell so meticulously prepared that the very fabric of the castle had already absorbed its essence.

Then—release.

A pulse of dissonant, static energy erupted from the core of the Celestial Seal Castle. A sound in a frequency inaudible to the human ear, yet absolute in its command.

The Sovereign Wraith’s shriek met the counter-frequency head-on.

The result was devastating silence.

Not the absence of sound, but the forced stilling of it. The shriek meant to tear into minds found no purchase within the castle’s domain. Instead, it was unwoven, dissipated like ink submerged in the ocean.

Within the castle, they could still feel it.

Their bodies still trembled, their hearts still pounded, but they were spared the soul-shredding agony that should have wracked their minds. They had been spared.

The other strongholds of the Tala Domain were not as fortunate.

Across the four corners of Tala Territory, the Gilded Star Castle, Star Scroll Castle, Moonveil Castle, and Astral Castle bore the full brunt of the Wraith’s unleashed horror.

Their towering structures, ancient and fortified as they were, shook violently under the assault. Runic defenses flickered and flared, attempting to repel the unnatural force, but the very foundations shuddered as cracks split through their enchanted stonework.

Then—collapse.

Not destruction, but devastation nonetheless.

Walls burst outward, their enchanted architecture unable to contain the sheer force pressing on them. Golden inscriptions burned, then dimmed, their protective light failing in patches. Towering pillars fractured, debris crashing into the sacred courtyards below. The air within those castles was heavy with dust, with the lingering essence of violated sanctity.

Yet—they endured.

Despite the destruction, despite the damage, despite the terrifying power that had just nearly shattered them—the four castles still stood. Their foundations held.

The Grand Matriarch exhaled as she felt the echoes of the Wraith’s frequency ripple outward, sensing the collapse of the outer castles but not their fall. Not unscathed. Not untouched. But they held.

Then—her gaze sharpened, her breath steady despite the lingering tension in the air.

This was not the end.

Her gaze shifted back to the open field where the monstrosity was forming its true form, and she could feel the pressure even by just watching over its indescribable features.