Flames erupted toward him.

Seraphine’s attack was beautiful in a horrifying way—a torrent of fire that twisted and spiraled through the crimson air, heat distorting reality around it, the kind of technique that could reduce a city block to ash. Mana Heart Rank 2 Peak cultivation backed every lick of flame, each tendril carrying enough destructive force to kill Foundation Establishment cultivators instantly.

Kael raised his hand.

"Lightning Fang."

Seven bolts of condensed lightning screamed forward to meet the flames. They clashed in mid-air—blue-white arcs against orange-red fury, elemental opposition creating explosions that shook the ground and sent shockwaves rippling outward.

Then the flames pushed through, consuming the fangs, destroying them one by one until nothing remained but burning destruction heading straight for Kael. He’d known it wouldn’t work—Mana Heart versus Foundation Establishment was too large a gap for techniques alone to bridge.

His other hand came up.

Two coins flew into the air.

The Barrier runes activated simultaneously, creating overlapping shields of condensed mana that materialized between Kael and the flames. The fire hit the barriers—

BOOM!

The runes held but barely. Cracks spiderwebbed across their surfaces, golden light flickering, but they absorbed the attack long enough for the worst of it to dissipate.

Seraphine didn’t wait.

She materialized in front of him—one moment fifty meters away, the next close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin. A flaming axe had appeared in her hands, Tier 2 quality, the blade wreathed in fire so intense it seemed to warp the air around it.

The axe came down.

Kael’s blades came up.

Darkness coated the Twin Fangs of Eclipse—pure shadow energy that made the weapons look like they’d been carved from the night itself. He crossed them above his head and channeled everything he had into a single technique.

"Sky Rending Technique, First Form: Falling Star."

The dark cross-shaped attack launched upward.

It met the axe mid-swing.

CLANG!

The impact sent Seraphine sliding three meters back. Her boots carved furrows in the red stone. Her expression shifted from confident to surprised.

Kael pressed the advantage.

His hands crossed again, index and middle fingers together, pointing at the sky.

Thunder cracked.

"SILENCE."

The lightning bolt that descended wasn’t natural. It was reinforced with gravitational compression—every amp of electrical energy squeezed into a smaller, denser package, moving faster, hitting harder. The sky itself seemed to tear as the attack screamed downward toward Seraphine.

She raised a shield.

Tier 3 quality—the best defensive artifact she had. It materialized between her and the lightning, a dome of condensed energy designed to withstand attacks from Spirit Soul realm cultivators.

It held for about five seconds.

CRACK!

The shield crumbled. Seraphine’s eyes widened. She didn’t have time to fully block—

But she had time to partially block.

Flame Barrier materialized around her body—a last-ditch defense that absorbed the remaining lightning, converting some of the energy, deflecting the rest. When the attack finally died, she stood in a crater of scorched stone, breathing hard, clothes singed, hair smoking.

Her molten gold eyes found Kael as she looked at him with pure hatred.

Kael just smirked.

She attacked again.

The flaming axe became a blur—overhead strikes, horizontal sweeps, thrusts designed to gut or decapitate. Each swing carried enough force to shatter walls. Each movement was faster than a normal human could track.

Kael met her blade for blade as he used the Spirit Eyes to read her attack patterns.

The Twin Fangs of Eclipse danced in his hands, blocking, deflecting, redirecting. His gravity sense mapped every trajectory a fraction of a second before it arrived, letting him angle his parries with impossible precision. But even with that advantage, the power differential was massive. Every blocked strike sent vibrations up his arms. Every deflected swing made his bones ache.

They separated.

Twenty meters between them.

"Pulsar."

Kael raised his palm. The gravitational orb formed—purple-black, dense with compressed reality, hungry for destruction. He didn’t hesitate as he threw it.

"Burning Lotus."

Seraphine’s hands came together. Fire gathered between them—not a beam, not a blast, but a flower. Literal petals of flame that expanded outward, dozens of them, each one carrying enough heat to melt steel. They launched toward Kael in a spreading pattern that covered every escape angle.

The attacks met.

BOOM!

The collision was catastrophic. Pulsar met Burning Lotus, gravity met fire, and the resulting shockwave was a physical wall of force that swept across the entire battlefield. Kael felt himself lifted off his feet, thrown backward, tumbling across the red stone.

He hit the ground hard.

Cough.

Blood sprayed from his lips. His ribs screamed. His mana reserves had dropped to at least 40% as—Pulsar was expensive, and he’d been using techniques constantly.

Across the battlefield, Seraphina had also been thrown back. She pushed herself up from a crater, coughing blood of her own, but her injuries looked less severe than his.

"Let’s get this over with." Seraphine’s voice was hoarse but determined.

She raised her axe above her head. Fire gathered around concentrated, focused, with every bit of her remaining mana channeled into a single strike.

"Gateway Departure."

The axe came down.

A flaming slash erupted from the blade—a horizontal wave of destruction that stretched across the entire battlefield, wide enough to hit Kael no matter where he dodged, powerful enough to leave a permanent scar in the earth.

Kael’s hands moved.

The Twin Fangs of Eclipse crossed. Darkness and lightning swirled around them, reinforced with gravity, compressed into something denser than either element should have been able to achieve alone.

He’d had five months to work on this.

The Sky Rending Technique manual had been incomplete—only three of seven forms. Kael had spent those five months trying to recreate the missing four, using what he understood of the first three as a foundation. He’d failed three times. Succeeded once. Partially.

The fourth form wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even complete. But it was enough.

"Sky Rending Technique, Fourth Form: Void Split."

The attack launched as a line—a single horizontal slash of darkness and lightning and gravity that seemed to tear reality itself as it passed. The air split. The ground split. The crimson light of the sky seemed to darken where the attack traveled.

It met Gateway Departure.

The flaming slash held as the two attacks where in a fierce duel but--

Then Void Split sliced through it like it wasn’t there.

The attack continued toward Seraphine—too fast to dodge, too fast to block, too fast to do anything except watch it arrive.

Her arm came off at the shoulder.

The cut was clean and precise. The darkness passed through flesh and bone like they were paper, taking her arm, her shoulder, a chunk of her torso in a spray of blood that painted the red stone even redder.

Seraphine screamed.

She dropped to the ground, clutching the ruined stump where her arm had been, blood pouring from the wound, her face contorted in agony. The axe clattered away, fire dying as her concentration shattered.

Kael walked toward her slowly.

"Sorry, love." His voice was soft. Almost gentle. "But your story ends here."

Seraphine looked up at him through the pain. Something in her expression shifted—hatred giving way to something else. Something that might have been madness.

She laughed.

Blood bubbled at her lips as she spoke. "You don’t know anything, kid. This is just the beginning. Once he rises, everything falls into place. We will—"

Kael’s hand closed around her hair.

He dragged her head back, exposing her throat. The other hand brought up a blade.

The tip pierced her heart.

"—I do love beautiful ladies." He whispered the words as the light faded from her eyes. "Not lunatics."

He let the body drop.

"Uh huh." Aria’s voice came from behind him. "I pretty much consider Lyra a lunatic."

Kael turned.

Aria stood there, daggers clean, the body of the Mana Heart Rank 2 cultivator lying a few meters behind her. She’d finished her fight while Kael was dealing with Seraphine.

He smiled. "You’re right. Another one is standing before me."

Aria’s expression flattened into an annoyed pout.

Fifty meters away, the Water Demon was losing patience.

His water attacks were devastating—waves, blades, spheres of compressed liquid that could crush stone. But the summoner kept throwing beasts at him. A Mana Heart Rank 3 direwolf that moved faster than he could track. Two lightning birds that attacked from impossible angles, forcing him to maintain water shields that cost precious mana.

The strain was showing.

"I will have to kill the girl." Water Demon’s cold eyes found Silas through the chaos. "Then these beasts will be gone."

He moved.

A water tornado erupted around him—a spinning wall of liquid that intercepted the charging direwolf and sent the lightning birds spiraling away. Through the gap, he sprinted toward Silas.

The summoner’s eyes widened.

She tried to summon something—anything—but she was already maintaining three Mana Heart realm beasts. Her concentration was split. Her mana was draining.

Water Demon smiled.

"You’re mine."

His water sword came down.