Valier collapsed to his knees.
Blood dripped from the wound like a confession—slow, steady, inevitable. His aura flickered, barely a pulse now, as if even his hate had grown cold. Around them, the distant clash of Crogs and steel still echoed, but quieter now. Duller. As if the battle itself were holding its breath.
"How… did you…?" Valier rasped, lifting bloodshot eyes to meet Aelar's.
Aelar approached like a verdict, blade still buried in Valier's ribs.
"How about what?" he asked, voice as emotionless as frostbite.
"You only won because you caught me off guard—after I'd just taken down your comrade," Aelar growled, each word laced with rage and mockery. "Twice. If I hadn't burned through my mana healing after your ambush… or fallen for your words about our adviser's betrayal… I would've killed you myself."
Despite the blood on his lips and the tremble in his limbs, Valier smiled. He forced it. Still trying to act untouchable. "You managed a fatal blow... but even that wasn't entirely your merit."
His gaze shifted toward Icariel.
The boy was still on his knees, trembling. Elena held his shoulder, whispering, "Are you okay?" But he didn't answer. His eyes were vacant, distant. Bone-deep exhaustion clung to him like frost.
Valier's gaze lingered. "What a talent…" he muttered. "If we had even one like him in our ranks… this battle would already be over."
Aelar didn't reply. He just stared at his disciple—his broken, bleeding disciple. And he smiled. Not with pride. Not with triumph. But with something deeper. Something wordless.
"He's still standing."
"I need to leave,"Icariel whispered, voice hoarse like sand in his throat. "This time… for real."
His lips were split, blood drying along his jaw, but his eyes burned.
"I was just a wall," he thought. "A distraction. A piece teacher could use. I bought time… and now it's over. If I stay, I'll break for good."
"Go now," the voice inside him agreed.
Void pooled in his eyes, emotion stripped raw by pain and exhaustion. He reached for Elena's hand and gripped it with what little strength remained.
She looked up at him, her silver eyes wide and wet, following him as he rose.
Every step he took was agony wrapped in silence.
A trail of blood marked the ground behind him.
Calvin and Elif watched from a distance, the girl resting in the soldier's arms.
"Where's Icariel going now?" Elif muttered.
"To rest."
Calvin answered without looking away.
That was all that needed to be said.
He'd done more than anyone could've asked—more than anyone should've survived. He'd fought for a promise he made and ties he never admitted out loud. He'd stood against death because someone needed to. Because they needed him because she needed him to.
And now, he walked away.
Because even a shield has to be reforged before it shatters.
Virethiel joined Aelar, dagger in hand, her presence like a razor wrapped in velvet. She pressed the blade to Valier's throat as she watched Icariel fade into the smoky distance.
She didn't speak until he was nearly out of sight.
Then, with venom in her voice, she turned back to the kneeling invader.
"For every elf you butchered. Every family you ruined. Every child you made scream—I will make you pay threefold."
Her eyes gleamed—lethal, green, and beautiful.
"You chose this village because it was the smallest, the weakest of the three tribes," she hissed. "And it's the one that destroyed you."
Valier chuckled through blood.
"If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have won."
He turned to Aelar, a weak smile curving his lips. "That boy… he's not just tough. His body… it's something else entirely—I felt it myself. But even after everything, I doubt that's all he has."
"You're bragging about my disciple now?" Aelar said coldly. "You'll have plenty of time to admire him. From your prison cell."
Valier ignored him. He looked past everything—through the wreckage, through the smoke, through the fading footsteps of the boy walking away.
"It's a pity," he muttered.
"Huh?" Virethiel narrowed her eyes.
"What did you say?" Aelar asked, his tone suddenly sharp.
Valier lifted his blood-crusted face and smiled with cracked teeth.
"It's a pity… killing such a talent.
"But I know even if you stand watch for a thousand years, a thorn is still a thorn."
"Never loved."
"Only feared."
Valier's body twitched.
Then… it rose.
Like something dead reanimated by rage, not magic. The fatal wound in his chest, where Aelar's sword had lodged deep, began to close—not slowly, but unnaturally fast. Flesh sewed itself back together with sinews glowing orange, veins lighting like molten threads under skin.
A wave of orange-black aura burst outward.
Virethiel's dagger slashed toward his neck, but it bounced back—useless. A shimmer of dark energy now wrapped around him, violent and pulsing.
"Back!" Aelar shouted. His voice cracked like a whip. "Elena, RUN!"
He yanked at the hilt of his sword still lodged in Valier's ribs. It didn't budge.
"Damn it," Aelar thought. "I'm drained. No more mana. No more strength."
Valier stood fully now, the blade still inside him, laughing as he grasped it and yanked it out himself.
Metal clanged against stone.
"Pick it up," he said, tossing the sword at Aelar's feet. "Come on, let's make it fair again."
His voice had changed. Less human. More like something remembering how to be cruel.
"I shouldn't have needed this… not here," Valier muttered, gaze distant, haunted. "Guess that bastard was right. I've grown soft."
"What… what is that aura?" Aelar whispered, eyes wide.
"Why do you ask how when I already had every one of my soldiers use it? The crystal... the same one they used to ascend. I used it too."
Aelar staggered back. "The crystal..."
"Yes. Dered," Valier hissed.
Valier's aura surged—swirling like a storm made of fire and shadow. His bloodlust crushed the air itself. Calvin staggered. Elif fell to her knees. Elena trembled, clutching her chest.
But Aelar and Virethiel stood firm.
"You feel it, don't you?" Valier smiled, orange eyes glowing brighter. "That dread. That helplessness. That's what we've been giving back the world… piece by piece."
Then—
The pressure vanished.
Gone. Like a storm retreating just before the lightning.
Valier's head tilted. He wasn't looking at them anymore.
His eyes followed the fading trail of blood on the ground.
"I'm not interested in you," he whispered.
Then he vanished.
"NO!" Aelar shouted, bursting forward in a blur of speed. Virethiel vanished too, chasing after the trail.
"He's after Icariel again!"
Valier moved like a storm unchained, thoughts coiling like serpents.
"Kill the boy, escape. I don't have long—Dered won't last. I should call the Crogs to distract them..."
He hissed in a forgotten tongue:
"ḭr ḥr ḭnḫ mḏn nḭ ḭr.t=k[1]"
Across the battlefield, the Crogs froze. Then shifted. Then turned—marching toward the village path.
At the castle doors, Tessara's eyes widened. "They're wide open—cut them down!"
The army surged forward. Swords rose. Blood sprayed. Crogs died screaming.
But many had already escaped.
Elena ran. Elif screamed for her mother. Calvin grabbed her and followed.
Icariel staggered down the path toward the portal, breath uneven but no longer ragged. Vital Surge pulsed through his veins, healing his body. His muscles screamed, but his steps were steady.
"I made it," he muttered.
"Barely," the voice whispered in his mind. "Even I didn't expect that last stand. You didn't act this way back when the village burned."
"I didn't have power back then," Icariel said softly. "And… I didn't have her."
The voice paused.
"Elena?"
"Yes, I don't know. Maybe. There's something about her eyes… like I've seen them before. Familiar. A smile, a kind of warmth I can't explain. It terrifies me—and yet, it's why I stay. It started the moment she hugged me."
He shook the thought away. "Anyway. I did what I had to. They're safe. I'm done."
"Then let's go back to the human world," the voice said. "I'll show you what you've gained and explain it."
But then—
His White Sense ignited.
No.
A crack split the air.
Like a cannon of hate and flame, Valier launched from the trees—his aura roaring like a beast unchained.
Icariel barely leapt aside.
"You again!?" he shouted.
Valier landed, steam rising from his skin.
"You dodged me again," he said, annoyed. "It's like you can feel me all the time. What are you hiding in that little soul of yours?"
Icariel's heart slammed against his ribs. "How…? You shouldn't be here! You were finished!"
Valier smirked. "No one finishes me unless I say so. And you? You're a loose end. A thorn in the wrong garden."
He vanished again.
Icariel spun, panic blooming.
He threw fire—a roaring burst of mana-flame.
Valier walked through it.
"I don' have time to play with you," he said, eyes burning. "I will end this quickly."
His fist shimmered.
"VOICE! WHAT DO I DO!?"Icariel screamed inwardly.
The voice—his voice—was gone or maybe he couldn't hear it.
Only fear answered now. Fear, raw and hungry, curling in his stomach like something alive. Something that wanted to devour him from the inside out.
He didn't stand a chance.
Not against this.
Not against Valier.
Even after all he had clawed and bled for—Vital Surge, spell elemental command, that maddening control of mana—he was still just a boy standing before a storm that had forgotten the name of mercy.
Valier stood draped in living flame. Orange aura like molten veins crawled over his skin, boiling the very air. He had consumed the crystal—like the bald woman from before—but this… this was far worse. No mutation. No grotesque transformation. Just focused, terrible power. A monster that had remembered how to wear a human face.
"I'm going to die."
The thought struck like frostbite to his soul.
"Where is Aelar? Where are the others? Where is Elif? Elena?"
Every name carved another hollow in his chest.
"Voice," he whispered, almost begging. "Tell me something. Anything. Please—
"Use the W—"
The voice was there… and then.
CLANG.
A dagger, forged from a screaming column of azure mana, tore through the sky.
It struck Valier's back with divine precision.
The wound hissed.
Virethiel.
A blur of sapphire rage, her dagger expanded, glowing with such intensity it left trails in the air like tears in the world itself. She didn't just strike—she carved herself into the battle.
A heartbeat later, Aelar's sword swung low, but his arm faltered. Mana-drained. Barely standing.
Icariel blinked.
They came.
Relief flooded him like a fever breaking.
"You okay?" Aelar rasped, his voice thin but steady.
Icariel nodded. Sweat trickled from his temples, dripping like rain off a dying branch.
Valier turned, slow and smiling. "You all just love interrupting me, don't you?"
The gash in his back was already closing. Like flesh obeyed his will.
"Again," Aelar muttered, almost in despair.
"Teacher," Icariel said urgently, "that crystal—Every second it saves you… it kills a piece of you. The other woman… the more she used it to heal, the faster it drained."
"I guessed that," Aelar answered nodding. "But thanks for confirming."
Valier grinned. "So what? One hit per person is all I need."
He wasn't lying.
Virethiel stepped forward. "I haven't mastered them… but I have no choice."
Her eyes closed.
"Royal Blood Bloom: Leaf Chapter One—Active."
The air wept.
Mana, glacial and ancient, formed around her in a wreath of zircon blue. It wept from her body in long threads of light that coiled like vines and bled like rivers. Icariel's White Sense saw everything.
She wasn't just wielding mana. She had become mana.
"Run."
One word. Soft as silk. Sharp as steel.
He obeyed without a glance back.
She lunged.
Her dagger danced—not guided by flesh or training, but by legacy. Every strike shimmered with unspoken grief, slashing into Valier's barrier like it wasn't there.
Valier flinched. "What is this? My barrier—"
Aelar watched, stunned. "She's using the royal secrets arts… but they're unstable. She won't last long."
Valier's face twisted. He was wasting time.
He raised a hand and whispered:
"Djedi ha n sen."
The crogs stirred.
Dozens—no, hundreds—crawled from the roots of the trees like vermin escaping a dying god. Yellow-eyed monstrosities. Hungry. Twitching.
They rushed Virethiel and Aelar in a tide of claws and rot.
"No!" she roared, slicing through them—but the tide didn't stop. It swallowed them.
Valier vanished.
Icariel ran.
His feet bled on unyielding ground. His lungs screamed. The portal—just ahead, at the forest's end.
FWOOM.
Valier appeared again.
Icariel's soul screamed.
He twisted, barely dodging. Flame scorched the air behind him.
"You little worm," Valier hissed. "Stop running!"
"Voice—what were you trying to say? What do I use?"
Silence.
Just the sound of his heartbeat.
Valier slammed into him.
His body shattered against the bark of an ancient tree. Bones cracked like dry wood. Blood filled his mouth.
He couldn't move.
Valier walked toward him.
Hand raised.
Ready to end it.
"Voice…"
"You said you'd guide me."
"Don't leave me now."
"…Please."
"VOICE!!"
His scream tore through the trees. Terror, hatred, and regret all bled into the sky.
He was drowning.
"I shouldn't have stayed. I shouldn't have cared. I said I was glad that I stayed … but what is gladness, when it ends like this?"
Thruuuck.
Blood splashed.
But not Icariel's.
He opened his eyes—confused. There was blood. So much of it. On his face. In his mouth.
Someone… was standing over him.
Someone who had taken the blow in his place.
Her long silver hair was matted with red. Her eyes were wide, full of shock—but not regret.
"E… Elena…?" he whispered.
She smiled.
A debt, paid in full.
And just like that—everything shattered.
[ End of Chapter 68 ]
[1] It's old egyptian language