He did not wait for an answer.
The shadows beneath his feet twisted violently, and in the next instant he vanished—reappearing directly before Nerion with killing intent.
There was no hesitation, no curiosity. Time was against him. Outside, Qi Emperors were already tightening the noose. If the Army broke into the dungeon and found the children, escape would become a joke then.
Sombra struck to end it quickly.
Nerion did not retreat.
He shifted into a defensive stance, weight grounding instantly. Sombra’s knee drove upward towards his groin—but Nerion snapped his leg down, blocking it cleanly, the impact sending a sharp crack through the stone beneath them. He countered at once with a roundhouse kick, then another, launching a relentless sequence of blows.
Sombra answered in kind.
Their fists and kicks collided in rapid succession, each impact heavy with Qi that made the air fracture like breaking glass. Nerion was forced backwards, step by step, but he redirected the force through his Unbreakable Stance, twisting just enough to bleed the momentum away and send it crashing into the walls and floor. Stone split open. Hairline fractures crawled across the ceiling, dust puffing up with every heavy thud.
Nerion’s eyes narrowed.
This man was strong.
As far as TAO Praetorians went, Nerion knew his limits well—and he also knew he should have the advantage against most of them. But Sombra was different. His movements carried a precision and lethality that reminded Nerion of his Big Brother Elisha at the same rank.
And yet—
Sombra was the one growing unsettled.
He had attacked with full intent. Incisive strikes. Killing angles. Still, the boy held. Worse—Nerion’s energy felt . Weak. Barely at the level of a Grandmaster. And yet he was standing toe-to-toe with him.
As the two exchanged blows, Alastor’s focus wavered.
The girl.
She had to be one of the captives—yet the Natural Energy coiling around her was far too controlled. Far too refined. And then there was the wolf.
A Rank 3 Magical Beast.
In normal circumstances, Alastor would not have feared it. He was a Praetorian noble, trained and armed. But the wolf was not alone. The emerald bird circling above carried Rank 2 pressure—and its movements were anything but erratic.
Only seconds had passed since the ambush began.
No alarms yet. No shouting. No spells detonating. Sombra’s arts were built for silence—but silence would not last. Serena and the others would arrive soon.
They needed to end this now.
Sombra disengaged abruptly, flicking a cluster of poisoned needles toward Nerion and dissolving into shadow.
But this time, he did not reappear behind Nerion.
He appeared beside Evelin. He would take a hostage.
Nerion’s pupils contracted.
His ocular meridians flared. He could not track Sombra perfectly—but he the disturbance in the flow of energy near Evelin. That was enough.
Nerion vanished in a burst of displaced air, reappearing between Evelin and Sombra in the same heartbeat. His palm drove forward.
Sombra met it with a punch.
The collision blasted both of them backwards, stone cracking beneath their feet.
Sombra flipped lightly to regain balance, annoyance burning beneath his mask. His was nearly flawless—but not seamless. There was a fraction of delay.
And Nerion was exploiting it.
"Hey, that masked creep is supposed to be yours—he almost got me there," Evelin said, sounding half-annoyed, half-amused. "Can't you keep better track of him?"
"Sorry about that, my lady," Nerion shot back with a quick grin, eyes never leaving Sombra. "I'll do better next time, promise."
Sombra thought grimly.
“I’ll need something heavier,” Sombra decided coldly.
Behind them, steel rang.
Alastor lunged for Evelin, sword flashing—but Leo was already moving.
The direwolf blurred forward, claws scraping sparks from stone. Leo’s strength lay in sudden strikes, flanking attacks—ancestral instincts honed for the hunt. He was slightly outmatched in raw technique, but far faster.
Little Green hovered close to Evelin, eyes sharp.
Leo expanded to nearly a meter and a half, choosing mobility over mass in the confined space. Frost spilt from his jaws in short bursts, forcing Alastor to reposition repeatedly.
Alastor snarled and answered with skill.
His sword movements grew sharper, Qi waves slicing outward in crescent arcs. Leo dodged in rapid succession, leaving afterimages as several slashes grazed his flank.
Then Alastor planted his feet.
Three serpents of Qi coiled around his blade.
The wave surged toward Evelin.
Leo leapt in front of her and unleashed his full breath, barely offsetting the attack. The force still hurled him backwards.
Alastor pressed the advantage.
Hurricane Sword – Second Form:
The air screamed.
Leo struggled to defend. Several slashes broke through, carving bloody lines across his legs and chest.
Nerion saw it. His breath hitched. His eyes reddened. And Sombra struck.
He attacked with brutal urgency, forcing Nerion fully on the defensive. If Nerion faltered now, the wolf would die.
Alastor raised his blade for the finishing strike—
Evelin remained serene. "Stay focused on your side," she called calmly to Nerion. "Don't worry about Leo—he'll be fine with me here. I was just getting a read on that guy's style; not everyone's a brute like you, you know."
She raised her hand. Runes shimmered into existence.
“Λιγ?τερη θεραπε?α — (Ligóteri therapeía - Lesser Treatment)”
Natural Energy surged.
Leo’s wounds sealed almost instantly, frost evaporating as muscle and fur regenerated. His strength stabilised.
Evelin turned slightly.
“Little Green.”
The bird shrieked and unleashed a storm of wind blades. Alastor staggered back, forced onto defense.
Evelin continued chanting.
"Αδ?ναμο? (Adynamos - Feeble)"
"Δ?ναμη (Dynami - Power)"
A whitish halo cloaked Alastor—strength ebbing, feverish drain, power sapped twenty per cent.
A red halo surged around Leo, a thirty per cent boost roaring through his frame.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Evelin looked like she needed no rest between spells, her mana flowing with ease.
The shift was immediate.
Leo lunged.
Sombra cursed and blinked toward Alastor, but Little Green switched targets; her wind blades intercepted him mid-step. He was forced back.
That moment was enough.
Leo struck.
His jaws closed around Alastor’s arm and tore it free at the shoulder.
"AAAAAAAAH!" Alastor screamed, agony tearing from his throat.
His troubles had only begun.
The freed Nerion flashed behind him—strikes precise as a surgeon's blade on joints and meridians, dislocating shoulders and knees with sickening cracks. Alastor tried to resist, but his body betrayed him, paralysed from head to toe in seconds, muscles trembling uselessly.
Nerion placed his palm on the man's nape and pushed with controlled force, slamming the head against the stone floor.
CRASH!
Alastor collapsed, unconscious, foam flecking his lips, his body a broken map.
Sombra's gaze darkened, cursing inwardly.
And then—
Recognition.
A setup from the start. Serena had endured all the pressure and humiliation just to lure them here, sweep them in one stroke.
A chill ran down his spine. He had mocked Serena not long ago, and yet…
This had never been an escape. It had always been a net.
He clasped his hands in a quick seal, feet planted firm. Shadows enveloped him like a living cloak.
Four clones split from him, darting in varied directions.
Nerion, Leo, and Little Green split instantly—each intercepting a clone. Nerion's meridians strained.
Evelin remained still.
One shadow rushed toward the cells with the kids under lock. Sombra materialised.
“Damn it!” Nerion cursed as he realised.
He raised his arm, three bone-white Qi serpents wrapped around it.
He struck.
BOOM.
The wall exploded, the debris hurling towards the children. Their little bodies about to be crushed by the rocks.
But Evelin reacted first.
"Τε?χο? αμπ?λου (Teíchos ampélou - Vine Wall)"
Vines erupted, shielding the children as debris slammed against them. Nerion arrived an instant later, bracing the impact.
Leo’s children saw their saviour.
Sombra did not linger. He blinked towards the ritual chamber.
Nerion pursued with ferocity. A bad feeling gripped him.
The full moon had just crested the starry vault. And something old stirred.
Milos had been weaving delays like a spider spinning silk—polite objections, subtle appeals to protocol, quiet glances to Rodolfo for support. As a viscount, he carried weight, but he knew it was borrowed time. Serena had not yet torn the ruins apart only because the army ringed the site like an iron noose, trapping everyone inside, and because she still clung to the thin veneer of decorum among nobles.
That veneer cracked the instant the ground shuddered.
A low, guttural rumble rolled through the stone corridors from somewhere deep in the back. Dust sifted from the cracked ceilings. Torches guttered. Then came a sharper tremor, as if something heavy had slammed against ancient walls.
“What in the AEON’s name was that?” Serena snapped. Her voice cut through the murmurs like a whip. “Soldiers! By His Majesty’s authority—advance to the rear chambers. Now!”
Milos stepped forward, palms raised in placating surrender. “Brigadier, I implore you to reconsider. A misstep here could bring consequences even the king’s mandate cannot shield you from.”
Serena’s eyes narrowed to slits. “One more word, Viscount, and I will treat it as direct defiance of the crown. Move.”
Milos’s face drained of colour. He exchanged a fleeting, loaded glance with Aran. Whatever had caused that tremor, it was not part of the plan. His only remaining hope was that Sombra had already erased every trace.
The entire party surged forward—soldiers in disciplined ranks, nobles trailing with drawn blades and wary suspicion.
Deep beneath the ruins, the clash had already begun.
Nerion struck first.
“Χ?ρι Φωτι?? - Fire Hand”
Five condensed firebursts slammed into the stone corridor ahead, detonating against the wall as Sombra fled, the explosion ripping through the chamber and sending shockwaves racing upward through the ruin’s bones.
“Move,” Nerion said tightly. “Something is very wrong.”
The Genesis Stone in his chest was cold.
Not dormant—cold. A suffocating chill pressed inward, smothering its usual warmth. It was the kind of cold that did not belong to weather or space, but to something antithetical to life itself.
Evelin felt it too—her hand instinctively clutching her chest, a faint glow flickering beneath her skin as if her own mysterious power recoiled. Leo growled low, hackles rising; Little Green chittered uneasily, vines twitching.
They ran.
Sombra burst into the central hall.
It was vast—once a place of music and ceremony. Now a cathedral of ruin. Broken columns lay scattered like fallen teeth. At the far end stood a shattered statue: humanoid torso, fishtail lower body, one arm missing, face obliterated by deliberate ruin. Rusted metal—a sword—had been nailed into the stone wall beside it, left like a warning.
In the centre stood the altar.
New. Obscene in its precision.
Runes crawled across the floor in layered geometries, some ancient, some hastily adapted. At the altar’s heart rested a cup filled with blood—dark, viscous, shimmering with a sorrowful, living sheen.
Sombra did not slow.
At that exact moment, Serena and her force entered the chamber from the opposite side.
Everything froze.
Serena’s eyes locked onto Sombra instantly.
The masked killer who had murdered Leto. Then they flicked to Nerion, Evelin, Leo, and Little Green in hot pursuit. Finally, they darted past the boy to the ragged hole Sombra had blasted in the far wall. Through it, pale faces of terrified children peered out from iron-barred cells.
The truth struck like a hammer.
“Milos! Aran!” one of the nobles roared, voice trembling with rage and disbelief. “You filthy scum—you’re the kidnappers!”
Milos’s head snapped toward Sombra. His eyes blazed crimson. Veins corded in his neck; blood dripped from clenched fists where nails had bitten into palms. Several nobles began to close a circle around him. Aran went very still, mind racing for an escape that wasn’t there. He shot a desperate glance at Rodolfo, but the man’s expression remained unreadable.
Then Nerion’s shout shattered the moment.
“STOP HIM!” Nerion knew he would be too late, even with Flash Walk.
Fire surged again—but Sombra deflected it with a sharp Qi wave, blade flashing, momentum unbroken. Against a prepared Praetorian, a child’s fire magic was little more than annoyance.
Serena surged forward, the same instinctive dread coiling in her gut. Kidnappers exposed or not, something far worse was unfolding. She lunged toward Sombra… or she tried.
Milos exploded.
His Qi detonated outward as his Will manifested in full. A massive spectral raccoon, with no tail, red-eyed—materialized beside him, jaws opening in a shriek that was not sound but .
SCREEEEEECH!
Ears bled. Vision blurred. Even Nerion and his companions staggered, clutching their heads. The technique was crude but brutally effective—perfect for stealing a heartbeat of chaos.
A heartbeat was all Milos and Aran needed.
Aran’s spear appeared from his spatial ring. He thrust forward in a blinding flurry.
Dozens of illusory spear shadows materialised, streaking toward every soldier and noble who had begun to surround him—including Serena.
Two men closest to him never had time to react. They died instantly, bodies riddled with phantom wounds that became horrifyingly real. Others cried out as spectral points pierced armour and flesh.
Then rose petals blossomed from nowhere—hundreds of them, crimson and razor-sharp.
Oliverio Dai Vanilla, the Rose Emperor, had moved. Petals whirled in defensive spirals, intercepting every spear shadow with pinpoint grace, then swirling toward Milos and Aran in tightening, deadly rings.
Oliverio’s gaze, however, never left Rodolfo. Deep ties bound Milos and Aran to the Salinas family; the Emperor’s suspicion burned cold and bright.
Yet the distraction had served its purpose.
Sombra reached the altar.
For the first time since the battle began, he did not move like a predator.
He moved like a priest, the grin carved into his mask seeming to deepen.
He lifted the cup with both hands. The blood within trembled, responding to something far deeper than gravity. Around him, the runes ignited—not bright, but , lines of absence etched into reality itself.
Sombra knelt.
His voice did not rise. It sank.
“I beseech thy presence, Dagon,” he intoned, each word deliberate, ancient, and weighted.
“Oh, Grand Master of the World.
Thou who wast named Father of gods, Lord of Prosperity, Sovereign of the Old Age.”
The air thickened.
Several nobles staggered as if struck, their breath forced from their lungs. A few fell to their knees without understanding why.
“The world has forgotten thee,” Sombra continued, unmoved.
“Templo erased thy name.
Yet still thou remainest.”
He poured the blood.
It did not spill.
It .
A column of crimson lifted from the cup, congealing, twisting, compressing into a faceted crystal that pulsed like a living heart. Each beat sent a pressure wave through the chamber—slow, inevitable, crushing.
Sombra pressed his forehead to the stone.
“Accept this offering,” he said, voice reverent, absolute.
“The blood of children.
The blood of beginnings.
The blood of limitless becoming.”
The moon outside . For a single breath, it bled.
“I beseech thy presence. KLAATU BARADA NICTO”.
The crystal floated upward and embedded itself into the hollow eye socket of the shattered statue.
The ruins screamed.
Stone cracked not from force, but from proximity
Something descended. Not fully. Not yet.
An avatar
The pressure was immediate.
Men collapsed.
Qi stagnated. Meridians seized. Will shattered like glass under deep water. Even Monarchs and Emperors found their instincts screaming .
This was not killing intent. This was recognition of prey
A voice rolled through the hall—not sound, but command.
“...Who calls my name?”
Sombra lifted his head.
“I am Sombra,” he answered without hesitation. “Servant of the Forgotten Throne. Bearer of the Rite. Heir to those who remembered thee when the world chose betrayal.”
The presence focused on him.
“You speak the old cadence,” Dagon said. “Few do.”
His gaze—if it could be called that—shifted across the chamber. Nobles shrank. Soldiers wept openly.
Serena and the soldiers trembled uncontrollably, power drained from their limbs by the mere timbre of that voice. One noble found courage—or folly—and screamed, “A false god! Heretics! The Templo and the Six Territories will hunt you to the ends of Aeonia!”
Dagon’s head turned. The man rose into the air. Blood wept from every pore, skin shrivelling until he collapsed, a desiccated husk.
Dagon did not look back.
“Your offering is… insufficient,” the false god said calmly. “But time has starved me.”
The pressure intensified.
“I will accept it,” Dagon continued. “Immolate the children. Let them dissolve into me. They will not suffer. They will belong
Milos fell to his knees without realising it, tears streaking his face as laughter bubbled up from his throat.
Then—
Dagon’s attention snapped.
The air around her warped violently. The avatar leaned closer, hunger tearing through its measured cadence.
“…This vessel,” Dagon breathed. “Such density. Such purity. Such unclaimed sovereignty.”
His voice deepened, greed leaking through divinity.
“Give me her heart,” he commanded. “Not her blood. Her .”
The chamber plunged into absolute silence.
“I will raise you,” Dagon promised. “Sainthood will be yours this very night, apostles of the New Tide. That is the word of Dagon.”
Sombra moved toward Evelin, dagger gleaming with eager purpose, the promise of power even alluring to him.
But as he passed by Nerion…
BAM!
Nerion struck him by surprise. The blow rang like a bell in deep water. Sombra was hurled backwards, his arm was almost broken by the unsuspected attack.
Dagon’s attention snapped again.
“A mortal child,” the false god said slowly, “…resists my presence.”
The oppressive weight redoubled. Nerion swayed—but the Genesis Stone flared coldly against his skin, drinking in the malignant aura, filtering it, letting his Qi flow unhindered.
“I did say I wanted to catch some fish,” Nerion muttered through gritted teeth, “but this is ridiculous.”
Fury flickered across the apparition’s regal features. A hand the size of a wagon lifted, dark water-energy coalescing into a chaotic sphere.
Then the sky tore open.
A shadow plummeted from the heavens like a falling star—blazing, inexorable. Dagon hurled the sphere upward. Light and shadow collided in a cataclysmic roar that turned night into blinding day.
BOOOOM!
The ruin shook to its foundations. Stone cracked. The apparition wavered.
And something—someone—crashed into the chamber amid a storm of shattered marble and righteous fury.