Chapter 1256: The Dark Came Home
Ignara’s flames leapt from one body to the next. Wherever they passed, nothing survived—only bones and ground stained red by the firelight.
Queen Elowen stood in the rear and raised one hand.
A transparent ice crystal appeared above her palm.
It was no bigger than a knuckle, yet its interior kept flickering with scenes from the battlefield. Ignara’s giant phoenix circling overhead. Soldiers charging forward. The dark gray enemies marching with their stiff, orderly steps—tiny moving images reflected across the crystal’s surface.
Elowen watched for a moment, then gently nudged her fingers upward.
The crystal lifted off her hand and drifted toward the air above the cage.
It wasn’t fast. After rising to a certain height, it stopped in place. In the next instant, its position changed—skipping over everyone’s heads and reappearing directly above the enemy mass in front.
A faint blue glow lit inside the crystal.
At first, it covered only a small patch around it. Then a circular spell array unfurled outward, centered on the crystal.
Pale blue lines shot along the ring, weaving and crossing, forming a complex inner structure. As the array expanded, the weak glow thickened into something solid, the color deepening from light blue to a dark, saturated navy.
Intricate runes began to form within the array.
They rotated slowly along different circles. Each time they passed the center, the chill inside the crystal sharpened by another degree. The temperature beneath the array started to drop, pressing the blood-red phoenix fire on the enemies down tight against their skin.
Ethan lifted his head, eyes on the array that hadn’t fully activated yet.
The ice crystal could spread the formation, but it wasn’t enough to support what came next.
His gaze lingered on the core. White lightning began to gather in his palm, arcs compressing into a small sphere that crackled rapidly between his fingers.
Ethan flicked his wrist and threw it.
The ball of white lightning shot straight up, pierced through the outer runes, and landed dead-center. The ice crystal slid aside at once, and the lightning sphere replaced it—becoming the new core.
White light raced along the dark blue pathways.
The entire formation released a low, heavy tremor.
Elowen spread her arms, her body lifting slowly off the ground. With every inch she rose, another layer of the runes flared to life.
The first ring stopped rotating.
The second ring accelerated in the opposite direction.
At the center, the white lightning began to split, threading itself into every ice-blue line. Cold and thunderlight converged together, and beneath the array, blue-white ice arrows started taking shape one after another.
Their shafts were forged from deep-blue hard ice.
White arcs of electricity hid inside the transparent layers, stretching from the fletching all the way to the razor point.
When the final arrow finished forming, Elowen pressed her palms down.
"Fall."
The sky of ice arrows released from the array.
The arrow rain dropped straight down over the enemy horde, the shriek of air tearing into one continuous roar. The first wave punched through the blood-red flames and speared into dark gray shoulders and skulls. The follow-up volleys fell into the blood slurry that had already melted out, pinning the burning liquid to the ground like it was alive.
Ignara’s phoenix fire was still spreading.
Elowen’s ice arrows now blanketed the battlefield.
Extreme heat and extreme cold existed at the same time. The flames didn’t get smothered by the ice, and the ice arrows didn’t melt in the high temperatures. Both forces stayed active inside enemy bodies, refusing to dissipate.
A body that had been melted into blood sludge tried to ooze outward—only for an ice arrow to drop right into it.
Cold radiated from the arrowhead.
The flowing blood stopped where it was and froze over in seconds. But beneath that skin of ice, the fire still wormed through the slurry, ramming again and again into the frozen shell.
Flame split the ice crust.
Cold snapped the splattered gore back into solid frost.
Dark red liquid sprayed everywhere—then crystallized in midair into chunks of icy grit before it could hit the ground, pelting bone and enemy flesh alike.
Only then did the power Ethan had hidden inside the ice arrows truly show itself.
The white lightning had been sealed inside the ice the whole time.
When an arrow sank into an enemy, the lightning followed into the wound. Arcs raced along the frozen blood, leaping from one enemy body to the next.
Ethan raised his hand, ready to detonate every strand of lightning.
He could already see it—the blood locked under ice, hellish thunderlight erupting from inside, the whole area turning into a cage woven from lightning and flame.
White light began to flicker.
But before Ethan could finish taking control, Goddess Catheryn moved.
A thread of pitch-black presence seeped from beneath her sleeve.
After it entered the cage, nothing blocked it. It drifted slowly through air and across the ground, and every shadow it passed through swelled naturally—like it had finally returned home.
The blackness slid through the burning blood slurry.
It drilled into the frozen enemies.
Before Ethan’s lightning could explode, the darkness had already finished building itself inside every target.
The freezing was no longer just the result of ice.
It became the doorway for darkness to descend.
A death notice.
The first enemy’s body blackened from the inside out.
There was no explosion. No wet tearing sound of flesh. The dark gray shape simply lost its outline within the ice—then got swallowed in a single bite of black.
Then the second.
The third.
Black spread across the battlefield at speed. Enemies melted into blood by flame, enemies pinned to the ground by ice arrows—everything vanished without a sound.
Ethan’s raised hand froze in midair.
The white lightning he’d been holding back was drowned under darkness, until not a speck of light remained.
He stared ahead.
In the space of a blink, the battlefield had turned into pure black. That power didn’t distinguish between enemy and ally. It swallowed whatever it touched. Scattered weapons, burning blood, even energy attacks that drifted too close—everything was dragged into it.
Seraphina had no choice but to retreat to Ethan’s side.
She positioned herself between him and the creeping dark, eyes locked on the deep-colored aura that was still expanding.
Catheryn’s power didn’t care who you were.
If it saw you, it ate you.
Goddess Catheryn stood on a black brick and lightly flicked a long finger.
The darkness inside the cage immediately gathered toward her position. The hungry wisps that had devoured enemies and attacks circled around her like servants who’d finally been given permission to approach.
She lifted her chin a fraction and looked past the bars with open contempt.
This was Vhalrath’s home field?
No.
This was her home field.
The home field of the Goddess of Darkness.