A moonless sky smothered the world in darkness.
Above Stormfall Ridge, black clouds tangled with the peaks, trailing ghostlike fingers over crag and cliff. Wind howled between jagged stones—high, sharp, and mournful, as if the mountain itself remembered a grief too old to name. It tore at cloaks, scraped against steel, and clawed its way into the bones of those who dared the summit.
At the apex, standing motionless against the storm, was Gideon Silversword—the Sword Saint.
His silver cloak flared behind him, not with flair, but with grim defiance. Each thread shimmered faintly, enchanted to carry the blessings of a forgotten goddess. His armor, dull and scarred, bore the weight of a hundred battles. But tonight, it was his eyes—clear, pale gray like steel under frost—that held the true burden.
He didn't blink.
He didn't move.
He waited.
The mountain wind screamed louder, and then—
Silence.
Not the silence of peace. The silence of something missing. Like breath before a scream.
Then the world snapped.
Lucian Blackthorne was simply—there.
No sound. No shimmer. No trace of arrival. Just the impossible, soul-freezing realization that something unnatural now stood where there had been nothing.
The shadows around him didn't fall—they stood. Straight and alert, like soldiers welcoming their king.
He wore no armor. Only a dark, weather-worn cloak that seemed woven from moonless nights and broken promises. His hair was tousled by the wind, but his gaze was still—a black void shot with starlight, as if the cosmos itself had abandoned the heavens to follow him.
Three paces apart, they faced each other—one a sentinel of light, the other its slow-coming eclipse.
Gideon's lips parted, breath visible in the freezing air. His hand found the hilt of Celestial ather, fingers pressing against the leather as though it might anchor him.
"I cannot sense Caius's presence," he murmured. Not suspicion. Not accusation. Just a sinking truth.
Lucian's voice came soft, almost bored—yet each syllable landed like a tolling bell. "Don't worry. You'll hear his voice soon enough... in the afterlife."
The stillness fractured.
Gideon's face tightened. "You slayed a National Hunter," he said, his tone now trembling with fury. "And now you threaten another. You truly have nerve,.....future Dark Emperor."
Lucian tilted his head slightly. Shadows curled along his jaw. "What else would you expect? The Blackthorne blood runs older than your legends."
No more words.
Gideon slammed his sword into the ground with a crack of light.
"Formation—Celestial Convergence!"
From the edges of the mist, four figures emerged like living echoes—members of the Celestial Swords. Each a S-class master, each chosen. They moved without fanfare, stepping into formation around Lucian. The air vibrated. Their auras braided together like rivers feeding into a holy sea.
Above them, the sky stilled.
Gideon raised his palm. Celestial ather shimmered and answered—embedding itself into his hand with a crackle of holy light. The other hunters followed suit, conjuring their relics: blades etched with divine law, gauntlets wrapped in prayer-seals, staves carved from world-roots.
Then—they moved.
The cliff trembled beneath them as the forbidden formation activated. Rings of light unfurled from their feet—concentric, perfect, and merciless. It wasn't just a battle aura. It was order incarnate, pressed against the mountain like a divine decree.
Even the wind stopped.
But Lucian… blinked.
No fear.
No tension.
Just a slight narrowing of his gaze—almost amused.
"You are not the first to wield light," he said. "And you will not be the last to drown in darkness."
Then his hand rose.
Not in a flourish—but in a deliberate, reverent motion. He traced a sigil into the air, invisible to mortal sight. The wind didn't carry it; the world bent around it.
And the Abyss answered.
An obsidian dome erupted, swallowing the formation in one breath. Dissonant Abyss. The sky dimmed. Sound warped. Color drained. Gravity became suggestion. Within the dome, mana bled away like warmth in winter. The hunters wavered.
One dropped to his knees, screaming as blood burst from his ears. Another staggered back, clutching his chest, eyes wide with horror. The formation flickered—faltered.
Lucian stepped forward.
His sword was already drawn.
Its edge hummed—a mourning hymn passed down from father to son, carved from every injustice, betrayal, and death his bloodline endured.
"Eclipse of Desolation. Fifth Form."
The motion was slow. Graceful. The blade barely hissed through the air. But in that silence, in that void, it sounded like judgment.
Two hunters collapsed—sliced by something they never saw. Their bodies crumpled, untouched by wind or fire—simply… undone. Their final expressions etched with a cruel irony: they didn't die fighting, they died vanishing.
Gideon roared. "YOU BASTARD!"
His aura blazed. Golden light surged from his blade, splitting the sky.
"Heaven's Descent!"
A beam of divine judgment screamed downward, carving through the mountain's spine. Trees burst into flame miles away. Birds fell from the sky. Gideon's wrath was a miracle made murder.
But it didn't hit.
Lucian moved.
Not with speed. Not with magic.
With mastery.
"Phantom's Requiem. Fourth Form."
Gideon's vision fractured. Shadows bled across the battlefield, each one carrying Lucian's breath, his intent, his killing edge. A dozen afterimages circled like predators, too real to dismiss, too swift to strike.
He wasn't there.
He wasn't anywhere.
And then—he was—above, behind, below. Everywhere and nowhere.
Lucian smelled the opening—an instant of overconfidence in Gideon's stance.
This fight drags on, and I can feel it—my body's reaching its limit. Every strike tears me apart more than it does them. If I keep this up, I'll collapse before I draw blood.
No… the only path left is to sever as many as I can before I fall. Gideon must be cut off—isolated. If I can break his blades, even for a breath, the board changes.
So be it.
"Nocturne's Ascendancy. Sixth Form."
A violet-black blade arced outward, carving through the last two Celestial Swords.
They didn't scream.
They turned to ash, consumed by something that had forgotten the warmth of mercy.
Only Gideon remained.
He staggered, chest heaving. His body bled from places he didn't remember being struck. His hands trembled, not from fear—but fury. Grief.
They were companion of Gideon for a long time.
He remembered their names.
He remembered their dreams.
And now they were dust.
He raised his hand. Mana surged—not from rage, but from memory.
Ten radiant blades appeared, orbiting his body. Each inscribed with a virtue once engraved on the walls of the Temple of Light.
Honor. Courage. Faith. Will. Unity. Sacrifice. Valor. Wisdom. Judgment. Hope.
He whispered, "This… is the Resonance of the Celestial Blades."
Lucian took a step.
A single step.
And then—
"Shadow's Wrath. Eighth Form."
His blade howled.
Not with sound, but hunger.
Each celestial sword shattered, not by force, but by absence—light unmade by something deeper than dark.
The virtues unraveled. The orbit failed.
Gideon froze, eyes wide.
"You… have walked too far into the abyss," he whispered.
Lucian exhaled. "No."
He raised his blade.
"I am the abyss."
Celestial aether seeped through Gideon's hands, each drop falling like molten fragments of a dying star. His fingers trembled around the fading weapon, his frame bent under the weight of its brilliance. He was barely standing, breath ragged, yet the defiance in his golden eyes had not dimmed.
Lucian took a step forward, the sound of his boot crunching against the shattered stone echoing far too loudly in the silence. A prickle climbed up his spine, a chill deeper than instinct—an omen. Something was wrong.
The air shifted. Mana bent unnaturally around Gideon, swirling and screaming like a wounded beast. Then came the cry. A raw, broken sound, half agony, half defiance:
"—AHAHAHAHAHA!"
The hall split with the roar of his voice as light erupted from his hands. Blinding. Burning. He wasn't wielding a blade anymore—he was becoming one. A spiritual sword manifested, not conjured but forged in the furnace of his very soul, burning his mana down to the marrow.
Lucian's eyes narrowed. He had never seen anything like it. The weapon pulsed with terrifying clarity, its edge so sharp it seemed it could slice the air itself—and perhaps even a dragon's neck as though it were nothing more than parchment.
His body screamed at him. Every muscle shrieked to fall back, to retreat. But he was frozen—stiff, locked in place by the weight of an enemy who had abandoned reason and embraced death itself.
Gideon lifted his sword high, his right arm trembling from the force he poured into it. Then he swung.
The blade fell, and with it came a vertical arc of energy so vast it tore the night apart. A sword aura that could have split mountains, clearing the world before it as though erasing existence itself.
Lucian stood unflinching. The massive beam of light consumed his vision. His body refused to move. He shut his eyes and braced for the end—
—but then something stirred at his throat.
A violet glow burst forth, fierce and defiant. The Nyxveil Relic awoke, unraveling the attack. The storm of mana dissolved as if it had never existed, scattered like smoke in the wind.
Gideon's golden eyes narrowed, overflowing with blood and fury. His aura flared again, brighter, wilder. The spiritual sword in his grip swelled larger, the light so intense it burned the edges of his flesh.
With a roar, he charged, his blade angled toward Lucian's neck.
Lucian brought his sword up just in time—
The collision was cataclysmic.
Steel met spirit. Flesh met force. The impact detonated the air, and Lucian's world went white.
He felt himself ripped from the ground. His body slammed through stone and dust, his bones groaning under the violence. The cliffside buckled under his weight as he crashed into it, leaving cracks spreading like spiderwebs.
For a long moment, he could not breathe.
Then, slowly, he dragged himself upright, leaning on his sword like a crutch. His chest burned, blood bubbling in his throat. He coughed crimson into the dirt. His ribs had splintered. His muscles screamed, tearing apart under their own strain. If not for the Blackthorne blessing pulsing through his veins, his body would have already given out.
But Gideon was still advancing.
The Sword Saint was burning. Quite literally. His body blazed like a man made of fire, skin peeling away to reveal raw light beneath. He was consuming himself to fight, burning his life to fuel the impossible. Each step shook with agony, but still he pressed forward, dragging his radiant blade behind him.
Lucian's vision blurred. He felt his body growing heavier, his breath shallow, his thoughts faint. There was no miracle left to cling to. No hidden strength to call upon. His body was broken.
This is the end.
His grip tightened on his sword.
He closed his eyes.
And then—
A flash of light erupted behind his eyelids.
When he opened them again, the world was no longer the same.
Everything had turned black and white. The night lost its depth, the air its shimmer, the sea its color. Sound dulled. Time slowed, each droplet of rain hanging in the air like suspended glass.
And there—before him—stretched a path.
A trail of shadows, sharp and certain, guiding his blade.
Lucian recognized it. His heart stopped.
The Tenth Form.
Sovereign's Finale.
But no—the path was different. It was clearer, sharper, purer than what he had ever performed. A perfection of something he had only brushed against before.
His body moved without command. His sword rose, humming with crimson-dark radiance. The last dregs of mana inside him surged, searing his veins, igniting every nerve.
Lucian walked the path.
The air dimmed. The battlefield bled into shadow. Gideon, blazing like a fallen star, swung down his radiant blade with everything left in him.
Lucian answered.
The clash ripped the night apart.
First came light, a brilliance that blinded, tearing heaven from earth. But then came silence. Darkness. A weight deeper than any void swallowed the battlefield whole.
When the haze cleared, Gideon stood frozen, sword still raised. His eyes widened, confusion flickering through the fading brilliance of his gaze.
Then his head slipped from his shoulders.
His body crumpled an instant later, folding into the ground with an eerie gentleness, as though even death bowed in respect to the warrior he once was.
Lucian remained standing, though his knees trembled. His chest rose evenly, but beneath his collarbone, faint spasms betrayed the truth. His body was breaking beneath him.
With effort, he reached into subspace, retrieving a violet potion. The vial shook in his grasp as he uncorked it and swallowed the bitter liquid, its burn chasing the blood from his throat.
The night was not safe.
If more Hunters arrived, there would be no reprieve, no second miracle to save him.
Leaning on his blade, his body torn and trembling, Lucian summoned the shadows around him.
They folded over him, consuming him whole.
And then—he was gone.
Far below, in the remnants of Caius Voltaris's mansion—now no more than scorched marble and blackened murals—Ignatius Emberlord crouched.
He examined Gideon's severed head in silence.
The air still smelled of ozone.
Alaric Spellbinder stepped through the ruin's archway, robes drifting unnaturally, as if carried by unseen hands.
"No need to debate," Alaric said, his voice unreadable. "The signature is unmistakable. Only one name leaves ruin so… elegantly."
Ignatius's eyes burned. "Three of us are gone."
A growl interrupted them.
Leonidas Wildborne, smoke curling from his mane-like hair, stepped from the shadows. His beast-hide cloak dragged embers behind him.
"Disappear," he snarled. "Let the brat come to us. I'll snap his spine myself."
Alaric's smile was cold. "You're next, Beast Monarch. You know that, don't you?"
Ignatius's gauntlets hissed. "Then it will be more better, but what about the fox, Aldric Voss?"
Alaric scoffed. "Let the bureaucrat rot. The Blackthorne vault is all that matters to us—they have relics beyond reckoning. Power traded in whispers for a thousand years. Once we have them we be invisible"
Leonidas cracked his knuckles. "And when he die…"
"We take everything," Alaric finished.
But then, another voice cut through the air—deep, steady, and weighted with memory.
"Powers alone isn't enough," rumbled Marcus Ironfist as he stepped into the open. Mana crackled along his knuckles, each step striking the ground like a war drum.
His eyes narrowed. "Remember the Dragon Gate."
They did.
Two decades ago, the world had shaken under the weight of an SS-Rank Gate.
It did not belch forth demons or twisted beasts as others had—it birthed dragons. Ancient, intelligent, and merciless. From the rift came their sovereign, Ignis the Undying, wings blotting out the sun, firestorms turning cities into pyres. A calamity in living flesh.
The Hunters of the world faltered. Legions burned. Cities crumbled. And at the heart of it all stood a single line of defiance—the Blackthornes.
Azrael Blackthorne, Lucian's grandfather, led that line. He fought as if he alone bore the weight of humanity. His blade carved through scaled titans, his magic bent reality itself, but the tide was endless. Still, he did not yield. For seven days and seven nights, the Blackthornes and their allies stood against the storm, their bodies breaking even as their will held firm.
But victory came at the cruelest of costs. Azrael, the Dark Warden of his era, gave his life to halt Ignis the Undying, his final strike sealing the dragon's eternal flame. Five National Hunters fell beside him, their names etched into both glory and regret.
When the dust settled, the battlefield was a graveyard of titans and men. The Blackthorne name—once a pillar unshakable—was left in ruin. Their fortress cracked, their lineage broken, their supremacy gone.
Only one walked away from that inferno.
Maximilian Blackthorne.
He carried the weight of a thousand ghosts, the last ember of a dynasty brought to its knees.
And now his heir had returned… not to beg.
But to judge.
Alaric's gaze flicked toward the others.
"The Hunt of Vengeance has begun."
Wind howled through broken stone.
Far above, the stars seemed to shift—aligning around a single flame rising from ash.
Lucian Blackthorne.
He was no longer just a name.
He was reckoning.