The higher a Viran rose through the stages of power, the more devastating their Resonant Arts — techniques powered by Vira — became.
For Virans like Anele and Rhesa, who stood at the Fifth Stage of Power — Virans known as Kyrios — their techniques were no longer mere weapons.
They were calamities.
Anele hovered twenty meters above the battlefield, beneath the living veil of blood that had swallowed the sky.
Below, the world had turned red. His crimson jacket whipped in the wind, and threads of blood coiled around his limbs like serpents, eager and hungry. The air was thick with something old and unnatural. The ground beneath him cracked.
He pointed his blood scythe toward the battlefield, then called out his mid-tier Art:
"Hands of Judgment!"
The veil of blood rumbled.
From it, colossal crimson hands erupted, hundreds of them, as far as the eye could see.
They came with open palms, each one wide, upright, and impossibly massive. Fingers splayed like the statues of silent gods, yet utterly wrong in proportion, with too many knuckles and too many joints, as though they had been sculpted by a blind child dreaming of divinity.
They did not fall.
They descended, slow at first, like judgment being passed. Then faster.
Below, Rhesa didn't move.
Her hands remained locked in prayer, fingers clenched tight, knuckles white with strain. Her head bowed slightly, not in surrender, but in focus.
Her voice rang out, calm, commanding, and absolute:
"Rain of Penitence."
The air shivered. Then cracked.
To her left, the archer golem stirred, eyes flaring with radiant gold. No ordinary arrow sat nocked; within its bow rested a gleaming javelin of condensed metals, thick as a spear. The vast swarm of metallic fragments that had been orbiting its form suddenly converged, drawn together by invisible force. Dozens of pieces fused midair, stacking, locking, and reshaping until dozens of javelins hovered in formation around it, each one glowing faintly with the heat of birth.
They circled the golem like soldiers awaiting a command.
Then.
The first javelin fired. Then the next. Then dozens more. Each one roared across the battlefield like artillery, splitting the blood-red sky.
Shockwaves tore through rubble and stone. One by one, the descending hands were pierced mid-fall, their massive palms rupturing as molten metal punched through them. Crimson limbs burst open, not in splashes, but in explosions, raining steaming gore across the earth.
But it wasn't enough.
She raised her voice again, louder, sharper. A command laced with finality.
"Warden's Sentence!"
The Knight Warden in front of her, a towering monolith of plated iron and sacred wrath, surged forward, a cathedral of metal in motion. With each step, the ground trembled beneath its weight.
As it charged, its lance twisted, reshaping in real time, divine metal clanging and folding, reforging itself into a colossal blade.
It leapt.
A blur of steel and fury sliced through the storm. One brutal sweep tore through a cluster of descending hands. Fingers the size of trees spiraled down, severed mid-air like broken marble columns.
Then the knight landed hard.
A thunderous quake rippled outward as it drove the massive blade into the earth, burying it to the hilt.
It was a declaration, like planting a war banner in hell.
Above, Anele grinned. His eyes gleamed with something sharp and satisfied.
'She's pushing herself. Good.
Let's see how far you can go before you break.'
He raised his hand, fingers curling slightly, as if tugging at something invisible just beyond the veil.
He whispered another Art.
"Vipers of the Vein."
The sky convulsed.
The veil above shuddered violently, as if in pain, its screaming faces twisting, warping, melting into coils of liquid hunger. Then the fabric of the heavens tore open, and through the wound came monsters.
Three gargantuan serpents erupted, each one a river of blood made flesh, muscle and venom wound into impossible shapes. Their bodies coiled through the air with unnatural speed, twisting and snapping with fluid precision. They dripped gore as they moved, and left the scent of rot in their wake.
Their heads were malformed, draconic things, eyes blind, mouths far too wide. Their fangs glistened like wet swords, barbed and silver.
One hissed, and it didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like a choir of children drowning.
Below, the Knight Warden roared, a metallic bellow that split the air, and charged the central serpent. Steel collided with blood in a violent clash, sparks and crimson spraying across the battlefield.
But the other two didn't slow.
They veered straight for Rhesa, fangs bared, bodies twisting midair like coiling executioners.
Her hands stayed clenched tightly together, fingers locked in the same unbroken prayer.
She called out her defensive Art:
"Warden's Pillar!"
The tank golem answered immediately, dragging its colossal shield across the shattered field. With a deafening clang, it slammed it into the ground, anchoring it like a barricade against gods.
Above, the metals suspended in the air, those still orbiting the archer, shot toward the shield. One by one, they stacked, fused, and folded, guided by unseen schematics etched into the very Vira of the land.
The shield grew, expanded, and rose. Plate after plate locked into place until the construct towered over Rhesa. It resembled a fortress forged mid-battle with dark iron and gleaming sigils, pulsing with sacred energy.
Then came the serpents.
The two blood-drenched monsters collided with the fortress like meteors, their shrieks splitting the air.
The iron wall buckled and groaned.
And then spikes burst outward from the iron wall, impaling both serpents before they could regain their balance.
The beasts writhed, fangs clashing against the air, bodies twisting violently as blood gushed in thick waves from the wounds. They screamed, long, shrill, and inhuman. And then they died.
Their forms collapsed, sliding down the walls like hunted prey, leaving steaming trails of gore behind.
Behind the structure, Rhesa stumbled, her breath shallow and ragged, her vision swimming. Yet she clung to her footing, just barely.
She looked up… just in time to see the Knight Warden bring its blade crashing down on the last serpent.
A clean cleave.
The serpent split like wet paper, blood erupting like a broken dam. Its body unraveled and dissolved.
And for one long, jagged moment, silence settled over the battlefield.
Rhesa dropped to both knees, gasping for breath. Her vision blurred and her lungs burned. But more than that, it was her soul that screamed.
She was different from other Virans.
Even as a child, her vessel — the inner core that held her Vira, the energy Virans used — had always been small and fragile, barely able to hold a fraction of what others could. While her peers tore through the world with ease, she was left behind, always recovering, always afraid she'd burn out and never rise again.
So she worked harder than all of them, three times harder. Through blood and prayer, through iron discipline and sleepless years, she climbed the stages and, eventually, somehow, reached the Fifth.
She became a Kyrios.
But no title could change her truth: she was still a vessel too narrow to survive a war of attrition. Conflict like this, drawn-out and brutal, was her greatest weakness.
She avoided them when she could. Out-planned them. Out-negotiated them. But today, there had been no choice.
'Dammit… dammit… dammit…'
She clenched her teeth. Her hands trembled against the cracked stone. Her body convulsed in tiny, disobedient spasms.
Her skin had turned pale, drained of warmth. Her lips were cracked, twitching. Her entire body rebelled with each breath she forced into it.
Too much Vira had been spent. More than she could safely channel.
Her Throne of the Iron Gospel was powerful, but every second it stood, it drained her from the inside.
And now, she was almost running low.
Her strength flickered like a candle in the rain.
'No more mid-tier Arts. Tsk.'
The thought gutted her more than any wound.
She still had other techniques, lethal ones, unholy things carved from the deeper layers of her Vira. But they came at a cost. A cost she might not survive.
And worse, Anele was the Kyrios of the Vein. Even the smallest scratch could become a death sentence in his domain. That's why she couldn't attack him herself. She couldn't afford to bleed.
She clenched her fists.
'I'll have to trust the Wardens.'
Her legs trembled beneath her, but she forced herself upright, staggering to her feet as her spine straightened one painful inch at a time.
The fortress still stood. The battlefield steamed with blood.
Her enemy was not yet done.
And she was not yet dead.
***
Inside the Warden's Carapace, time crawled.
The dome trembled with every strike outside. The air turned thick, heavy with dust. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed along the walls. With each distant explosion, the metal groaned, and dust fell like ash from a dying sky.
Ren sat pressed against the cold interior, eyes wide, breath shallow.
He had always known what a Viran was, or at least he thought he did.
Everyone who watched the news knew. They were painted as gifts from God, people born with supernatural abilities meant to help the world. Some reshaped infrastructure with a thought. Some grew food in barren districts made of nothing but concrete and glass.
They were quiet, always controlled, and strictly regulated.
Occasionally, one might break protocol, cause a disturbance, but they were always arrested. Always restrained. The world moved on.
That's why this… this war that was tearing the city apart… this was unthinkable.
It felt like two gods had descended, begun fighting over something ancient and unknowable, with no care for the humans crushed beneath their feet.
And yet, that wasn't the part that shattered him most.
'Mom?
Mom... is a Viran too?'
The thought felt impossible. Like trying to breathe underwater.
Not just a Viran, but one with a level of power the news had never shown before.
Even Simon hadn't known. That much was obvious. The look in his eyes, the mix of fear and awe and confusion, said everything.
And still, none of them spoke about it, not now, not here. They didn't question who she was; they only held onto one truth: she was out there, fighting, bleeding, standing between them and death.
Ren had a thousand questions, but they all came tangled.
His breath hitched as the metal dome quaked again, casting flickers of dust into the dim, copper-lit air.
He could barely make out his father's face in the gloom. Simon sat hunched, cradling Anya like she might fall apart if he let go for even a second. Tears streaked down his face, silent and hot.
Anya trembled like a leaf in a storm. Her small hands clutched her bear so tightly its seams looked ready to burst. She kept whispering the same words, over and over again, barely audible.
"Is Mom okay…?
Is Mom okay…?"
Simon pressed his face to her hair, voice cracking as he whispered,
"She's strong."
Not for her. For himself.
Ren looked down at his palms. They were trembling lightly, rhythmically, like the aftershocks of a fading quake.
But what unsettled him most wasn't the shaking. It was the fact that he felt... nothing. No panic. No dread. No terror clawing at his chest. Just silence.
'Why… why am I calm?
Why don't I feel afraid?
Aren't I supposed to be terrified right now?'
His hands shook. His breath came shallow. But inside, there was a quiet, too still to be normal.
'It doesn't make sense…'
Across from him, Simon turned, gently adjusting Anya in his arms. His eyes fell on Ren.
"Ren?" he asked, voice barely holding together. "Are you okay?"
Ren blinked. The question didn't feel real.
"I… I think I am," he answered.
But he wasn't sure if that made things better… or worse.