I. The Iron Dawn
The sun that rose over the Morningstar Citadel that day brought no warmth. Its light, filtered through thin desert clouds, painted the obsidian walls and ice towers in a grayish, almost metallic hue. The air, which the night before had vibrated with the cheers of celebration and blood oaths, now weighed tons. It was the heavy silence before the thunder.
The disciples no longer laughed. In the training courtyards, the sound of wood against wood had been replaced by the sharp screech of whetstones against real steel. Smiths worked at a frantic pace, and the smoke from the forges mingled with the magical mist that Lyra and Sela maintained around the walls to hide internal movements.
In the Dragon Tower, Samael observed his domain. He did not wear the ceremonial robes of the previous night, but his battle armor: matte black plates that seemed to absorb light, engraved with violet runes that pulsed to the rhythm of his breathing. The System floated in his peripheral vision—a constant stream of logistical data and casualty predictions that he read with the coldness of a general, though his father's heart beat with restrained fury.
—"They are coming," he murmured, not to anyone in the room, but to the northern wind.
Behind him, the door opened. Kael, Cedric, and Violeta entered. There was no need for protocol. War had erased ceremonial hierarchies; now, only function and survival existed. —"The Strategy Room is ready, Patriarch," said Cedric. His gray eyes, usually calculating, showed deep circles. He had not slept, tracing supply lines and attack vectors all night.
Samael turned, his cloak billowing like liquid shadow. —"Then let us move the pieces. Today we decide where the enemy will bleed."
II. The Cartography of Disaster
The Strategy Room was dominated by a polished black stone table. Above it, thanks to a projection matrix designed by Cedric and Xylia, floated a solid light holographic map representing the surrounding terrain in painful detail.
The twenty Sequences, the Elders (now Semi-Saints), and Elara were present. The tension was palpable—a violin string about to snap.
Cedric stepped forward, manipulating the light with his fingers. The map zoomed north. —"The situation is critical," he began, his voice devoid of emotion, purely analytical. —"Our scouts, or what is left of them, have confirmed the invasion force. This is no simple punitive expedition. It is a Crusade of Extermination."
Red dots appeared on the map, staining the north in luminous blood. —"Three True Saints," Cedric continued, and a murmur ran through the room. —"Grand Ancestor Valerius (Stage 3, Fire and Law of Pressure). Matriarch Ysabel (Stage 3, Poisons and Wind). And a third, whose energy signature is... unstable. Possibly a mercenary or a summon."
—"To that, add four Semi-Saints, twenty Origin Realm experts, and a fleet of five 'Leviathan' class warships," Xylia added, arms crossed, sparks jumping from her shoulders. —"They have aerial, numerical, and rank superiority. If we lock ourselves behind the walls and wait for a siege, the citadel's barrier will fall in three days. They will bombard us from the stratosphere until we are turned to glass."
The silence that followed was dense. Kael gripped the hilt of his greatsword until his knuckles turned white. —"Then we don't wait," Kael growled. —"We go out. We hit them on the ground before they can position their ships."
—"Their land vanguard is heavy," Eris pointed out, studying the map. —"Siege artillery, corrupted war beasts... they need a wide path to move."
Samael, who had been listening in silence, extended his hand and pointed to a specific geographic spot: a narrow fissure that cut the northern mountains like a scar. —"The Northern Throat," Samael said.
Everyone looked at the spot. —"It is the only viable land pass for their heavy machinery," Samael explained. —"If they try to bypass the Fang Mountains, it will take them two more weeks. They will pass through there. They have to."
—"It's a natural bottleneck," Cedric nodded, his eyes shining at the tactical opportunity. —"But they will send scouts. They'll know it's an obvious trap."
—"Exactly." Samael smiled, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. —"They will expect a military ambush. They will expect archers on the cliffs, falling rocks, defensive formations. They will prepare for a fight."
Samael looked toward the shadows of the room, where four figures remained almost invisible, merged with the darkness of the columns. —"But we won't give them a fight. We will give them a nightmare."
III. The Selection of Shadows
—"Malak," Samael called.
The shadow behind the throne lengthened and solidified. Malak, leader of the Legion of Silent Shadows and now a Shadow Semi-Saint, stepped forward. His presence was cold—a void that absorbed the heat of the room. —"My Lord."
—"I want no heroes in the Throat," Samael ordered. —"I want no honorable duels, no speeches, no prisoners. I want that vanguard to fear the darkness more than death. I want the survivors to be incapable of speaking without trembling when they reach their commanders."
Samael scanned those present and selected his instruments of terror. —"Draven (The Fallen). Your abyss and ice are perfect for breaking morale. Sela (Voice of the Penumbra). Your illusions will turn their friends into monsters. Tamsin (Forest Shadow). Your poison will ensure that even the air they breathe is their enemy."
The three chosen ones stepped forward, bowing. Their auras darkened, tuning into the murderous intent of their Patriarch.
—"You have one night," Samael said. —"Dismantle their vanguard. Blind their eyes. Cut their tongues. Let them know that the desert does not belong to the Purple Light."
Malak nodded, a mask of shadows covering his face. —"They will find no bodies, my Lord. Only silence."
IV. The Northern Throat: Where the Wind Howls
The Northern Throat was a naturally desolate place. Red rock walls three hundred meters high rose on both sides, creating a corridor where the wind howled constantly, sounding like the wails of forgotten ghosts.
That night, however, the wind brought more than dust. It brought the smell of oil, metal, and the sweat of five thousand men.
The vanguard of the Sect of the Purple Light had camped at the southern entrance of the gorge. They were an elite force: soldiers in enchanted plate armor, beast tamers with stone-skinned lions, and an engineering unit assembling siege ballistae capable of toppling city walls from miles away.
The General Commander of the vanguard, a burly man named Tross (Origin Realm, Stage 9), drank wine in his main tent. He was confident. —"Tomorrow we cross the pass," he told his lieutenants. —"In two days, we will be before their pathetic fortress. They say they have a 'Dragon.' Bah. I'll bring its head to decorate my chair."
Outside, campfires burned high. Sentinels, in pairs, patrolled the perimeter. Light-detection matrices were installed every fifty meters. Nothing could approach without triggering an alarm. Or so they thought.
V. The Art of Silence
Atop the western cliff, four figures watched. The wind whipped their cloaks, but they made no sound. They were blurs in the night, voids in the landscape.
—"They have light and motion detection matrices," Sela whispered, her eyes glowing with a faint violet radiance as she analyzed the magical defenses. —"Sect standard. Sensitive to external Qi fluctuations."
—"Then we won't use external Qi," Malak replied. His voice was like sand rubbing against stone. —"We will use theirs."
Draven smiled under his hood. He pulled out two daggers of crystalline bone. —"Tamsin, the water."
Tamsin nodded. She slid down the vertical rock wall like a spider—no magic, just muscular control and physical adherence. She reached the engineers' water supply: three large oak barrels. She didn't poison the water to kill. That would be too quick. She poured a vial of translucent liquid: "Essence of Paranoia," an extract Elowen had refined from abyss fungi. It didn't kill, but it amplified fear and suspicion a thousandfold.
Meanwhile, Sela infiltrated the beast perimeter. The stone lions, sensitive creatures, smelled something. They growled. Sela did not hide. She showed herself to the alpha male, but not as a human. She used her illusion technique to project into the beast's mind the image of a superior predator, a primordial shadow. The lion whimpered and cowered, terrified. Sela touched its cage and whispered a word. The lock broke. But the lions did not come out. They stayed inside, trembling, waiting. Fear is more effective than chains.
VI. The Dance of Nightmare
The signal was subtle. The moon hid behind a passing cloud, plunging the gorge into near-total darkness for a few seconds. In that instant, Malak and Draven dropped.
They didn't fall on the soldiers. They fell on the shadows of the soldiers. Malak landed in the center of the northern sentry group. Before they could scream, his shadow expanded, turning into solid pikes that pierced the throats of ten men simultaneously. There was no sound, only the wet gurgle of blood. Malak did not stop. He moved like liquid, passing from one shadow to another. A soldier saw his companion fall and opened his mouth to give the alarm. Malak emerged from the soldier's own shadow, covering his mouth with a hand of darkness and snapping his neck with the other.
Draven, for his part, was more brutal. He wanted to be seen. He landed in the middle of the officers' quarters. —"Intruders!" a lieutenant shouted, unsheathing his sword. Draven laughed. A dry, cold laugh. —"Intruder implies I don't belong here," Draven said, dodging the slash with a lazy side-step. —"But the night is mine."
The lieutenant attacked again. Draven caught the blade with his bare hand, coated in Abyssal Black Ice. The metal froze and shattered. —"You are the intruder in my darkness." With a fluid motion, Draven drove the frozen sword fragment into the lieutenant's eye. The man's scream was the signal that woke the camp.
VII. Absolute Chaos
The camp exploded into activity. Torches were lit, orders were shouted. But then, Tamsin's poison took effect on the engineers who had drunk the water. —"They are among us!" one screamed, looking at his companion with eyes wide from hallucination. —"You are one of them!" The engineer attacked his own brother-in-arms with a hammer. Confusion spread like wildfire.
Sela activated her masterpiece from the heights. —"Mass Illusion: The Army of the Dead." To the Sect soldiers, the shadows projected by the bonfires came to life. They saw their fallen comrades rise. They saw demons crawling out of the sand. They fired their crossbows, launched their fire and lightning techniques. But they were firing at illusions, and the stray bolts struck their own allies.
In the midst of the chaos, Malak reached Commander Tross's tent. Tross stepped out, his Stage 9 aura exploding and sweeping the tent away. —"Cowards!" he roared. —"Show yourselves!"
Malak did not show himself. Simply, every torch around Tross went out. The Commander found himself in a sphere of absolute blackness. —"You think darkness can stop me?" Tross shouted, charging his sword with Purple Light. —"I am the Light!"
He launched a slash that illuminated the area, revealing... nothing. —"Light casts shadow," Malak's voice whispered right in his ear. Tross spun, terrified. Malak was stuck to his back like a second skin. —"And in the shadow, I am King."
A blade of void pierced Tross's heart from behind, exiting through his chest. The commander's aura flickered and died. Malak let him fall. He cut off the commander's head, grabbed it by the hair, and leapt to the top of a rock pillar.
From there, he amplified his voice with Qi: —"Your Commander has fallen! The Throat is closed! Run, or serve me in death!"
He threw the head into the center of the chaos. The effect was immediate. Morale, already fractured by hallucinations and friendly fire, broke completely. The elite vanguard, the proud soldiers of the Sect, threw down their weapons and fled north, trampling one another in the dark.
VIII. The Dawn of Crows
The sun rose again over the Northern Throat, revealing a macabre scene. There was no army. Only smoking remains, sabotaged siege engines, and bodies arranged in gruesome geometric patterns. The four Morningstar Shadows stood on the cliff, looking at their work. They were stained with blood and soot, but unharmed.
—"It is done," said Tamsin, cleaning her dagger. —"We've bought them two days," Sela calculated. —"And we've cost them their heavy artillery." Draven looked north, where the enemy air fleet was still approaching, oblivious to the disaster on the ground. —"Now they know we bite."
IX. The Saint's Reaction
On the bridge of the Battleship Heaven's Wrath, Grand Ancestor Valerius received the report through a communication crystal that trembled in the operator's hand. He listened in silence. His face, a mask of nobility and arrogance, slowly contorted into a grimace of pure rage.
—"A vanguard of five thousand men... defeated by four assassins?" His voice was low, dangerous, making the glass windows vibrate. —"Lord... they say they were ghosts. That the shadows came to life..."
CRACK!
Valerius crushed the communication crystal. —"Not ghosts," he growled. —"They are rats hiding in the sand."
He turned to Matriarch Ysabel. —"They have blocked the land pass. They want to force us to fight in the air, where they think their tricks won't work." Ysabel smiled, stroking a green serpent coiled around her neck. —"Then give them what they want. Deploy the full fleet. But activate the 'Hammer of the Purple Sky.'" Valerius's eyes glinted with malice. —"Yes. If they want to play with shadows, I will bring the sun that erases them all."
IX.b – Before the Assault: Voices of Panic and Courage
While Malak's Shadows prepared atop the cliff, rumors of the attack began to spread among the younger disciples stationed in the lower levels of the citadel. In the apprentices' dormitory, Joren (Silent Wind), barely into the Transcendence Realm, tried to calm the trembling of his hands.
—"What if the Shadows fail? What if the enemy gets in?" a voice whispered, almost a sob, from the darkness.
Aylin, hearing the fear, knelt among the little ones and handed them a small wooden talisman. —"War is scary," she said sincerely, "but the root survives because it does not flee from winter. We resist together. If the walls fall, we will form a new circle around the Tree. None of you are alone."
A junior disciple, barely in the Sea of Qi, clutched the talisman and murmured: —"I won't let fear take the clan from me… even if I have to fight with my bare hands." The apprentices took each other's hands, forming a silent circle, drowning their fear in a murmur of shared courage.
IX.c – Doubt Before the Leap
On the western cliff, just before sliding into the darkness, Tamsin paused, her breath hitching. For an instant, the voice of her mother, lost years ago, resonated in her mind: "Morningstars always return… but what if I don't?"
Draven touched her shoulder. —"Fearing is normal. I'd be scared to death if I didn't have someone to remember to come back for." Tamsin nodded, feeling that the war was not just to show strength, but to return alive. —"We come back together," she promised, and vanished into the mist with renewed will.
X. Red Alert and Family Reaction
When Samael receives the Red Alert on the System, the wave of danger propagates throughout the Citadel. In the chamber of the Star Tree, Seraphina feels the shift in Qi and clutches Celeste tightly.
—"Mommy, why are the branches shaking?" the girl asks, her aurora eyes full of unease. The Matriarch, her voice tempered with ice and love, replies: —"The tree feels everything that happens in the family. But there is no storm we cannot shelter from as long as we are together."
Celeste, with a new courage, curls into her mother's lap and closes her eyes, murmuring a childish prayer for her brothers in battle, choosing a crimson ribbon from the Tree and tying it to her wrist: —"So that everyone comes back."
Elder Marcus enters, his presence as solid as a mountain. —"Fear not, little star. The clan's bark is hard because the heart is soft." In the council hall, Great Elder Lilith lights a flame of ash over the altar. —"Today, the ancestors listen. If we fall, we fall defending to the last leaf."
The elders of the minor branches, each in their pavilion, reinforce defensive formations, reciting old legends of resistance and rebirth, reminding their disciples that no Morningstar generation has ever yielded without leaving a mark of light and blood on history.
XI. – Back to the Front
In the Northern Throat, just as the enemy vanguard begins to break ranks prey to the terror sown by the Shadows, Tamsin remembers the circle of apprentices and the red ribbon on Celeste's wrist. —"For them," she whispers, throwing the poison with a hand firmer than ever.
Malak, seeing the determination of his squad, nods in silence. Today, the night belongs to the Morningstars.
XII. – The Family Echo
When the alert of the Purple Hammer shakes the city, the desperate and brave reaction of the Morningstar family—from the most powerful to the smallest—is the true key to the legend. The roar of the clan is not just of power, but of the promise that no Morningstar falls alone.
And while Samael gives the order to resist and take the sky, everyone, in every corner of the citadel, repeats the same oath in a low voice: —"We will return alive. We will return together."
Samael smiled, his dragon eyes glowing with absolute protective violence. —"Come for my family," he whispered to the wind. —"And discover why even destiny fears us."
[End of Chapter 87]