Chapter 133: The Dragon, the Tempest, and the Flame

A torrent of pale, blinding cold erupted from the dragon’s jaws, powerful enough to freeze miles of battlements in an instant and kill hundreds of soldiers where they stood. It no longer resembled an attack so much as destruction given form, a river of white death pouring down from the sky.

Along the miles of parapets, death was reflected in every pair of eyes. Soldiers who had survived until now could only stare as the wave of cold swelled before them, so vast it swallowed the dusk itself. Some closed their eyes, others whispered the names of people they would never see again. A deep, groaning rumble rose from the sky itself, drowning out every other sound.

BOOOOOM!

A second before the Dragon Breath struck...

Domain of the Northern Tempest

The sound that shook the battlements was not the impact of the dragon’s breath against stone. It was Marcus unleashing the full power of an Advanced Heaven Knight.

The moment the words left his lips, the domain unfurled in a fraction of a second, stretching for dozens of miles. A howling gale erupted over the long wall as Marcus’s wind aura surged outward, ripping through the oppressive Dragon Fear like a blade through silk. High above Northwatch, the sky twisted violently into a colossal, churning vortex. Dark clouds spiraled into being where there had been none a heartbeat earlier, and gales roared across the ramparts, carrying Marcus’s compressed aura into a vast protective canopy that enveloped the entire fortress. It was more than a domain; it was his will made visible, cutting through the terror that had gripped every soul on the wall.

But the tempest did not meet the dragon’s breath like a wall of force. Nothing could have stopped a torrent like that head-on. Instead, Marcus used the swirling gale to catch the deluge of absolute cold, bending and twisting it, dragging the roaring beam of frost upward and away from the battlements. The sky above Northwatch became a blinding white inferno of displaced ice. Frozen light filled the heavens from horizon to horizon, so bright that night seemed to fall and lift at the same time.

Where the breath and the tempest met, the clash detonated in a shockwave that slammed into the wall like a hammer. Banners snapped flat, loose stones skittered across the walkway, merlons cracked along the parapet, and the nearest soldiers were thrown off their feet. The tremor ran down through the stone into the streets of the Inner Fortress, where shutters rattled in their frames.

Yet down on the ramparts, not a single soldier had been touched by the breath.

Suspended in mid-air at the center of the tempest, Marcus felt the full, monstrous weight of the breath pressing against his domain. It was like holding back a collapsing mountain with his bare hands. A low groan escaped his lips. The bone-chilling cold seeped through his dense aura, creeping into his fingers and threatening to freeze the blood in his veins.

For a split second, his instincts urged him to draw upon the other half of his strength: his frost aura. Against almost any other enemy, it would have been the natural choice to reinforce his domain.

He discarded the thought at once. His cold would be useless before the one who ruled over frost itself. Worse, it might only help it.

Instead, he poured even more of his wind aura into the vortex. The tempest screamed louder, its currents tightening, until the dragon’s breath finally broke apart, scattering into thousands of jagged ice fragments across the sky.

But even redirected, the breath was not finished. Everything the tempest had shattered began to rain back down. Spear-length ice shards, chunks of compressed frost the size of carts, and a wave of freezing backlash plummeted toward the exposed soldiers like a hail of deadly lances.

But it never reached them...

Flame Empress Art

Third Form: Incarnation of Flame

On the battlements, Evelyn’s blood burned more violently with every passing second beneath her skin, as though refusing to bow to the cold.

The moment Marcus leaped into the air, she drew a slow, deep breath.

Her black armor began to change as crimson flames enveloped it, the fire spreading through the metal from within until every plate glowed blood-red, as though the entire suit had just been drawn from a forge. The flames did not merely surround her body; they seemed to merge with it, her very presence beginning to blur at the edges like a figure formed from living fire. The fire aura she released now made everything she had displayed against the Tyrant Beasts that morning seem insignificant.

She leaped from the highest merlon and stepped into the air, flames trailing from her boots, then slashed her sword skyward.

An ocean of crimson fire erupted from her core, spreading beneath Marcus’s wind domain like a burning sunset unfolding across the sky. The sea of flames stretched along the entire length of the main wall, and the falling ice disintegrated the instant it entered the inferno. Spear-length shards burst into steam. Chunks of frost cracked apart and melted into warm rain that hissed against the stone. The freezing backlash burned away before it could touch a single soldier below.

Still, the sky was vast, and even Evelyn’s fire could not cover every gap.

A few fragments slipped through.

All along the line, the Black Raven Knights and veteran mercenaries reacted before the younger soldiers could even register the danger. They swiftly compressed their aura into dense shields above their heads, catching the stray shards and vaporizing them, shielding not only themselves but the soldiers beside them who were still too stunned to move.

From the battlements, the sight was awe-inspiring. A roaring tempest churned above, a roof of raging fire burned below, and in the narrow space between those two forces of nature, thousands of soldiers stood alive and unharmed.

Under the shelter of Marcus’s domain and Evelyn’s flames, the paralyzing grip of the Dragon Fear finally loosened. It did not vanish entirely; they could still feel the weight of those vast, pale eyes pressing down on them. But the suffocating pressure had lifted enough for their bodies to obey their minds again.

"Look..." someone whispered. "Look at the Commander..."

Soldiers and mercenaries who had never once seen Marcus fight at full strength stared upward in stunned silence. There he was, hovering in open air against a creature out of legend, single-handedly holding back a calamity. When the dragon had first descended, nearly everyone on the wall had believed they were already dead.

Now the dying embers of hope within the garrison flared back to life, fiercer than before.

"Great One!" Marcus shouted, his voice carrying over the howl of the tempest. He hoped the Ice Dragon would listen, or at least pause for a moment.

But it didn’t even acknowledge him. Its throat was already beginning to stir with light, preparing its next attack.

Marcus did not give it the chance as he stepped into the wind using the advanced forms of the Northern Gale Steps and vanished, reappearing directly above the white beast’s massive head. His spear blazed with condensed aura as he used Mountain Cleaving Strike of the Northern Heaven War Art, pouring every principle he had mastered and the full force of his will into a single downward strike. It was a blow that could have cleanly bisected a Peak Calamity Beast.

But the Ice Dragon could not be measured by the standards of ordinary beasts. Though its realm stood at the peak of the Calamity tier, its strength and defenses were as far above others of that realm as the heavens were above the earth.

CLANG!

The spear struck the dragon’s neck with the sound of two iron mountains colliding. Shockwaves ripped outward through the sky, tearing the clouds of the tempest apart for a heartbeat. When the gale settled, Marcus’s eyes narrowed.

Far below, the shockwave rolled out across the plain. The snow lifted off the frozen earth in a vast ring, and the pinned beasts were pressed even flatter into the ground.

The blow had carved only a shallow gash across its massive frame. Before a single drop of blood could spill, frost surged from the surrounding scales and sealed the wound shut.

Evelyn closed in, stepping through the air with flames trailing from her armor. She unleashed a lance of condensed crimson fire that struck the dragon’s side dead center. The white scales glowed bright red under the intense heat, and for a moment it seemed the fire might burn through.

Then deep, unrelenting cold surged from inside the dragon’s chest and smothered the flames from within, leaving nothing but harmless steam drifting away on the wind.

The collision of fire and frost detonated in a ring of steam that rolled across the sky and rained scalding droplets onto the wall.

The Ice Dragon fought back not only with its massive body. It spoke a single word in the Dragon Tongue, and dozens of intricate, multi-layered magic circles bloomed above it, silver-blue runes rotating in perfect silence across the sky. In the same breath, its massive tail swept around and smashed into the outer edge of the Tempest Domain.

The vortex shuddered violently for the first time, its pressure collapsing inward. Marcus took the brunt of the shock and was flung backward through the air before he could brace himself, tumbling through the wind until he finally caught himself. A thin line of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth as pain flared through his chest.

The magic circles flared, and seventh-circle spells descended upon the domain all at once: lances of ice, frozen storms, waves of crushing cold, and blinding whiteouts. Under the barrage, the tempest groaned and buckled, looking for all the world as though it was about to be torn apart.

But Marcus didn’t even stop for a second. He moved like wind across the domain, stopping every attack that might befall Northwatch, his unwavering will pouring into the winds to break the beast’s offense, while below him Evelyn hung in the air above the wall, keeping the Flame Empress Art burning across the battlements and catching everything that fell.

And through it all, the dragon’s mana showed no sign of diminishing. It had unleashed enough magic to level a city, yet it betrayed no strain. Every exchange cost the two exhausted Heaven Knights far more than it cost the dragon.

———

Down on the lower battlements, Ethan watched everything unfold.

In a matter of seconds, more than a dozen exchanges had passed between the Ice Dragon and the two Heaven Knights, each one faster and more violent than the last. Every time Marcus’s spear struck her scales, Ethan’s grip on the Eternal Sovereign Blade tightened until his knuckles ached.

Something about his friend felt completely wrong today. Her eyes remained as serene as he remembered them, yet something lurked behind them that he had never seen before. The madness driving her attacks was something he couldn’t understand.

Ethan had seen her fight before. Even when facing powerful enemies, she had always fought with a measured calm, conserving her strength and watching her opponent carefully. Now there was none of that restraint. She attacked as though the only thing that mattered was destroying everything in front of her, never once responding to Marcus’s call.

The friend he knew would always try to speak first. She negotiated with words and resorted to her power only at the very last moment. From everything he knew, Ice Dragons, who were always aloof in their clans, only interfered when something threatened the realm itself, or when their mortal enemies descended upon it.

But this wasn’t either of those situations.

So why...?

CRACK!

A stray ice shard, slipping past the edge of the flame canopy, hissed down toward their section of the wall. Ethan moved on instinct, grabbing Finch by the back of his armor and hauling him backward just as the ice spike shattered against the flagstones where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier.

Finch stared at the shards scattered across the stone, his face white. "T-thank you, Captain..."

Ethan didn’t even glance at him; his eyes had already returned to the sky.

The Ice Dragon was wheeling around, banking low over the lower battlements as it unleashed another volley of magic circles, so close now that its shadow swept over Ethan’s section of the wall.

His mind was revolving with countless thoughts as he searched for a way to stop his friend.

Then something flashed through his mind as his eyes turned to the Golden Dragon outline on his palm.