Chapter 538: Abyssal
Naval’s laughter boomed, wild and fierce, even as blood poured down his scales. His trident swung in wide arcs, lightning crashing into decree after decree, each bolt reverberating down the stair before returning, doubled, as if Leon’s flame had taken it and hurled it back anew.
"He’s not just fighting below—he’s answering us! Our strikes, our blood, our will—they echo in him, and he sends them back stronger!"
Milim’s eyes gleamed, fangs bared in feral delight. She plunged straight through a rain of spears, her body torn open, her laughter louder than the wounds. Every decree that should have ended her instead unraveled, eaten by her destruction and then fed into Leon’s rhythm. Her violet aura burned white-hot, each rupture of power leaving scars in the air that bled flame.
"HAH! Now we’re not just fighting—WE’RE FEEDING A GOD!"
Liliana swayed, threads bursting from her fingertips in torrents. Each crack she bound now thrummed like a string, part of a vast instrument that Leon played through her. Silver burned her veins black, and yet she smiled through the pain, whispering like a prayer:
"He’s weaving us... every strike, every cry, every drop of blood—we’re part of his return."
Roman’s fist shattered through another beast’s skull, molten fire gushing over him like baptism. His bones screamed, his body trembling on the edge of collapse, but his grin was savage, unrelenting. He drove his fist deeper, screaming against the abyss itself:
"You hear that?! We’re not soldiers anymore—we’re his flame given flesh!"
The stair shook as though the cosmos itself bent to the rhythm.
The Thrones faltered, their decrees unraveling as the law of return bled into the marrow of their spears. Their radiant armor flickered, halos dimming, as though their authority had become the weaker scripture.
The abyssal beasts clawed upward, but their ligaments unraveled mid-lunge, collapsing into scripture ash that burned before it touched the stair.
And below—
Leon’s flame roared. His descent had ceased to be solitary. He bore the rhythm of five warriors above, their pain, their laughter, their defiance forged into an unbreakable chord.
His whisper carried again, not only up the stair, but through the heavens and abyss alike:
"Return is not mine alone. It is ours. You fall, and I rise with you. I fall, and you rise with me. Flame without end."
The stair blazed with that truth, a law that refused to be unwritten.
The Thrones staggered. The abyss recoiled.
And still, the rhythm deepened, preparing to break all that stood against it.
The heavens split.
The Thrones, shaken, raised their decrees higher—no longer measured edicts, but the raw, desperate shrieks of collapsing authority. Their halos flared into crowns of fire and judgment, each one hurling the sum of its dominion downward. Spears no longer rained—they became pillars, lances of law meant to pierce stair and abyss alike, to snuff out the flame before it could rewrite everything.
The stair groaned, fracturing under the assault. Whole steps dissolved into void, silver threads snapping like nerves.
Liliana screamed as the backlash tore through her veins, blood spilling black and quicksilver. Her hands shook, but she pulled new threads from the marrow of her soul, tying her own life into the bindings. "You will not—cannot—unmake what he’s written!"
Roselia surged into the storm, emberblade crossing with decree-spear. The clash roared like stars dying, heat melting her armor into her skin. She held, screaming back into the sky, her fire erupting into a storm not her own—his. "If his flame says burn, then burn you will!"
Naval’s trident shattered against a pillar, lightning coiling around the fragments before reforging itself in his grip. Thunder swallowed his roar, his scales breaking apart into stormlight. "You cannot command the sea against the tide of his return!"
Roman waded into a tide of beasts pouring through the wound, his fists molten anvils. His body was breaking—spine screaming, ribs cracked, knuckles gone—but with every blow that landed, the rhythm caught and returned it tenfold. His laugh tore through blood and ash: "C’mon, you bastards! Every strike you take just makes him stronger!"
And above all—Milim.
Her destruction flared until her body was nothing but a silhouette of violet light. She tore a decree-pillar in half with her bare hands, hurling its fragments back into the Thrones. Her laughter was no longer wild—it was ecstatic, furious devotion. "I’ll shatter the sky itself if it means his fire rises higher!"
The Thrones faltered. Their decrees splintered under the weight of resonance.
Because the rhythm had changed.
It was no longer only descent.
No longer only return.
It was rewrite.
Leon’s flame pulsed once, and the stair blazed brighter than heaven. The abyss shrieked as its ligaments unraveled into dust. The Thrones’ spears cracked, their laws buckling as if bent by a greater script.
His voice rose, not a whisper now, but a law that devoured theirs:
"No edict above. No claw below. There is only the fire we carry—unbroken, eternal."
The battlefield stilled for a heartbeat, caught between collapse and the inevitability of a new law.
Then the next pulse came—louder, final, demanding.
The next pulse did not just echo.
It struck.
The stair, the abyss, the heavens—everything shuddered under the impact. The decree-pillars shattered mid-fall, breaking not into fragments of law but into dust that held no command, no voice, no power. For the first time since the Thrones carved their dominion, silence lanced through their authority.
The halos above flickered, dimmed. Their crowns of fire guttered like candles drowning in storm. The Thrones themselves reeled back, their forms cracking—not from any single strike, but from the rhythm that had become absolute.
Rewrite.
Roselia’s emberblade blazed with both her flame and his, carving through a dozen half-born beasts in a single sweep. Her voice thundered with his rhythm:
"Your laws are ash. His fire writes us new!"
Naval, more storm than flesh now, hurled his trident high. The lightning did not fall—it climbed, coiling upward until it pierced a Throne’s halo and split it apart like rotten wood. His laughter was a roar of waves:
"The tide has turned, and it does not return to you!"
Milim was madness incarnate, violet light erupting as she leapt straight into the falling remnants of decree-pillars. She smashed them apart with her body, each shatter feeding into Leon’s pulse until the air itself bled flame. "HAHAHAHA! Break it all! Burn it all! His flame is the only decree left!"
Liliana’s silver threads became luminous veins across the stair, her body slackening as she poured the last of her soul into the weave. Where collapse threatened, her bindings caught it, but now the stair did not tremble—it resonated, each step thundering with Leon’s heartbeat. Through pale lips, she whispered:
"He carries us... and we carry him. That’s the law now."
Roman, broken but unyielding, slammed both fists into the abyssal wound. The impact detonated in molten fury, collapsing half-formed beasts before they could rise. His grin was bloody, wild, unafraid. "You’re not even worth his flame anymore—just sparks I’ll stomp out!"
The Thrones screamed—not with words, but with the sound of unraveling, their decrees unmade in the marrow of their existence. Their light poured downward in floods, not as weapons but as fragments of something dying.
And beneath it all, Leon’s voice rose once more, not only to his allies, not only to the stair, but to heaven and abyss alike:
"No throne commands flame. No abyss consumes it.
You are not gods. You are not rulers.
You are kindling."
The stair ignited, each step blazing as though the cosmos itself had been set to torch. The light was not fire alone—it was resonance, return, rewrite, all bound into one rhythm that shook eternity.
And in that fire, the Thrones’ crowns fell.
Their last light bled out, swallowed by the law they could no longer deny.