Chapter 536: Inevitable XXI
They turned together.
The host of script-warriors had not risen. Still bowed, still silent, yet the pulse of their runes had shifted. Lines of black-gold light crawled across the stair, shaping barriers—not walls of attack, but of boundary.
One path, one flame.
Leon’s team could fight here, could hold here, could bleed for him—but the abyss would only let him descend.
Roselia’s grip tightened on her sword, emberlight quivering against the barrier. "So that’s it? It cuts us out, writes us aside?"
Naval pressed his trident to the boundary, listening to the hum. His jaw set. "Not aside. Guarded. The Tower chose the descent to be walked alone. But it left us here for a reason."
Liliana’s threads whispered across the edge, sparking harmlessly against the script. She shook her head, tears threatening but never falling. "If we force it, we’ll break more than the stair. We’ll break him."
Milim’s wings flared, aura raging hot enough to blister the runes. Her fangs bared. "So what? You expect me to just watch him walk into a pit while we sit like obedient pets?"
Roman spat blood, grinning through cracked teeth. "Not pets. Wolves at the door. Whatever those Thrones send crashing down, we tear apart. Whatever tries crawling up out of that hole, we break. He walks down with only his fire—but he doesn’t come back to ashes."
The words settled like iron.
Leon’s body swayed as he looked at them. Each face was raw with battle, streaked with blood and firelight. He opened his mouth—no speech, no command, just a broken rasp that might’ve been a thank you. Then he stepped forward.
The boundary parted for him alone, closing tight behind his heel.
The stair deepened, every rune sinking into black flame. Above, the Thrones screamed in fury, their decrees breaking like lightning across the conduits. The sky fractured into war.
And Leon descended, his silhouette shrinking against the abyss’s call, until the stair swallowed him whole.
The silence that followed was not peace.
Roselia lifted her sword, fire flowing across her shoulders like wings. "Then we hold. No one touches this path."
Naval set his trident in the stone, a storm already crackling along its length.
Liliana bound her silver threads tighter, weaving them into a web above the stair.
Roman flexed his ruined fists, blood dripping in time with the stair’s pulse.
Milim’s aura ignited, violet destruction screaming for war.
Above them, the Thrones gathered their wrath.
Below them, the abyss stirred with things too ancient to name.
And in the center of it all, the path Leon had taken glowed like a wound in the world—an open gate daring the heavens to close.
The true descent had begun.
The wound in the world bled light. Not upward, not outward—but inward, folding upon itself as if the stair were sinking into a second skin beneath the Tower. The runes groaned with each pulse, black-gold threads tugging at the fabric of existence, unraveling the script the Thrones had written for millennia.
Roselia braced against the heat radiating from the path Leon had taken. It wasn’t fire. It was something deeper, something that gnawed at the marrow of her bones, demanding reverence or ruin. Her grip tightened until the emberblade hummed in warning. He’s not just walking down... he’s rewriting what ’down’ means.
Naval’s scales shivered as the storm in his trident flared, arcs of lightning grounding into the stair. He glanced at the sky, where Thrones clawed their way closer, each flare of their authority a spear of radiance sharp enough to split oceans. "They’ll come in force now. No more proxies, no more whispers. They know if he reaches the bottom, their hold ends."
Milim’s wings spread wide, shadows breaking against her violet blaze. She snarled, her aura spilling cracks into the air itself. "Good. Let them come. I’ll burn every false star until only his fire shines."
Liliana’s threads pulled taut, weaving a dome of trembling silver above their heads. The strain etched itself into her pale skin like new veins, each filament tied directly to her pulse. "We can’t just fight—we have to endure. If the boundary collapses, Leon’s descent collapses with it."
Roman spat blood into his palm, then dragged it across his chest like a mark of oath. His grin was nothing but teeth. "Endure? Sure. But I say we endure by breaking their damn faces in."
The first blow came before the words left his mouth.
A Throne-spear of condensed decree tore the veil, screaming down from the heavens. It struck the silver dome with a crack like the sky shattering. Liliana screamed, threads flaring white as half her web incinerated. Naval’s trident thrummed, lightning leaping upward to catch the collapse. Roselia’s flames surged, wrapping the wound until it sealed with molten fire.
The air quaked. More spears fell. Dozens. Hundreds. Each one a shard of law, a command carved in radiance: Obey. Submit. Break.
Milim hurled herself into the storm, her fists colliding with the first spear before it struck. The impact ripped the stair apart for ten paces—but her destruction flared brighter, violet arcs snapping the spear in two. She laughed, wild and sharp, blood streaking her cheek. "IS THAT ALL?"
The Thrones did not answer. They unleashed more.
The abyss below rumbled in answer.
A crack tore open beside the stair, bleeding black flame that moved like flesh, like hunger. Something vast pressed against it from the other side. Claws—or wings—or both—scratched against the wound, trying to climb upward into the breach Leon had opened.
Naval cursed, slamming his trident into the stone. "They’re not waiting for him to reach the bottom—they’re sending their dead gods up to meet him halfway!"
Roselia’s emberblade sang as she set her stance, fire burning hotter than grief, brighter than doubt. Her voice rang like a vow hammered on an anvil: "Then we kill what climbs, and we burn what falls. He descends, and we hold."
The stair split into war.
Above, Thrones screamed their decrees, a storm of divine law made manifest.
Below, abyssal beasts clawed free, their forms half-rune, half-nightmare, dripping hunger into the stair.
At the center, Leon’s path glowed, a flame cutting through eternity.
And around it, his team stood, bleeding, burning, breaking—but unyielding.
Wolves at the door.
The true war of the descent had begun.