Chapter 668: Heavenly Wrath

Suddenly both pairs of their eyes snapped toward the center of the clearing as the thrum in the air reached an unbearable pitch.

The deafening howl of the essence storm that had battered the trees and whipped the pond into a frenzy that choked into total, unnatural silence.

The towering vortex of compressed grey-white light, which had torn the moss from the roots and sucked the water into hovering sheets of spray, suddenly collapsed inward upon itself. It contracted violently, drawing millions of threads of ambient essence into a single, blinding point of incandescent brilliance that hovered directly over the center of the hollow.

The glare peeled away like molten slag, burning out until it revealed the figure suspended at the heart of the clearing.

Veylara was hovering three inches above the churned ground, her bare feet hovering weightlessly in empty air.

Her body, which barely an hour ago had been flushed, trembling, bruised, and slick with the raw evidence of their relentless rutting under the willows, looked as though it had been carved from sacred marble and tempered in primordial fire.

Every lingering scratch, every reddish bite mark on her collarbone, and every drop of spent seed that had coated her skin had been utterly incinerated, devoured as supreme fuel for the furnace of her newly forged foundation.

Her sun-kissed skin radiated a deep, terrifyingly dense golden-white luster, a brilliance so pure and absolute that the surrounding silver moonlight looked sickly, dull, and completely dead by comparison.

Her long hair drifted weightlessly around her shoulders, floating without a breath of wind, pulsing in lockstep with a heavy, subterranean rhythm that demanded the absolute submission of the surrounding air.

Sol stared, a rough breath catching in his throat. But before he could even make out of the situation, the quiet curdled.

The silence in the clearing twisted into something he couldn’t exactly out word to it.

GROOOOAN.

A sound like tearing parchment, multiplied ten thousand times, ripped across the heavens above the Great Orrath.

The blanket of quiet stars and the pale silver moon suddenly vanished, swallowed by an encroaching, unnatural darkness. It didn’t seem like the arrival of storm clouds.

The peaceful dusting of silver stars, no more like actual fabric of the night sky warped, twisted, and smeared across the dark dome of the heavens like grease dragged across slate. A deep, unnatural violet bruise spread outward from the apex of the sky, centered directly above the hollow.

The space above Veylara’s floating form buckled inward, twisting like leather stretched over an anvil, until broken, bleeding fractures of dull, crimson-black light cracked across the empty air.

CRACK-BOOM!

The air pressure plummeted so violently that Sol’s ears bled, a sharp hiss of agony tearing through his sinuses.

An atmospheric weight of pure, malicious suppression descended upon the clearing.

It was a thousand times heavier than any Layer 4 aura Sol had ever encountered.

The flattened willow branches snapped and splintered into matchsticks; the damp moss turned to dry dust beneath an invisible, descending hammer; and the very stone shelf bordering the pond cracked in a web of fissures.

Even standing at the perimeter, Sol felt his knees buckle. His Layer 3 Peak core, reinforced with the immovable mass of the Great Badger, roared at full fury, but every single vertebra in his spine screamed under the astronomical load.

The water droplets clinging to Sol’s skin flattened into mist, and his knees buckled an inch before he slammed his boots down, channeling the immovable mass of the Great Badger just to keep his spine from snapping.

Beside him, High Shaman Zephyra cried out, her wooden staff almost snapping in half beneath the ambient gravity.

But even though her pale face drained of all color, strangely she seemed to fare better than him, as if the pressure they were both feeling was different.

"Zephyra!" Sol roared over the groaning fabric of the sky, forcing his legs to straighten, his neon-crimson eyes blazing with furious alarm. "What the hell is this?! What’s happening to her? Is this part of the fifth Layer ascension?!"

Zephyra’s eyes were almost rolled back, her hands clawing desperately at the staff as her chest heaved in shallow, panicked wheezes.

She was trembling uncontrollably, her teeth chattering with a primal terror that went far beyond mere physical danger as her milky-white eyes were blown wide, tracking invisible, apocalyptic lines weaving across the shattered sky.

"No! This is not an ascension! This is... this is punishment!

Sol was stunned hearing this, but Zephyra didn’t stop and continued.

"The... the sky..." Zephyra choked out, her voice trembling like a reed in a gale. "It’s the Heavenly Restrictions! The rules of the northern basin... the ancient decree of this land! Layer 4 is the ceiling... no one is allowed to cross... the realm itself is rejecting her!"

"Rejecting her?!" Sol snarled, his fists balling tight enough for his knuckles to split. "She broke the wall! It’s her power!"

"The heavens do not care for her effort!" Zephyra shrieked, spitting blood onto the stone. "To ascend here is a crime against the weave! The realm thinks an abomination has been born! It isn’t trying to test her, Sol... it’s descending to annihilate her! To erase her from the earth!"

Sol’s head snapped toward the center of the hollow.

In the middle of the crater, the golden-white radiance surrounding Veylara was violently sputtering.

The crimson-black fractures in the sky were lowering like a collapsing ceiling, pouring localized heavenly wrath directly onto her naked shoulders.

Her suspended form was being driven downward inch by inch. Her fifth fifth layer power which had only just begun to form, flickered wildly, the golden light turning pale and sickly.

Blood... bright, pure gold essence-blood... began to trickle from Veylara’s nose and the corners of her eyes. Her neck strained, veins bulging against her skin like taut ropes as she desperately fought to keep her head lifted, but the weight bearing down on her was infinite.

She was trying to hold up the will of an entire domain with the flesh of a single mortal woman.