Chapter 516: The Eyes of the Moon

A domain was a power only available from the Arcanist Tier, it was the sort of power that would take a lifetime to master, even with the long lives of mages, a domain was something that went beyond spellcraft.

I may not have had centuries and millennia to master the domain as most mages of my power, but I had seen enough of it to understand its core principles.

A spell leaves you when it is cast, even though it is our souls that shape it, but a domain is almost the opposite. It is to claim. My new lightning law took a shape that screamed to the world... I will not be unmade!

[ Lightning Law Shard — Armor: Comprehended. ]

[ Lightning Law Shards: 2/9 comprehended. ]

[ Domain: The Stillness of the Storm — Evolving ]

∞

My domain erupted from the core of who I am. At first it resembled a swirling haze and as both of my lightning laws were slotted into it, the domain rippled and expanded, and as it did, the millions of suns pressing on my body froze.

My domain was not deflecting the heat or the pressure of this spell, it just took all of it and kept it. More suns were being birthed by this spell, but my domain kept growing, from six hundred meters to a thousand, and when it crossed twelve hundred metres I stopped being pressed into the ground and started standing up.

I could feel all the weight and the heat, but my domain took it all, and for a moment, what my perception could see was a man surrounded by a million stars... I thought of that Celestial figure inside the darkness that was made of stars, and wondered whether he felt the weight of everything that he carried.

For me, this weight was not my own, and as I stood straight, the tomb of suns was ripped apart. Like a million meteorites they tore through the ranks of the flaming army that was heading into my darkness, shattering them all to ash that was swallowed.

I could feel the will of the Sovereign in the spell, and with a roar of comprehension that sent a lightning bolt erupting from me to the flaming sky above, the will was shattered to pieces and a shockwave of lightning burst out of my body that went out in a spreading ring.

Where the ring passed, the flames on the houses stood still, exactly as they were, every tongue of them frozen in the shape it had been in, and then they were taken by my stillness.

Two thousand metres. It stopped at two thousand metres, and a strange sound echoed across the entirety of this space.

I suspected that if I was outside the Grimoire, the world would have greeted the birth of a second law of lightning in a much more dramatic fashion, but this was enough for me.

[ Domain: The Stillness of the Storm → The Unmoving Storm ]

[ Radius: 600 → 2,000 metres ]

∞

My domain had spread so rapidly that the Sovereign had been caught inside of it, and he appeared to be frozen in place, his eyes wide as he looked at me, and then slowly, his head turned towards me, fighting against the influence of my stillness.

"Is this the power that is hidden by the Celestial? The foundation of your soul is deeper than a Mage... Ah! To grow as a Sovereign we must nurture a second Apex Law from scratch with a new element... but you, not even a Sovereign and you can hold two Apex Laws of the same element?!"

A blast of fire erupted from him, the same teleportation that he had used before, but now something had changed, he attempted to vanish and I could feel it, and with a surge of will, I enforced my control over this space and his form blurred into a fiery haze before he took flesh again. Underneath him, his flaming army stopped moving, and the whole city seemed to be holding its breath.

"Where are you going," I scowled, "We are not done talking."

"Interesting," Sovereign Caldus sneered, "But you cannot hold me."

His eyes suddenly lost their light a moment before his head just exploded. His body sagged inside my domain before it collapsed into cinders. A new blaze appeared outside my domain and took the shape of a Sovereign.

"I am done with this game. I will..."

The howl of a fox burst out of my chest and rippled across the city of flame.

It silenced Caldus. It froze the burning knights, and made the Spirits of the Unconsumed stumble in their charge. And it caused the Sovereign himself to move back several hundred meters, his eyes wide, his Grimoire pulsing beside him like a wounded animal.

It was just in time.

Because at the edge of the darkness that surrounded me, massive trees began to appear.

Their trunks were wider than houses, with roots that dug into the burning streets like claws, and branches reaching toward the golden dome like fingers grasping for the sky.

A pale silver light fell upon me, and I did not need to look up to know that a full moon had appeared over my head.

The Sovereign stumbled back, and for the first time ever, I saw something in his red eyes that I could not describe, it was not really fear, more like awe mixed with a healthy dose of caution.

"What," he said, "is that."

His eyes were not on me but above me, and when I followed his gaze, even my eyes widened as well.

There were two moons in the sky, when I had been expecting one. Large, silver and cold, they hung in the golden dome like eyes watching from the dark. No, those were eyes!

I sometimes forgot that Aurora was just a small fragment of the true Moon Fox, and a Heavenly Beast was a Transcendental being that was beyond anything that a world could contain.

The room in my soul that held Aurora was a window to somewhere, a place where the true Moon Fox dwelled, and now this window had been connected to the dimension of the Grimoire.

The destruction that came next was sudden, as the eyes blinked, and gravity... ceased.

I do not know how else to describe it. One moment, the burning city of the Grimoire was present, filled with the weight of a Sovereign’s will, and the might of his element, and the next, the weight was simply absent.

The burning knights, the Spirits of the Unconsumed, rose from the ground. Their flaming horses kicked at nothing, wailing without sound as their armored bodies drifted upward, slow and silent, like embers rising from a fire in the hundreds of thousands.

There was a loud crack as the city itself began to break apart. Houses of fire, courts of flame, palaces of burning law, all of them cracked and crumbled and floated upward. The cobblestones beneath my feet lifted, and the golden dome above us shuddered.

It was as if the world was ending, and everything was under the glowing eyes of the Moon Fox.

The cold voice of Hollow resounded in my consciousness, ’The true Moon Fox is a Transcendental entity. Her presence alone is enough to break the laws of a Grimoire. Ready yourself, the hunt for the law shards is about to begin. Head towards the core of the Grimoire.’

My feet left the ground as I could hear the scream of rage and disbelief from the Sovereign... something tells me that Caldus would be coming for my head.