Chapter 164: Save them all

Chapter 164: Chapter 164: Save them all

.....purification."

Golden light surged through the barrier in a single pulse.

Every monster inside the academy froze mid-stride. A claw halted inches from a fleeing student’s back. A jaw hung open in mid-roar. Cracks of gold ran across black scales like lightning across a night sky.

Then they were gone.

All of them, all at once. No bodies, no ash, no echo. The air where they had been simply held nothing.

Silence fell across the academy. It was so complete that Theon could hear his own pulse knocking in his ears, slow and heavy, like a drum after a march.

Students looked around, blinking. Instructors lowered their weapons by slow degrees. Then someone near the dormitory pointed, and a voice rose, thin and shaking.

"It’s him!"

"The Headmaster!"

"He’s back!"

"We’re saved!"

The cheers broke out like a dam bursting. They rolled across the academy grounds, across the walls, up into the towers. Students wept and hugged each other. Even the members of the noble families, standing stiffly in their fine clothes, let their shoulders sag and breathed out.

"It’s finally over."

"We’re saved!"

Theon looked down from the balcony and felt his chest loosen. The Headmaster had taken care of the academy. For hours he had carried the weight of every scream, and now it slid off his shoulders so fast that his knees went weak. He gripped the stone railing and let out a shaky laugh.

But something else pulled at the edge of his attention, a pressure that had not gone away.

The demon army was gathering.

It moved in the distance beyond the broken crater, ranks reforming. Seven figures stepped out from behind the wreckage of Valerath’s fall and took up positions in a line, each one taller than a doorway and wrapped in the same blood red armor as their fallen commander. The seven generals raised their hands in unison.

Magical circles opened above them. They were enormous, one stacked over another, black and violet and edged in the color of a bruise. Light poured out of them. The air began to scream.

Theon stepped forward without thinking. "I’ll stop them!"

A hand closed around his arm.

He looked down. Silver stood beside him, her white eyes fixed on the horizon. Her fingers were small, yet they held him like iron.

"Don’t."

"Why?" Theon asked.

Silver moved in front of him, blocking his view with her narrow back. "Master, it’s not that restricting you."

She stared toward the army, toward the spell building above it.

"We’re actually trying to protect everyone around you from you."

Theon froze. The words didn’t make sense. They slid around inside his head and refused to settle. A cold weight dropped into his stomach. He wanted to laugh it off as a joke, but Silver’s voice had held no humor at all. "What?"

Silver did not turn around. "Don’t worry." She lifted one hand. "After this fight, we will explain everything."

The seven generals finished their spell.

Above the battlefield, the circles merged into one vast sigil that blotted out half the sky. A massive attack hung there, a star of black fire the size of a city block, rippling and spitting arcs of dark lightning. The demon army roared. The sound shook the glass in every window.

The spell fell.

It came down slowly at first, the way a boulder begins its roll, and then faster. The heat of it scorched the grass from fifty meters away. The students in the courtyard dropped and covered their heads.

Silver raised one hand. Her eyes went icy white. She snapped her fingers.

Snap.

The spell disappeared.

There was no explosion, no clash, no contest. The black star shivered, and a hairline crack ran across its surface. Then the whole thing shattered into a million pieces of glittering light. The fragments drifted down over the courtyard like falling stars, soft and silver, melting before they touched the ground.

The seven generals froze. Their raised hands hung in the air.

Silver rose.

She floated up from the balcony, hair streaming behind her, until she hung level with the generals’ faces. Her expression had gone cold. All the warmth she wore around Theon was gone.

"You peasants aren’t worthy to fight my great Master."

She lifted her hand again.

"Fall."

BOOM!

An invisible force slammed down over the battlefield. The ground bowed under it. Stone cracked. The seven generals were driven into the earth as if a mountain had been dropped on their backs, and the sound of their armor crumpling rang across the grounds like a rack of bells being crushed. Behind them, the demon army went down in waves. Soldiers screamed as gravity pinned them flat, faces pressed into dirt, weapons slipping from their hands.

Silver moved two fingers in a small, precise arc.

The battlefield distorted. Space folded, as if a hand had grabbed the world by its edges and wrung it like a wet cloth. The entire demon army, every soldier, every general, was wrenched out of the academy grounds in a single lurch.

They reappeared a moment later far to the east, scattered across the edge of the Forest of Spirits, and the dark treeline swallowed them.

Theon stared at the empty ground.

He barely had time to process what he had seen. It had taken a few seconds. A snap, a word, a gesture. An army that had carried terror into every corner of the academy had been undone like a knot pulled loose. He should have felt relief but instead what he felt was a silent, unsteady awe, and under it a question he did not yet know how to ask. Then he remembered the other fight and turned.

Ifrith stood at the lip of the crater.

At the bottom, something moved. Valerath was clawing his way up from the rubble, one hand dragging, his armor split and his horns chipped. Blood ran freely from his mouth. He was still alive, and he was furious.

Ifrith descended into the crater. He walked straight up to the supreme general and grabbed him by the neck with one hand.

He lifted him off the ground like a stray cat.

"You’re not worthy to speak to my master."

BOOM!

His other fist hit Valerath’s chest. The supreme general left the crater at an angle, a streak of red across the air. He flew over the walls, over the broken gate, over the long open field beyond, and plowed into the edge of the Forest of Spirits, tearing a trench through the roots before he finally came to rest against a fallen trunk.

Blood poured from his mouth. Around him, the forest was still. The trees stood tall, and their leaves did not stir. The place itself seemed to reject him, as though the ground were holding its breath.

Valerath lifted his head, shaking. He saw Ifrith walking toward him across the field, unhurried, hands at his sides, and something broke in his face.

"You’re..." He coughed. A red bubble burst on his lips. "You’re a demon like me."

He struggled to breathe. His eyes searched Ifrith face, looking for an answer.

"Why?"

Ifrith kept walking.

"Why are you siding with the humans?"

Ifrith’s expression changed.

A black haze rose over his face, swallowing the features one by one. Where his left eye had been, the haze split, and a single crimson eye opened in the dark, vertical and burning.

"I am nothing like you lowly beings."

Valerath trembled. The fury had burned out of him, and what remained looked a lot like fear.

"It seems your ancestors escaped from my realm," Ifrith continued, "and have already ridiculed the reputation of demons." His aura swelled. The grass around his boots curled and blackened. "But do not worry."

He smiled. It was a gentle smile.

"I will help re-form it."

His voice dropped, soft and terrible.

"I will bring the lost balance back."

He shot forward and covered the distance in a blink and stopped at the very entrance of the Forest of Spirits, where the grass gave way to dark soil and the first great trees rose like pillars. Valerath lay a few meters inside the treeline, propped on his elbows.

A smile crawled slowly across the general’s bloodied face.

"Even you cannot enter."

Ifrith said nothing.

Valerath began to laugh. It was a wet, cracked sound, and it shook his whole body. "This is the Forest of Spirits." He coughed blood onto the roots. "Even the Demon Lord cannot enter this place."

Ifrith raised one eyebrow.

"Really?"

He lifted his foot and took a step forward.

The moment his boot touched the forest floor, the trees began to die.

It started at the nearest trunk. The bark grayed. The leaves above curled in on themselves and dropped, one after another, then all at once, a rain of brown and gold. Roots that had gripped the earth for a thousand years withered and shrank. The moss turned to dust. A wave of spiritual energy, pale green and shimmering, fled from his path like startled birds.

Valerath’s smile disappeared.

"No."

Ifrith took another step. More trees died. The dying spread outward in a widening ring, and deeper in the forest, the spirits scattered, ghostly lights streaking away between the trunks.

"No..."

Valerath stared, his breath catching in his throat. His fingers dug into the dirt. "It’s impossible."

His voice cracked.

"This is the Forest of Spirits! Even the Demon Lord cannot enter here. could it be!"