Tunde felt reality twist, folding inward like silk in a storm as the entrance to the soulspace tore itself open.

  And just like that, he manifested back into the world. Straight into the heart of enemy territory.

  It happened in a blink.

  Just a blink, barely a ripple, and yet the sheer suddenness of his reappearance caught the surrounding cultivators completely off guard. For an instant, there was only silence.

  Then—detonation.

  The heavens howled.

  Lightning screamed through the sky in arcing chains of destruction, not wild or chaotic but precise, finely forged spears of divine judgment, descending in perfect sequence.

  They slammed into the exact spot where the Keeper Paragon’s body had once hovered, now reduced to nothing but ash and burning violet flame.

  It was not just lightning.

  It was retribution.

  A dome of pure, annihilating force erupted outward, expanding into a sphere of violet fire and ruin. Panic surged through the defenders.

  Dozens of elite cultivators, loyal to the cults, scrambled to respond, but only a handful had the strength and knowledge to intervene.

  Twelve Arcanists blinked into existence, weaving complex formation sigils into the air with frantic precision, layers of defensive scripts blooming into golden light. Together, they contained the eruption, barely.

  Three figures appeared in rapid succession.

  Two paragons. One master.

  Tunde recognized all of them. Their presence was impossible to miss. Their auras had shifted—deepened. At least two had ascended recently, their realms still unstable, raw with the scent of freshly earned advancement.

  Still, he ignored them.

  There was nothing they could do now, not while the Heavenly Crucible was descending.

  It struck like the wrath of the heavens itself, slamming into the sphere around him with a force that shook the skies and forced even the paragons to brace themselves. Clouds twisted. The air groaned. Reality buckled.

  But Tunde stood motionless within the eye of the storm.

  This—this was not his death.

  This was his reforging.

  The Crucible consumed everything: the fire, the essence, even the residual authorities of the fallen paragons. And in its heart, Tunde’s body began to rebuild. Bone reknit. Flesh rewove. Ethra flowed. Authority returned.

  And at the center of it all, the song of the void rang clear and unbroken.

  He hadn’t become a Saint.

  He had gone further.

  A single step, but one that split worlds.

  Paragon.

  Early-tier. Young. Unrefined. But undeniable.

  And with that came the insight, a glimpse into the deeper meaning of his own concept. The Void no longer whispered. It sang. It resonated. It moved with him, through him.

  He drew breath, the cold air of the shattered battlefield filling lungs reborn in flame and law. Ethra surged through his meridians, but it was different now—refined, tempered, as if the very foundation of his being had evolved.

  His weapons answered his call.

  The first, the one Shen had forged, scattered into a dozen blades, orbiting him in perfect formation, each pulsing with lethal grace.

  The second—his relic weapon, the fang—appeared with a low hum, wrapped in violet flames and bound by his authority.

  Tunde inhaled again, slower this time.

  His core, newly advanced, settled. No longer just a reservoir of Ethra, but a power unto itself.

  The Essence Flame within had crossed into its next form: the Conflagration Stage, a mark known only to true paragons.

  Was it too soon?

  Had he risen faster than even the heavens intended?

  Was he being dragged upward by fate itself, toward an end that no sane cultivator could hope to survive?

  He didn't know.

  But there was no turning back.

  He exhaled, calm as a stone in the sea.

  The last strands of fire vanished. The Crucible faded, and with a wave of his hand, Tunde cleared the burning violet flames still clinging to the air around him.

  Then he looked up, eyes cold, steady, and met the gazes of Varis, Rhaelar, and Tianlei.

  They had been waiting.

  Now, it was his turn.

  Tunde cracked his neck, the sound sharp in the air as his floating blades continued their steady orbit behind him, twelve lethal stars suspended by will and authority.

  He stood calm, centered, yet fully aware of the monsters before him.

  He was no longer looking up at them.

  He was standing on equal ground—a Paragon, same as Varis and Rhaelar.

  “Tunde,” Varis said,

  His voice was calm, but the pulsing waves of authority and Ethra building in his frame betrayed his composure. His dominion was shifting—quiet, lethal tension.

  Tunde bowed at the waist.

  The movement made both Varis and Rhaelar twitch, their instincts expecting a sudden strike.

  “I offer congratulations,” Tunde said, voice level.

  “On your advancements, both of you.”

  Rhaelar looked conflicted, her hands curling near the hilt of her blade. She spoke softly, a quiet undertone beneath the tension.

  “What happened to the paragons?”

  “Dead,” Tunde replied.

  The silence that followed was absolute.

  Varis’s eyes widened. The master-rank Arcanists around them tensed like arrows on drawn bows.

  Among them, one Paragon stepped subtly forward, eyes narrowed and locked onto Tunde with measured wariness.

  “They should’ve known better than to take their time trying to kill me,” Tunde said, just as another explosion thundered from the palace behind him, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

  Dust rained from the sky.

  He knew exactly where he stood, beneath the island of the Arcanists themselves.

  “You killed three paragons?” the Arcanist Paragon asked, voice caught between disbelief and instinctive fear.

  Tunde didn’t reply directly. He caught the way Rhaelar’s eyes flicked toward the burning horizon behind him, the way Varis did the same.

  He stepped forward slightly.

  “When you’ve lived my life,” he said, “you realize very few things are impossible.”

  Above his palm, the floating blades gathered in a tight, slow spiral—calm, but ominous.

  “Surrender,” Varis said suddenly, voice low and heavy with authority.

  “Surrender to the clan, Tunde. We’ve brought you this far. Your journey doesn’t have to end here.”

  He drew his weapon—Ebon Tempest—and the air screamed as it ignited in crackling black fire and lightning.

  The blade burned with the raw fury only a true Paragon could summon. It was beautiful, terrible. Tunde wondered idly how that sword would have turned the tide back at the Battle of the Ashen Flame sect.

  “Surrender?” Tunde echoed, cocking his head slightly.

  He watched as the master Arcanists began to trace formation techniques into the very air around him.

  Scripts of binding, intricate and fast—meant to seal, not kill. He could see them, Ethra Sight overlaying the world like a second eyes.

  He smiled, rueful and sharp.

  “Your clan head has orchestrated the death of the last family I had left. You promised to help Miria, and now she’s nothing more than a husk, a mindless weapon.”

  His tone turned cold.

  “You used me because I was useful. And now, because the regents want to remake the world in their own image, you want me to kneel to it. To them. Advance to Hegemon on a world not even meant to hold such power.”

  His gaze turned toward Tianlei, a silent figure standing like an unspoken threat.

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  “Do you believe this, Elder Tianlei?” Tunde asked.

  The elder said nothing, but Tunde felt the pressure building. He was surrounded. The net was closing.

  “You can’t win,” Rhaelar said, her voice soft again, almost pleading.

  Tunde tilted his head and gave her a small, enigmatic smile.

  “Really?”

  The formation snapped shut.

  Chains of pure Ethereon and paragon-level authority exploded into existence, wrapping around him with impossible weight.

  The binding laws screamed of emptiness and sealing, but the moment they touched his body, something happened.

  The void stirred.

  The chains froze. Reality shuddered. And then—they cracked.

  Arcanists screamed as void ice crawled up their bodies, devouring the scripts they’d cast.

  The Paragon among them blurred backwards as Ebon Tempest came alive in Varis’s hands, his blade bursting with fire and storm to push back the creeping void.

  Tunde laughed.

  It was calm. Casual. Unshaken.

  The formation shattered like glass, and the chains fell away into oblivion.

  He let his relic manifest fully, a naginata glowing with lines of rune-script and a dragon's head at its blade, radiating authority and purpose.

  Varis’s gaze tightened. Rhaelar stepped back.

  Then their domains expanded, full Paragon might crashing down, making reality quake beneath the force of their presence.

  “If you swing that weapon,” Varis said, voice low, “you are no longer my student.”

  Tunde’s smile didn’t fade.

  “Was I really ever your student?”

  Varis gripped his sword tighter.

  “You were,” he said quietly.

  “And I was proud to be your teacher.”

  Another explosion rang from the palace, this one closer. Constructs broke apart in midair, figures bursting from the chaos as if hurled by the heavens themselves.

  Tunde didn’t hesitate.

  He swung.

  The blade cut silence itself—his greatest technique, Empty Silence—ripped through the air, bending light and space with its force. The blow could have cleaved a fortress in two.

  But Rhaelar was there.

  She intercepted it, her bow split into twin blades, crossing before her just in time. Her arms shook, her eyes wide with shock at the sheer pressure behind his swing.

  Then, she spoke to him in Ethereal Voice, whisper only he could hear.

  Tunde’s eyes widened.

  And in that instant, Varis flashed to his side, Ebon Tempest raised. A tiger of black flame and lightning coiled around the blade, roaring down upon him.

  From the other side, Tianlei surged forward, his arm cocked back, radiating with crimson lightning—a strike so dense with killing intent that even the sky shook.

  Then, Rhaelar kicked him.

  Right in the gut.

  Tunde let the blow carry him, blasting him backward toward the palace.

  The twin techniques from Varis and Tianlei collided, a cataclysm of light and flame erupting behind him.

  As he twisted through the explosions, Rhaelar followed, dancing through the storm with inhuman grace. Her blades twisted back into a bow as she drew a silver thread of Ethra across it.

  Cold. So cold.

  Tunde recognized the move. An old technique, one she’d once shown at the battle of the wastelands. He watched her draw it back, but not at him.

  She was aiming at Varis.

  And Varis’s eyes were wide, his own void ring spitting out a defensive shield even as the air around them grew heavier.

  Tunde narrowed his eyes.

  What are you doing, Rhaelar?

  Something was unraveling.

  Rhaelar seized up mid-air as glowing runes, like sentient chains of judgment, flared to life and wrapped around her limbs, locking her in place.

  She fell like stone into water, her descent abrupt and unnatural. Elder Tianlei moved swiftly, catching her with a grunt, his face contorting in surprise and alarm.

  By then, Tunde had already broken past the first defensive barrier around the Talahan palace.

  The walls came alive.

  Constructs of high-grade Ethra groaned as they activated, their massive forms shifting in place. Cannons—not ordinary ones, but cultivator-killers, weapons that could immolate peak realm masters in a single shot—lit up, targeting his form with ruthless precision.

  The air hummed with death.

  But Tunde’s thoughts barely lingered. Void Step took him straight to the first cannon, his hand outstretched.

  He didn’t dodge it.

  He swallowed it.

  With barely more effort than inhaling a breath, the massive construct vanished into his void realm, its existence stolen and pulled into the depths of his soulspace.

  That cannon alone, he thought absently, was worth a hundred of Black Rock’s finest.

  Too valuable to destroy.

  More awoke—more weapons, more constructs—as he blinked again, appearing within a vast courtyard of golden marble inlaid with shimmering Ethra veins and lined with statues of fallen Talahan heroes.

  All around, the palace shook as more layers of defense awakened.

  Peak master-tier constructs stirred to life, their eyes glowing like miniature suns. Ethra blades unfolded from their arms. Energy cores pulsed in their chests.

  Seconds. Varis and Tianlei would arrive in seconds.

  Tunde expanded his dominion, a wave of oppressive force washing over the courtyard like a storm surge.

  The constructs froze mid-motion as Ethra drained from their bodies, leeched of every drop of power that fueled them.

  He felt it all—the flow of Ethra, authority, and formation techniques—funnel through him, directly into the Inheritance sleeping within his soulspace.

  One by one, they collapsed like puppets with severed strings.

  Tunde crossed the courtyard, swift and silent, ignoring the crushed statues and shattered wards, heading straight for the palace’s heart, until a spear of lightning and flame exploded in front of him, forcing him to a halt.

  “You dare steal from the Talahan Clan?” Varis’s voice thundered behind him, his authority flooding the air like a tidal wave.

  Tunde turned, just in time to void step away from Tianlei’s follow-up strike—a brutal technique that melted the floor beneath them into slag.

  Even the stone screamed as it liquefied under the intensity of the blood-and-lightning imbued attack.

  Floating above the carnage, Tunde raised a brow.

  “I’m not stealing,” he said. “I’m simply looking for a way out.”

  That’s when the sky exploded.

  A shockwave ripped through the palace as Skyvessels bearing the unmistakable sigil of the Wardens punched through the clouds above, their hulls glowing with script formations of war. They didn’t pause.

  They opened fire.

  And not just on Tunde, but on Varis and Tianlei as well.

  Confusion rippled through the battlefield like a second explosion. Tunde’s aura flared, forming a protective shell as the blasts rocked the courtyard. He narrowed his eyes.

  Why are the Wardens targeting everyone?

  Two ripples of pressure blinked into place beside him, Mei and Shen, both alive, both somehow Paragons. Their bodies were battered, but their presence burned bright.

  And then, behind them, the tall, silent figure of the Null from the capital, the same one who had accompanied Hao as they reached the capital earlier at the start of the tournament, stepped out of the smoke like a walking judgment.

  Shen blinked at Tunde, then offered a faint nod.

  “Greetings, Paragon,” he said mildly, as if this were a quiet meeting in a temple, not the eve of a war god’s descent.

  But Mei, Mei radiated fury.

  Her eyes locked on Varis with an expression that could freeze time itself. He stood amidst the rubble, his defensive formation flickering under the bombardment of two fully loaded Warden Skyvessels.

  His shield held, but barely.

  Then more shadows tore through the courtyard, swallowing light like predators, collapsing into forms.

  Dozens of Phantoms emerged—Highlords, Lords, even Adepts—all wrapped in flowing shadow, their presence twisting space.

  They aligned behind Varis, silent and still.

  And then, from above, more Wardens. They descended in waves, falling beside Tunde and the Paragons at the far end of the courtyard.

  The battlefield split, two halves, two camps, the line between them lit by flame and tension.

  Then she appeared.

  Miria.

  She stepped out from behind the Shadow Saint.

  Her face—

  Cold. Lifeless. Hollow.

  The sight punched through Tunde’s heart like a blade. His breathing hitched. He hadn’t realized until now just how much hope he had held onto, hope that she was still in there, somewhere.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Varis roared, his voice cracking under pressure.

  Mei stepped forward, every word sharp as the edge of a Saint’s blade.

  “Get your hands off my daughter.”

  Varis flinched.

  “The Wardens have betrayed us!” the Shadow Saint hissed.

  “Suyan has turned against the imperial clan—”

  A tension like taut wire drew across the courtyard. Every figure held their ground. One mistake, one twitch, and war would erupt.

  Tunde didn’t move.

  His eyes were still on Miria.

  Rage coiled inside him, slow and venomous. His instincts screamed. He could cross the distance in a blink, tear her from the Saint’s grip, and kill a paragon on the spot.

  He could do it. Even if it meant retreating right after, he could do it.

  Then a pulse of power shook the very world.

  From above, the island of the Arcanists shuddered in the sky. The clouds bent around it. The air twisted. The stone beneath their feet quaked.

  Tunde looked up.

  His bones shivered, his heart sunk.

  A pressure descended from the heavens—a will so ancient, so deep, it transcended Ethra, flame, and law.

  The regents were advancing.

  The heavens themselves trembled.

  Every head—cultivator, Saint, Paragon, turned skyward as the impossible presence above the floating island of the Arcanists thickened.

  A shockwave rippled across reality itself, and far in the distance, explosions tore through the warfront like the wrath of ancient gods.

  From the other side of the battlefield, where Paragons and Saints clashed in titanic displays of authority and essence flame, the sound of death thundered across the land.

  Tunde didn’t hesitate.

  He moved when the others did, before the phantoms could strike again.

  Void ice lanced outward from his dominion, spreading like plague, beautiful and terrible. Phantoms caught in the blast were frozen mid-shadow, their bodies shattering a breath later as ice expanded inside them.

  One screamed—then died before the sound fully left their lips.

  The Saint retaliated instantly.

  Shadows fell like night, a blanket of annihilation smothering the courtyard. Reality dimmed under the pressure of a concept fully realized.

  Tunde felt it, saw it with Ethra Sight now fully fused to his natural vision. It was no longer just perception, it was understanding, awareness, clarity.

  And in that moment, he understood.

  Saints weren’t necessarily stronger than paragons. They were deeper. Their bond to their concept went beyond mere projection.

  Their dominion bent not just reality, but meaning. Her darkness was absolute. Her attacks came from the folds between light and silence.

  But Tunde had changed too.

  A pulse of his aura, heavy with void authority, swept across the battlefield. The darkness broke—shattered under the pressure.

  Nulls gasped for air, several already dead before the pulse reached them. Others, high-level masters, held their ground, deflecting the Saint’s technique through sheer will.

  The Saint’s eyes widened. For a moment, doubt cracked her certainty.

  Tunde was already there.

  “Joran’s Wrath,” he whispered.

  The ghost of his former master’s technique burned into his soul, carried by the creature that now lived within his void.

  His fist crashed into her sword, not clashing with it, but annihilating the technique mid-flow.

  The force blasted the Saint from the courtyard like a comet hurled by heaven itself, her aura breaking trees and stone as she vanished into the distant battlefield.

  He landed silently, already next to Miria.

  She was feral, a weapon wrapped in shadow and pain. Her blade, her Ethra, her soul all merged into one horrific convergence of ink, steel, and silence.

  She struck from every direction, and just when Tunde reacted, another shadow cast the same technique in mirror.

  It was an ambush.

  A third figure—masked—lunged for Miria’s neck. Their blade burned with urgency, desperation, not malice.

  Tunde's rage answered.

  The floating blades around him howled to life, propelled by force aspect, and shot toward the attacker like a storm of divine retribution.

  The masked figure’s eyes widened too late. A null—one he recognized, vaguely, threw himself into the path, intercepting the attack. He lost an arm for it.

  A clean cut. The smell of burnt Ethra and cauterized flesh filled the air.

  “We’re trying to stop her!” the figure snarled, voice trembling with pain and frustration.

  Tunde said nothing.

  His Ethra-flushed hand surged forward, the void opening wide. Miria’s technique evaporated, devoured, as he caught her mid-motion and hurled her, limp and frustrated, into the yawning chasm of his void realm. Her eyes locked with his as it swallowed her.

  Not hatred. Not pain.

  Recognition.

  “She has something of mine,” the attacker growled, cradling his bleeding stump, an elixir already sealing the ruin. Tunde’s gaze flicked down, then back up, ice cold.

  “She owes you nothing,” he said with finality, voice like falling stone.

  Then the battlefield roared to life again.

  Tunde vanished in a blur, Void Step hurling him through the field like a phantom himself. He tore through phantoms with precision, each kill clean, each void ring swallowed into his domain.

  He moved with terrifying clarity, his Ethra Sight sorting allies from foes, the burning rage in his heart his guide.

  The Wardens held strong, their nulls and master cultivators wielding absence like blades, carving paths through the Phantom forces. But the air grew heavier by the second.

  Something was coming.

  Tunde was mid-motion when it happened.

  A golden explosion tore through the distant clouds like a blade splitting the sky. It wasn’t just light—it was pressure.

  Authority. The concept of purity, of annihilation, roaring down like a heavenly verdict.

  It slammed through the battlefield like a comet, tearing apart cloud, construct, and stone alike. It crashed past Tunde and the courtyard, trailing shrapnel and lightning.

  But it wasn’t the explosion that froze his blood.

  It was the feeling.

  Zhu’s anguished cry tore through the bond they shared, raw and soul-deep.

  Tunde’s heart turned to ice.

  “Ifa,” he breathed.

  His hands trembled. Not from fear. From helplessness. Horror churned in his gut like a flood. He knew that presence. That Ethra.

  The golden light hadn’t been an attack.

  It had been a sacrifice.