ONLINE: Blades of Eternity-Chapter 294: BIRTH OF A DARK ETERNAL (2)

At the northern edge of the arena.

The ground was cracked, the sky overhead dyed with eerie crimson light leaking from the growing fissure in the heavens. All around them, chaos had consumed the coliseum. Faint screams echoed in the distance as the last remaining spectators fled. Blood, broken tiles, and fading magic littered the battlefield.

Reeves, Kaelen, and Kelvin regrouped swiftly with Marel, General Cao, Lila, Guinevere, Morris, and Ethan. Some of them bore wounds—some deep, some superficial—but it was the expression they shared that bound them in that moment: dread.

Reeves scanned the scene ahead, his face pale. "This... this isn't just a power grab. I can feel it, Something is being summoned… something beyond us."

Kelvin gritted his teeth, his eyes still glowing from his confrontation with the First Magi. "He killed Lysander. I felt it since Lysander's presence has always been a thorn on my flesh. That bastard Alden… And now, King Alexandria is going for the final step."

Kaelen, his liquid mana now fluttering beneath the cracked plates of his Eternal Guardian Armor, glanced over the battlefield. "Where's Forbes?"

No one answered immediately.

Then—

"Argh!!"

The center of the coliseum, suspended in the air.

Forbes let out a cry—not of desperation, but of unyielding rage—as he dashed forward with a blur. Shadows converged around him. His Silent Requiem Mana Domain unfurled in its entirety, creating a void that silenced even the chaos around him. Not a sound escaped. The light bent. Time, even for a moment, felt like it trembled.

His blade danced through space—ghost-like, lethal, and final.

Kael Dragonyx stood in his path, unmoved.

With a motion so calm it felt like sacrilege against the storm around him, Kael raised two fingers and tapped the incoming blade with a flick of draconic mana. The clash sent an explosive pulse through the domain, snapping it entirely. Forbes' body was launched backward like a cannonball, tumbling, bleeding, before crashing into the far wall, buried in debris and unconscious.

"Such ferocity," Kael murmured, his voice devoid of pride or cruelty. "But unfocused."

Elsewhere in the air.

Castenada and Lockwood were engaged in a duel they hadn't expected to lose. Not so quickly.

The First Magi floated calmly, his robes unmoving despite the raging air currents and flames swirling around him. He deflected Lockwood's class-defying fire spells with a twist of his fingers. When Castenada summoned a titanic wind spear reinforced with gale runes only someone who has masters the elemental laws of this world could comprehend—it shattered before reaching him.

Castenada, sweat dripping from his brow, couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This… this strength… How—?"

Lockwood snarled as he burned hotter, but nothing touched the First Magi.

"You still don't understand," the First Magi said softly. "All you've seen is the surface. And I've long since drowned in the depths."

Meanwhile....

Near the Fissure.

King Alexandria arrived with the bodies of Valir and Kent in his arms. He stood just before the gaping, corrupted fissure now pulsing with an aura ancient and primal—an energy that no mortal should have ever been close to. The air buzzed like an old melody being hummed by forgotten gods.

He looked around the battlefield, eyes briefly settling on the distant forms of Reeves, Kaelen, and Kelvin. Then on Castenada and Lockwood still clashing futilely against the First Magi.

Then finally, he raised his voice.

"This... This is a day that will be carved into the bones of time itself."

His voice echoed through every inch of the coliseum, carried by ancient power.

"The world will remember this moment. Not for the deaths… nor the resistance… but for the awakening. You—fortunate few—will be the ones to witness the true beginning."

He turned to the Fissure, and the aura surged again, now so dense it crushed the air itself.

"The beginning… of Aetheris' New Order."

And with that, he stepped closer.

Kaelen stepped forward from the group, gripping his Blade of Eternity as liquid mana coiled around his limbs like chained serpents. His jaw clenched. "We have to stop him. Now."

Marel's voice was low, nearly a whisper. "We're not ready…"

Kelvin's scythe shimmered in his hand. "We'll never be. But I'm not dying here. Not today."

Reeves stared at the expanding Fissure, fear battling resolve in his eyes.

"The end," he muttered, "is already here. What matters now—is what we do before it."

And so, the moment King Alexandria raised his arms with the cold bodies of Valir and Kent in his grasp, standing before the gaping, pulsing Fissure, an instinct tore through every single soul watching him.

Kaelen's eyes burned royal blue as liquid mana exploded around him, his Blade of Eternity thrumming with anticipation. His cloak flared from beneath his blackened armor like a living shadow as the mana beneath his feet fractured the earth.

Reeves followed, lightning crackling across his form, eyes narrowed. Kelvin's scythe hissed, bleeding shadow and his very own blood simultaneously as he surged forward.

"Mana Domain: Ice World!!"

"Mana Reinforcement Spell: Elemental Haven!!"

"Mana Domain: Relieving Inferno!!"

"Mana Domain: Hollowing Avalanche!!"

Lila, Morris, Ethan, and Guinevere all screamed out, unleashing everything at once—some forming mana domains that twisted the very terrain with their wills. Marel and General Cao did the same, their domains turning the coliseum into a blend of absolute chaos and elemental rage.

The moment their foot left the ground to charge King Alexandria, they were met with a wall.

No—worse.

A maelstrom of chaos incarnate stood in their way.

Kael Dragonyx.

His aura erupted in full.

No longer cloaked, no longer restrained—his form stood at the epicenter of a pressure that bent space. His hair flared like white fire, and his silver eyes gleamed with an overwhelming dominance that crushed the surrounding mana into submission.

Kaelen stopped dead in his tracks—his breath caught in his throat.

'What… is this aura…?' he thought. It wasn't just strength. It was primordial, Chaotic, Apocalyptic. As if the very laws of existence refused to accept Kael's existence.

The ground around him splintered like glass, his very presence cracking mana constructs and distorting domains around him. Even Reeves's Surge Magic Domain, a spatial-temporal field of acceleration, folded in on itself.

"None," Kael said, his voice grim, layered with draconic resonance, "shall pass me this moment."

And he meant it.

Reeves blinked forward at near-lightning speed. Kael caught his throat mid-transit, redirected his momentum, and slammed him into the earth with a shockwave that ruptured the terrain.

Cao came next—massive boulders, pillars of unshakable earth, and reinforced strikes that had once toppled entire armies. Kael did not dodge. He walked through it.

Boom!! Boom!!

Every hit was absorbed, shattered, or deflected with such terrifying precision that not even a single wrinkle formed on his robes. Then, with a calm backhand, Kael launched General Cao across the coliseum like a ragdoll.

Kaelen and Kelvin tried to flank him, slicing with everything they had. Kelvin even poured his very soul into a devastating shadow-blood duality technique, and Kaelen spun his Eternal Blade into a full-force Divine Sword Series Final Technique Arc Slash.

But despite all these, Kael Dragonyx didn't even blink.

He redirected the arc slash mid-air, caught Kelvin's attack with two fingers—and unleashed a wave of chaotic energy that shattered both boys' attacks and threw them back, bruised and bleeding.

Just then—an explosion rocked the western end of the coliseum.

Everyone turned.

A gigantic five-fingered dragon had descended upon Forbes, its wings blotting out the sky, its form molded from unstable, half-realized chaos energy. Forbes was already mid-air, drenched in blood, blade chipped, but unrelenting as he danced around the colossal being, delivering slashes that sang in silence.

Marel's eyes widened. "Forbes!"

Without hesitation, he blurred from the battlefield, rushing to his aid.

Kaelen staggered back, glancing from the chaos behind Kael Dragonyx to King Alexandria, who was now only inches from completing his ritual.

"No…"

But he couldn't move.

The First Magi, far above, stood motionless, watching the battle below. Below him, Castenada and Lockwood had fallen—bloodied, unconscious, utterly defeated. Their bodies, flickering with unstable mana, were being levitated toward the fissure by King Alexandria's will.

"Why don't you guys be the icing to the cake?"

And then…

He threw Valir, Kent, Castenada, and Lockwood into the fissure while he muttered in delight.

And in that instant—

Everything stopped.

The wind. The light. The sound. Time.

Birds froze in mid-flight. Dust stopped swirling. Mana paused in the air like suspended glitter.

Everyone and everything stood still—except the fissure.

It devoured all it touched, folding inanimate reality into a single collapsing point, like a sun being crushed into a black hole. novelbuddy.cσ๓

And then—

Boom!!!

A singularity-level explosion erupted with a soundless roar.

It hurled everyone within a ten-mile radius.

Kaelen, Reeves, Kelvin, even Kael Dragonyx, King Alexandria, and the First Magi were all flung into the air like leaves in a tempest.

The coliseum crumbled beneath the force, and for a long moment—there was only ash, silence, and void.

And in that void—

Something stood.

A vague being, its body wreathed in shifting ethereal smoke, levitated in the center of the devastation. It had no distinct features, no color, no mana trail—nothing that denoted it being alive.

And yet it was.

Kaelen, who was now kneeling on broken stone, stared at it, gasping.

"I… I can't sense anything from it…" he muttered.

Not mana. Not energy. Not spirit.

It was the absence of everything.

And somehow… the beginning of something more.