Harem Of Eternal Yandere Beasts: My Legendary Wives

Chapter 72: The Broken Sky

The mountains exploded. There was no other word for it. One moment they stood solid against the horizon, a permanent fixture of the western landscape; the next, an entire section of the mountain range simply vanished. Stone, ancient forests, and high cliffs disappeared in an instant, replaced by a massive pillar of black light that erupted into the heavens. The sky itself seemed to crack around the energy beam, rippling with dark static that bled into the clouds.

Every person in the academy saw it. Every student trailing behind the evacuation lines, every instructor occupying the strategic high points, and every citizen in the surrounding capital city paused. The world had just changed, and everyone knew it.

No one spoke. The scale of the destruction was too large, too sudden, and too impossible for words. The ambient sounds of the city died down, replaced by a hollow, ringing void.

The Hall of Founders shook violently under the kinetic backlash. Ancient stone pillars groaned as fine dust cascaded from the vaulted ceiling. Defensive formations blazed brighter than the sun, and emergency barriers spread across the entire academy, layer after layer, snapping into place with the sound of breaking ice. Hundreds of years of ancestral preparation activated simultaneously, draining the central nexus to its limits. The academy was preparing for war, not a mere raid or a localized student challenge. This was an existential mobilization.

Orion stared at the distant black pillar. The Sovereign Core inside his chest was reacting so violently that his ribs ached from the sheer pressure and internal friction. It wasn’t just a physical ache; it was a profound spiritual weight. For the first time since awakening his lineage, the Core was radiating pure, unadulterated fear.

Caelum looked entirely unsurprised, which somehow made the unfolding situation worse.

"You knew," Orion said, his voice flat as he turned away from the horizon.

Caelum nodded slowly, his hand resting on the hilt of his unsheathed blade. "I suspected."

"Suspected?"

The black-haired cultivator let out a short, humorless laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. "Fifteen years of recurring nightmares in isolation creates exceptionally strong suspicions."

It was a fair point. It wasn’t reassuring in the slightest, but it was fair.

"What is that thing?" Selene asked. For once, her voice lacked any trace of its usual sarcasm, teasing, or baseline confidence. There was only raw concern as she tracked the dark static spreading across the clouds.

Caelum looked toward the black pillar, his expression growing distant and haunted, like someone staring directly into a memory he had spent a lifetime trying to bury. "That is the reason the Frontier Branch died."

Silence fell over the group before Selene managed a brief, strained question. "What do you mean by that?"

The black-haired cultivator exhaled slowly, as though preparing himself to voice a history he had hoped would remain buried in the ash. "The Sovereign Path wasn’t created by our ancestors through meticulous research, Orion. It was discovered."

The air in the plaza became very still, the wind dying out completely.

"The original founders of the academy believed they had invented the progression tiers from scratch," Caelum continued, his eyes locked on the column of light. "They were wrong. They found something ancient beneath the bedrock of this continent. Something that had been sealed away long before humans recorded their first breakthrough."

The System interface appeared instantly and without warning in Orion’s vision, the blue text flickering rapidly.

◈ MYTHIC SUMMONING SYSTEM ◈

*Technically true.*

*I preferred the historical version where nobody knew that.*

◈ ◈ ◈

Orion’s stomach dropped. There were no jokes, no cynical commentary, and no nonsense from the interface. It was just an immediate confirmation. The old bastard had verified the claim without a single piece of wit.

It was terrifying.

"What exactly was sealed beneath the world?" Vale asked. The instructor sounded perfectly calm, but she wasn’t. Orion had known her long enough now to recognize the subtle signs of her tension—the tightness in her jaw and the way her mana was pooling heavily around her boots.

Caelum slowly looked toward her, then toward Orion, and finally back to the black pillar. "No one alive knows the classification. We only know what happened afterward." His jaw tightened as he gripped his weapon. "The founders discovered a reservoir of boundless energy beneath the world. They built the progression framework of the Sovereign Path around it to safely draw from it, and they built the physical and spiritual seals around it to keep the core container secure."

The Hall of Founders trembled again, harder this time, knocking loose fragments of masonry from the archways. In the distance, the black pillar expanded, its circumference growing larger, darker, and more unstable as it consumed the surrounding air.

Then, something moved inside the light.

The entire academy froze. Every person looking toward the ruined mountain range saw an enormous shadow slowly shifting within the darkness of the beam. Orion felt every survival instinct scream danger—not normal combat danger against a superior cultivator, but an existential threat that existed entirely beyond standard categories.

Selene saw it too, her grip tightening on her sheath. "What is that?"

Nobody answered her. Nobody knew, or perhaps nobody wanted to voice the reality aloud.

The shadow moved again, pressing against the boundaries of the light, and this time, a part of it broke through the perimeter. A massive, black, ancient claw, large enough to crush an entire city wall in a single strike, pushed into the open air. It moved slowly and patiently, flexing its jagged digits like something waking from a long, multi-millennial sleep.

The academy alarms intensified to a frantic pitch, and communication crystals across the plaza erupted with panicked activity. Combat formations activated across the entire capital city as the Empire itself began to respond to the spiritual pressure, deploying legions toward the western border.

Caelum closed his eyes, his physical frame looking utterly exhausted under the pressure. "This is happening much earlier than I expected."

The statement drew Orion’s immediate attention. "Earlier?"

Caelum nodded. "According to the cycle of the ancestral arrays, the seal shouldn’t have suffered a structural break for another decade at least."

"What changed the timeline?" Orion demanded.

The black-haired cultivator smiled bitterly, opening his eyes to reveal a cold, clear focus. "We did. The Frontier Branch searched for a shortcut to absolute power. We dug too deep into the foundational inheritance. We found a method to accelerate the progression of the Sovereign Path, thinking we were becoming stronger than the main branch." He paused, watching the massive claw grip the air. "We didn’t realize that every fast breakthrough was feeding the underlying seal exactly what it needed to loosen."

The world went silent around them. Orion’s Sovereign Core pulsed violently, as though reacting to the weight of the truth—as though it had always known its own origin and had hoped nobody would ever discover the cost.

Then the old bastard appeared again. For the first time since Orion had awakened the system, there was no humor, no clever diversion, and no sarcasm. There was only a single, stark line of text.

◈ MYTHIC SUMMONING SYSTEM ◈

*...He’s right.*

◈ ◈ ◈

Nobody had time to process the system’s confirmation because, at that exact moment, the ancient claw gripped the physical edge of the black pillar, tearing through the light and beginning to pull a much larger silhouette through the gap.

Caelum’s face went entirely white. "No," the word escaped his lips before he could stop the impulse. For the first time since walking onto the campus, the man who had survived fifteen years of nightmares looked completely terrified.

Orion suddenly realized the truth. The claw wasn’t the core threat; it merely belonged to a grander entity. Something far larger was following it through the breach.

Then a new notification appeared in the center of Orion’s vision, unlike any interface alert he had ever seen. The text was a deep, burning crimson, the edges shifted like fire, and the entire screen trembled violently against his retinas.

◈ WORLD THREAT DETECTED ◈

*Classification: UNKNOWN*

*Status: AWAKENING*

*Estimated Survival Probability: Insufficient Data*

* **Primary Objective Updated:** SURVIVE

◈ ◈ ◈

The creature’s first eye opened within the center of the darkness, a massive orb of burning gold, and the sky itself began to scream.