Chapter 786: [The Rewritten Lost Past] [26]
-BOOOOOM!!!
Explosions of terrifying intensity tore through Central Vedelia.
The city had not yet been overrun by the Witch’s army, and yet destruction was already raging through its heart as though war itself had descended ahead of the invaders. Streets shook. Towers cracked. Roofs caved in under waves of force so violent that the entire district seemed to tremble.
"W—What’s happening?!"
"Kyaaa!!"
"Run!!"
"The Witch’s army reached us!"
Panic spread instantly.
Men, women, and children fled through the streets in blind terror, unable to understand what they were seeing, only that two monstrous beings were tearing the city apart around them. The clash of mana thundered through the air like continuous storms colliding above their heads. Lightning burst in savage flashes. Fire rolled across stone and wood alike, devouring whole sections of buildings and leaving them collapsing in showers of sparks and rubble. Structures that had stood for generations were smashed apart as if they had been made from paper and dust.
Even far from the center of the battle, the heat could be felt.
Shockwaves rippled through the city again and again, striking like invisible hammers and forcing people to stumble, shield their faces, or throw themselves flat against the ground. Anyone reckless enough to look toward the source of the devastation could barely make out what was happening at all. There were only two blurred figures, little more than streaks and flashes, moving at impossible speed before crashing into one another with catastrophic force.
Lisandra and Sylvia were not among those fleeing.
They stayed back from the center of the battle, helping drag terrified civilians away from collapsing streets and burning structures, pulling the wounded aside, forcing stragglers to move when fear had frozen them in place. Only once the area had mostly cleared, once the people nearest the destruction had finally escaped, did they allow themselves to turn and truly watch the fight.
And what they saw left both of them shaken.
The battle had already raged for ten minutes.
Ten brutal minutes.
Neither of them had ever seen Amael fight like this.
Not truly.
They had sparred with him. They had trained beside him. They had seen glimpses of his strength and understood, at least in part, that he always held himself back around them. But this... this was something else entirely. This was not restrained. This was not the composed, guarded Amael they knew.
This was ruthless.
Amael was overwhelming Rucain with a violence that bordered on savage.
Rucain kept recovering, his Blood Arts stitching him back together again and again, and it was obvious now that the Witch had given him her blood. It had strengthened him, heightened his restoration, made him more difficult to put down. Wounds that should have crippled him sealed over in moments. Torn flesh rewove itself. Broken bone reset. Blood gathered back into his body as though refusing to let him fall.
And still Amael kept beating him down.
Every strike he landed carried frightening force. His whole body crackled with Wrath, dark energy lashing around him in arcs, and each blow felt as though it had enough power to split stone and crush steel outright. Even from a distance, Lisandra and Sylvia could feel it. Each impact sent tremors through the air. Each collision made the ground jump.
"S—Shouldn’t we help him?" Lisandra asked at last, unable to tear her eyes from the battle.
Sylvia did not answer immediately.
Her gaze remained fixed on Amael.
"He doesn’t need it," she said quietly.
And it was true.
More than that, he would not have accepted it.
She had never seen him like this before. There was no hesitation in him, no caution, no attempt to protect himself first and strike second. He was fighting as though nothing mattered except ending Rucain as quickly and violently as possible. He dodged some attacks, yes, but not all. Some blows he took on purpose. Some injuries he accepted without flinching, allowing them to strike him if it meant getting close enough to answer with something worse.
It was madness.
Or desperation.
Maybe both.
The unknown state of his mother weighed on him, that much was obvious. The uncertainty, the fear, the sense that every second lost brought Belle closer to danger, it had stripped something out of him.
Even Rucain seemed unnerved now.
For a vampire, taking injuries was natural. Their regeneration made recklessness almost practical. But Amael was different. He did not possess that same innate gift, and yet he drove forward anyway, heedless of pain, heedless of blood, like some wrathful beast that would rather be torn apart than slowed down.
"Y—you monster..." Rucain spat, blood running from his mouth as he glared upward at Amael. "I have the Witch’s blood... how are you even still standing—"
-BAM!!
Amael vanished in a flash.
A second later, his leg crashed into Rucain’s side with enough force to send him flying. Rucain’s body tore across the ruined street, bounced once, twice, then crashed against the ground repeatedly before grinding through stone and rubble in a spray of shattered debris.
Amael moved to finish it.
Then he stopped.
Something below him pulsed.
He looked down sharply.
A purple pentagon had appeared beneath his feet, glowing with a dark, ominous light. Strange symbols swirled through its shape, unlike any mana circle he had seen before.
-BOOOOOOM!!
The spell detonated.
A pillar of destructive power erupted upward and swallowed him whole.
"Garghhhhh!!!"
The blast roared through the street in a towering column, devouring everything within its radius. Stone cracked apart. Nearby walls collapsed. Purple light flooded the ruins so brightly that for an instant it drowned out the red gloom hanging over Central Vedelia.
When it finally began to fade, Rucain was still standing, but barely.
One of his arms was gone.
Half his body had been burned black and red, flesh torn open, blood dripping freely onto the ruined ground beneath him. His regeneration started at once, but this time it was slower. Much slower. The damage had gone too deep. His breathing turned ragged, and his long hair hung disheveled around his face as the transformation began to recede. The horns, the flaming veins, the demonic distortion of his body, all of it was fading, his form reverting toward something closer to normal.
He gasped, trying to steady himself but eventually fell on his knees.
Then a shadow fell over him.
Amael stood directly in front of him staring at him coldly.
A moment later, Lisandra and Sylvia arrived behind him without a word.
Rucain lifted his head with effort. His vision was clearly blurring, his body failing, blood still sliding from his lips. And yet, somehow, he managed a smirk.
"Don’t enjoy it, Mael," he spat out. "I’ll be the one responsible for your death... even in my own—"
-SPURT!
The sentence never ended.
Amael’s sword flashed once.
Rucain’s head left his shoulders.
For a single second, the body remained kneeling there, as if it had not yet understood what had happened. Then it collapsed.
"You are nothing," he said coldly.
It did not spare it another glance.
"Let’s find my mother," he said.
Then he pushed off the ground and rushed forward again.
The Tree was close now.
And so was Belle.
Lisandra and Sylvia exchanged one look, then followed after him at once.
Amael’s expression twisted with anguish the closer he drew to the Tree.
The mana in the air was growing denser by the second, thick and oppressive.
All around them, Central Vedelia was trembling more violently now. It had already been shaking before, but this was different. The disturbance had crossed into something far more dangerous, as though the entire heart of the city stood on the verge of collapse and huge heart quake.
A crushing pressure settled over the three of them.
It bore down on their shoulders, seeped into their bones, and made even movement feel harder. But none of them stopped. Amael pushed forward, Lisandra and Sylvia close behind him, all three forcing their way toward the roots of the Holy Tree.
Then, at last, they reached the foot of it.
Amael’s eyes widened.
He had seen something.
And in the very next instant he dropped to the ground.
"Mother!!"
It was her.
Belle lay motionless on the ground beneath the Tree, still and silent. A surge of fear ripped through him so sharply that it nearly stole his breath. He rushed to her side and fell to his knees, gathering her into his arms at once.
With trembling hands, he checked her pulse.
It was there.
Steady and alive.
A deep breath escaped him, almost breaking on the way out.
"Mother..."
He pulled her tightly against him, holding her with pure relief, his body trembling as the terror of what he had imagined slowly gave way. Even his lips shook faintly, betraying more emotion than he would ever have allowed anyone to see under normal circumstances.
A few steps behind him, Sylvia and Lisandra both smiled in relief.
For a moment, the sight before them left them almost stunned.
They had never seen Amael like this, never seen him so openly vulnerable, so stripped of composure, so unable to keep his emotions hidden behind that usual guarded restraint. There was something almost startlingly tender in the way he held Belle, something that made both of them look on with quiet fondness despite the danger around them.
Amael slowly drew back just enough to look at his mother’s face.
She seemed asleep.
Only unconscious.
"Is she okay?" Lisandra asked, still frowning despite the obvious relief in her voice.
"She is," Amael said with a small nod.
From what he could sense, this was not a wound but a spell, something made to force her into sleep or a similar suspended state. And it had to be a powerful one, to work on Belle at all. But for the moment, that did not matter. She was alive, and that alone was enough to steady the panic that had been threatening to tear through him.
He brushed a few strands of silver hair away from her face with careful fingers.
Then he bent and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.
"I’m sorry..." He whispered against her skin.
It was not only for finding her like this. It was for everything. For being the kind of son whose life had brought danger to her again and again. For how little peace she had ever truly been allowed because of him. For all the times she had needed to protect him, worry for him, fight for him, when he should have been able to give her more than endless cause for fear.
And thankful for the motherly love she had given him, giving him back everything he had lost on Earth.
"Mael, the Tree..."
Sylvia’s voice cut through the moment.
Amael lifted his head at once.
The enormous branches above them were shifting.
Not with the natural movement of a tree stirred by wind, but with something far stranger. They seemed to be straining outward, almost writhing, while glowing runes slowly began to spread through the vast trunk in widening patterns of light. The sacred bark shone with an ominous radiance, and the power inside it deepened into something harsher, more unstable, more awake.
Amael’s stomach tightened.
A terrible feeling crawled through him.
Without another second wasted, he lifted Belle fully into his arms and rose to his feet.
"We’re leaving!" He said.
"Yeah!"
Lisandra and Sylvia both nodded and followed him at once.
Amael was ready to launch into the sky and get them away from the Tree, away from Central Vedelia, away from whatever disaster was beginning to unfold there...
He stopped.
So abruptly that Sylvia and Lisandra froze behind him as well.
Someone was standing ahead of them.
Ernest.
Amael’s expression hardened at once.
"Sirius..." He muttered.
Lisandra’s relief vanished immediately, replaced by anger.
"Hey! How about you just get lost?!" She shouted, glaring at him. "It’s over!"
But Ernest did not answer.
He stood there in silence.
Still.
Watching them.
Lisandra took a step forward, ready to confront him herself if she had to, but Amael stopped her at once.
"Wait!"
The force in his voice made her flinch.
Amael did not take his eyes off Ernest.
Something was wrong.
He could feel it before he fully understood it.
Ernest’s gaze remained fixed on him.
Then, slowly, far too slowly...the lips began to curve upward.
"....!!!!"
Amael stiffened and took a step back.
Behind him, Lisandra and Sylvia both went pale as death. A deep, instinctive fear gripped their hearts so suddenly and so completely that it felt almost unnatural.
They had never ever felt his scared and threatened before.
Ernest’s amber eyes darkened.
They turned pitch black.
Black markings spread beneath them, staining his face.
And then, when he spoke, the voice that came out was no longer his.
It was deeper.
Feminine and divine.
"So you came, Vessel."
Amael narrowed his eyes, though his arms trembled slightly around Belle.
"A-Nox..."
