Chapter 131: The Golden Snowflake Mark
The ghouls were immediately stripped of their movement as every trace of mana in the area was stolen by Max, greedily sucked into his mana container until the battlefield itself felt hollow. The purple ice flames feeding their bodies dimmed, the green winds wrapped around their claws weakened, and one by one, Henry’s summons froze in the middle of their attacks like puppets with their strings cut.
Henry’s eyes narrowed, but fear never appeared on his face. He did not step back when the battlefield went still around him. Instead, he remained eerily calm, his disgusting smile fading only slightly, as if he had been waiting for Max to reveal this side of himself from the very beginning.
"So... you’re finally showing your true colors, aren’t you... Max?" he muttered under his breath, his eyes fixed on the rubble slowly turning into dust.
The ruined stones cracked apart as black-violet pressure seeped through the gaps, swallowing the frozen dust before it could rise. Then a man dressed fully in black armor stood up from beneath the wreckage. His armor had been shattered moments ago, but now it looked darker than before, as if the world’s missing light had gathered around him instead.
"King Maximus!"
The army, still caught in the middle of the fight with Henry’s ghouls, finally found a moment to breathe. Relief washed through their bones as they saw their king rise from the ruins, alive, furious, and carrying enough pressure to make every soldier understand that the battle had shifted back into his hands.
"What kind of magic is this, Henry?"
Max roared, his face flushed with fury as the darkness around him pressed down on the ruined capital. "Why are ice flames controlling corpses? This is sick."
He hated Oswald. He had wished for the man’s death more than once, and if the Wind Emperor had stood before him as a living enemy, Max would have killed him without hesitation. He was ready to force every dragon clan into submission if that was what it took to build his empire, but even Max knew there was a line that should not be crossed, and Henry had stepped over it with a smile on his face.
Max could see the faces of the wind dragons who had followed him here. Their grief was not loud, but it tore through them all the same. Some had already recognized the dead warriors charging at them. Brothers. Cousins. Old comrades. Men they had trained with, fought beside, or buried in their hearts long before this night. Now they were forced to raise their weapons against those same faces because someone was wearing their bodies like puppets.
Max had never wished to kill Henry as much as he wished for it now.
He walked toward Henry’s smirking face, each step making the ground crack beneath his feet as the mana he had stolen from the battlefield churned inside him with restless hunger.
"As if you can talk, child." Henry’s voice came out low and uneven, his head tilting slightly as that rotten smile stretched wider. "You. You stole everything from me. Left me to die. Forsook me. And now I am here to forsake the world. What is that to you?"
His giggle followed those words, but it did not sound human anymore. It shook strangely through the air, layered with something colder beneath it, making even the dragons nearby feel their souls tighten.
"And your magic..." Henry continued, his dead eyes lowering toward the darkness wrapped around Max. "So greedy. So hungry. Taking everything around you as if the world was born to feed you."
Max’s expression darkened, but then his steps slowed.
Something was not right.
He had stripped the mana away from the area. Henry’s summons should have remained frozen, yet the purple flames in the eyes of the possessed dragons suddenly lit up again, one after another, like torches being awakened inside dead skulls.
Their bodies began to twist. Bones bent the wrong way, broken wings folded inward, and their empty mouths opened without sound as the green winds and purple ice flames wrapped around them began to mix violently. The magic burned through their dead flesh from the inside, devouring the corpses like fuel and melting them into ghastly streams of wind, frost, and blackened ash that tore free from their bodies and flew toward Henry.
The ghouls unraveled one after another.
Their bodies broke apart into streams of cursed magic and rushed into Henry’s right hand, gathering there with a hideous pressure that made the air tremble around his fingers. Max narrowed his eyes, and through the darkness covering the world, he saw something golden shine beneath Henry’s skin.
A mark.
It was shaped like a snowflake at first glance, but the lines forming it were too sharp, too uneven, curling into patterns that looked almost like demonic runes carved into flesh. The golden light pulsed once, and the last remains of the ghoul-like wind dragons were dragged into it, swallowed as if the mark had been waiting to feed on them from the very beginning.
For the first time since Henry appeared, Max felt the hair on his body rise.
Max flapped his wings, and void magic twisted the very light before him, making his image blur slightly as black-violet pressure wrapped around his body. The darkness covering the battlefield bent with him, as if the world itself was being dragged forward by his anger.
His mind screamed at him to kill Henry.
A cold premonition crawled through his chest, the kind of feeling that came from instinct sharpened by every battle he had survived. If Henry escaped today, Max felt that one day he would face something far worse than a mad man controlling corpses. Henry was stealing what should have remained dead, twisting bloodlines into something so wrong that if he was allowed to continue, whole armies and clans could one day become nothing more than his puppets.
"You’re no longer my match, kid."
Henry said it quietly, in a voice only Max could hear, yet those words cut through the roar of the battlefield as if they had been whispered directly into his skull.
In the next moment, the ground shook.
A terrifying pressure descended without warning, forcing dragons to their knees before they even understood what was happening. Wings folded. Claws dug into the ruined stone. Even the proud commanders who had survived wars and bloodline transformations felt their bodies betray them under that ancient weight. The ground burst open behind Henry, and Max’s advance stopped for the first time, his eyes widening slightly as something familiar pressed against his soul.
He remembered this aura.
It was the most terrifying existence he had ever faced.
A hollow draconic roar shook the world, deep enough to split the air and make the broken capital tremble beneath it. The ground cracked apart behind Henry as something massive shot out from below, carrying dust, bones, and ancient wind with it. Green winds spun like a hurricane from every direction, tearing through the ruined streets as they gathered around the giant skeletal creature rising from the earth.
Its body was made of enormous old bones, yet every piece of it was wrapped in violent green wind that moved like living flesh. Torn wings stretched open above the battlefield, their empty bones cutting through the darkness while green light burned inside its hollow eye sockets.
"The Wind Progenitor Dragon..."
Someone in the wind camp whispered those words, but his voice broke before he could finish them. His knees hit the ground, and all the hope in his eyes vanished like a flame being snuffed out by a storm. Around him, other wind dragons stared upward in despair as the sacred ancestor they had worshiped through stories and bloodline legends stood before them as a hollow corpse under Henry’s control.
Purple ice flames then roared from Henry’s palm, bursting upward with a cold so deep that even the fire dragons felt it in their bones. The flames twisted beside him, swelling higher and higher until another massive shape began to form, bones appearing inside the purple blaze one after another. A skull. A spine. A pair of wings wide enough to cover part of the ruined capital. The cold fire wrapped around it like rotten flesh made of frost, and when the second skeletal dragon lowered its head, purple light ignited inside its empty sockets.
One stood on Henry’s right, its hollow eyes burning green.
The other stood on his left, its hollow eyes burning purple.
"Two progenitor dragons..." Max muttered, and the confidence he had carried only moments ago slowly disappeared from his face.
Henry spread his arms slightly, standing between the two skeletal giants as if he had always belonged there. The golden snowflake mark on his right hand pulsed with that demonic light again, its twisted lines shining beneath his skin while green wind and purple ice flames crawled up his arm like two curses answering the same master.
"Why did you stop?" Henry’s voice rose, losing its quiet amusement as madness cracked through it. "Fight me. Fight me if you dare, Max!"
The two skeletal progenitor dragons answered with their own roars, hollow, ancient, and wrong, rolling across the ruined capital like the cries of dead gods dragged out of their graves. The green winds screamed around one, while purple ice flames burned around the other, and even the dragons who had been ready to die for Max felt their courage tremble.
