House of Blood

The forest clearing didn’t merely burn; the atmosphere violently imploded.

The combined killing intent of six High-Sovereign heirs crushed the pine canopy into matchsticks within a three-hundred-meter radius.

Soil turned to black slag under the friction of concentrated Blood Aura, and the sky directly above the grove turned a bruised, unnatural violet.

”He’s not wearing the slate,” Marvos cackled, his wild eyes reflecting the blood-red aura coating his massive executioner’s scythe. ”The little ghost came back with his real face!”

”Don’t hold back,” Vespera warned, her six-foot broadsword humming with a density that bent the light around its edge. ”If you treat him like a fifteen-year-old child, he will snap your neck before you register the pivot.”

”Alexis, vector grid!”

”Already active,” Alexis murmured, pushing his spectacles up his nose with one finger.

With a flick of his wrist, twelve silver spatial ledgers expanded in mid-air, locking the perimeter into a localized spatial cage.

Gravity inside the ring surged by a factor of eight.

BOOM!

The attack opened simultaneously from three directions.

Marvos and Maelis struck as a single fluid unit—the twin dynamic.

Marvos descended from the sky, bringing his scythe down in a wide, spatial-cleaving crescent designed to split the bedrock.

Maelis melted into the shadows beneath his shadow, her twin throwing daggers whistling through the air in an intricate, micro-vibrational cross-pattern aimed at Valerian’s knee tendons.

Valerian didn’t deploy aura.

He executed The Phantom Tread: Fifth Stance.

Using the newly forged S-Rank black chitin staff, he drove the bottom cap into the mud at a sixty-five-degree angle.

He didn’t block Marvos’s scythe; he used the dense kinetic feedback of the falling blade, catching the inner curve of the scythe with the staff’s shaft and redirecting the entire weight of the blow downward into the dirt.

CRACK!

Marvos’s scythe slammed six feet into the solid basalt floor.

In the exact same millisecond, Valerian used the leverage to vault his body three feet into the air, dodging Maelis’s throwing daggers as they whizzed beneath his boots.

While suspended upside down, he spun the black staff like a propeller, the S-Rank material creating a localized air-vacuum that slapped Maelis across her shoulder armor, sending her skidding thirty paces through the dirt.

”Impressive physical mechanics!” Caelum’s voice boomed from his flank.

The Second Eldest Brother stepped through the spatial cage, his heavy war-spear thrusting forward with a sound like a cannon shot.

Sanguis Imperial Art: The Iron Piercer.

A solid beam of dark, crimson aura wrapped around the spear tip, drilling through the air at supersonic speeds.

Valerian landed on one foot, his northern blindfold glowing brightly as his acoustic perception mapped the exact spiral geometry of Caelum’s spear strike.

Instead of dodging, Valerian finally unsealed his core.

BZZZZZZT!

A wave of concentrated, dark-crimson Blood Dragon Aura erupted from his chest, coating his new S-Rank staff in a thin, microscopic layer of pressurized energy.

CLANG!

Valerian met the tip of Caelum’s war-spear with the cold-iron cap of his staff.

The collision of two High-Sovereign bloodline aura techniques generated an acoustic shockwave that leveled every remaining stump in the clearing.

The ground beneath their boots collapsed into a fifteen-foot crater.

Caelum felt his forearms go numb as the kinetic recoil traveled up his spear shaft, his eyes widening in pure disbelief as Valerian’s staff didn’t even chip.

”He compressed his aura into a thread...” Caelum gasped, struggling against the forward pressure. ”It’s higher density than mine!”

”Morrigan! Cross-cut!” Vespera barked.

Morrigan materialized directly behind Valerian like a silver spectre.

Her twin short-swords moved in a zero-deceleration arc—The Sanguis Executioner: Shadow-Shedder.

Two razor-thin crimson light arcs sliced toward Valerian’s neck from his blind spot.

Valerian didn’t turn around.

He leaned his torso forward at a thirty-degree angle, letting the twin blades shave off the fur lining of his collar.

Without breaking his forward momentum, he drove his elbow backward into Morrigan’s sternum.

Morrigan crossed her forearms to block, but the raw kinetic force behind Valerian’s non-aura leverage combined with his Blood Dragon compression launched her backward, her boots carving deep trenches through the stone floor before she stabilized.

”My turn,” Vespera growled.

The Eldest Sister vanished, re-emerging directly above Valerian.

She held her executioner broadsword with both hands, her entire body engulfed in a roaring column of crimson flame that burned so hot the surrounding mud turned to liquid glass.

Prim Sanguis Secret Art: Third Form — The Cleaving Dragon.

A seventy-foot blade of pure blood-aura descended, threatening to split the mountain ridge in half.

Valerian took a deep, rhythmic breath.

His cracked ribs from the previous battle had fully healed thanks to Wren’s vital essence, and his unsealed fifteen-year-old core hummed with unprecedented vitality.

He gripped his new S-Rank black staff with both hands, shifting into the foundational stance taught to him by his father before his fall into the crevasse.

Prim Sanguis Secret Art: First Form — The Crimson Needle: Grand Domain.

He didn’t fire a single beam.

He swung his staff upward in a wide, parabolic arc.

The compressed Blood Dragon Aura wrapped around the black chitin staff expanded in a fraction of a millisecond, forming a razor-thin needle-wall that cut straight through Vespera’s seventy-foot aura blade like a hot wire through butter.

BOOM!

The resulting explosion of kinetic force blew the rain clouds out of the sky for five miles in every direction.

Vespera was pushed back fifty feet into the air, flipping gracefully before landing on a high rock spur.

Her broadsword was smoking, her executioner robes torn at the sleeves, her face flushed with excitement and shock.

Every single sibling was out of breath.

The clearing was entirely unrecognizable—a sunken, glassy crater forty meters across, surrounded by burning trees and shattered spatial arrays.

In the center of the destruction stood Valerian.

His black combat robes were scorched at the hem, his wolf-fur cloak was long gone, and his northern blindfold was slightly frayed at the edges, but he stood completely upright.

His new S-Rank staff rested casually across his shoulders, and his lips were curved into that same calm, pleasant, infuriating smile.

”Is that all the Vanguard has to offer?” Valerian asked smoothly, his voice carrying effortlessly over the echoing thunder. ”Father said you were going to give me a warm welcome.”

Marvos laughed hysterically, wiping blood from his lip where his scythe recoil had nicked him.

”The bastard is mocking us! He didn’t even use his secondary spirit core!”

”He doesn’t need to,” Alexis said quietly, stepping down from the high ledge as his spatial ledgers dissolved into light.

His spectacles were cracked, but his eyes were filled with profound, quiet pride.

”His martial framework has completely integrated with our ancestral bloodline. He isn’t just a survivor, Vespera.”

He paused.

”He is an Apex.”

Vespera slowly sheathed her massive broadsword, the heavy iron clanking as it locked into her back scabbard.

Her crimson eyes softened, looking at her youngest brother with a mixture of immense relief and ferocious love.

”You’ve grown tall, Valerian,” Vespera said, her voice dropping its lethal edge for the first time.

”And your staff work is terrible. Father is going to make you redo your forms for three weeks.”

”I look forward to it, Sister,” Valerian replied, lowering his S-Rank staff and offering a polite, elegant bow.

”Come,” Caelum smiled, resting his war-spear on his shoulder as he walked toward his baby brother, slapping a heavy hand on Valerian’s shoulder.

”The Patriarch is waiting at the high altar.”

”And the Sec Elders... well, they are about to have a very bad day.”