SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 420: Chapter 420: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXXIV]

Valttair counted again.

The flow of mana across the battlefield did not lie. Each heir carried a signature he could identify without effort, a pattern ingrained in memory through years of cultivation and observation. He did not need names. He did not need sight. Their presence was as distinct to him as breath.

Eight.

He let the awareness extend once more, slower this time, filtering through the shifting currents of the castle’s interior.

Eight.

Sylvar was not there.

His fifth son.

The son of Naevia.

One of the most disciplined among them.

Sylvar’s mana had always been controlled, structured, almost severe in its restraint. It carried none of the volatility of Helgar, none of the restless fluctuations of Darion. It was steady, sharpened through repetition, obedient to doctrine. That signature was absent now, not masked, not suppressed, but extinguished.

The conclusion formed without hesitation.

Sylvar had died.

Valttair did not ask how. He did not speculate whether it had been a Void Creature, an enemy heir, a miscalculation, or betrayal. The cause did not matter in this instant. The fact did.

A Morgain heir had fallen.

He had once assumed that when such a moment arrived, the reaction would be administrative. A name removed from future projections. An adjustment in succession lines. A formal burial conducted with precision, as it had been for Mordrek. Respect would be given. Continuity would be preserved. The house would not waver.

That had been the expectation.

The reality was different.

A current moved beneath his composure.

Anger.

Cold. Dense. Contained within strict boundaries.

Who dared place a hand upon a Morgain heir?

The question did not flare outward; it settled inward like weight added to steel. Whoever was responsible would pay. Through consequence measured with the same exactness he applied to every other variable.

And yet, even as that resolve formed, it did not dominate his focus.

There was something else.

A disturbance in the pattern that demanded more immediate attention.

Another presence, sharper than the rest, cut through the natural rhythm of the battlefield like a foreign blade entering calm water.

Valttair’s eyes opened slowly.

The anger did not fade.

Because whatever had killed Sylvar was not the most urgent threat still moving within these ruins.

Valttair did not shift his stance when the second anomaly surfaced.

Amid the steady signatures of his remaining heirs, amid the lingering turbulence of dissipated plague and shattered stone, a presence cut across the current with an irregular cadence that did not belong to human cultivation. Its flow did not align with natural mana circulation. It bent slightly against the field, like ink bleeding through parchment in a pattern that resisted symmetry.

Dark.

Uneven.

Recognizable.

The same energy he had faced moments earlier, refined now to a singular point rather than a battlefield-scale disturbance. The intelligent Void Creature had not fled blindly. It had not vanished into chaos.

It was moving.

Valttair narrowed the field of perception and traced its trajectory. The creature’s signature was thinner than before, diminished by the pressure he had imposed upon it, but the instability in its mana made it easier to isolate. It did not conceal itself with subtlety; it advanced with intent.

Direction resolved quickly.

Toward the eastern corridor, through fractured passages and collapsed vaults, cutting diagonally across the interior of the castle.

Toward two converging signatures.

Trafalgar.

Lysandra.

Valttair’s awareness sharpened.

He isolated Trafalgar’s presence first. The density he had noticed earlier was not incidental. Trafalgar’s core had grown more compact, more defined, as if tempered by compression rather than expanded through excess. His mana moved with structural cohesion uncommon for someone at his stage. There was direction in it. Discipline in formation.

Lysandra’s energy complemented his, steady and measured, positioned slightly offset but within immediate proximity.

The Void Creature was closing the distance between them.

Valttair understood the implications without needing to articulate them.

Losing another heir would be costly.

Losing Trafalgar would be catastrophic.

Trafalgar was not merely another extension of House Morgain’s reach. His potential had already begun to bend trajectories. The refinement in his core signaled more than growth; it suggested convergence, a future axis around which strength could consolidate. Removing him from the board would not weaken the present alone. It would destabilize the future.

Valttair did not entertain panic.

He measured timing.

The creature’s pace was deliberate but strained. Its earlier wounds had not fully stabilized. Its signature flickered at the edges, still recovering from the damage inflicted during the confrontation. That weakness would not persist indefinitely.

Distance.

Angle.

Interception point.

Valttair opened his eyes fully.

The crater around him remained silent, moonlight falling across broken stone and the absence left by Icarus’ extinction. The air had regained clarity, yet the field of conflict had not concluded. It had merely shifted.

He did not summon the ten swords again.

He did not expand his aura.

He stepped forward.

Stone beneath his boots fractured slightly as momentum gathered, not from haste but from compression of intent. The castle’s corridors lay ahead in ruin, fractured beams and collapsed arches forming a labyrinth of debris. None of it would delay him meaningfully.

His thoughts aligned into a singular vector.

The Void Creature would not reach Trafalgar.

Not before him.

Valttair’s form blurred as he initiated movement, speed building without spectacle, each step recalibrated against the shifting currents of mana he continued to read in real time. The battlefield no longer required dominance; it required precision arrival.

Behind him, the crater remained as testimony.

Ahead, the true confrontation continued to unfold.

He would not arrive too late.

Elsewhere in the shattered corridors, Trafalgar advanced.

Maledicta rested steady in his hand, its edge dark and patient beneath the fractured light filtering through broken arches. The blade felt heavier than usual, as if the air itself resisted their passage.

They were moving toward the adjacent chamber where the Thal’zar heirs had been positioned. That had been the objective. Secure them. Break their formation. End the resistance cleanly.

Arthur marched at his side with disciplined silence, issuing short commands to maintain cohesion as Morgain troops pressed forward in layered formation. Behind them, Aubrelle rode her stag, the creature’s golden antlers catching stray light like sharpened branches of dawn. Pipin hovered above, flames coiling around him in controlled spirals that evaporated stray fragments of corruption before they could settle.

Garrika moved along the flank with agile precision, dark ears angled forward, her green eyes scanning for breaches. Lysandra remained close to Trafalgar’s right, her presence steady, aligned.

And yet something was wrong.

Void Creatures filled the corridor ahead in numbers that defied expectation. Not dozens.

Hundreds.

More than had swarmed the outer walls.

They pressed from every fracture in the stone, bodies colliding, claws scraping, eyes reflecting hunger without thought.

Trafalgar felt it beneath the surge.

Something was wrong.