Left leg back. Right forward. Blade raised.
The crimson light bled into the steel — a deep red glint that hadn't been there before, like the sword was drinking something in.
In that moment, I had one thought.
End it.
Not for victory. Not for pride.
Just — protect them. Protect the peace everyone had bled for without ever being sure it existed.
Chirp.
That sound again. Same as during Atherion's test. No source. No explanation.
I don't know how it happened.
But my blade ignited.
Red-orange flame — not from mana, not from any spell I'd cast. Not a reaction to anything. Just fire. Pure and direct and completely without permission.
"That's not—" Atherion's voice behind me. Low. "That's not what I taught him. I only showed him the fundamental form. The first foundation."
"At his age." Veltherion — barely conscious, still watching. "He built something entirely his own."
Keltherion's Dracula form took a step back.
Hesitating.
What did you make.
I don't fully remember what came next. Only the pressure — heavier than anything I'd felt before, heavier than it had any right to be. Like the weight of every nation, every broken promise, every person who'd ever wanted peace and never gotten it had settled directly onto the arm holding the blade.
I took it.
The wind surged. Fed the flames.
They still didn't burn me.
Warm. That same warmth — like something sharing itself with me, pouring strength into my grip from somewhere outside my own body.
I brought the blade down with everything I had.
Crimson Blade — New Dawn.
The arc left the steel.
Pure flame. Moving in a clean, straight line toward Keltherion.
Nobody had time to accept it.
The clouds split — a single straight line, horizon to horizon, the artificial sky cracking open like something had finally had enough. Through the gap, slow and deliberate, the first light of the artificial sun peeked through.
Then my eyes closed.
I hit the ground.
{ Keltherion's mind — that moment }
This child.
What is he.
The arc had come and his instincts — ancient, Dracula-deep, older than the empire itself — had screamed. He'd seen it. His own death. Sitting behind Felix's eyes like it had always been there waiting.
He couldn't move.
For the first time in centuries the ancient form of Dracula had simply — frozen.
He moved. Eventually. Not enough.
His arm was gone now.
It wasn't regenerating.
He stared at the stump. At the split sky. At the boy collapsed on the ground.
His ego registered the wound before anything else did.
Then the anger came.
His aura flared — darker than the abyss, flooding outward, the temperature plummeting, the split in the clouds swallowing itself back into shadow.
Lucien landed beside me.
He touched my cheek.
Something warm and wet met his fingers.
His eyes went wide.
And then — something broke open in him that he kept very carefully locked.
Memories hit fast. Old ones. The kind that arrive without asking.
He stood slowly.
Atherion and Veltherion had never seen Lucien look like this. Not once. Not the easy Lucien, not the dramatic Lucien, not even the Grand Mage Lucien who'd stood in the World Tree and ended the Succubus Queen.
This was something else.
His eyes were cold.
He stepped forward.
Floated upward.
Twelve pillars of tornado erupted around the perimeter — not summoned, not chanted, just there, like the weather had decided to respond to his mood directly.
"HOW DARE YOU."
His voice carried across everything. Not loud. Worse than loud.
The dark clouds swallowed the split sky whole. The artificial sun vanished. The storm hit — heavy, immediate, the kind that doesn't build gradually.
Everything not nailed down flew.
"You dare—" His voice cracked once. Just once. "—to do this to my disciple."
A breath.
Then, quietly — the kind of quiet that comes right before something irreversible:
"Piece of shit."
He raised his staff.
His voice dropped into something formal. Ancient. The cadence of someone reaching for something they very rarely reach for.
"Oh god of thunder and storm — you who hold the power to serve justice. I, the Grand Mage Lucien Morvale, call upon you — with both mind and heart — for the justice of those who suffered at the hands of this monster."
The storm answered before he finished.
"Grant me your power."
Lightning gathered above the clouds — not in bolts. In mass. A single, vast, building convergence of force that made the air smell like burning metal and old gods.
"VAJRA."