Chapter 173: The Rebirth of Ash
The colossal Throne Room of the Eternal Dawn fell into a reverential silence as the heavy obsidian doors closed behind the six newly evolved elders, while the air still vibrated with the aftershocks of magma, steel, shadow, jade, storm, and abyss.
In the immensity of the hall, only five figures remained.
Atop the platform, seated on twin thrones carved from the same rock that held the world, were Samael and Seraphina. The Chaos Dragon and the Eternal Lotus Empress radiated a perfect duality: the darkness that devours all and the ice that preserves all. To the left of the staircase, Vexia, the Grand Marshal of the Void, organized the clan's new data in her holographic Codex with mechanical coldness. To the right, floating softly, Sienna, the Maiden of the Infinite Mirror, absentmindedly played with the golden bell on her wrist, her silver eyes fixed on the woman waiting in the center of the hall.
Lilith Morningstar.
The Grand Elder of the clan. Third in command. The general who had held the pieces of a shattered family together with her bare hands. Her deep red hair, speckled with silver and ash-white streaks, cascaded over her shoulders. She wore a war tunic of smoky hues and deep scarlet. Her bearing was undeniably maternal, but her golden eyes burned with the ferocity of a cornered predator that never surrendered.
Lilith stepped forward and bent a knee, bowing her head. "The foundations are set, Patriarch," Lilith said, her voice resonating with a warm but harsh echo, like burning coal. "The elders are ready. The Sequences will awaken in seven days. Order me, and I will march at the vanguard to turn the outer continent into a graveyard of ashes."
Samael watched her in silence. The terrifying, divine, and oppressive aura that always surrounded him, the one that forced Great Saints to tremble, began to retract. The darkness dissipated. Slowly, Samael rose from his obsidian throne and descended the steps. Seraphina watched him with a soft smile, perfectly knowing her husband's heart.
When Samael reached Lilith, he did not speak with the voice of the Sovereign of the Void.
"Rise, aunt," Samael said, his voice stripped of all authority, filled with a warmth he reserved for only three people in the entire universe.
Lilith looked up, surprised. Before she could process it, Samael bent down, took her by the shoulders, and forced her to stand. "Never kneel before me in private again," Samael decreed, looking directly into her golden eyes. "You are the Third in command of this Empire. If Seraphina and I are not here, your word is Absolute Law. Not Vexia, not Sienna, nor the Six Elders are above you."
Lilith pressed her lips together. An ancient and painful emotion crossed her mature face. "Samael... I am your soldier. My duty is..."
"You fulfilled your duty a long time ago," Samael interrupted, and for the first time in years, his eyes showed a trace of vulnerability. "When the original clan was massacred. When the whole world turned its back on us and hunted us down like rabid dogs. When I was just a broken boy, consumed by the thirst for revenge and pain... you did not run away."
Samael let go of one of her shoulders and raised his hand, tracing a line of invisible memories in the air.
"You gave up your own glory. You burned your years of youth and your cultivation potential to raise us. You endured the wounds, the poison, and the humiliation to ensure that the heir of the Morningstar blood survived one more day. You fed me. You healed my wounds, crying with me in the darkness while my flesh rebuilt itself. You are the reason this Empire exists today, Lilith. Without you, the Chaos Dragon would have died in a ditch before learning how to roar."
A solitary and treacherous tear, shining like liquid gold, escaped Lilith's eye, instantly evaporating from her body's natural heat before touching her cheek. She reached out a trembling hand and caressed Samael's pale cheek. "You were all I had left of my brother," Lilith whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of centuries of pain. "You were my boy. Protecting you wasn't a duty. It was my salvation. Look at you now... you have conquered the heavens."
Seraphina majestically descended the stairs and stood beside Samael. She took Lilith's other hand with deep reverence. "The family you have protected is now invincible, Lilith," the Empress said, her voice calming the storm in the woman's heart. "You have taken care of my husband. You have cradled my daughter Celeste. But you no longer have to bear the weight of survival alone. Now, it is our turn to elevate you to where you belong. To the peak of divinity."
Samael took a step back, his face recovering the stoic and implacable determination of an emperor, but his eyes shone with pure familial devotion. "Your cultivation has been stagnant at the Low Stage 5 Saint Realm due to your foundational injuries and the sacrifices of your life force over the years," Samael said, his voice resonating with power. "Your Ash Phoenix bloodline is a miraculous mutation, entropy incarnate. But the gray fire inside you is suffocating from the impurities of mortal age."
Samael raised his right hand. The space in front of him distorted, cracking like broken glass. The Void split open, revealing the infinite inventory of his System. From the dimensional rift, Samael extracted an object that caused the Throne Room's temperature to skyrocket so violently that the obsidian pillars began to sweat smoke.
Hovering in the palm of Samael's hand was a fire seed the size of a walnut. But it did not emit light. It was an absolute black flame, with ashen violet edges. Its mere presence devoured the oxygen in the immense hall. The shadows writhed in adoration. It was not fire that gave heat; it was the concept of the absolute end.
"This is the [Primordial Black Phoenix Flame]," Samael announced. The name of the flame resonated like an ancient curse. "It is a Divine-Grade Fire Seed... although it is incomplete. It contains the essence of a primordial being that burned an entire world to dust to be reborn. Its nature is absolute destruction and entropic resurrection. It is the perfect complement, and a thousand times more powerful, for your Ash Phoenix bloodline."
Lilith looked at the flame. Her own heart, the Heart of Eternal Embers, began to beat with a violence that threatened to break her ribs. Her blood boiled. Her bloodline screamed in pure hunger, acknowledging the supremacy of the divine seed. "Samael... a Divine-Grade treasure..." Lilith gasped, feeling the immense pressure of the flame physically pushing her backward. "Absorbing this... even if incomplete, will shatter my current body. I'm not sure if my meridians will withstand the combustion of a deity."
"Your meridians will break. Your blood will boil and your bones will turn to slag," Samael confirmed with terrifying calm. "You will die, Lilith. And then... you will be reborn. Because that is the way of the Phoenix."
Samael extended his hand to her, offering the seed of death and resurrection. "I give you this flame, Aunt. Accept it, and become the Ash Calamity this Empire needs."
In the millisecond Samael severed his spiritual connection from the Divine-Grade Seed, formally handing it over to Lilith, a series of deafening, celestial chimes resonated exclusively in his Sea of Consciousness. The System, the entity that dictated the true laws of his existence, awoke in an absolute frenzy.
[DING!]
[INVESTMENT DETECTED!]
[The Host has voluntarily granted a Divine-Grade Treasure (Incomplete) to a member of direct bloodline and extreme loyalty (Lilith Morningstar).]
[Evaluating karmic resonance... Perfect Synergy! The impact of this donation will alter the military destiny of the Empire.]
[CRITICAL REFUND MULTIPLIER ACTIVATED!]
[Calculating multiplier... SUCCESS! The Host has triggered a 3000x Return Multiplier!]
Samael almost lost his breath. A three-thousand-fold multiplier on an object that already bordered on the Divine Grade. The System's mathematics were about to break the logic of the Heavens.
[REFUND COMPLETED!]
[The Host has obtained: "Stellar Heart of the Absolute Chaos Phoenix" (Imperial-Grade Fire Seed - Consummated).]
[Description: A flame born at the origin of the multiverse. It does not burn matter; it burns Concepts and Laws. By fusing it with the Void, the Host will be immune to any fire tribulation and will be able to incinerate the "Dao" of Fossilized Emperors with a simple thought. The item has been sent to the System Vault.]
Samael gritted his teeth, holding back the immense laugh of pure megalomania that threatened to escape his throat. An Imperial-Grade fire. A fire capable of burning destiny itself. The System had just handed him a weapon that could threaten the Heavenly Dao.
But this was Lilith's moment. He buried his euphoria deep in his mind and focused his black-hole gaze on the Grand Elder.
Lilith hesitated no longer. She reached out both hands, which were already covered by a fine layer of ash and gray smoke, and took the [Primordial Black Phoenix Flame].
In the millisecond the divine fire seed touched her skin, reality inside the Throne Room fractured. BOOOM! An explosion of black and gray fire consumed Lilith completely. The thermal shockwave made contact with the obsidian and began to melt it instantly. Seraphina stepped forward and extended a hand. Her Body of the Eternal Lotus Empress unleashed the [White Lotus Inertia Field], freezing the thermal entropy before it melted the Palace, creating a stasis barrier around herself, Samael, Vexia, and Sienna.
Inside the black fire pillar that stretched from the floor to the vaulted ceiling of the hall, a heart-wrenching scream was heard. It was Lilith. The Primordial Flame wasn't being assimilated smoothly; it was devouring the Grand Elder alive. Her skin charred in less than three seconds. Her fiery red hair turned into black smoke. The bones beneath her flesh cracked as the divine fire purged millennia of inferior evolution.
"Master, the target's physical integrity has dropped to 0%!" warned Vexia, her glasses flashing frantically as she read the data. "Her heart has stopped. Her meridians have been incinerated. Technically... she is dead."
Samael didn't move. His crimson-violet eyes watched the black fire with absolute faith. "A phoenix does not hatch from an egg, Vexia. It is born from the urn. Wait."
Outside, in the Realm of the Eternal Dawn, the world reacted to the blasphemy that was brewing. This mini-world, although protected by the Stellar World Tree and hidden from the eyes of the outer Heavenly Dao, had its own nascent laws. And the forced ascension of a mortal to the Great Saint Realm using a Divine-Grade object was an absolute violation of the natural balance.
The realm's artificial sky, always illuminated by the serene and beautiful Eternal Aurora, was dyed a suffocating black. Tribulation Clouds, dense as liquid lead, swirled directly over the Patriarch's Palace. They were not normal storm clouds; they were composed of Karmic Destruction Lightning, of a sickly blood-red hue. The entire world trembled. The hundreds of thousands of cyborg soldiers, the spiritual beasts, the disciples in training, and the newly ascended elders looked to the sky with profound biological terror.
KRA-KOOOOM! The first lightning bolt of the Great Saint Tribulation struck. But it didn't hit the palace roof. Before the crimson bolt touched the obsidian tiles, the immense body of the [Guardian of the Eternal Dawn] (the mythical tectonic dragon) partially emerged from the mountain, its crystal fins absorbing the impact and dissipating it deep into the earth with a roar that shook the aerial continent.
Inside the Throne Room, oblivious to the outer apocalypse, magic was happening. The pillar of black fire began to contract, sucked into a single point in the center of the flames. It was [The Last Ember], the supreme parasitic resurrection skill of Lilith's bloodline. But this time, she wasn't using the lives of her enemies to resurrect; she was using the very essence of the Primordial Black Phoenix as her own fuel.
The gray and black ash began to swirl, solidifying, building a body from scratch. Bones the color of tempered steel. Meridians that were not veins, but rivers of will-o'-the-wisp and gray magma. Dense and lethal muscles forged in the fire of divine destruction. And finally, immaculate skin, pale and glowing with the luster of stellar ash.
The black fire burst outward in the shape of two titanic wings that swept the hall. Lilith Morningstar opened her eyes. Her pupils were no longer golden. They were two incandescent gray embers with rings of black fire spinning inside them. Her hair, previously red, was now a dazzling ash-white, with streaks of liquid darkness that seemed to move like living smoke. The [Gray Scale Feathers] beneath her skin emitted a lethal glow.
She had been reborn.
The aura that erupted from her new body had nothing to do with the Stage 5 Saint Realm. The stagnation of years shattered with the sound of thunder. The immense accumulation of her suppressed talent and the power of the Primordial Flame shot her toward the heavens. Stage 8 Saint. Peak Stage 9 Saint.
The bottleneck separating an ordinary "Saint" from a "Great Saint"—the point where a cultivator stops using laws to begin creating their own Law Domain—was pulverized. The atmospheric pressure in the hall collapsed. Vexia had to dig her boots into the floor to avoid being blown away, while Sienna created three reflective mirror shields to avoid being crushed by the sheer gravity of the new General.
Lilith crossed the threshold. Great Saint Realm (Middle Stage 4).
The air around her twisted and stabilized. Lilith had forged her own Law Domain. A domain of suffocating ash and black fire, where her opponents' laws would simply "age" and wither away to their deaths. The Grand Elder's battle power, boosted by her hybridized bloodline and the Divine Seed, easily brushed the peak of a Stage 3 Great Saint.
Lilith lowered her arms, the wings of black fire and gray smoke vanishing into her back with a hiss. She took a deep breath, and her exhaled air slightly melted the stone in front of her. She looked at her hands, feeling the youth, vigor, and incomprehensible power coursing through her veins. All her old wounds, the chronic pain of her damaged meridians, and the heaviness of centuries had evaporated.
She looked up at Samael, a predatory, arrogant, and infinitely beautiful smile curving her lips. "I feel... like I could incinerate the sun with my bare hands," Lilith said, her voice now possessing a dual resonance, the echo of two mythical birds speaking in unison.
Samael nodded, with an expression of dark satisfaction. "That is the power of a true Phoenix, Aunt. You have touched the Great Saint Realm. But we are not finished. A deity of ash needs wings and a flawless foundation if she is to command my army in the coming war."
Samael raised his hand again. The dimensional rift opened once more. The punishment to the heavens was not yet over. Lilith's rebirth was only the first step in the forging of the Supreme Commander.
The air in the Throne Room had become so heavy it threatened to liquefy the immense obsidian pillars. Lilith Morningstar, newly ascended to the Great Saint Realm, floated a few centimeters off the ground. Her Law Domain, a conceptual force field woven with black fire and suffocating ash, flickered around her. Within that space, the very laws of nature seemed to age, wither, and die, consumed by the absolute entropy of her new hybridized bloodline.
Samael watched her with an intensity that eclipsed the very darkness of the Void. The first step had been accomplished. The Primordial Flame had burned away his aunt's mortality, forcing her entry into the realm of the continent's true monsters. But a flame, no matter how divine, needs a physical vessel capable of withstanding its eternal combustion. Lilith's newly forged body was powerful, but the fire of a primordial being threatened to devour her from the inside out if not anchored correctly.
"The Primordial Flame has given you the engine of a deity, Lilith," Samael said, his voice breaking the crackle of the gray embers floating in the immense hall. "But your newly formed skeleton and meridians are still young. The sheer power of that black fire will end up tearing your flesh apart if you use it in prolonged battles against other Great Saints. You need stabilizers. You need the history and the weight of your own race to anchor that chaos."
Samael raised his left hand. The fabric of reality tore again with a sound like glass crunching under the weight of the ocean. The System's inventory opened, revealing its unfathomable abyss of treasures stolen, looted, and accumulated throughout countless massacres and rewards.
From the dark vortex, Samael extracted three elongated objects. The Throne Room instantly filled with a golden and reddish light, an ancient and majestic warmth that violently clashed against the dark ash of Lilith's new Domain.
They were the [3x Ancestral Phoenix Tail Feathers]. Saint-Grade materials of incomprehensible purity. Each feather was nearly two meters long, glowing with an internal fire that did not burn, but pulsed with the vitality of countless eras. They were not mere biological remains; they were living relics. An Ancestral Phoenix did not molt these feathers; it only lost them in planetary-scale battles or at the moment of its ultimate Nirvana. They contained the pure essence, the genetic marrow, and the will of the kings of the skies.
Lilith felt her breath catch. Her new gray ember eyes widened. The blood running through her veins boiled, not from pain, but from an instinct of absolute biological reverence. Those feathers were the royalty of her species, the pinnacle of mythological avian biology.
"An Ash Phoenix is a mutation born of pain and the end of things," Samael explained, holding the three massive feathers that seemed to float in his hands, defying gravity. "But even the end needs an origin. These tail feathers from a Saint-Grade Ancestral Phoenix will be the pillars that will support your new body. They will stabilize the Primordial Black Phoenix Flame you just absorbed, fusing ancient vitality with your entropy."
Samael stepped toward her, extending his arms. "Incorporate them into your skeleton, Aunt. Let these feathers become the structure of your definitive wings."
Lilith did not hesitate. The respect and love she felt for her nephew had transcended any mortal limit. If Samael asked her to devour the sun, she would open her mouth. She reached out and grabbed the shafts of the three ancestral feathers.
The moment the ancient fire touched her palms, a deafening shriek, the song of a million mythical birds, erupted in her Sea of Consciousness. Lilith threw her head back, squeezing her eyes shut. The three colossal feathers didn't shrink or attach to her clothes; they became intangible, turning into torrents of golden light and liquid magma that penetrated directly through her chest, seeking her spine.
The assimilation process was brutal and beautiful. Seraphina, watching from the stairs beside the thrones, raised a barrier of Absolute Ice to protect Sienna and Vexia from the thermal shockwave. Lilith's black fire and gray smoke wings burst from her back, spreading to a wingspan of over ten meters. But this time, the fire wasn't amorphous. The golden torrents of the ancestral feathers traveled through the structure of her wings. They solidified, forming bones as sharp as stellar steel blades. The smoke feathers gained a terrifying physical density, now glowing with a metallic black hue in the center, surrounded by a halo of gray ash and golden sparks.
The destructive volatility of the Primordial Flame found its channel. The ancestral feathers acted as the perfect skeleton, dominating the uncontrolled fire and forcing it to obey Lilith's will. Her aura, which previously fluctuated wildly threatening to destroy the hall, compressed, becoming dense, heavy, and absolutely controlled. Her cultivation level consolidated flawlessly, securing her foundation in the Great Saint Realm without the slightest risk of Qi deviation.
While Lilith experienced the apotheosis of her physical bloodline, in Samael's mind, the System was collapsing in on itself, calculating the magnitude of the transaction that had just occurred.
[DING!]
[HIGH-IMPACT SECONDARY INVESTMENT DETECTED!]
[The Host has granted Saint-Grade Biological Materials (3x Ancestral Phoenix Tail Feathers) to a Supreme Clan General.]
[Evaluating bloodline resonance... Mythological Stabilization Confirmed! This action has solidified the foundation of a Great Saint-level combatant who swore eternal loyalty to the Host.]
[CRITICAL REFUND MULTIPLIER ACTIVATED!]
[Calculating multiplier based on karma and strategic value... SUCCESS! The Host has triggered a 2000x Return Multiplier!]
Samael clenched his fists, the vibration of the Void in his blood responding to the cold euphoria that invaded his mind. The System rarely granted multipliers on this scale unless the investment altered the very fabric of the war's destiny.
[REFUND COMPLETED!]
[The Host has obtained: "Bone Marrow of the Genesis Solar Bird" (Quasi-Emperor Grade Biological Material/Base Artifact - Consummated).]
[Description: It is not a mere feather; it is the bone core of one of the first creatures to soar the skies of the primitive cosmos. This material can be forged by Elder Marcus to create a Quasi-Emperor Grade Flying Artifact, or it can be absorbed by the Host to grant Immunity to Solar Laws and atomic-level regeneration in combat. The item has been secured in the System Vault.]
"A Quasi-Emperor Grade material..." Samael thought, a sadistic smile, sharp as a blade, appearing on his face. "Marcus will weep tears when I hand this over to him for the forge. The empire is arming itself with the bones of the gods."
But Samael's focus immediately returned to the woman floating in front of him. Lilith had retracted her immense and now perfect wings of black fire and ashen gold. Her skin shone with incomprehensible health and vigor. She looked younger, more lethal, the embodiment of a war goddess walking among mortals.
However, Samael, with his Eyes of Destiny, could still see an imperfection. A microscopic stain on Lilith's soul. They were the invisible scars of her years of suffering. The dormant toxins of old mortal poisons she had absorbed to protect him when he was a child. The karmic wear and tear of having pushed her vitality to the limit for decades to hold back the clan's pursuers. The Primordial Flame had burned her body, and the Ancestral Feathers had forged her structure, but those old wounds of the soul, those impurities of time, were still there, hidden deep within her marrow.
Samael was not going to allow his Supreme Commander to carry the slightest flaw onto the battlefield. A Great Saint must be a being of absolute perfection.
"You have survived the flame and claimed the ancestral bone, Lilith," Samael said, his voice becoming solemn, resonating with the authority of the Patriarch dictating the destiny of his people. "But your soul still remembers the pain of the lower world. Your deepest meridians still harbor the shadows of the poisoned arrows you took for me in the Forest of Agony. You still carry the weight of the dark years."
Lilith looked down, surprised that he could perceive those ghostly scars. They were dulled pains, echoes of a past life that she had accepted as the price of her loyalty. "They do not bother me, Samael. They are war medals. They are the reminder of why we fight."
"Not in my Empire," Samael decreed, stepping forward and raising his right hand toward the ceiling of the hall. "In the Morningstar Empire, our scars become weapons, not burdens. Today, I will eradicate your mortal past. Today, I will erase the last vestige of weakness from your existence."
Samael closed his eyes and communicated directly with the System's absolute core. "System. Connect the spatial coordinates of this Throne Room with the isolated domain of my interface. Open the physical doors of the Hall of Inheritances. Authorize the Blood Fusion protocol for Lilith Morningstar. Cost: All necessary Qi from my reserves."
[COMMAND ACCEPTED, HOST!]
[Manifesting Physical Interface of the Hall of Inheritances on the material plane...]
[Preparing 'Blood Fusion' Protocol and Absolute Bloodline Purification.]
The space behind Samael didn't break or distort; it simply opened majestically, like the heavy doors of a divine temple that had been sealed for eons. A golden and violet light, pure, sterile, and devoid of the chaotic emotions of the material world, flooded the Throne Room. It was the light of the System's Hall of Inheritances, a conceptual space designed for the rewriting of existence itself.
The pressure of that light forced Vexia to take a step back, her runic glasses saturating with incomprehensible data. Even Sienna, a conceptual deity, narrowed her eyes, feeling the power of an authority that operated above the rules of the Heavenly Dao. Seraphina, standing next to the thrones, felt her Empress core shudder before a majesty that ignored the logic of the cosmos; an absolute confirmation of why her husband was destined to devour the Heavens.
"Step into the light, Lilith," Samael ordered. His voice was not a request; it was a divine mandate.
The Grand Elder, mesmerized by the purity of the energy flowing from those invisible doors, walked slowly forward. The moment the violet and golden light of the Hall of Inheritances enveloped her, her feet stopped touching the obsidian floor. She was suspended in the air, held by the System's purification matrix.
Samael raised his hand, pointing his index finger at Lilith's chest. "[Blood Fusion: Absolute Purification]."
The System executed the command. Threads of pure light, as fine as an angel's hair, penetrated Lilith's skin. They caused no physical pain; instead, they triggered a catharsis of the soul. The threads dove straight into the woman's bone marrow and Dantian. There, they sought every trace of toxin accumulated over sixty years of combat, every residue of low-grade healing pills she had consumed in her youth, and every micro-fissure in her soul caused by the stress and despair of protecting the last heir of her blood.
Under the astonished gaze of Seraphina and Vexia, a miasma of dark green and sickly black began to be expelled from Lilith's pores. It was the rot of the mortal world, age, trauma, and cellular imperfection being torn from her existence by the brute force of the System's administration.
As soon as that miasma touched the golden light of the Hall of Inheritances, it was incinerated into absolute nothingness. The Blood Fusion did not merely cleanse; it restructured. It took the hybrid essence of the Ash Phoenix, the power of the Primordial Black Phoenix Flame, and the bone resilience of the Ancestral Feathers, and wove them into a single, perfect DNA strand. The three elements ceased fighting for dominance within her body to become a harmonious whole.
Lilith let out a deep sigh, a sound that denoted the release of a cosmic weight she didn't even know she was carrying. Her skin lost any trace of dullness, acquiring the immaculate glow of a divine being. Her ash-white hair, with its streaks of liquid darkness, seemed to take on a life of its own, waving without wind.
When the light of the Hall of Inheritances dissipated and the conceptual doors closed, Lilith descended gently, her black leather boots touching the obsidian floor without making the slightest sound.
She was perfect. The Great Saint Realm (Middle Stage 4) of her cultivation felt denser, more immovable than a mountain of steel. Her actual combat power, now purged of any internal resistance, was absolutely terrifying. There were no longer any cracks in her spiritual armor. She was a living siege weapon, a general designed to eradicate armies with a single beat of her wings.
Samael walked toward her, his footsteps echoing in the vast silence of the hall. Seraphina descended from the platform and stood next to her husband. The Empress of the Eternal Lotus, with her translucent ice crown and constellation eyes, looked at Lilith with deep respect.
Samael extended his hand, and in his palm materialized a massive black jade plaque, adorned with crimson gold borders. In the center of the plaque, an ice lotus and a void dragon intertwined over a field of crossed swords. It was the Seal of Supreme Military Command of the Morningstar Empire.
"Aunt Lilith," Samael said, his voice echoing so that every shadow in the palace would witness his words. "The impurities of your past have been erased. The fire of destruction and the will of the ancestors now belong to you completely. Your loyalty has brought us this far, but it will be your fury that opens the path to world domination."
Samael handed her the Black Jade Seal. Lilith took it with both hands. The weight of the jade was immense, not because of its physical mass, but because of what it represented.
"With this seal," Samael continued, "I grant you absolute authority over the sword and shield of our family. From this second on, you assume command as the Supreme Commander of the Siege Force. The thirty thousand Magic Cyborgs of the Dead Blood Guard, along with their Praetorian Captains, the ancestors Feng-Wu and Lian-Hua, are under your orders. They will answer to no one but you, Seraphina, and me."
Samael turned his head slightly toward the shadows creeping in the corners of the hall. "Malak."
Space darkened in the left corner of the room. From a patch of boiling tar, the tall, slender figure of Malak the Shinigami, wrapped in black cloth, slowly emerged. His spiritual silver scythe emitted a lethal hum. Behind him, in the empty air, hundreds of small pairs of white eyes blinked in the blackness, revealing the presence of the hundred Silent Shadows, the fanatically loyal assassins who formed the knife in the dark of the clan.
Malak advanced in silence, his face hidden beneath the dark hood, and stopped three meters from Lilith. He drove the shaft of his immense scythe into the obsidian floor and, with funereal grace, knelt before the woman of the Ash Phoenix. In perfect synchrony, the hundred presences in the shadows around him imitated the gesture, bending the knee in the empty air.
"The Legion of Silent Shadows," Samael declared, pointing at the assassin, "the elite of our Black Ops and Extermination, also falls under your operational command for large-scale war deployments. You are the General of the Dawn. You will be the hammer that breaks the gates of the orthodox sects, and the gray fire that suffocates the hope of the imperial families."
Vexia, from her position by the stairs, closed her holographic Codex with a sharp click, a sound that sealed the end of bureaucracy and the beginning of tactical execution. The Grand Marshal of the Void stepped forward, squaring her shoulders militarily. Her runic glasses flashed with golden light as she mentally transferred the massive control codes to Lilith's aura token.
"General Lilith," Vexia said, her tone devoid of emotion, but laden with a terrifying efficiency. "The neural loyalty codes of the thirty thousand Praetorian Cyborgs have been changed and synchronized with your aura. They will respond to your intentions. The teleportation gates of the inventory's Portal Key are synchronized with your will. Logistically, you now have the destructive power to wipe any top-tier sect off the map within twenty-four hours. The war machine is oiled. We await your deployment orders."
Sienna, the Maiden of the Infinite Mirror, let out a melodious, sadistic giggle, floating in circles around the pillars. "Oh, the poor mortals out there," Sienna hummed, her golden bell tinkling cheerfully. "They have no idea of the calamity we've just unleashed. I hope you bring me many valuable prisoners, Lilith. My mirrors are hungry for new souls to torture."
Lilith Morningstar pressed the Black Jade Seal against her chest. She closed her gray eyes, feeling the power of an infinite army beating in unison with the black fire of her heart. When she opened them again, the maternal love she had always harbored for Samael had been locked away in a crystal vault in her soul, completely replaced by the implacable coldness of an empress of death. Ash began to fall slowly from the ceiling of the Throne Room, as if the building itself recognized the nature of its new owner.
She took a step back and bowed her head in a rigid, perfect, and absolute martial inclination. "The Anvil has been forged. The Swords have been sharpened. And the Ash is ready to suffocate the heavens," Lilith's voice echoed, dual, mystical, and brutal. "Give me a target, my Patriarch. Point me to your enemies, and I will bring you their charred skulls to adorn the steps of your throne."
Samael smiled, crossing his arms behind his back. The darkness of the Void began to slowly swirl around his boots, a sign that his human patience had come to an end.
"The Forty-Five are assimilating their final trauma in the healing domes," Samael announced, turning to walk slowly toward the twin thrones, with Seraphina floating elegantly by his side. "When they awake, their six-year torture in the Infinite Mirror Labyrinth will have concluded. They will be unleashed monsters. They will be our hunting packs."
Samael and Seraphina took their seats on their respective thrones. The Dragon and the Empress looked at their General, their assassin, and their strategists.
"Prepare the heavy infantry, Lilith. Vexia, initiate the geographic assault probability algorithms. Sienna, open the vision of the Thousand-Mile Mirror and project it in the war room."
Samael's voice became so cold it frosted the magical fire braziers on the walls of the immense hall. "The time for rest is over. It is time for the outer continent to remember why the name Morningstar was cursed by the gods. It is time to show them... hell."
War had been declared. And the Morningstar Empire, now an ecosystem of perfect, divine, and unstoppable annihilation, was about to march.