Duke Maros scrambled backward, his hand fumbling for his ceremonial sword, but his fingers felt like lead. The temperature on the deck had dropped forty degrees in a matter of seconds. Frost crept up the masts, turning the sails into rigid sheets of ice that snapped and tore in the wind. The "Invincible Armada" was being frozen alive in the middle of a summer storm.
"Fire!" Maros screamed, his voice cracking. "All ships, fire on the flagship! Kill him! Kill the freak!"
The other ships in the fleet, seeing their leader in peril, pivoted their heavy cannons. Blue and orange beams of concentrated magical energy streaked across the dark water, all converging on The Crimson Tide. The power was enough to level a city, a concentrated strike of pure destruction.
Livius didn't move. He didn't even raise a shield. He simply closed his eyes and thought of the silver sarcophagus in the Origin Vault. He thought of the centuries of silence his mother's people had endured.
"Reflect," he commanded.
As the beams hit him, they didn't explode. They slowed down, their colors shifting from orange and blue to a brilliant, shimmering silver. The energy wrapped around Livius like a cloak, swirling faster and faster until he was the center of a roaring cyclone of redirected mana. With a scream of effort, Livius threw his arms outward.
The redirected energy didn't just strike back; it multiplied. The silver beams lanced out from his body, striking the other galleons with pinpoint accuracy. The Leviathan-bone hulls, meant to withstand the pressure of the deep sea, shattered like porcelain. The power crystals, the hearts of the ships, were overloaded by Livius's "Sovereign Mana" and detonated in spectacular plumes of white light.
One by one, the pride of the Southern Navy began to sink. The great masts toppled into the waves, and the magical engines hissed as they were quenched by the freezing sea. On the flagship, the silence was absolute. Only Maros and a handful of his elite guards remained, huddled against the railing.
Livius walked toward the Duke, his footsteps crunching on the frost-covered deck. With every step, the scales on his skin receded, and the golden glow in his eyes dimmed to a calm, terrifying ember. He looked at the Duke, not with hatred, but with a weary, clinical detachment.
"You brought a navy to a conversation, Maros," Livius said, leaning over the trembling man. "I brought a god. Who do you think the people will choose to follow now?"
"You're a monster," Maros wheezed, his eyes wide with a primal terror. "The Dragon God will never accept a half-breed on the throne. You're a blight on the bloodline!"
Livius reached down and grabbed the Duke by his collar, lifting him with a strength that shouldn't belong to a seventeen-year-old. He held the man over the edge of the sinking ship, looking down into the dark, churning water.
"The Dragon God has been silent for a thousand years, Duke. If he has a problem with my blood, he can come and tell me himself. Until then, I am the only god you need to worry about."
Livius didn't drop him. Instead, he tossed the Duke back onto the deck. "Cian will be here in an hour with the recovery crews. You will sign over the Southern Trade Rights, and you will spend the rest of your life as a lighthouse keeper on the most remote island in the empire. You wanted to watch the sea? Now you'll have nothing else to do."
Livius didn't wait for a response. He stepped off the deck and into the air, ascending back into the clouds as the first rays of moonlight broke through the storm. The Southern Fleet was gone, replaced by a graveyard of ice and wood. The Ghost had claimed the sea.