Chapter 71: The Ashen Eclipse
The battlefield burned with the screams of the dying. Ash blanketed the ruined landscape like falling snow, blotting out the moonlight and choking the wind. Towers once gilded with divine crystal lay broken, shattered. Rivers ran red. The remnants of Valerian’s elite vanguard—mages, oath-sworn knights, spectral beasts bound by blood contracts—were scattered and failing. All around them, the Dread-Touched continued to surge.
Kael stood amid the chaos, his sword streaked with silver blood, steam rising from its edges. He panted heavily over the body of a Dread-Touched Warlord, its limbs twisted in death. His aura flickered—unstable, jagged, draining fast. He had no potions left. No tricks. Just willpower and rage.
And still... his eyes drifted toward Valerian.
At the epicenter of it all, Valerian stood like a jagged monument, unmoving. His black coat hung in shreds, soaked crimson. From his back, chains of obsidian slithered and snapped like living things—serpents forged from system corruption, animated by the core of the Forgotten Titan he had consumed. Each link pulsed with unnatural rhythm. The chains whispered, promising annihilation.
The system wanted more. It was goading him—pushing him to ascend fully.
But he held back.
"Valerian!" Selene’s voice rang sharp across the ruined field. "You’re bleeding too much! You have to stop!"
She descended in a comet of silver, her armored dress flaring like wings, inscribed with divine sigils. Magic bled from her like a goddess of war—but her face, normally carved from ice, was frantic. Not for the battlefield.
For him.
But Valerian didn’t move.
He wasn’t listening.