Chapter 16: Blood And Silence
CHAPTER 16: BLOOD AND SILENCE
The air still trembled from the Lightning Titan's fall.
Cracks spread across the dueling platform like veins of scorched fate, steam rising from the molten edges. The Peer Hall was silent, holding its breath. A hundred Star Children watched with narrowed eyes, divine senses sharpened.
And Lux didn't wait.
He turned sharply from the smoking remains of his first battle, his golden robes fluttering, and pointed straight at the boy seated near the middle of the hall.
"You."
A single word.
But it cut through the room like a blade.
The boy looked up.
He had red hair like dripping wine and eyes carved from garnet. His aura was cold—quiet—not like the Titan's thunderous presence. But Lux felt the danger immediately. There was something older, darker, coiled beneath that stillness.
A child of the Crimson Thorn Clan.
He stood without speaking. His silver-accented uniform gleamed, and the sigil of a blooming rose covered in thorns, etched in bloodsilver, pulsed on his chest. Every student knew that mark.
One of the noble vampire houses from the Inner Rings. A lineage with ancient gods. Their bloodlines specialized in consumption—not just of flesh, but of divine energy, law, and time.
Lux met his gaze.
"I challenge you."
Another silence.
The vampire boy raised a brow. "You've barely finished one fight."
"I've already seen this one," Lux replied, voice low. "A hundred times."
The vampire's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his aura. A thread of caution. His kind could sense the dangerous weight of fate around a person—and Lux… Lux felt like a calamity walking on two legs.
He stepped forward anyway.
"You'll regret it."
"I already have," Lux said.
And so, with no flourish, no ceremony, only the weight of two destinies colliding—
The second duel began.
⸻
The vampire moved first.
His figure vanished in a blur of afterimages, dozens of silhouettes scattering in every direction.
Lux didn't chase.
His divine perception stretched, and in his mind, threads of probability bloomed—each one showing a different version of the fight. The Codex of Fate pulsed beneath his skin. The Golden Crow within his dantian screamed with solar hunger.
He watched.
Then turned.
And caught the real vampire mid-strike, palm raised to block a blood-forged blade.
Sparks flew.
Flesh met divine metal.
Lux skidded back, golden boots carving twin grooves in the arena floor.
"You're fast," he said calmly. "But I've seen faster. In better worlds."
The vampire didn't answer.
He just surged forward again—this time his body flickered, dissolving into a mist of blood, then reforming behind Lux, dagger slashing in a crescent arc that tore the air open.
Lux twisted through space—literally.
Golden fatefire flared at his feet, and he stepped through a burn in reality, reappearing six meters above.
He raised his hand and used a technique from his previous live."Solar Seal: Second Layer."
A disc of gold expanded in the air behind him—wheels of radiance spinning like suns being born. The air pulsed with light so hot the arena stones began to melt.
But the vampire was already moving again—his hand carving symbols in the air with blood, invoking the Law of Blood Chains.
Chains of scarlet law curled upward from the floor, clawing toward Lux's body—binding fate, binding time, trying to lock him in place—
But Lux's crow screamed again.
And flames erupted from within him.
The arena vanished in white heat as Lux burned one second of time to break the law of stillness. The chains fell apart before they could touch him.
He blurred—reappearing beside the vampire mid-cast, palm glowing.
He didn't shout this time.
He whispered it.
"Space Collapse."
A ball of golden fire, concentrated and impossibly dense, detonated in his hand, sending both boys flying in opposite directions. Lux twisted mid-air, landed in a crouch, and skidded to a stop. The vampire hit the ground hard, blood spraying from his mouth.
The Star Children above the arena stood, some gasping, others pale.
The Crimson Thorn prodigy… was losing.
Not crushed, not destroyed—but cornered.
And worst of all—
Overwhelmed.
The vampire stood again, slower this time.
"Where… did you learn that technique?" he growled, wiping blood from his lips.
Lux looked down at his own burning hand.
The flames danced like living fate, coiling in symbols too ancient for the vampire to recognize. They weren't of this age.
"Somewhere you can never reach."
The vampire's expression darkened.
"I've walked through shadow realms, bathed in the blood of dragons, and trained under gods of my clan. But you are from the slums."
Lux tilted his head.
"Exactly. So why am I winning?"
The words stabbed deeper than the fire.
The vampire bared his fangs.
Then—he unleashed everything.
His body exploded in a storm of ancestral blood energy, forming a massive crimson sigil behind him — the image of a rose with ten thousand thorns, blooming from a coffin of moonlight.
Lux stepped back. Even with fatefire, he could feel the weight of that power.
This was his final move.
A blood domain.
"Begone," the vampire snarled.
The arena was drowned in crimson.
But Lux's expression remained calm.
He closed his eyes.
And within him, the Golden Crow flared, its wings stretching across the universe of his dantian.
It opened its third eye.
Lux's fate ignited like wildfire.
And then—
He burned a hole through reality again.
The audience saw it—a vertical flame tearing through the vampire's blood domain like a scar through heaven. Lux stepped out from within it, palm raised, eyes shining with ten thousand futures.
Then came the final strike.
"Solar Verdict."
The flames turned white.
Not gold. Not orange.
White.
So hot, so absolute, they didn't burn — they erased.
The blood domain shattered.
The rose sigil cracked.
The vampire's feet left the ground as the blast caught him in the chest — hurling him across the arena.
When he landed this time, he did not rise.
⸻
"I…"
He tried to speak.
Blood ran down his chin.
"I yield," he gasped.
And it was over.
Two fights.
Two victories.
Two children of heaven brought low.
And Lux… stood alone.