A/N
2 chapters combined into a 3k chap for better readability, enjoy!
Also I included a list of the Skybound runes that Ke Yin has access to in his inner world that he can use for the battle because I wasn't completely sure if I missed any so wanted to give you all the chance to remind me. Some runes are inscribed on his main body while others are inscribed in the inner world. If I forget any, just comment down below and I will add them into this chapter, thanks!
Chapter 796: Death Comes Singing
“What…what are you?”
I decided against answering Elder Sorrin’s question, because giving an enemy free information about what you are has never once ended well for anyone. So, I’d rather they all wonder what I was because wondering meant hesitation, and their hesitation was the only advantage I had right now.
Unfortunately for me, Elder Thorn didn’t think the way I did.
"He is the True Saint," Elder Thorn said proudly, making me sigh, "the one this world has been waiting on since before your Academy laid its first stone, Sorrin, since before the Blue Sun ever convinced your people that you were the chosen instrument of salvation."
Honestly, I should have expected that from him, and I can’t really blame him.
After all, the man had spent hundreds of years alone with this conviction, watching colleagues he'd once respected die believing in a lie, somewhere in all that isolation he must have dreamed about this moment, and now that it was happening, he couldn’t help but boast about it.
"The True Saint?" Elder Sorrin laughed, lowering his extended hand finally, though the blue light hadn't faded from his eyes at all. "Do you mean the Saint of the Golden Sun? There is no Golden Sun, Thorn. There hasn't been one for thousands of years. You've spent so long alone in your madness that you've started believing your own delusions."
The female elder beside him, the one I remembered from a past loop, Neira, snorted. "This is what centuries of isolation does to a mind," she said. "He's invented a village tale and convinced himself it's prophecy."
"Pathetic," spat the third elder, Dayen. "All this time we thought you were dangerous but you're just a sad old man worshipping the ghost of a sun."
If there was one thing that I had learned from my time in the Two Suns World was that you don’t go around insulting another man’s sun. Just like I expected, Elder Thorn's face went red and he clenched his jaw.
"I will kill you all for that blasphemy," he whispered through gritted teeth.
And with that, he disappeared.
One moment the elder was standing beside me on the grass, and the next he was directly in front of Elder Sorrin, they were close enough that their robes were touching.
Elder Thorn’s right arm was drawn back and wreathed in a golden light that solidified into a fist three times the size of his actual hand, translucent at the edges but solid enough at the core that I could feel the pressure radiating off it from where I stood.
Elder Sorrin's eyes went even wider than before and his hand moved in a blur, brushstrokes of calligraphy forming in the air faster than I could track, blue characters stacking on top of each other until they solidified into a hexagonal shield in front of his chest.
The golden fist connected with the shield and the entire Sacred Ring shuddered.
The shield held for as long as it took the sound to register, a deep concussive crack that I felt in my teeth, and then it shattered into hundreds of fragments of blue light that scattered outward like glass.
Elder Sorrin was thrown backward through the air, his body cutting a visible furrow through the atmosphere before he crashed into the treeline at the edge of the Sacred Ring with enough force to snap nine trees clean through their trunks.
"That," Elder Thorn said, lowering his arm and letting the golden light fade from his fist, "is what blasphemy earns you, you heretic."
The older two elders didn't waste time being shocked.
Neira must be a Rank 7 sculpturer because something out of solid blue light that thickened into a massive serpent made of compressed energy. As for Dayen, I could immediately tell he was a painter, his finger began painting directly onto the air, the strokes forming a wall of fire-colored light shaped like a charging bull.
Elder Thorn raised both hands and the golden light gathered around them, and when the serpent and the bull collided with him, the resulting explosion of conflicting energies canceled out in a flash of white light that left afterimages burned into my vision.
When the light cleared, the old man was still standing, robes scorched but otherwise untouched.
I didn't have time to be impressed, because that was the exact moment Sorrin reappeared behind Elder Thorn's blind side, having used the brief reprieve to circle wide and come at him from an angle his attention wasn't covering, and his hand moved through a series of strokes so fast they blurred together into a single motion.
The character that formed in the air glowed white-hot before it struck Elder Thorn square between the shoulder blades, and I watched the old man's entire frame jolt forward, his knees buckling for half a step before he caught himself, a visible tremor running through his whole body like something inside him had been forcibly interrupted mid-motion.
"You always were good with the quiet ones, Sorrin," Elder Thorn said through gritted teeth, recovering his footing mid-air.
"I learned from the best," Sorrin replied, already retreating to a safer distance, his composure cracking around the edges now, the casual mockery from earlier gone. He turned his head toward Neira without taking his eyes off Elder Thorn.
"Kill the Saintess," he said. "Now."
I felt my stomach drop before my mind had even finished processing the order since everything was all happening in the span of a few seconds just like most high ranked battles did.
Neira broke off from her exchange with Elder Thorn and shot toward Lady Laelyn like an arrow released from a bow.
I watched Laelyn's eyes go wide as she saw death coming down on her. There wasn’t anything I would be able to do to save her. Despite all the advantages I had, there was no way I could defend against a Rank 7’s peak attack.
Fortunately for us, Beric moved before she could get skewered
He stepped directly into Neira's path with his arm raised, and the tattoo beneath his ear flared white, and a shield of pure white-gold light snapped into existence around him just as Neira's strike connected.
The impact sent out a ring of compressed air that flattened grass in every direction and threw up a cloud of dirt and torn earth.
Neira staggered back, her hand pressed against the front of her own chest, her expression went from fury to shock. "That's not possible," she said, staring at Beric. "I’m Rank 7 and you're just a mortal soldier wielding a weapon you don’t understand, you should be dead right now."
"I get told that a lot," Beric said, and then he was moving, closing the distance between them in two long strides, his sword already drawn and releasing the same white-gold light that had powered his shield, and he brought it down in a diagonal slash aimed directly at her throat.
Neira barely got her arm up in time, a hastily formed bracer of solid light wrapping around her forearm, and even then, the strike connected hard enough that the bracer cracked and Beric's blade kept traveling, the edge passing close enough to her neck that I watched a thin line of blood well up along her collarbone where the very tip had grazed skin.
She threw herself backward, putting distance between them with a burst of energy beneath her feet, her hand pressed against the shallow wound, her breathing ragged.
"He nearly took my head off," she said, more to herself than to anyone listening.
I didn't have the luxury of watching how that fight continued, because Elder Sorrin gave out his next order. "You three," he said, his attention swinging toward Corwin, Bram, and Isara, "take the servant alive. Whatever he is, the Blue Sun wants him intact."
The three disciples finally stopped staring at the chaos around them and descended to face me.
Damn it, the math wasn't in our favor and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise just to make myself feel better about it.
Lady Laelyn was a Rank 1 Lightweaver, which meant one stray hit from anyone in this fight could end her permanently, and the only thing standing between her and that outcome right now was an old soldier with a borrowed tattoo and more loyalty than sense.
Elder Thorn was fighting two Rank 7s by himself, which sounded impressive until you remembered that even a Rank 7 with Golden Sun energy eventually runs out of energy and options against two opponents working in tandem.
Beric was locked into his own duel against an elder who outranked him by every conventional measure that mattered in this world. And I was standing in front of one Rank 6 Calligrapher and two Rank 5s, a Painter and a Singer.
I was a Stellar Realm cultivator from another world, Rank 4 in both Skybound and Lightweaver cultivation, and I carried the Golden Sun's energy in my inner world on top of all of that, but none of that mattered as much as it should have right now, because I didn't have access to my full arsenal.
All I had inscribed into my inner world at this exact stage of this loop were eight runes, and I ran through them quickly in my head like I always did before a fight.
Shroud, which could mask my red sun energy but came with a steep drain and weakened my other techniques while active, which meant that it was basically useless in this battle since I didn’t have the luxury to hide anything.
Soul Ward, which protected against spiritual intrusion, always a good thing to have. Hawk Eye let me read micro-expressions and anticipate movement but burned through mental focus fast.
Leaf Storm, razor-edged leaves I could control with my mind, versatile but limited by how much energy I was willing to spend keeping them sharp. Aegis Mark, a barrier that absorbed the bulk of incoming physical damage but only lasted thirty seconds.
Blink Step and Shockwave, which fused together to form Shockstep, my newest rune. While it wasn't nothing, it wasn't enough to make this an easy fight.
"Whatever tricks you're hiding," the male Rank 5 said, his hands already glowing with the early stages of a painted construct forming between his palms, "it doesn't matter. You're outnumbered, you're surrounded, and you're going to lose, so you should just save us the trouble and surrender."
"The elders are being controlled by the Blue Sun," I said. "I can save them, but I need to get to the tree."
The girl, the Singer, the one who'd introduced herself as Isara back when I'd known her in a previous loop she didn't remember, laughed at that.
"That's not happening," she said.
"She's right," the male painter, Bram, added immediately, his eyes hard. "Whatever you think is happening, whatever excuse you're cooking up, it's not going to work on us."
Corwin, the Rank 6 standing slightly apart from the other two, didn't say anything at first, and I watched a flash of doubt cross his eyes, his gaze flicking between the elders fighting Elder Thorn and back to me like he was trying to reconcile what his training told him with what he was actually witnessing.
"Corwin," I said, pushing into that crack while it was still open. "You can see something's wrong with them. You know it. Look at their eyes."
He hesitated, and for a moment I thought I might reach him, then his jaw tightened, and whatever crack had been there closed itself back up. "I'm sorry," he said, and he sounded like he actually meant it. "I have to trust the Blue Sun over a person I have never met before."
I sighed, because I hadn't really expected words to work against people who'd spent their entire lives being taught that questioning the Blue Sun was the first step toward heresy and death, but there was never any harm in trying. Sometimes a single sentence planted at the right moment grows into something useful three steps down the line, even if it doesn't bear fruit at the time.
"That was a cute attempt to get us to stand down," Isara said, taking a step forward, "but I think it's time you learned what we do to those who waste our time."
I didn't bother responding to that, because I've never been one for trading taunts in the middle of a fight. Talking is a tool, sometimes a useful one, but once the talking stops working you let your actions carry the rest of the conversation, and right now my actions needed to communicate something to these three before this fight spiraled out of my control.
If I tried to rush toward the Eldest Tree right now, in the middle of all of this, I'd be cut down within seconds of placing my palm against the bark, caught in the vulnerable window where the connection between my Genesis Seed and the tree was still forming and I had no defenses to spare.
What I actually needed to do, before anything else, was even the numbers, and the only way to do that quickly enough to matter was to take one of these three off the board before they fully understood what they were dealing with.
Right now, they thought I was a frightened servant boy with some unexplained tricks, that misconception wouldn't survive long, but for the next few seconds it was the most valuable weapon I had.
Isara opened her mouth and sang a beautiful melodious song.
"Break the bone, crack the will, Bend the air until it's still, Voice of blue, let silence reign, Strike him down and end his pain."
From her throat a visible wave of compressed blue sound rolled toward me.
I opened my own mouth and let the Lung Resonator do its work, channeling blue sun energy through the chamber Azure had helped me build into my Cerulean Vein, and I screamed back at her, a single raw note that came out far louder and uglier than anything she'd produced.
The two sound waves met in the middle of the gap between us and detonated against each other, a concussive boom that flattened grass in a wide circle and sent a visible ripple through the air.
Even though her note had been built by a Rank 5 Singer and overpowered mine in raw output, I'd never intended to win that exchange directly.
I'd already vanished using Shockstep the instant our attacks made contact.
I appeared between all three of them, none of them had time to register my arrival before the Impact Shock detonated, a ring of compressed force erupting outward from where I'd materialized.
It caught them all mid-stance and sent them flying in opposite directions, their bodies tumbling through the air with no control over their trajectory.
I followed through immediately, Leaf Storm already forming around my outstretched hand, dozens of razor edged leaves spinning into a tight, controlled blade as I threw it toward Isara while she was still airborne, still disoriented from the shockwave, with no footing beneath her to redirect or defend.
The leaves connected with her throat in a single tight cluster.
Her head separated cleanly and fell, and her body continued its arc through the air for another moment before crashing into the grass several meters away, lifeless before it even landed.
Bram and Corwin both managed to right themselves mid-flight, landing hard but on their feet, skidding back several meters with their hands already raised defensively, and the first thing either of them saw when they finished orienting themselves was Isara's head hitting the ground and rolling to a stop in the grass between us.
It kept rolling for a moment, slowed, and then stopped, her eyes still open, still wearing the same confident expression she'd had half a second before she died. I bet she hadn’t thought that would be the last song she ever sang.
Bram's face had gone pale, his whole body locked in place, and I could see the thought running through him as clearly as if he'd said it out loud, the realization that whatever had just happened to Isara could just as easily have happened to him since they were both Rank 5.
Corwin's eyes widened, tracking the faint red glow still lingering around my hand from the Leaf Storm technique.
"That's red sun energy," he said slowly. "You're... you're a Skybound?"
Bram shook his head violently, taking a step back, his hand pointing at me like an accusation alone might somehow undo what he'd just seen with his own eyes.
"No," he said. "He's not a Skybound. Look at him. Blue sun, red sun, and that golden light Thorn was using earlier. He's an abomination."
I wasn't surprised by either reaction, honestly. I'd used Golden Sun energy to shield myself from Sorrin's pull only minutes ago, then channeled blue sun energy through my Lung Resonator to counter Isara's song, and now I'd just demonstrated multiple Skybound runes to kill their friend right in front of them, so, of course their minds were scrambling to find a category that fit.
"You can call me a Lightweaver," I said, looking between the two of them. "You can call me a Skybound. You can call me an abomination if that's easier for you to swallow. None of those words change what I actually am, and none of them change what I'm here to do."
I let my gaze drift past them toward the Eldest Tree.
"What matters is that I save this world," I said. "And if I have to go through you to do it, then I'm sorry, but I will."