The battlefield was trembling now, not with fear but with the weight of its own destruction. The Dragoons moved like a living storm, weaving between black claws and crushing limbs, each strike carving a path toward something greater—the cores. They knew if they failed, this ridge would fall, and with it the lands beyond.
Takayoshi's fist howled through the air, its edge glinting with raw divine chi. He struck the first lesser Demon God again and again, carving away chunks of its grotesque form. Arvalen, the crystal-bound War God, slammed his blade into the ground beside him, erupting a wall of jagged crystalline spikes that tore through the demon's side.
"Hold it there!" Takayoshi roared.
The Dragoons obeyed without hesitation. Vellmar charged first, his armored body a battering ram of sheer force, smashing into the demon's kneecap and forcing it to stagger. Selin appeared behind its head, silent and precise, driving a Sky Piercer: Celestial Thrust straight through its eye. Talia swooped overhead, planting Fire + Wind markers into its open wounds, detonating them with savage joy.
Arvalen's sword pulsed once—an explosion of crystal light—and Takayoshi followed through with a finishing arc. "Thunderclap: Skybreaker!" Lightning and flame fused into one devastating strike, collapsing the demon's chest inward.
The first lesser Demon God fell, its twisted body convulsing as its core fractured and dissolved into black ash.
"Next," Takayoshi growled, eyes burning as he turned to the second target.
The Dragoons were already there.
This time, the personal disciples of Alter took the lead, flanked by select squads. Rhed Velgroth cracked his knuckles, planting Earth + Flame markers beneath the demon's feet to hold it in place. Elira Mistshade flickered into shadows, dragging its attention to split its vision. Jaris and three other rune specialists set a synchronized pattern—Runic Chains of Ice + Gravity—forcing the demon's limbs to lock mid-motion.
"Now!" shouted Selin.
The 18 Dragoons surged forward, every one of them focusing as they had been trained, their movements harmonized like a single divine pulse.
"Demon God Killing Martial Arts – Fist of Ruin!"
The ground cracked as they struck—each blow timed to hit like a drumbeat of the heavens. A chain of follow-ups came instantly:
Void Fang Rend from Selin's reverse blade cut deep into its core shield.
Soulbreaker Dive from Rhed smashed the sternum, causing fissures to spread.
Graviton Sever by Talia and Elira forced the monster to collapse to its knees.
One after another, the Demon God Killing Martial Arts unfolded—each Dragoon executing a strike in a deadly sequence. By the time the 18th Dragoon's palm struck home, the air had ignited with layered resonance.
The demon's core shattered. A wail tore through the sky—a sound that burned itself into every soul within earshot. Then silence.
The second lesser Demon God fell. Its monstrous form crumbled into dust, the fragments scattering like burnt glass across the battlefield.
The celestial soldiers watching from the perimeter froze, their armor reflecting the dying light of the demon's corpse. Shock and awe rippled through their ranks.
"They… they just killed it," one whispered. "Mortal-born warriors… struck down a Demon God…"
Arvalen, still holding his crystal blade, stared at the Dragoons—his voice low and almost reverent.
"These aren't mortals anymore," he said. "They are what he forged. They are his blades."
Takayoshi simply smirked, halberd resting against his shoulder. "Hmph. That's why I like them."
The skies pulsed.
From the floating observatories of the Divine Realm to the high spires of Veyr'Zhalar, from the crystal towers of Seraveth to the last flame-beacons of Terravane—they watched.
Through seerstone networks, divine mirror-links, and celestial scrying glyphs, the battle below was broadcast to every council, throne, and sanctuary that dared to witness the frontline clash of gods.
And what they saw…
Was impossible.
On a field torn by war, where reality had begun to bend and bleed under the weight of divine fury, the Dragoons stood triumphant.
Two lesser Demon Gods—slain.
One brought down by the combined might of Takayoshi and Arvalen. The second? Cut apart and destroyed by eighteen mortal warriors moving in perfect synchronicity, each one wielding a piece of a martial art crafted to kill Demon Gods.
The moment their final strike landed—when the demon's core shattered and collapsed into burning ether—the Divine Realm trembled with applause.
In Celestia, the bells of the Sanctuary Choir rang in instinctive chorus.In Aetherreach, a line of dragonblooded priests stood in stunned silence, then dropped to one knee in prayer.In the war rooms of Seraveth, soldiers pounded their spears on the ground in thunderous rhythm.
The world cheered for the Dragoons.
Within the command observatory atop the floating citadel of the Divine Council, the 14 Commanders watched with mouths agape.
"…Was that… Soulbreaker Dive?" murmured Mira, eyes wide.
"No, no, that was Graviton Sever," Finn corrected, waving his hand too fast. "Wait—Talia used Heavenfall Rend in mid-air, didn't she?!"
"I lost count after the seventh strike," said Selene Virellia dryly, though her mouth twitched with a proud smile.
Blazebloom—formerly Commander Garran Flamecoil—grunted from his recliner. "You lot seeing this? We trained under a living legend, and here come the little hatchlings putting us to shame."
Darius leaned back in his chair. "I'm not ashamed. I'm retired from making sense of power creep."
Revyn Mistclaw scratched his chin. "Are we… obsolete?"
Sorei Windshaper laughed, tossing a grape into her mouth. "Obsolete? No. Slightly embarrassed? Absolutely."
Thorne Ironstride folded his arms. "I mean, if we all used Demon God Killing Martial Arts at the same time, maybe we could've killed one too…"
"Could we, though?" Arinelle added with a raised brow. "Really?"
Everyone went quiet.
"…No," Thorne admitted.
Selene sat in a crescent-backed throne beside the viewing crystal, watching the battlefield image flicker between burning ground and Dragoon formations reforming under command glyphs. The twins, nestled in her arms, giggled—though they could not understand what they saw, they seemed to laugh every time one of the commanders flailed in exaggerated frustration.
Finn leaned over with a grin. "I think the little one approves of Rhed's punch."
"No, that's a Mira giggle," Mira protested. "It happens every time I talk."
"Because you sound like you're still commanding," quipped Blazebloom.
The laughter carried, soft and easy, like the warm wind before a storm. Selene let it wash over her, hand gently stroking her son's hair as her daughter nestled closer to her chest. For the first time since the descent, her shoulders eased.
They were winning. At least, for now.
The tension did not vanish. Alter was still far away—his battle invisible beyond the veil of heaven, locked in a war of Creator Authority that shattered the sky itself.
But in this moment, for one breathless, golden pause, she smiled.
The field, though littered with ruin, breathed like a living organism—coated in blood, ash, and the flickering shimmer of dying resonance. Where once four Demon Gods stood in dominion, now two remained. The others had fallen. And with their fall, something shifted.
The third and fourth Demon Gods—brothers in origin, their forms carved of obsidian rib and blackened steam—glared across the ruined battlefield at the two craters where their kin had collapsed. Even they, in their madness and malice, understood.
They were prey now.
The twin monsters turned and fled in unison, tearing open the air behind them in twin streaks of shadowed propulsion, wings like broken cathedrals stretching wide to escape judgment.
Takayoshi's voice thundered, sharp as an order of execution.
"They run. So we follow. Dragoons—wings out. Formation Seraph's Hound. Hunt them."
Two full Dragoon divisions—nearly two hundred elite warriors—rallied behind him, their armor singing with energy as elemental markers burned into their limbs, feet, and blades. Runes flared across their armor, some glowing with lightning, others flickering with chained sigils of ice and gravity. The air behind them shattered into plumes of propulsion as they gave chase.
The lesser War God Arvalen, his body still radiating fragments of the last kill, followed without a word. His sword crackled in his hand, now curved and reshaped from contact with demon flesh. He nodded once at Takayoshi mid-flight, and together, they rose through the charred sky.
Behind them—the battlefield erupted.
The retreat of the remaining Demon Gods signaled a counterstrike from the abyssal ranks. Thousands of demons, awakened by the blood of slain divinity, surged forward like a tide of teeth and screaming will. Horned beasts with molten limbs, smoke-born assassins, and whispering horrors from the gaps between thought—all charged with renewed madness.
The celestial soldiers formed bulwarks at once.
Golden shields formed a lattice of divine light. Arcs of radiant flame tore through the front lines of demonic infantry. Mounted archons dove from above, launching crystal-tipped javelins that exploded on contact.
But the pressure grew.
Then came the Dragoons.
The remaining units, those not pursuing the gods, struck from the flanks. Rhed Velgroth and Elira Mistshade tore through formations like thunder and shadow incarnate. Talia Fenreith danced between air currents, her hands leaving trails of wind and fire markers that chained into explosions as demons drew too close. Vellmar's blade sang in close quarters, executing Sky Piercer: Zero Distance upon anything too large to kill cleanly.
Even exhausted, the Dragoons adapted.
Their strikes were more precise now. Their marker placements burned deeper. And behind every movement was the echo of what they'd just done: kill gods.
The demons broke against them—but did not stop.
The field was now a storm of fire, screams, and divine order.
And in the distance, past the smoke, past the ruptured ridgelines and shattered pillars of war—the chase continued.
Takayoshi raised his hand, pointing toward the fleeing gods. "There! Push them to the edge! End this!"
Dragoons surged past him like arrows of purpose. Arvalen moved ahead with explosive speed, his sword igniting from within. They chased the fleeing gods through broken ranges of shadowed rock and shattered divine crystal. The sky itself roared overhead, shaking under the faraway clash of higher gods.
But none of that mattered now.
Only the kill.
The thunder of wings had long faded into the upper skies.
With Takayoshi, Arvalen, and two Dragoon divisions in pursuit of the fleeing Demon Gods, only the remaining Dragoons and celestial soldiers stood between the demon horde and the heart of the mortal world.
And the demons knew it.
They surged now in greater number, drunk on hatred and desperation. Bellowing hounds with skeletal limbs and mouths that opened sideways charged alongside obsidian wyrms crackling with abyssal flame. Between them, gliding like vipers through the smoke, came the dreadspawn—assassins of the abyss, invisible until the moment they struck.
The Dragoons met them head-on.
Vellmar Dreadmoor's armor was cracked and bleeding from the seams, but his stance remained immovable. He planted both feet, gritted his teeth, and met a charging beast the size of a siege tower with a roar of his own.
"Zero Distance!"
His thrust detonated inside the demon's ribcage, and the monster erupted from within, raining black ichor in a thirty-foot radius.
Selin Varrow moved like a wraith through the chaos, blades drawn. He struck from behind—never seen, never heard—cutting down demon lieutenants before they could rally squads. Talia Fenreith rode windstreams between firebomb craters, dropping contact runes that chained into detonations behind enemy ranks.
Across the battlefield, celestial soldiers held the flanks. Their radiant shields shimmered with dented halos and fraying sigil-glow, but still they stood. Their battle chants rose again, strengthened by the Dragoons' presence.
Jaris Tenvahl launched chain-markers from across the ridges, locking down large demon clusters in brilliant sync with Elira Mistshade, who blinked through shadow to strike at cores, then vanish before retaliation. The two worked like a mirrored heartbeat—strike, vanish, lock, shatter.
A demon captain burst from the ranks and descended with blades dripping black fire, aiming to crush a formation of healers at the rear.
It didn't reach them.
Rhed Velgroth caught the beast mid-air with a flying hook, pivoted, and drove it into the ground hard enough to fracture the canyon floor. He stomped once—Fist of Ruin—and the demon's body shattered beneath his foot.
Cheers rose up from the celestial soldiers nearby.
"THE DRAGOONS HOLD!"
The cry spread like a signal fire, rippling through ranks of weary but defiant men and women. Bloodied, breathing hard, their limbs shaking—but still they stood. Behind their broken lines, countless lives still depended on this patch of ruined ground not giving way.
And the Dragoons refused to fall.
Every formation was tighter now. Every runic marker placed with discipline born of pain. Their motions had become rhythm, and rhythm had become steel. Each pair, each squad, each brother and sister in arms moved with one unspoken thought:
If we break… they all fall.
The tide began to slow. Not because the demons lacked numbers—but because they began to recognize something primal.
Fear.
Fear of mortals who had slain gods.
And yet… the battle would not end here.
The sky above remained fractured. The cries of gods still echoed across the high firmament, where Alter dueled the most terrible of foes. But below, upon the ash-wreathed fields of the mortal world, the Dragoons stood—not as students, not as soldiers, but as sovereign weapons forged by flame and discipline.
They were no longer waiting for rescue.
They had become the reason others were still alive.
The wind above the mortal world had no shape.
Only violence.
Through clouds torn apart by war and through updrafts blistered with heat lightning, two titanic shadows fled. Their wings flapped in frantic rhythm, propelling their grotesque forms further from the battlefield—Demon Gods once revered among their kind, now fleeing like wounded beasts.
The third and fourth lesser Demon Gods had seen enough.One of their brothers reduced to burning mist by Takayoshi's bare hands.The other annihilated by the unified will of eighteen mortal warriors, each striking in sequence with techniques forged to kill gods.
Fear was not foreign to them—but the clarity of death was.
And yet, even as the heavens seemed wide before them, even as they veered into higher air currents beyond mortal range, a voice—calm, merciless, divine—cracked like thunder behind them.
"You fled far enough."
Takayoshi appeared above them, without wings, without weapons—his robe flaring like storm banners, his hands gleaming with internal chi so dense it curved the air. His foot landed on a ripple of compressed gravity, and then he shot downward—a missile of raw martial will.
The Demon Gods shrieked in tandem, spinning in desperate formation. One raised a barrier of abyssal plates. The other fired twin beams of ruinlight from its eyes.
Takayoshi vanished between them.
He reappeared behind the first one, his fist already planted into its spine.
"Hellpulse Eruption."
The strike detonated inside the demon's armor like a furnace imploding.
Chunks of obsidian flesh blew apart as the god screamed, flailing. The other spun to retaliate, only to catch a broad slash of light to the chest—a single diagonal cut across its ribs.
Arvalen had arrived.
He held no words, only his sword—a massive cleaver-like blade of shimmering divine steel. His body burned with pressure: every movement laced with Creator Authority, every blow rippling with the aftermath of the first kill.
Takayoshi dove again.
"Heaven's Dismantle."
He struck three times.The first blow into the left rib.The second into the right shoulder.The third just below the throat—divine pressure points.
The demon's body locked up mid-air, unable to move. Arvalen didn't hesitate. He slashed horizontally and cleaved off an arm.
The second Demon God launched a volley of compressed void orbs from its torso-mouth in panic. Takayoshi weaved between them—barefoot on the sky, every motion a dance of calculated speed.
"Still slow," he said. "I see you now."
He drew a glowing spiral around his chest with both hands. Energy surged between his palms. Runes, old and forbidden, aligned down his forearms.
Then—
"Thunderclap: Tempest Strike."
He launched his fist forward—and the entire sky rang with a boom like a divine gong.
A shockwave of condensed lightning tore through the demon's ribs, flinging the god into a spin. At that moment, the Dragoon squads arrived—diving in perfect formation from above, flanking wide arcs.
Each squad focused on cutting down the demon's outer shell.
The dragoons now joined the pursuit. Dozens of them descended like fire-forged blades. Their markers activated mid-air, rippling in synchronized detonations.
Arvalen raised his sword.
"Push them down. Drive them to ground. Their fate was written the moment they ran."
Takayoshi said nothing.
But his knuckles glowed white with readiness. His eyes fixed on the crippled demon before him—whose wings now sputtered, whose frame now bled entropy like a dying star.
They would not reach another horizon.
The sky howled as if mourning what was to come.
Above the clouds—far beyond the reach of mortal breath and into the stratosphere torn by divine warfare—the battle had narrowed to a single arc of inevitability.
The third Demon God, bleeding void from half a dozen wounds, twisted in mid-air as Arvalen closed in. Each beat of the demon's shredded wings sent warping pulses across the air, reality groaning in protest with every frantic movement. Its howls no longer held command—they were shrieks of panic.
Dragoons swarmed like falcons in formation, each weaving trails of elemental markers that blazed and detonated around the Demon God's limbs. Their synchronized strikes did not aim to kill—but to pin.
Arvalen surged forward.
He hurled his blade not as a weapon, but as a divine signal. It spun in a full arc, then split into three—one aimed for each wing joint, the third at the spine. They struck simultaneously, slashing with force that tore sound itself. The Demon God reeled, its entire body locking in mid-air as if caught in a net of golden chains.
And that was all Takayoshi needed.
He was already above.
He dove like a comet—barehanded, cloaked in nothing but his own burning chi. His body shimmered with inscriptions along the skin, glowing in sequence from neck to heel. As he fell, the heavens themselves seemed to contract around him.
Eighteen markers pulsed across his limbs. Each one burned red-gold.
His voice was low, almost reverent. "Demon God Killing Martial Arts... final sequence."
The Dragoons, even in the chaos, turned upward to watch.
Fist of Ruin – His fist crushed into the demon's clavicle, cracking the shell wide open.Heaven-Piercer Step – A split-kick sent him flipping beneath the demon.Void Fang Rend – His clawed palm tore into its abdomen, dragging through abyssal veins.Bloodlash Howl – He spun midair, generating a shockwave that broke the surrounding clouds.Soulbreaker Dive – A sharp elbow drove into the sternum, targeting the spiritual core.
Five. Then ten. Then fifteen.
Each motion blurred with the next, impossibly fast, impossibly heavy. Chi howled. Bones cracked. Space warped around him. By the time the seventeenth strike, Sovereign Fang Collapse, landed—driving the Demon God downward in a meteor-slam—it was already over.
But Takayoshi didn't stop.
He dropped with it—slamming his hand directly into the creature's chest, where the ruined core still flickered.
"Strike Eighteen... Creator's Banishment."
The impact was silent.
No sound. No scream. Only light.
Then—A thunderclap that split the heavens.
The Demon God's chest caved inward. Its core cracked. Its mouth opened in frozen agony as time unraveled around the moment of its death. The being imploded, its form eaten inward by its own collapsed divinity.
By the time the wind returned, nothing remained but drifting shards of ruined essence, glinting as they fell like dark snow over the world below.
Takayoshi hovered, breathing slowly. His skin steamed, but he did not bleed.
Around him, the Dragoons screamed in triumph. Their aura blazed brighter now than ever before—wounded, exhausted, but exalted by the fall of yet another god.
But the fight was not yet over.
In the distance, the fourth Demon God clashed with the second Dragoon division—its howls echoing like thundercracks against a dying sky.
Takayoshi turned toward it. His knuckles popped. Arvalen flew beside him, retrieving his sword from a drifting island of cloud.
Their eyes locked.
"Let's finish this," Arvalen said.
And they surged forward—one a blade, the other a storm, descending upon the final demon in this skyborne hunt.
The thunder in the upper sky had not yet faded when a lone figure rose through the haze.
As Takayoshi and Arvalen turned toward the fourth Demon God—intent on ending the hunt with their own hands—a voice cut through the crackling air.
"Wait."
It was a Dragoon.
Armor cracked and blackened from earlier battle, one hand clutching his side, the other raised—not in salute, but in request.
Both divine warriors paused mid-hover, their auras humming.
The Dragoon floated just ahead of them now, eyes unwavering. "Let us finish this one."
Takayoshi narrowed his gaze. "You're injured."
"So is everyone still standing," the Dragoon replied, steady. "But this isn't about pride. This is our chance—our final trial."
Arvalen remained silent, arms crossed. "You realize what you're asking."
The Dragoon nodded. "This is why we were trained by the Sovereign. To face gods. We've learned your techniques, survived your expectations, and mastered your arts. If we don't test ourselves now… then when?"
Behind him, the second division of Dragoons, nearly a hundred strong, began ascending. Bruised. Burned. But united.
And behind them—the survivors from the first pursuit division arrived as well. Nineteen more rose into formation. Some had seen death. Some had delivered it. All of them shared one thing:
Resolve.
Arvalen looked to Takayoshi. The war monk simply exhaled.
"Very well. Show me what it means to be forged by him."
The Dragoon dipped his head. "You'll want to watch."
Then he turned and launched forward.
The Dragoons followed.
They surged in unison—two hundred strong, forming synchronized wave-lines across the sky. Each one drew a long katana, blades forged in the exact image of Starsever, humming with divine resonance and elemental trace signatures. The moment they unsheathed, their aura flared like a field of starlight igniting across the sky.
Elemental runes blazed across the blades. Markers ignited mid-flight—flames, frost, gravity, lightning—each leaving tracer arcs in the sky as formations tightened. The 200 katanas moved like a single system.
The demon roared, a spiral of corruption bursting from its core. It began to tear open reality again, healing itself by anchoring into future timelines and siphoning from parallel existences.
But the Dragoons were already in motion.
They didn't speak—only moved.
A singular thrust technique, taught to them by the Prime Sovereign himself.
Polished. Refined. Perfected.
"Sky Piercer."
The cry erupted through their ki and exploded into the sky.
Two hundred long katanas thrust forward as one. A web of golden arcs spiraled into a divine pattern.
From above, it looked like a spear-shaped bloom of starfire—unstoppable, synchronized.
The Demon God shrieked as its attempt to phase flickered—and failed.
The Sky Piercer lattice detonated through the collapsed spacetime folds, ripping apart its defenses and driving every edge into the core from all sides.
Time paused.
Then—shattered.
The demon's chest cavity fractured like volcanic glass, lines of divine rupture splitting outward as its heart-core—an obsidian sphere of chained code—began to hum and fissure.
Then it imploded.
The light vanished. So did the Demon God.
Gone before its corpse could even fall.
The battlefield was silent.
Then a single Dragoon—his sword raised—saluted the sky.
Another followed.
Soon, all two hundred sheathed their Starsever-forged katanas, raising fists skyward not in triumph, but in tribute—to the Sovereign who gave them purpose.
Takayoshi crossed his arms.
"He did more than train them."
Arvalen gave a low whistle. "He raised them into gods."
High above the mortal battlefield, in the suspended sanctum of the Divine Realm's scrying halls, reality shimmered with a dozen floating mirrors—each depicting a different front of the war below. But only one crystal dominated the center: a vast projection of the sky battle where the Dragoons had just slain a Demon God through synchronized Sky Piercer.
Light from the crystal pulsed once—then again—before dimming, signaling the demon's final dissolution.
For a breathless moment, no one moved.
Then the silence broke.
The celestial commanders standing beside the high gods erupted in murmurs, eyes wide in disbelief.
"That was no formation strike…" one whispered. "That was a coordinated execution."
"With no divine leading them. They moved as one."
Solien stood at the dais' edge, his hand gripping the arm of his silver throne. Though his expression remained calm, the veins of light spiraling beneath his skin pulsed brighter than before.
"They've reached synchronization not even our celestial legions can achieve."
"Those are mortals," another war god muttered under his breath. "They shouldn't be capable of such harmonized divine resonance."
Solien didn't reply at first. He merely watched the replay again—rewinding time with a flick of his finger. Two hundred long katanas drawn in perfect symmetry. Elemental runes flaring at identical intervals. Not a single thrust missed its mark.
A glint passed through his eyes, one that flickered somewhere between pride… and caution.
"They are no longer just mortals," he finally said. "They are his flame. And that flame has started to burn across the realms."
Far below, in the grand citadel of Veyr'Zhalar, the royal family of Drakareth stood in stunned silence within their own mirrored scrying hall.
Alyxthia's small hands were clenched tightly around the edge of the crystal rail. Her sapphire eyes shimmered with tears not from sorrow, but disbelief. "They did it... they really did it…"
Soryn stood nearby, arms folded, his face unreadable. But even his normally impassive mask wavered as he watched the image of the Dragoons re-sheathing their Starsever-forged katanas in unison.
King Vael'Zarion's eyes narrowed with sharp intensity. "So this is what you've shaped them into, Sovereign. Divine warfare—executed without a divine presence."
Queen Elanra exhaled slowly, voice calm but awed. "They didn't falter. Not even once. To face a god and kill it… as if it were destiny forged into motion."
Prince Kaelen, usually composed, had his mouth parted slightly. "I saw the formations taught by Soryn… but this is beyond imitation. They've evolved the technique."
Ryvar blinked at the spectacle, slumping back into a chair with a loud sigh. "They've literally stabbed a god out of existence. I don't know whether I'm inspired or terrified."
"And we're calling ourselves princes while these Dragoons are shattering deities," he muttered again.
A soft giggle echoed behind them.
Selene stood by the elevated couch, her long hair cascading like silk as she gently rocked the twins. Both infants—still too young to speak—clapped and babbled with wide smiles, as if they had felt the tremor through the veil. The divine mirror cast soft hues over their faces as their hands reached toward the light.
"Looks like they recognized it too," she said warmly.
The baby girl let out a squeal and grabbed at the air, while her brother blinked, reached one tiny hand outward, and then nestled into Selene's chest with a sleepy smile.
Alyxthia stepped closer, eyes softening. "They felt his legacy in them… just like we all did."
Soryn gave a faint nod. "It was never just a battle. It was a message."
The commanders watching from the rear of the hall—Blazebloom, Mira, Finn, Revyn, and the rest of the 14 Commanders—exchanged stunned looks.
Blazebloom, arms crossed, finally gave a low chuckle. "We're officially obsolete."
Mira elbowed him. "Speak for yourself. I can still outrun most of them."
Finn folded his arms and stared at the crystal. "Outrun, maybe. But synchronize like that?" He shook his head. "That was... beautiful."
Revyn, leaning against a pillar, smirked. "We spent years training under Takayoshi. And here comes a new generation that just surpassed us before their third campaign."
Sorei added dryly, "I think I just felt my ego crumble."
The room chuckled gently.
Even Selene laughed—genuinely—at their banter. Her eyes flicked from each Commander to the twins, then back to the fading projection.
"Let them laugh," she whispered to herself. "Let them feel joy. Even if just for this breath... before the next storm comes."
The light dimmed from the scrying crystal, but the echo of that divine moment remained etched in the hearts of all who had witnessed it.