The sun had dipped beyond the horizon, staining the sky in hues of dying gold and soft violet. As the last warmth faded, the moon began to climb by the time Kael and Lira left the Vyxen Council. The air hung heavy with tension whispers from the elders still echoing in Kael's mind. Its pale glow slowly washing over the stone path that led back to the Silverwood in Vyxen arclands.
Lira held Caelum close, gently rocking him.
"He's asleep… thank the stars."
Kael forced a soft smile. "We'll be home soon."
But the shadows around the ancient silverwood roots felt heavier.
Too heavy.
The path back to their home was quiet. Crickets hummed. Leaves rustled in a gentle night breeze. But Kael's instincts honed from years as a warrior tightened.
Something was wrong.
"A Whisper in the Dark"
Halfway down the forest trail, Kael abruptly stopped.
Lira froze. "Kael…?"
He raised a finger to his lips.
No wind.
No insects.
No sound.
The world had gone still.
"Behind me," he whispered.
Lira obeyed immediately, clutching Caelum.
Kael's hand instinctively drifted toward the sword at his hip, a weapon forged with Arcanum runic enchantments magic, sigils carved along the blade's core. As the moonlight touched it, faint glyphs along Kael's forearms began to glow beneath his skin, like molten lines waking from slumber.
Then Crack.
From between two stone houses, a figure slipped out silent as drifting ash.
Kael reacted instantly, pulling Lira back as a blade of compressed mana sliced down from above, carving into the earth where they had stood.
Kael's runes flared, golden-white and sharp.
His enchanted sword leapt into his hand in a single motion, shimmering with spellfire.
A twig snapped and burned in the trees.
Lira gasped. "They're trying to!"
"Move!" Kael ordered.
Lira's hands forming a shimmering sigil. A barrier of pale azure light rippled into existence around herself and Caelum, forming a protective dome. The runes on her wrists and collarbones glowed gently, responding to her fear and urgency.
A lot of masked figures stepped out from the treeline, cloaked in dark green, robes, but marked with an unfamiliar symbol carved over their hearts. Their faces were painted black to blend with the night.
Traitors.
Or… worse.
The tallest assassin spoke, voice cold and calm:
"Hand over the child, Kael Arctis."
Kael's grip tightened on his sword. "You dare attack a B ranked warrior? In our own lands?"
the assassin replied. "The infant is need to die."
Lira stepped back, shielding Caelum with her Magic
Her voice trembled, but her eyes burned with fury:
"You will not touch my son."
"The Ambush"
The assassins moved first.
Blades glinted with mana.
Shadows lunged.
The ground hissed as spell sigils lit up.
Kael pushed Lira behind a thick tree, drawing the attackers toward himself.
"Run if you have to!" he shouted.
"I'm not leaving you!" LIra cried back.
The assassins struck as one.
Kael shifted his stance, the glyphs along his arms and torso burning brighter. His fighting style Runeblade Aegis melded swordsmanship with explosive rune-burst magic. Each breath he took made the runes pulse like a heartbeat.
Kael parried the first blow steel clashing with mana.
The second attacker fired a burst of wind that sliced toward his side.
The third vanished entirely, a shadow flicker technique used only by high(A) ranked Arcanum warriors.
Kael blocked two attacks, but the other's appeared behind Lira.
The assassin's dagger raised
"NO!" Kael roared, mana bursting from his legs as he charged
But before the blade could fall…
The forest dimmed.
Just for a heartbeat.
A strange pulse rippled outward like a soft breath quiet, colorless, and cold.
The assassin froze mid-swing, stumbling as if his mana had been drained.
"What!? My energy!"
Lira gasped as Caelum's eyes opened, glowing faintly with a soft gray-violet haze.
Another pulse.
The assassins staggered back, losing balance, their mana threads unraveling.
Kael seized the opening.
He moved with deadly precision his blade sweeping the legs of one attacker, striking the wrist of another, and knocking the third unconscious with a reinforced strike to the chest.
Within seconds…
The forest fell silent again.
The assassins lay defeated alive, but powerless.
Lira clutched Caelum, tears in her eyes. "He… he protected us…"
Kael knelt beside her, shock mixing with fear and awe. "No mana core… no training… and yet he instinctively used that power again."
Caelum blinked up at them, the gray-violet glow fading back into ordinary baby yellow eyes.
From every shadowed alley, more masked figures emerged twice, maybe thrice their original number. Their blades gleamed with poison sigils, their eyes cold behind their masks.
Lira swallowed hard.
"Kael… there are too many."
Kael planted his feet, raising his sword once more. The runes along his body glowed fiercely… but dimmer than before.
The assassins advanced.
Kael burst forward first, delivering a sweeping arc of rune-empowered light that forced three assassins back. But fatigue dragged at his limbs, each strike heavier, slower.
One assassin slipped past Kael's guard.
Another struck Lira's barrier, cracking it.
A third raised his blade toward Caelum And then everything changed.
A deep hum rippled through the air.
A circle of light formed behind the assassins silent, precise, ancient.
From that circle, a man stepped out.
He wore a long black robe trimmed with pale silver, his hood shadowing his face. No crest, no symbol only an aura that pressed on the world like a quiet storm.
He lifted a hand.
Reality rippled.
Dozens of assassins were blown backward as if gravity itself had bowed before him.
Kael stared, stunned.
Lira froze mid-breath.
The robed man spoke softly, voice calm yet heavy with power.
"Enough."
The remaining assassins surged toward him in panic.
He didn't move. He merely traced a sigil in the air a single stroke of shimmering light
And the sigil exploded outward into a silent wave, knocking every assassin unconscious without leaving a single cut behind. In less than ten seconds, the battlefield fell still.
Kael tightened his grip on his sword.
"Who are you?"
The stranger lowered his hood just enough for his eyes-silver, runic, unreadable to meet theirs.
"A friend."
He walked toward Lira, kneeling slightly to examine Caelum.
His expression shifted subtle, but unmistakably tense.
"He must not stay here," the man murmured.
"Your Place no longer safe for him. Or for either of you."
Lira stared at him anxiously.
"Then what do we do? Where can we go?"
The stranger extended a hand toward them, forming another circle of shifting light.
"A place hidden from all sight. A place even your elders cannot reach."
Kael hesitated, glancing at the unconscious assassins around them.
"Why help us?"
The man's eyes softened, l not with warmth, but with something like inevitability.
"Because your son is not meant to die tonight."
He stepped back and gestured toward the glowing portal.
"Come. Your time in this land has ended."
Kael sheathed his sword.
Lira tightened her hold on Caelum.
With one last look at the moonlit street their home now stained with betrayal they stepped into the light.
The portal closed behind them. And swallowed the last trace of their escape.