Valerius felt the familiar, cold hum vibrating in his marrow, a sensation he had engineered into the very foundations of this city. But today, the frequency was jagged. It was the sound of glass screaming before it shattered.
He stood at the head of the circle, his eyes locked on the weeping mask of the woman he had once called a daughter. To the rest of the world, she was a Supreme, a divine engine of light and law.
To him, she was a catastrophic error in his own design – a masterpiece that had rotted from the inside out because he hadn't had the courage to let the sun set three hundred years ago.
'I am the smartest man in the whole Kingdom of Glass!', he thought, a deserved ego and confidence lacing it, his mind already spinning through ten thousand variables a second, 'Yet, I have never been more of a fool.'
The power radiating from Halesia was staggering. Even in her degraded, fractured state, her presence was a physical weight that made his Transcendental core feel like a guttering candle.
The difference in their strength wasn't a gap; it was an abyss.
Beside him, he felt a sudden, sharp flare of violet light. He glanced sideways, and for a moment, his breath hitched.
Asteria – his 'favourite toy,' the little coincidence from the mines who shouldn't have even survived the first day.
She wasn't just standing; she was leveling the starlight of the jian at the throat of a Goddess. Her hands were steady, though her face was pale. She was a mortal, a girl who had only just learned how to breathe air, pointing a weapon of end-times at a Supreme.
It was the most beautiful, suicidal thing Valerius had ever seen.
"Asteria," he said, his voice dropping into a low, commanding frequency that vibrated through the floorboards. "Go. Now."
She didn't move. Her eyes remained locked on the mask.
"This is not your fight, little rat," Valerius snapped, the urgency finally cracking his polished veneer. "The Lords and I will hold this. Your job is the people. Drag them out if you have to. Break their trances. Get them as far from this altar as the walls allow. If we fight here even I am not sure what would come of them."
He saw the hesitation in her eyes, the stubbornness that made her such a fascinating variable.
"Go!" he roared, snapping his fingers. A localized fold erupted behind her, a forceful gust of air intended to shove her toward the nave. "I'll keep the Queen busy. I'm quite good at being a distraction."
Asteria took one last look at him – look that held more understanding than he was comfortable with – and then she turned, her boots pounding against the glass as she sprinted toward the first row of entranced citizens.
Valerius turned back to Halesia.
"Now then, Your Majesty," he purred, though his heart was hammering a frantic rhythm. "Shall we discuss the terms of your retirement?"
Valerius stood at the center of the storm, his long, elegant coat tattered and stained with the silver-red of his own blood. He didn't use the grand, sweeping gestures of the other Lords. He didn't summon fire or call down lightning. Instead, a pale, intangible aura flickered around his hands – a distortion in the air that seemed to pull at the very light of the room. It wasn't a physical blade, but a manifestation of his intent, the deadliest type of weapon – one that attacks the victims' soul.
Across from him, Halesia moved like a ghost caught in a whirlwind.
She lunged. The movement was a blur of white silk and indigo shadow. Valerius met her halfway, his hands moving in a blur of defensive parries. Every time his palm struck her skin, he wasn't hitting flesh; he was striking the metaphysical anchor of her being. He could feel her mind – a screaming labyrinth of centuries of repressed grief that encompassed her blows.
But he was losing – badly.
Every strike he landed was met with an invisible, crushing pressure. It was an absolute wall of force that emanated from her skin – 'Will. Of course...' – it was the divine right of a Supreme, a literal command to the universe that she was untouchable. No matter how much he sharpened his edge, he couldn't pierce that final, shimmering barrier.
He bared his teeth in a snarl as he was knocked back by a casual flick of her wrist. '...What am I supposed to do here?!'
He skidded across the mirrored floor, his boots carving deep furrows in the glass. He felt his ribs groan, the integrity of his transcendent body reaching its limit.
Halesia stalked toward him, her steps erratic, her head tilting with a sickening click. Her own willpower was faltering, flickering like a dying lamp as the mask ate away at her sanity, but even the fractured will from a God was enough to grind a man to dust.
"You... traitor," she hissed, the voice coming from the mask's weeping mouth.
"I am but a lowly servant, Halesia," Valerius gasped, pushing himself up. "I'm just doing my duty.."
He threw himself back into the fray. The combat was a brutal, high-velocity dance. They traded blows that would have leveled city blocks, the impacts ringing out like the tolling of a funeral bell. Valerius was a master of efficiency, his every move designed to bypass her strength and strike at her fraying focus, but she was an ocean of power. He was drowning in her presence.
Then, through the haze of indigo light and his own mounting exhaustion, he saw her.
Asteria was a shadow moving through the pews. She wasn't fighting people – no. She was fighting the room itself.
The floor of the Cathedral was inlaid with glowing stones – the physical anchors of Halesia's domain over the district. To anyone else, those stones were indestructible, hardened by divine decree. But Asteria held the jian, and the blade was reacting to the stones with a predatory hunger.
She swung the blade downward, the star-forged metal singing a high, clear note. When it struck the glowing stones, they shattered – no; they yielded. It was as if the sword was a key designed specifically to unlock the prison of the Queen's domain.
With every stone she crushed, the trance over a dozen citizens snapped. They fell to the floor, gasping and weeping as their minds were returned to them, and she moved among them like a dark angel, herding them toward the exits with a frantic, desperate speed.
'That sword...' Valerius thought, narrowly dodging a strike that took a chunk out of a marble pillar behind him.
He turned his focus back to the Queen, he needed to keep her eyes on him. He needed to be the only thing she hated.
"Look at me, Halesia!" he roared.
He lunged, his hands glowing with a terrifying, pale intensity. He struck the invisible wall around her again and again, the vibration traveling up his arms and rattling his skull. He saw her flinch. For the first time, her movements were heavy. Her will was a storm, but a storm without a center. The mask was dragging her deeper into the dream, and every step she took seemed to require a monumental effort.
They traded a final, devastating exchange. Halesia's crystalline claws tore through Valerius's shoulder, while his hand slammed into her chest, his intent finally biting into the edge of her soul.
The impact threw them both apart.
Valerius hit the ground hard, his vision swimming. He tasted iron and felt the cold seep of the slumber entering his wounds. He struggled to his knees, his breath a ragged, wet whistle in his throat.
Across the ruined dais, Halesia stood hunched, her mask weeping a river of light. She looked like a broken doll, her silk dress tattered and stained.
And then, they both froze.
The fog in the center of the room cleared for a heartbeat.
Asteria had reached the altar. The same altar she stole the kingdom's power from, the same altar the Sovereign's Spark used to lay within.
She stood at the very heart of the kingdom's power, her blade held low at her side. The altar – massive block of unpolished glass that used to pulse with the stolen heat of the Sun – was inches away.
She didn't look at Valerius. She didn't look at the fleeing crowds. Her eyes were fixed on the black stone, her hand reaching out, fingers splayed.
"No," Halesia whispered, the sound was a low, guttural growl that shook the very foundations of the Cathedral.
The Queen's faltering will suddenly snapped back into a singular, murderous focus. The mask exploded with a blinding radiance. The erratic movements vanished, replaced by the terrifying, predatory grace of a Supreme.
She didn't look at Valerius. She didn't care about her lords.
Halesia lunged toward the altar, her body a streak of white and gold, her hand outstretched to crush the girl who dared to touch her throne.
"ASTERIA!" Valerius screamed, but he was too far. He was broken, his strength spent, his body refusing to move.
Asteria didn't flinch. As the shadow of the Queen fell over her, as the crushing weight of a Goddess's will descended to snuff her out, the rat from the mines simply closed her eyes.
Her palm touched the cold glass of the altar.
The world stopped.
The subjects within the Cathedral froze. The transcendent lords which were part of this endeavour stared at the center dais of the Cathedral where Asteria stood.
Halesia, too, froze in place.
"Don't take them away from me..." The ragged Queen sobbed, choking on her own breaths. "Please... I can't lose them, not today..."