The First Imperial Gate of the Capital City was known as the Dragon's Teeth—a massive, three-hundred-foot wall of solid, cold-rolled sky-iron built directly into the throat of the valley. It was designed to repel armies, dragons, and rogue summoners alike. Giant, steam-driven ballistas lined the parapets, their tips dripping with a glowing, anti-mana poison meant to pierce the hides of Platinum-tier monsters before they could even reach the threshold.
Behind the battlements stood five hundred soldiers of the Imperial Shield Vanguard, their heavy iron pavises locked together in a tight defensive formation. At their center stood Commander Brandon, a Rank 22 veteran whose deck was renowned for its unbreakable defensive synchronicity.
"Keep the barriers up!" Brandon bellowed, his voice amplified by the mana-arrays built into his helmet. "The scouts in the valley were wiped out in seconds. We are not dealing with a normal tamer. Whatever came out of that pit is a high-density anomaly!"
Down in the dark plains, a single figure walked through the morning mist.
Jeather's footsteps left no sound, but the tall grass withered and curled away from his boots as he approached. His tattered under-world garments fluttered in the cold wind, revealing the silver-threaded lines of the Silver-Thread Spider pulsing beneath his skin. The Sovereign Deck hovered in a slow, precise orbit around his left hand, the cards whispering to each other through the synchronized Hive-Link he had taken from the Spore-Mother.
"They've reinforced the gate with an anti-gravitational anchor," Jeather calculated, his eyes tracking the blue ley-lines glowing across the sky-iron. "They think they can keep me from pinning them down."
"Jett, let me shatter it!" Saxum's voice boomed within his mind, the little Golem now a giant of brass and titanium. "The sky-iron on that wall looks incredibly crunchy. It'll make great plating for the Hound!"
"Patience, Saxum," Jeather murmured. "We don't just break the wall. We use it to teach them a lesson about gravity."
"Target in range!" a spotter on the wall yelled. "Fire!"
Ten massive ballista bolts erupted from the parapets, their anti-mana tips tearing through the air with a deafening screech. They were aimed to pin Jeather to the earth, to neutralize his mana-veins before he could draw a single card.
Jeather didn't run. He didn't even lift his hands.
"Synthesis: Reflective Aegis."
He didn't summon the Mirror-King into the physical plane. Instead, he pulled the King's trait directly into his own aura. A shimmering, multifaceted barrier of prismatic light snapped into existence an inch from his skin.
The ten ballista bolts hit the barrier simultaneously. The sound wasn't an explosion; it was the high-pitched ring of a glass tuning fork. The anti-mana poison hissed against the light, but the kinetic force of the massive projectiles was instantly absorbed into Jeather's internal 'buffer.'
Commander Brandon's eyes widened behind his visor. "The bolts... they didn't pierce? They just stopped?!"
"Redistribute: Multi-Vector."
Jeather's eyes flashed with a blinding prismatic fire. The ten ballista bolts didn't just fall; they reversed their trajectory, flying back up toward the battlements at three times their original speed, propelled by the stored kinetic energy of the Mirror-King's entropy.
The bolts slammed into the ballista emplacements, shattering the massive wooden structures into splinters and throwing the siege crews from the walls.
"Formations! Lock the shields!" Brandon screamed, realizing the level of threat they were facing. "Summon the Aegis-Drakes!
Now!"
Inside the soul-realm, Jeather was already preparing the final blow. He didn't want a prolonged siege; he wanted a statement that Kael Dravenhart would hear in the central palace.
"Saxum, channel the World-Cracker Centipede's core through the Jungle King Gorilla," Jeather commanded. "Fray the frequency. I want the wall to turn to sand."
"Live-Forge initiated!" Saxum shouted, slamming his mercury-iron hands into the crucible.
The Jungle King Gorilla let out a low, terrifying rumble as the titanium segments of the legendary centipede fused with his brass-plated muscles. His knuckles began to vibrate with a high-frequency hum that turned the surrounding air into a blurry distortion.
The Void-Sovereign Hound and the Obsidian Wraith-Lord stood by, their shadows blending into a massive, multi-headed silhouette that paced the borders of Jeather's mind, waiting to slip through the cracks of the physical world.
"Let's breach," Jeather said.
Jeather stepped to the base of the three-hundred-foot sky-iron gate. The Imperial Shield Vanguard looked down from the parapets, their shields locked, their remaining summons—a dozen armored Aegis-Drakes—snarling as they breathed protective walls of golden mana.
Jeather placed his right palm against the cold metal of the gate.
"Manifest: Molecular Vibration."
He didn't throw a card. He funneled the World-Cracker's legendary trait directly through his arm into the structure of the wall itself.
The sky-iron didn't buckle; it began to sing. A low, bass frequency vibrated through the valley, so intense that the armor of the soldiers at the top of the wall began to rattle and shake. The molecular bonds holding the sky-iron together were being violently unraveled by the high-frequency oscillation.
Within three seconds, the three-hundred-foot gate didn't fall—it liquefied into a fine, gray metallic dust that poured into the valley like an avalanche of sand.
The defensive walls were gone. The Dragon's Teeth had been brushed away like a spiderweb.
Commander Brandon and his five hundred soldiers fell from the collapsing battlements, tumbling into the dust. The Aegis-Drakes tried to fly, but Jeather used the Void-Stalker Hydra's gravitational maw to drop the local air pressure, grounding the drakes instantly.
Jeather walked through the cloud of gray dust, his silver scars glowing brightly against the morning sun. He stood over Commander Brandon, who was gasping for air, his legendary armor cracked and useless.
"Who... what are you?" Brandon whispered, his hands trembling as he looked at the young man who had just erased the empire's greatest fortification with a single touch.
Jeather didn't answer with his name. He held up a blank Void-Steel Card, the violet vortex already spinning at its center as it targeted the fallen Aegis-Drakes.
The card flashed, and the souls of the drakes were dragged into his deck, their golden defense traits instantly siphoned to the forge.
[Capture Successful: 12 Aegis-Drakes (High-Gold)]
[First Imperial Gate: Breached]
Jeather looked past the ruined valley toward the Second Gate, his march continuing without a single moment of hesitation. The Capital was wide open, and the sovereign was moving in.