Chapter 72: The Blades That Do Not Break
The firestorm parted—not by wind, not by spell, but by sheer will.
Jean stepped through the carnage, her aura burning white-gold, streaked with divine markings. Whitney walked at her side, his fur scorched and glimmering with remnants of starlight. Her breath was heavy, ragged. Not from fear, but from focus.
In her right hand, she held Solstice, the lightforged blade gifted by the goddess Celeste—a sword of divine clarity, radiant and swift.
In her left, she now drew Eclipsion.
The blade hummed like the heartbeat of the world. Ancient. Heavy. Beautiful. Forged by the First Patriarch, Martin Luther, to face the unfaceable. The blade that struck down Antares a thousand years ago. Black steel veined with flickering light, a paradox made into a weapon.
The runes on its surface awakened as Jean called its name.
> "Eclipsion," she whispered, "lend me the memory of the man who struck a god from the sky."
The sword answered—not with words, but with presence. Her body surged. Her aura rippled out in expanding arcs. She could feel Martin's echo in her bones, in her breath, in the very angle of her stance.
And then Jean ran, leaping skyward, both blades poised.
From a distant cliff, Ryan Magus watched.
His mother, Erin, had collapsed after defending a dozen soldiers from dragonfire. Sages fell around him. The battlefield's center burned with Antares' wrath. Even the Emissaries were faltering. Too much. Too soon.
But Ryan held something ancient too.
A gift? A theft? He no longer knew.
The False Codex. A pale imitation of a divine relic once housed in the Vault—a half-realized piece of the Primordial Codex, that Jean herself had once seen in full but never dared use. The real one spoke in forgotten tongues, in realities not meant for minds. But Ryan had read the fragment. Learned its core spell. The Word of Unmaking.
A reality-warping spell of immense instability. A desperate weapon. A last resort.
> "Forgive me, Jean," he whispered. "You're the light."
> "But I'll walk the madness if it gives us a chance."
He spoke the Word.
The world shuddered.
Sky split open above him like torn cloth. Dragons turned mid-flight, disoriented. For a moment, even Antares paused, his massive head tilting as the laws of creation bent in unnatural ways.
And Jean struck.
Solstice screamed in her grip, blinding bright. Eclipsion cut a dark, perfect arc—straight through the waves of flame. She landed on Antares' spine, dug her feet in, and drove both blades in deep.
Antares roared again—but this time, it was pain.
Not just pain. Recognition.
> "That sword..."
Jean stood between his wings, her aura flaring like a beacon.
> "Martin Luther sends his regards."
The tide had turned. But the cost—still unknown.
And the Codex's Word had only just begun unraveling.
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