The Sovereign Chronicles novel Chapter 12

The sequence of savage, predatory strikes was executed with the clean, brutal efficiency of a gale ripping through autumn leaves—erupting without warning and concluding in the span of a single breath. Corin, the Veridian Acolyte, dragged Moria back over thirty feet to secure a safe distance. He leveled his Gilded Bronze Sword at the shadowy figure. The blade pulsed with an icy luminescence, and his aura sharpened into something lethal.

One dead. Two critically wounded. The metallic tang of fresh blood drifted through the forest canopy. The two downed Initiates lay groaning in the dirt, their bodies too broken to even crawl. Every desperate attempt to rise ended in another collapse.

The figure slowly straightened his posture in the gloom. His eyes were as cold as drawn steel, overflowing with killing intent. Wild arcs of lightning crackled across his form, illuminating his features.

"Kaelen? It's you?!" Moria was visibly shaken, completely unable to process the reality before her. She had personally tested Kaelen's strength before. Sure, he was feral, fighting like a rabid beast, but his actual power output had been roughly equal to her own. Tonight, he was an entirely different monster. Looking into those dead, frozen eyes sent a physical chill racing down her spine.

"You're no Phase Three Spirit Warrior!" Corin was equally appalled. The onslaught had been too precise, too ruthless, too fluid. It was as if Kaelen had drilled this exact sequence of murder a thousand times over. Every single movement was laced with unrelenting savagery.

Kaelen stood silently in the dark for a moment before taking a slow step back, retrieving his scattered Throwing Daggers from the dirt. "However you want to play this, I'm game. But understand this: if you don't put me in the ground tonight, I will slaughter every last one of you."

"Arrogant worm! You are nothing. You don't possess the right to bark at me." Corin's face twisted into a snarl. His Aether surged, and the Gilded Bronze Sword began to hum with a crisp, melodic vibration. Lethal sword-Aether bled from the steel, flooding the clearing with oppressive killing intent.

"Kaelen, you have lost your mind! Butchering your fellow disciples? The Azure Sky Sanctum will mount your head on a spike!" Moria finally snapped out of her shock. We haven't even laid a finger on you yet, and you have the audacity to ambush us?!

"Drop the self-righteous act. Don't think a pretty face gives you a free pass to play god. You want my life? You're completely out of your league."

"Stop wasting breath on him! Kill him! Gut the bastard!" The Dual-Blade Initiate struggled to lift his head from the dirt. His once-handsome face was now a mask of agony and pure hatred, glaring venomously at Kaelen in the dark.

"You dug your own grave, Servitor. Corin, do not let him escape." Moria urged the Veridian Acolyte forward. The sheer brutality Kaelen had just displayed made her feel a profound, instinctual threat.

"Corin, end him! What are you waiting for?!" The Dual-Blade Initiate suddenly scrambled upright, desperately trying to put distance between himself and Kaelen.

Without a word, Kaelen exploded off the mark, charging straight at the Dual-Blade Initiate.

The Initiate flinched violently. Abandoning all dignity and ignoring his shattered ribs, he practically crawled toward Corin, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Kill him! Kill him!"

"You dare overstep in my presence? Know your place." Corin intercepted with clinical precision. Moving like a phantom serpent, his speed was breathtaking. He positioned himself between Kaelen and the fleeing Initiate and thrust his sword forward. The blade instantly fractured into five distinct, shimmering afterimages. The technique was vicious and unpredictable, locking onto Kaelen's heart, shoulder, brow, stomach, and throat simultaneously. It was impossible to discern which blade was steel and which was merely lethal Aether.

Kaelen didn't dodge. He didn't even flinch. He met the assault head-on. In a fraction of a second, he reached over his shoulder and drew The Daevan Blade. A heavy, oppressive aura—like the weight of a collapsing mountain—erupted from his core. He swung. The sword-Aether boiled. Everyone present felt a freezing, visceral slash of Aether graze their skin, causing the hairs on their arms to stand on end.

Shhh-slik!

Kaelen and Corin blurred past each other. A spray of crimson painted the air.

Corin's strikes had found their mark, tearing three deep, perilous gashes across Kaelen's flesh.

But Kaelen's ancient broadsword had grazed right past Corin's throat. Kaelen's momentum didn't falter. His blade didn't waver. Completely ignoring his new wounds, he continued his charge. His target: The Dual-Blade Initiate!

The fleeing Initiate snapped his head back in terror. In his final moments, the razor edge of The Daevan Blade expanded rapidly in his pupils.

"No—"

The scream was abruptly severed as the heavy sword cleaved cleanly through his neck. His decapitated head launched into the air, rolling across the forest floor, his eyes bulging in frozen horror.

Dead silence. The dark forest was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. It felt as though even the wind had stopped breathing.

Corin, standing with his back to Kaelen, slowly reached up in disbelief to touch his own neck. Blood? Blood! It was a shallow cut, just a grazing of the flesh, but... he was a Phase Seven Spirit Warrior! How had a filthy Servitor managed to draw his blood?!

The remaining conscious Initiate shivered uncontrollably, dragging himself backward through the dirt. He looked at Kaelen not as a man, but as an apex predator off its leash.

Kaelen stood over the headless corpse. His face was pale, his clothes soaked through with his own blood. The stab wounds on his chest, shoulder, and abdomen were severe, bleeding profusely. Yet, his utterly stoic expression made him look more terrifying than ever.

"Corin! Corin!" Moria shrieked, snapping the Acolyte out of his daze. She summoned twin spheres of fire into her palms, her stance trembling as she prepared for a fight.

"Kaelen, no god can save you tonight." Corin was utterly enraged. Boiling with killing intent, he raised his sword and lunged at Kaelen, holding absolutely nothing back.

Kaelen clamped a hand over the worst wound on his chest. Without rushing, he took two measured steps backward, turned, and melted silently into the pitch-black forest.

"After him! Run him down! Do not let him get away!" Moria commanded the surviving Initiate.

The rugged Initiate glanced at the two corpses of his squadmates, gritted his teeth, forced himself up, and gave chase.

"Don't be afraid! He's bleeding out. He can't run forever."

"He only landed those hits through cheap ambushes. His actual Aether capacity is trash compared to ours."

"Encircle him. Execute on sight."

Moria and the others pursued relentlessly, shouting commands to bolster their own faltering courage.

Kaelen's lips were pressed into a thin white line. Clutching his hemorrhaging chest, he sprinted through the suffocating darkness of the mountain woods. To an observer, his injuries looked fatal. But Kaelen's tolerance for pain was inhuman. He could endure this. Over the past eight years, he had suffered torments far beyond a few stab wounds. He had survived worse; this was nothing but a flesh wound.

………………

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