Bloodline: Sovereign's Awakening
Chapter 39: When Radiance Breads Ruin IV

Chapter 39: When Radiance Breads Ruin IV

The alleys whispered with dread. Hollow yet suffocating in their silence. Shadows clung to the walls like festering wounds, the brick slick with the creeping moisture of corruption.

Overhead, the sky had soured to a deep bruise, its once-pristine vastness choked by the roiling miasma bleeding from the ruined Tala residence.

The scent of decay curdled in the air—foul, acrid, and thick enough to taste. It coated the tongue like spoiled meat left to rot under a dying sun.

Thunder continued rumbling. A sound not born of the heavens, but something far worse, like ribs breaking under unseen weight and voices screaming through split flesh. It came in waves, rattling through the broken district, seeping into bone and marrow. The echoes stretched, distorted, and warped into something unnatural.

Virelio stood at the edge of the Gilded Star Castle. His chest rose and fell in measured breath, but fatigue gnawed at him like a dull, rusted blade. His hands, once steady as steel, quivered at the edges—not from fear, but from the strain of continuous use of power. He had done all he could. The central castle already housed those who needed saving.

The rest...

He did not look at them.

They corrupted.

Obscene, incomplete movements twisted their bodies, mocking what they once were. Their mouths had split into grotesque maws, lips torn away to reveal jagged fangs that jutted in every direction. Their hands had elongated, fingers tapering into curved talons, each quivering as though sensing unseen prey. And then there were the threads—writhing, worm-like filaments of decay, coiling around their limbs, burrowing into their flesh-like parasitic veins. Some twitched erratically. Others shuddered in place, their heads lolling to one side as if listening.

The answer came swiftly.

A sound both wet and gurgling, like something swallowing itself from within.

Virelio did not wait. His fingers moved, weaving through the air with effortless precision. His threads formed in the surrounding space, luminescent and whisper-thin, twining like celestial silk. A single breath, a single shift, and he would be gone—pulled from the stained ground, back to the Celestial Seal Castle.

But something was wrong.

The threads did not meet.

He felt them coil around him, light as air, but their ends unraveled before they could knit together. The strands frayed, twisting into nothingness, dissolving into the ether-like mist beneath the rising sun.

Virelio’s heart clenched.

Again.

He wove the pattern once more, tracing the sacred lattice of translocation, but the moment the threads reached completion, they broke. Not severed, but corrupted. They turned brittle, disintegrating as if devoured by an unseen force.

The malice in the air pulsed and grinned with a satisfied look.

He gritted his teeth, his pulse hammering against his ribs. The corruption was too thick, its presence clinging to him like a second skin, weighing him down, bleeding into the fabric of his power. The corrupted were changing and transforming into savage creatures. After dealing with and observing Virelio for a while, the Sovereign Wraith learned to counter his ability and prevent him from leaving by distorting the surrounding space widely.

Another sound.

This time, a crackling wail—a high-pitched, distorted thing that scraped against the air like a serrated edge. The corrupted figures twitched violently at the noise, their bodies jerking like puppets caught in tangled strings.

Then they moved.

The streets, once empty, came alive with skittering limbs and dragging flesh. The corrupted beings lunged, their movements erratic yet horrifyingly precise. Their mouths split wider, unhinging as they let out shrieks that rippled through the air, reverberating against the walls.

Virelio’s breath came sharply.

If he couldn’t leave, he had no choice but to carve his way out.

The Standby Weaver Guards had formed a blazing cordon around the Tala residence, their enchanted threads pulsing with elemental charge, coiling like storm-laced rivers in the air. Fire-imbued filaments crackled overhead, forming shimmering barriers interwoven with technological reinforcement as ethereal Wards activated and gleamed like mirrored obsidian, each layer pulsating with defensive algorithms and infused power.

From above the city’s council tower, General Eli watched with an unreadable expression, his cloak’s woven sigils responding to the rising malice. His eyes narrowed as he assessed the battle’s flow; the Sovereign Wraith’s corruption was intensifying and warping the very air with a malignant presence spreading slowly outside the Tala domain.

"This is not just residual malice," he murmured into the weave-comm link, his voice transmitted across the guard’s network. "It’s reacting. If it adapts any further... we may not hold."

Platoon Ten, stationed on the southern perimeter, braced as the next wave of corrupted emerged.

Spiral Adept Durias, his reinforced gauntlets humming with fiery glyphs, stood at the front. The twin sigil brands on his forearms pulsed. He was the anchor of his squad and his command’s absolute.

Release the first volley! Keep the elemental weave sustained! His troops immediately followed his command.

Warped Artisan Elhara, standing behind a reinforced barricade, lifted her hands, and then her thread conduits whirred to life. With a sharp motion, she wove a crimson net of volatile energy, a living mesh of searing embers reinforced with conductive resonance. The very air trembled as she cast it forward. A few meters from her right, Warped Artisan Riego, the fastest in the platoon, darted to the left, firing a barrage of ether-woven arrows, their flaming tips piercing through the mist, illuminating the field. Then Threadbinder Jeno, stationed near the second line, jumped and suspended in the air, floated and descended like weightless fabric, raised a volley cannon—a weapon fused with thread-channeling conduits—and unleashed a scatter burst of explosive projectiles, their runed surfaces detonating mid-air to incinerate anything in their wake.

From a distance, like a shadow darting from corner to corner, Threadbinder Corin, the squad’s forward scout, had activated his Phase Weave, darting through the shifting gaps in reality to relay enemy movements to the back line. And then it emerged.

A corrupted human, its flesh stitched and twisted, veins turned to writhing black filaments, its form hunched as if tangled in its own cursed body. The transformation had lengthened its jaw, splitting its mouth into a shattered, tooth-laden grin, while eel-like threads slithered across its face. Its eyes were nothing but empty, sinking voids, swallowing the firelight without reflection.

Behind it, the lesser monstrosities of skeletal abominations with sinewy limbs, limp torsos dragging entrail-thick threads, and disembodied arms writhing like pale centipedes surged forward, throwing themselves against the blazing barriers.

The ethereal barricades held for a moment.

Then, like diseased sinew resisting amputation, the corrupted filaments lashed at the shield, searing into it like an infestation burrowing into flesh. The barrier fractured, cracks spider webbing outward as it resisted the shock and then slowly regenerated. The technology-enhanced barrier automatically starts weaving itself together and pulsing with renewed integrity as backup formations kick in.

Yet some creatures still broke through.

"Reinforcements on the second perimeter, now!" Durias barked, shifting his stance.

Two corrupted humans had breached the line, and one was lunging straight at Elhara.

She didn’t flinch. With a flick of her wrist, the ember-thread net she had prepared constricted, its searing cords wrapping around the creature’s throat, burning deep into corrupted flesh. It thrashed, hissing, its own darkened tendrils trying to unravel the bindings, but it was already incinerating from the inside out.

Riego aimed at the second breach, a skittering, multi-limbed horror with threaded spines coiling like a centipede’s maw. His flame bolts struck true, piercing through its core, but it continued forward, shrieking as half of its form burned away.

"Jeno, finish it!" Durias commanded.

Jeno then fired his concussive round of thread-bound projectiles lined with compressed ether-blast sigils. It collided with the monster’s remaining body and detonated, sending charred limbs flying in all directions before it dissipated like mist.

The battle wasn’t slowing down.

From beyond the oozing fog, the Sovereign Wraith’s influence thickened, distorting the battlefield. The crimson-lit sky darkened further, and the ground trembled as its unseen will stretched further beyond the Tala domain.

Durias grimaced, his flaming threads coiling around his fists, preparing for the next onslaught.

"We hold this line," he muttered, his threads blazing, "or we burn with it."

A resounding boom split the air within the Tala Domain from the eastern corner.

Virelio wove himself into motion, his body dispersing like mist, reforming in bursts of ethereal flickers. His every movement was a dance of survival and a blur of weaving silver, each thread shifting to counter the storm of abyssal strikes lashing toward him.

The Sovereign Wraith descended upon him, an amorphous void bound together by writhing, fragmented limbs. Its existence was a broken hymn, seemingly an unfinished form that devoured space itself. Its attacks were more than striking, and they tore open reality, each movement leaving behind fractures of collapsing space, and shattered echoes of the world undone.

The sound of their battle was deafening as the constant reverberation of shrieking metal, warping air, and howling abyssal resonance echoed. Virelio could hear his threads strain, each unraveling filament screaming against the corrosive force of the Wraith’s presence.

He twisted mid-air, summoning his Diwa back into action.

The summoned dagger immediately shifted and formed his Kampilan.

It emerged in his grasp like a luminous blade, its length a spectral flare of woven ether. A raving, war-drunk force still strongly pulsed within it, a phantom presence mirroring his resolve. But even as he gripped it, he felt the blade strain like its essence flickering and its edge fraying against the sheer intensity of the battle.

Still, he fought back.

Threads of magic wove into existence around him as dozens of sigils, radiant geometric patterns spiraling mid-air. Each array ignited in bursts of woven fire and launched spears of ice toward the Wraith.

The monster’s existence seemed blurry and twisted—

Its form bent around the attacks, its body phasing into split-second distortions of space, its limbs stretching unnaturally before snapping back into place. Yet Virelio was already moving—his Kampilan carving through the void, colliding against the Wraith’s defenses in a series of explosive clashes.

CLANG! SHRRRK!

The wailing clash of steel against abyss sent tremors through the battlefield, each strike of his Diwa colliding with the Wraith’s tendrils. Sparks of the Virelio’s threads and the malicious void threads of the Wraith burst outward, scattering in chaotic arcs as they clashed.

The exchange streched into minutes that felt like hours, and the Sovereign Wraith was learning.

Virelio moved like the haze as his speed blurred him into streaks of luminous silver, each step reinforced by a burst of interwoven threads. But the Wraith kept pace.

It teleported swiftly as its major form snapped into existence wherever its disembodied limbs floated and scattered.

The battlefield became a labyrinth of severed abyssal parts of floating snake-like hands, shifting maw eyes, and twisting clawing tendrils—each piece an anchor that let the Wraith reposition without delay. Every time Virelio maneuvered away, the Wraith collapsed toward him, emerging from its scattered remains.

It was closing in.

Virelio barely deflected a descending void claw, the force splitting the ground beneath him. Another limb detached, spiraling into the air before vanishing, and only the Wraith’s full form lunged from that very spot, cutting off his retreat.

A trap—

He turned, but too late.

The Wraith’s strike landed on a direct impact on his ribs. The force detonated like a gravitational pulse, sending him hurtling across the battlefield. He spun midair, barely threading a weave of shock absorption before crashing into the ruined earth.

Dust and debris billowed, the sheer impact vibrating through his bones.

A fractured gasp escaped him—his Kampilan’s light wavering.

"Tch..." His grip tightened, forcing the weapon to stabilize.

The Sovereign Wraith did not stop.

Its abyssal tendrils split into dozens, each one accelerating toward him with the force of an executioner’s blade.

Virelio wove instantly.

A massive hexagonal barrier surged into existence, layer upon layer of luminous thread interlocking into a crystalline fortress.

CRACK—!

The first tendril shattered one layer.

CRACK!

The second.

The Wraith’s attack did not slow. Each strike sent fractures racing through the weave. The air screamed as the pressure built and the space itself began to distort, bend, and unravel. But Virelio wasn’t waiting for it to break.

He burst forward, his Kampilan igniting with explosive momentum, weaving through the gaps of broken space.

The Wraith lunged to meet him like a warping blur of abyssal mass.

They collided.

The battlefield erupted.

Blades of woven ether and abyssal void clashed in a relentless storm, each strike ringing out like war drums, each impact splitting the air with cataclysmic force.

Virelio’s Kampilan sang with every cut like a hunting raven, but the strain was showing.

The ethereal force within it was faltering, its raving spirit struggling to keep up with the sheer demand of the fight. Each clash weakened its form, and each desperate countermeasure pushed it closer to collapse.

Still, Virelio pushed forward.

Because he knew if he slowed for even a moment...

The Sovereign Wraith would consume him whole.

Inside the watchtower of the Celestial Seal Castle, the air was thick with tension.

The panoramic view of the battlefield stretched below them, the land fractured with streaks of abyssal corruption; the sky quivering from the sheer force of the ongoing clash. From this vantage point, the battle between Virelio and the Sovereign Wraith was nothing short of cataclysmic. Their strikes split the very air as their movements blurred into violent distortions of space and light.

Elder Saphira stood rigidly beside Grand Matriarch Iskayna, her violet eyes flickering with growing alarm. The Sovereign Wraith was pressing harder. Virelio was fast, resilient, and unrelenting, but the abyssal horror was adapting too quickly. Its fragmented limbs were sealing his every escape route, its void-rending claws forcing him further into a battlefield that had become a death trap.

Saphira’s fists clenched. She could not watch this any longer.

"Matriarch," she began, her voice barely concealing the desperate plea beneath. "We must act. Virelio—he cannot hold on much longer!"

But Iskayna did not move.

The Grand Matriarch stood motionless, her long silver robes billowing gently against the cold air of the tower. Her gaze was unwavering, locked onto the battle below. Her expression was unreadable, yet there was no mistaking the weight of her silence.

Saphira knew what she was doing. Calculating. Waiting.

But for how long?

"Matriarch!" Saphira’s voice rose, her brows furrowing. "If he falls, the Wraith will turn to us next! He’s holding it back with everything he has, and we must intervene!"

Still no answer.

Saphira’s breathing turned shallow. The castle’s Kalasag barrier, still forming under Marcon’s power, flickered ominously and was yet to stabilize. If they drew the Wraith’s attention now, the stronghold’s ultimate defense would collapse before it was even complete. The balance of their survival rested on an agonizing thread.

She knew this. But that did not ease the storm inside her.

Then, finally, Iskayna exhaled.

"Calm yourself, Saphira." Her voice was soft, yet it carried the weight of absolute authority. "Trust in Virelio. He may be a little weaker than he was, but he had better battle antics than any of us elders; he may even surpass my creativity with battling monsters."

Saphira stiffened. "Matriarch, I—"

She stopped herself. Because she saw it, the distant and shadowed sorrow behind Iskayna’s steady gaze.

This was not indifference.

This was the resolve of a leader who carried the burden of sacrifice.

Saphira lowered her head, her lips pressing into a thin line as she understood what the matriarch was doing.

Without another word, she turned away from the watchtower.

If the matriarch would not act yet, then she would reinforce their last defense. Marcon needed help to stabilize the Kalasag barrier. If they held strong enough, perhaps... just perhaps, the Matriarch would step in before it was too late.

Her threads coalesced around her, weaving a luminous pattern at her feet. Before she vanished into the temple halls, she heard Iskayna whisper—

A quiet thank you.

By the time Saphira drifted from sight, the Grand Matriarch remained alone, her eyes never leaving the battle.

Grand Matriarch then allowed herself a single deep sigh, not of relief but of hopes and contemplation.