My Wives are Beautiful Demons
Chapter 410 - 410: She's using her Ultimate Technique

Sapphire's flame roared across the sky like a divine comet, pushing the Empress's ice back into the abyss from whence it came. For a moment, the balance seemed stable—two extremes dancing on the brink of collapse.

But it was only for a moment.

A sharp crack cut through the air. Almost imperceptible.

As if something, right at the center of the clash, had... cracked.

Vergil narrowed his eyes.

"Sapphire... overdid it."

Sepphirothy felt it before he even saw it — the flow of mana had changed. The air began to grow heavy, bending in on itself as if space had begun to collapse. An invisible crack snaked between the two colliding powers.

Then, everything that had been contained collapsed.

A silent explosion engulfed the battlefield. There was no sound. Only light.

White. Pure. Blinding.

When vision returned, the world was no longer the same.

The crater had turned into an inverted valley—the ground sunk, cracked into deep fissures, from which icy vapors rose like wandering spirits. The skies trembled. Ice flakes fell slowly, but dissolved before touching the ground, burned by the pressure of residual heat.

At the center of it all, the Platinum Dragon Empress... was different.

Her wings were now double—an ethereal, translucent layer sprouted over the original ones like a living aura. Her eyes, once an icy blue, now shone with an almost silvery light, divine and profane at the same time.

She did not roar.

She breathed. Slowly. Rhythmically. As if she had finally awakened.

Vergil took a step back, his eyes wide. "She's stabilized..."

Sepphirothy clenched his fists. "Too soon. This wasn't supposed to happen now."

Sapphire, floating in the sky, kept smiling — but her eyes flickered, discreetly. The heat around her wavered. As if her own flame had faltered.

The Empress looked at her.

Not as a beast. But as an entity.

And then she spoke.

"You... will die."

The voice was multiple — each word echoed with different tones, as if each layer of the Empress's being spoke together.

"You want to lapidate me. Refine me. Contain me."

The atmosphere shook. Time seemed to slow down.

"But you... have no right."

That was when the seal on the Empress's chest broke.

Not physically. But magically. An ancient seal, placed to contain the primordial essence of the draconic... shattered into a thousand fragments that evaporated into the air like stardust.

And with it, hell was unleashed.

An ancient energy field exploded from the Empress's body—it was not ice, nor mana. It was something beyond. A raw, unfiltered force. Part of her, part of the world that created her. The true essence of the Age of Dragons.

Everything touched by this energy began to fall apart.

Mountains eroded. Trees turned to frozen ash. The ground opened up in veins of light that should not have existed. The air screamed—literally screamed—as if reality itself was trying to pull away.

Sapphire's body was thrown backward, streaking across the sky like a comet of flames that faded with every passing second. Vergil had to invoke six magical seals just to keep the Shadow Dragon standing.

"Sapphire!" he shouted, but his voice was swallowed by the roar of the world.

Sepphirothy did not respond. Her eyes were fixed on the Empress.

"It's too late..." she whispered.

The Empress spread her wings—now resplendent—and flew.

The speed was impossible. She crossed the sky in an instant and collided with Sapphire in midair. It wasn't a blow. It was an impact between forces that should never coexist.

Sapphire's body was thrown downward, opening a new crater—much larger than the previous one. A column of fire rose into the sky like a solar flare. And then... silence.

For an entire second, no one moved.

Vergil descended with the dragon. The world seemed about to collapse.

"Sapphire?" he called.

Nothing.

In the center of the crater, the flames were... extinguished.

Sepphirothy leaped. "No. It's not possible..."

The ground beneath her feet screamed in protest, cracking under the impact of her presence. She did not hesitate. The black gloves on her hands opened, and the runic symbols along her arms began to glow—first blue, then gold, then shades of gray that seemed older than time itself.

"I can't allow this to spread."

Vergil stared at her. "What are you going to do?"

"Close the cell before hell devours hell."

She spread her arms wide, and a gust of wind cut through the landscape like an invisible blade. The air around her froze and burned at the same time—time and reality beginning to bend around her.

Slowly, Sepphirothy began to murmur.

It was no ordinary spell.

The words she uttered did not exist in any living language. Each syllable echoed like a whisper from the cracks of time, like echoes from a world that never existed. The runes on her skin began to detach, one by one, floating around her like satellites of a god.

"…" Sepphirothy began to conjure various demonic runes with his own power, using an ancient language that Vergil did not know...

The sky began to darken, not with clouds, but with condensed time. The space between seconds was sealed. The shadows of the trees stopped moving. The particles in the air froze mid-spin. Even the light faltered.

And then, the barrier appeared.

A colossal wall of curved, translucent energy rose from the ground with the roar of a mountain being born. It was a dome. A giant cocoon enveloping the crater, Sapphire, the Empress—everything. It was not made of matter, but of condensed time.

Vergil had to retreat hastily, shielding his eyes from the unbearable glare that exploded at the moment of activation. When he looked again, the landscape was no longer the same.

Everything inside the barrier had stopped.

The chaos, frozen.

The dust in the air? Motionless.

The fire, halfway through an explosion? Static.

Even the Empress's aura? Sealed.

Vergil's eyes widened. "You... stopped time entirely..."

Sepphirothy fell to his knees, panting.

"No... I didn't stop time. Only this space. A prison of absolute moment."

The barrier now glowed with concentric lines spinning in opposite directions. Arcane symbols spun like gears around its surface—representing hours, days, seasons, millennia—all overlapping in an impossible cycle.

"Sealed in the second before the collapse," Sepphirothy murmured, leaning on the ground, her body trembling. "If the Empress's energy spread... not even this world could withstand it."

Vergil climbed down from the dragon and knelt beside her. "What about Sapphire? Is she alive?"

"She has to be. If she isn't... this prison will break from the inside out. The internal balance depends on the resistance of the forces inside."

Vergil looked up at the dome. Inside, frozen like a stained-glass window of war, Sapphire was still falling—a statue of interrupted heat. The Empress followed close behind, a wall of destruction halted inches from impact.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Sepphirothy closed his eyes. Blood dripped from his nose, and his hands trembled with exhaustion.

"Now... we pray that the prisoner wakes up... before the prison gives way."

Vergil stood up, staring at the temporal prison with a tense face.

Inside the prison frozen in time, a faint heat began to pulsate.

At first, it was imperceptible. A wisp of steam formed around Sapphire's suspended body, which was still falling—motionless, frozen in a moment that should not advance. But heat did not respect laws. It was... instinct. Fury. Life.

Sapphire's eyes opened.

Not slowly. Not dazedly.

They simply lit up, like two blue flames burning the impossible.

Time, even sealed, seemed to falter. The lines of the prison cracked slightly — like glass under pressure. A subtle crack inside Sepphirothy's barrier.

Sapphire moved her fingers. Then her fists. Then her feet.

And then, the inner world of the prison shook.

She was standing. The heat coming from her body was not only more intense — it was absurd. The frozen particles around her began to burn, one by one, melting away with tragic and inevitable slowness.

Sapphire looked at the Empress.

The draconic wall remained locked inches from impact—its eyes frozen amid the fury of the primordial essence. Untouchable. Indestructible.

But something inside Sapphire... had changed.

She let out a sigh.

"Fuck it."

Her voice did not echo. It was not a sound.

It was a statement.

"I will kill."

And that's when the real transformation began.

The air around her became incandescent. Gravity reversed, twisted. Flames came out of her pores, yes — but they weren't ordinary flames. They were conscious flames, like specters of the original fire. As if every fragment of Sapphire's soul had decided to burn with her.

Her aura exploded.

Ten times.

A hundred times.

Perhaps more.

The interior of the barrier screamed in pure agony. The structures of Sepphirothy's seal began to flicker, alarmed. Not because of failure, but because of excess. The temporal prison was made to contain the Empress's chaos — not the awakening of an even greater hell.

Everything began to burn.

The frozen ground? It melted.

The frozen time? It trembled.

The prison? It cracked again.

The runes on Sapphire's body began to appear in incandescent red — ancient marks, seals she didn't even know she consciously carried, now emerging like embers on raw flesh. Her eyes burned white and blue. There was no hesitation. There was nothing left to hold back.

She was fire.

She was judgment.

And then, she advanced.

In the blink of an eye—or more precisely, before an eye could even blink—Sapphire was standing before the Empress. The wall of frozen power had not yet moved. But Sapphire broke through it like thunder breaking through silence.

And the blow... came.

It was not a fist. It was not magic. It was not a sword.

It was pure will, condensed into a direct impact, launched with everything her universe could muster. The world did not understand what had happened. The barrier of time faltered once more. Overlapping timelines reversed. But inside — in that instant — the Empress was struck.

And the result... was destruction.

Half of the Empress's body disappeared.

It didn't explode.

It wasn't pushed away.

It was disintegrated.

As if everything that existed in that half—flesh, bone, ice, essence—had been removed from the equation of reality.

The left wing was gone.

The lower part of the torso disappeared.

The left side of the face turned to ashes of light.

A scream began to form—a sound so vast and abysmal that it echoed even in the timeless prison.

But Sapphire had already retreated.

And now she floated in the air, her eyes fixed on her enemy, like a goddess of destruction who had decided that the world was too small for that creature to exist.

"You think you are inevitable," she muttered through clenched teeth. "But I am older than your fear."

The Empress staggered, even within the temporal prison. The already fragile structure of Sepphirothy's barrier began to glow orange. Arcane alarms sounded silently. The seals were collapsing—not by mistake, but because the interior had already exceeded the limit of what was bearable.

Outside, Sepphirothy opened her eyes with a start.

Vergil grabbed her shoulder. "What is it?!"

She whispered:

"Sapphire... she... she's using her Ultimate Technique..."

Vergil looked up at the dome.

Flames.

Too many flames.

"Holy shit... that thing... is it draining the energy of time?" He asked, watching the barrier collapse... "Damn..."