Reincarnated as an Elf Prince
Chapter 280 - 280: Attack (2)

Not far, just half a meter forward. No flash, no flare. Just presence. It bent the light subtly, made the sky seem dimmer around his shoulders.

Eldrin's arms tightened slightly at his sides. The sun affinity rose like a quiet firestorm in his blood, pressing out from his skin in steady, invisible heat.

"Speak," Eldrin said. "Or I send you both down in pieces."

Maeven shrugged like he wasn't standing a heartbeat from combustion.

"We're here for a woman," Maeven said easily. "Melion Sunblade."

That name, his queen's name, landed with a sudden weight.

Eldrin's expression didn't change.

"You're not getting her."

"She's not a prisoner," Maeven said, still smiling. "We just want to talk."

Eldrin floated forward a hand's width. "You don't talk. You show up, unannounced, uninvited, and say her name like it's a trade. That's not how it works here."

"She's important," Maeven said.

"You think I don't know that?"

Dythrael still hadn't spoken. Still hadn't blinked.

'He's the dangerous one,' Eldrin thought. 'Maeven's just a crack in the door.'

"What do you want with her?" Eldrin asked.

"No harm," Maeven said, waving a hand lazily. "Just… history. The kind that got buried a little too deep."

"She doesn't know you," Eldrin said.

"But we know her," Maeven said, smiling sharper now. "And you'd be amazed what someone can forget."

Eldrin didn't answer.

He couldn't, because part of him already felt the shift in the wardline two towers down.

Someone inside the estate was moving. Fast.

Melion?

No. The handmaiden. The guards. She'd been moved quietly, on instinct. He could feel it.

'Good.'

Maeven smiled wider, sensing the change. "You're stalling."

Eldrin let the heat in his chest rise, just a little. Gold sparked faintly behind his eyes.

"You made it this far because I let you," he said. "You're not touching my wife."

Dythrael lifted his head slightly.

And finally spoke.

One word.

"Yet."

The sky dimmed around them.

Maeven laughed, soft and strange, like someone hearing a joke an hour too late.

"You might want to tighten your barriers, old man," Maeven said. "He doesn't like being told no."

Eldrin's jaw flexed once.

"You should go," he said quietly. "While the city still stands."

Maeven tilted his head. "And if we don't?"

"Then I make it my problem."

He didn't shout. Didn't flare his aura.

But the temperature in the sky shifted instantly. The mist around the outer hills turned gold. The clouds hissed from distance alone. The banners on the highest tower ignited and burned clean through without catching fire.

The sun affinity wasn't always fire.

Sometimes, it was command.

And Eldrin Sunblade had plenty left to give.

Maeven's smile twitched. Then he floated back.

Not far.

But enough.

Dythrael didn't move.

Didn't breathe.

Didn't speak.

But the pressure he left behind was heavier than a war declaration.

Eldrin stared them both down.

No one spoke again.

Not yet.

Not until next time.

—

Dythrael moved.

There was no build-up. No aura spike. No flicker of warning through the mana lines in the air.

One second, he was hovering still, arms folded behind his back. The next, Eldrin felt a shift behind his ribs.

Something cracked.

Not his bones.

Time.

It folded.

And by the time he saw Dythrael standing in front of him, a kick had already buried itself in his chest.

Not sharp.

Not dramatic.

Just fast.

The blow hit like a mountain moving sideways.

Eldrin was flung down.

He barely had the thought—

'He's using both.'

Time and space. Not just one. Both, tangled together.

The sky above blurred in vertical smears as his body tore through the balcony, then the upper stone rail, and finally down into the terrace garden below.

He hit the ground in a blast of crushed stone and scorched grass.

Guards shouted.

Crossbows fired.

Mana surged behind armored palms as half a dozen soldiers on the west rampart lit up with fire affinities, launching it in compressed arcs across the sky.

Maeven just turned toward them.

The grin didn't even drop.

He flicked a hand upward.

And space split.

Like glass.

A dozen fire arcs vanished midair, drawn into a jagged ripple that folded once, blinked, and reappeared behind the soldiers who fired them.

Half the guards never saw it coming.

They lit up from the back, screams torn into the wind. Armor warped, flesh blackened, and the few who didn't die instantly fell forward into the stone rampart, limbs limp and smoking.

Maeven didn't flinch. "Told you," he muttered. "Don't waste time."

Another squad rushed the stairwell. Seven of them.

Too late.

The air around them twisted once, quiet, like silk folding.

They didn't vanish.

They just stopped being whole.

The leading guard collapsed in pieces, sliced into four exact segments. Not from a blade. From space itself being compressed around his body and shearing him in perfect halves.

Eldrin heard it.

Even through the ringing in his ears.

Even from the ground, where the grass had burned clean away from the heat he couldn't contain.

'That was… seconds,' he thought. 'They wiped a defense squad in seconds.'

He coughed once—thick, wet, metallic.

Ashwing's voice would've said something sarcastic about pride right now.

But Ashwing wasn't here.

He felt the heat inside his chest pulse again, gold fighting against the pressure from above.

'Get up.'

The sky flickered above. A ripple of distortion. Time still wasn't stable around them.

Dythrael lowered himself through the air again, slowly now, with purpose.

His coat didn't shift.

His face hadn't changed.

Not one line of emotion.

Just precision.

He landed in the crater, six feet from where Eldrin was still on one knee.

Eldrin spat blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You want her?"

Dythrael said nothing.

Eldrin's eyes narrowed.

"Try."

He rose fully.

Pain roared down his spine, but the sun in his chest roared louder.

The air shimmered again, not from Dythrael, not from the space folding overhead.

But from Eldrin's body.

This wasn't time magic. Wasn't distortion or speed.

It was light.

Solar affinity, compressed to the edge of combustion. Not flung wildly. Held. Directed. Pressure-forged until every movement trembled with the heat of a collapsing star.

His coat peeled in the wind of it.

The gold in his eyes flared, veins shining along his forearms like stained glass.

Dythrael tilted his head, just a fraction.

Not impressed.

Not frightened.

Just… measuring.

And that pissed Eldrin off more than pain ever could.

He launched forward.

No theatrics. No mana-flare.

Just one step, and the courtyard vaporized in a straight line beneath his foot.

The fist came next.

Dythrael didn't dodge.

He twisted the air.