The Battlefield

Arkaz feels pain in his chest for the first time in over a thousand years as he checks over his granddaughter, who by all accounts should be healthy again after his healing.

But isn’t.

He continues searching over her for wounds, the girl herself being in a coma now as he does so, only to hear his son’s voice echo through the battlefield, “Father, what’s wrong with her?”

Arkaz doesn’t answer for several seconds, instead just searching for the answer himself. And after a time unknown to Arkaz has passed by, he finally finds the source of the problem, only to grimace when he realizes that it’s not something he can fix.

He turns to his son, finding a worried look on the boy’s face as Arkaz says, “There are two problems, neither of which I can fix.” Leonidas’s body stiffens up, his eyes widening in horror. But Arkaz just continues while turning to face his granddaughter, who by now has been lifted so that her head is lying on Leonidas’s lap, “The first is that her reality itself has been damaged pretty badly. Not enough to permanently harm or scar her, but enough to keep her to be unlikely to regain consciousness for at least a few weeks.” He turns back to his son again. “But the main problem is that she seems to have tried forcing her way past the System to use a weaker version of my Blood Transcendence skill.”

Leonidas immediately turns his head to look at his daughter at that, a look of horror on his face.

“Since she tried doing it past the restrictions of the System, she didn’t fully succeed,” Arkaz continues, a sad look reaching his face as he gazes at his granddaughter. “But she didn’t entirely fail either. So her body is currently part-way separated by each individual atom.” He pauses, feeling his throat choking up slightly. “And it won’t be possible for anyone but her to fix it.”

Silence fills the Battlefield as all of the remaining blood lycans around them, each at least of the Marquess or Marchioness ranking, stand perfectly still with the exception of the one that had walked up to hold his granddaughter’s fae who had collapsed.

“She will have to fight against her own DNA if she wants to survive,” Arkaz continues, feeling a tear beginning to build up on the corner of his eye. “And to make matters worse, she also seemed to have been lost to her Sin when it happened.”

Leonidas stiffens up at that.

“So it’s entirely possible…” Arkaz starts but doesn’t finish out loud.

It’s entirely possible she could be too deeply under the effects of her Sin to fight her way through this.

Before the tear building up in Arkaz’s eye finishes building, he waves his hand, making a bubble of blood surround and envelop them, following which he, Leonidas, and his granddaughter end up in Arkaz’s bedroom at the castle. Meanwhile his granddaughter’s fae appears on his bed next to Scarlet who is already lying there, Leonidas having not wasted a single second of time getting her to it.

Time passes slowly as Arkaz and Leonidas kneel on the sides of the bed, holding Scarlet’s hands. But the girl’s eyes never open.

Meanwhile Arkaz feels tears silently flowing down his cheeks, and sees the same happening to his son.

After nearly an hour of silence though, Arkaz wipes his tears and stands up, barely managing to let go of his granddaughter’s hand as his son looks up at him. But Arkaz just answers, “I need to make a call.”

The Frontlines on Earth

Amelia frowns as she stands off against a few Class V demons who had come out of their way to attack her while she was dealing with the army beneath them, the four of them including herself floating high above the ground. But she just lets out a sigh and snaps her fingers once, taking away every last sense the three Nobles have, leaving them struggling to remain flying. Then she snaps her fingers again, making wound after wound after wound appear on their body. Every last wound they had ever taken within the last decade.

And all three Nobles fail to retain their flight after that, shouting in pain from the multitude of wounds that make their own faces unidentifiable to anyone who may have known them.

The White Knight raises her hand, still frowning, only to pause when she feels a vibration from the communicator stone she keeps in her pocket connected to her mate’s stone. So she quickly finishes off the three Nobles by using a wave of Lesser Erasure, erasing their life energy instead of themselves, and rushes off back to a private location where she takes out the stone.

But unlike what she expected, when she answers the call, her mate’s voice isn’t the one that comes through the stone.

“Scarlet is in a coma, so I will permit you to come to Tartarus and bring whoever you believe Scarlet would wish to have by her side,” the Demon King’s voice echoes out around her sending a chill down her spine. The contents of what he says quickly hits her though, sending away any thoughts about why and how he’s contacting her through her communication stone with her mate. “Enter through the Gate in the Arctic. I will have Damien let you all pass.”

Amelia’s eyes widen in both terror and dread as she immediately vanishes from her location in search of everyone that she knows Scarlet is close to, including Aria, the Silvesters, and her former teammates. And without even giving them the chance to say anything, she simply snatches each one of them up without a word and continues on to the next until she finally heads straight to the Arctic.

She only finally pauses to give them a very short explanation when she reaches the Arctic and finds demons there to guide them to the Gate, absolutely terrifying each one of them in the process.

But no one says a word in response despite their obvious fear and worry.

Please be okay!