Before the hour Jalen had granted could expire, the twenty-five elders of the Solar Clan descended from the sky in rigid formation. Their robes were immaculate, their expressions anything but. Behind them, one hundred and fifty warriors followed in silence, their synchronized steps echoing across the compound like a dirge. What once might have been a proud procession now resembled a funeral march.
The Flare Palace guards tensed, hands drifting toward their weapons. But Simon's voice echoed calmly through their minds via spirit link: "Stand down. There is no threat."
Disciples who had gathered outside were ordered to return to their dorms and resume their daily training. The compound's rhythm resumed, but the tension lingered like smoke.
Talia landed first, her posture regal, but her aura dimmed. Tomlinson followed, his silence heavier than armor. Timothy and Lyle touched down next, their eyes burning with resentment—but not defiance. None dared.
They arrived at the palace gates, where the ancestral flame still burned in its basin, flickering against the morning light.
Jalen stepped from the palace interior, his presence quiet but absolute. His robes shimmered faintly with residual light qi, and the ground beneath him seemed to hum in recognition. Jael sat on his shoulder, tugging playfully at his hair, oblivious to the tension.
The elders bowed—not out of reverence, but necessity. The detonating qi embedded in their cores pulsed like a leash, invisible yet undeniable.
Jalen's voice was calm, but it carried the weight of divine judgment.
"Your task is simple: protect the Flare Family from all threats. Fail, and you will be terminated."
He raised a hand, and a pulse of spirit sense surged outward, embedding a map of the compound into their minds. It marked the quarters he had prepared for them—modest, functional, and far from the palace's inner sanctum.
"You will remain there until I say otherwise."
He turned without ceremony, dismissing them with silence.
The elders and warriors departed, their pride bruised, their hearts heavy. Some clenched their fists. Others lowered their heads. But none spoke. None resisted.
They had come to claim.
Now, they served.
Over the next few hours, Simon, Jana, and the top officials of the Flare Family worked tirelessly. Evacuation formations were activated, guiding both cultivators and civilians out of EmberFall City. No one within the city was strong enough to withstand what was coming. Elder Talia's warning had been clear—thirty Sage Realm experts from the Solar Clan were en route. Thirty-six hours had passed. Time was nearly up.
__
By mid-afternoon, the sky over the Ruona Continent darkened unnaturally. A pressure descended—heavy, suffocating, divine. Thirty powerful auras surged toward EmberFall, not with stealth, but with overwhelming force. Their arrival stirred the continent itself.
Then came the strike.
A combined attack from all thirty Sage Realm cultivators—flame qi woven into a catastrophic solar barrage—descended upon the protective formation surrounding Flare Territory. EmberFall City, caught in the shockwave, became a river of molten stone. Buildings melted. Streets vanished. Screams were drowned in lava.
But just before the formation shattered, Talia and the twenty-four elders Jalen had subdued appeared outside the barrier. Their auras flared, intercepting the blast with coordinated defense techniques. Flame walls and spatial folds collided with the incoming destruction, reinforced by defensive formations etched into the terrain.
The thirty invaders drew closer, their eyes burning with fury. These were not just enemies—they were executioners. To them, Talia and her companions were traitors, exiled from the Solar State and marked for death.
They didn't come only for Rana.
They came to erase everything.
The battle erupted—twenty-five against thirty. Flames surged in every direction. Qi storms tore through the sky. Within five minutes, EmberFall City was gone. Their clash spilled into neighboring towns, cities, and even bordering states. The continent trembled.
Flare Territory was not spared. The formation collapsed. Buildings crumbled. Even the palace was set ablaze. But thanks to Simon's foresight, the territory had already been evacuated.
And while chaos reigned, Jalen struck.
Using Flash Reversion, the eleventh technique of the Light Art, he appeared behind an Early Sage Realm cultivator mid-cast. Before the enemy could react, Jalen unleashed Flame Rupture, the eighth technique of the Spirit Fire Art—a blast of compressed blue flame qi that pierced defenses and ignited the soul from within.
The enemy tried to counter with flame qi of his own, but Jalen's fire was forged from the beast core of sky limit realm dragon and the flaming lotus he retrieved from the scorch realm and refined by the Solar Bath. Needless to say whose flame was stronger. The man screamed as his core buckled.
Jalen vanished again, reappearing with his third light art technique: Luminous Veil Step before another Sage Realm enemy. His thirteenth light Art technique: Luminal Edge, a light qi sabre clashed against flame defenses, forcing the cultivator back, coughing blood.
But Jalen wasn't done.
A vortex of snow qi erupted—Blizzard Coil, the eighth technique of the Ice Art. The enemy was trapped, his movement slowed, his qi disrupted. He broke free after great effort, only to be slashed across the torso by Jalen's blade. A fraction slower, and he would've died.
Jalen raised his blade to finish the job—
—but a Mid Sage Realm expert intercepted, shielding the wounded cultivator.
The man's aura was immense, heavier than Tomlinson's, and more refined than any elder Jalen had subdued.
"I see," the man said calmly, eyes blazing. "You're the brat our patriarch wants dead."
Jalen didn't respond.
He vanished again, appearing behind the man with lethal intent. His blade descended—but the Mid Sage Realm cultivator was no fool. He turned, deflecting the strike with a burst of spatial qi and countering with a flame-infused palm that cracked the air.
The Mid Sage Realm surged forward, his flame qi laced with spatial distortion, warping the air around him. Each step cracked the ground; each movement bent light itself.
Jalen met him head-on.
Their clash was seismic—Luminal Edge against a flame-forged halberd, Flash Reversion against spatial displacement. The battlefield warped around them, qi storms spiraling outward, forcing even Sage Realm elders to retreat from the shockwaves.
Jalen's strikes were precise, but the man's defenses were layered—flame shields, spatial folds, and a technique Jalen hadn't seen before: Solar Cage, a binding art that trapped light itself in a prism of burning gravity.
Jalen was caught mid-step, his body suspended in a sphere of molten light. The pressure was immense, threatening to crush his bones and rupture his organs.
But he didn't panic.
He closed his eyes—and the Luminal Heart pulsed.
A radiant surge erupted from within, dissolving the Solar Cage from the inside out. The light didn't resist—it reclaimed.
Jalen reappeared above the man, descending like judgment.
Solar Flare—the twenty-second light art technique—erupted from his palm, concentric waves of divine heat radiating outward. But the light didn't spread indiscriminately—it curved. Jalen's mastery over the Luminal Heart allowed him to bend the wavefront, spiraling it toward the Mid Sage Realm cultivators with surgical intent.
The battlefield trembled, but his allies stood untouched. The light knew its master.
The Mid Sage Realm expert raised his flaming halberd to block, but the force sent him crashing into the earth, carving a crater beneath him.
Jalen hovered above the crater, blade humming with light. The cultivator's flame hadn't dimmed—it had deepened. A pressure stirred beneath the scorched earth, ancient and volatile. Jalen's grip tightened. This fight wasn't over. The cultivator was just getting started.