With the arrival of the Flame Phoenix Lord, Duke Charles Luminaris, the heavy demonic intent of the Underworld that had been hanging over the area vanished instantly, burned away by the overwhelming aura of the Flame Phoenix. The Archmage hovered nearly forty feet above the ruined Vistro courtyard, his ornate robes snapping violently in the fierce winds stirred by his own magic.
Below, everything was destroyed. The west wing was nothing but stone pieces, the garden was a crater turned to glass, and the Marquis, Charles’ long time political ally, was gone. Charles had felt the rapid deterioration of the Marquis’s aura from miles away, a sickening slide as the man’s vitality was devoured by his own demonic desperation. Now, only a pile of ash and a heap of silk remained where a True Mage once stood.
The Duke looked around, stopping when he saw the only person still standing in the middle of the destruction.
Edward Vistro was down on one knee. The Duke’s Archmage aura pressed on him like a tangible force, so heavy it made the earlier demonic pressure feel insignificant by comparison. His clothes were torn and fluttering, his muscles screaming as they fought against being forced into the ground. Even so, his head remained raised, his gaze steady and calm as it locked onto the Duke’s eyes.
Charles Luminaris stayed still in the air, his face showing all kinds of expressions. For a long, silent minute, the only sound was the crackle of the fire vortex.
’So it’s true,’ the Duke thought, the last trace of doubt finally collapsing into certainty. ’That unease I felt at the engagement banquet, that quiet sense of danger I couldn’t name. It wasn’t just my imagination.’
His eyes hardened as they remained fixed on Edward.
’It was you.’
He looked at Edward’s kneeling form, and a dark, grim realization began to settle in his guts.
’I tried to warn you, Vistro. I told you that confidence like his doesn’t just happen. I told you that a wolf doesn’t walk like a sheep. But you were too arrogant, too obsessed with your so-called talented son, Damian, to see what was right in front of you. You let someone powerful grow right under your nose. You told me he was harmless. Useless, you called him. A disgrace.’
The Duke’s eyes narrowed,
’But this... this is beyond anything I anticipated. To reach the High Mage Realm at fifteen? It goes against nature. Even with a Saint Flame inheritance, the body must be tempered for decades to hold such cultivation. Yet here he sits, pulsing with a mana core so refined that it rivals the veteran mages of this kingdom. At the initial level of the High Mage stage, this boy is already among the strongest entities in the Kingdom of Luminaris. He is a singular anomaly.’
The Duke felt a shiver of fear – not for himself, because he was an Archmage, but for the Luminaris family.
’He killed his father. This can’t be the tantrum of a neglected child; this was a clean, deliberate coup. He didn’t just take the Marquisate ring— he seized the fate of the entire territory. And now he was looking at me as if I were nothing more than the next step in his path.’
Charles let out a slow breath, white steam spilling from his lips into the air. His initial shock slowly hardened into a cold, murderous resolve—settled, cooled, and reshaped into something far more calm. Focused. And deadly.
He had always lived by a simple rule. When a fire grows too bright, when it burns beyond control, you don’t wait to see what it becomes. You stamp it out early, before it has the chance to turn into an inferno that devours everything around it..
’If I don’t end this today,’ the Duke thought, a rare edge of unease slipping into his calm, ’then the throne is already slipping away. A rebellion that begins with the death of a Marquis doesn’t stop there. It grows. One day, it will reach the palace gates—and when it does...’
The duke slowly shook his head, as if brushing away the last traces of hesitation. His expression settled into calm certainty.
"There’s no need to worry," he said quietly. "This won’t take long. I’ll end it here, and I’ll end it quickly."
The Duke’s face became calm and serious. He wasn’t confused anymore. He was an Archmage, and he wouldn’t let a fifteen-year-old boy ruin things for him.
"You really are something special, Edward Vistro," the Duke said, his voice rolling across the courtyard like distant thunder. "A miracle too dangerous for this world to handle right now. And because of that... you cannot be allowed to live."
The Duke slowly raised his right arm.
The magic in the air began to pull together, forming a massive sword of pure red fire mana in front of him, nearly sixty feet long. It wasn’t a real blade of metal, but a weapon made entirely of burning energy, its edges trembling as if countless furnaces were roaring at once. The heat pouring from it was overwhelming. Stone buildings nearby started to glow red, their surfaces cracking and melting, while the cobblestones beneath turned soft and flowed into shining pools of molten slag.
Edward, still pinned to one knee by the Duke’s overwhelming spiritual pressure, looked up at the blazing sword appearing above him. The blue lightning around his body chirped, but he was held in place by the Duke’s aura.
The Duke immediately dropped his hand in a sharp, vertical motion.
"Fall!"
The giant sword of fire came crashing down at once, a massive wave of burning heat aimed straight at Edward’s head. The air burst apart as the blade fell, the sheer force setting the oxygen in the courtyard ablaze. To the one-armed Valerius and the servants hiding in fear, it looked as if the heavens themselves were falling, descending to finish what the Marquis had failed to do.