From the silent, motionless form of Ifrit, a new, and completely unexpected, kind of light began to glow. It was not the deep, crimson light of fire. It was a brilliant, almost blinding, azure light, the color of a storm-swept sky. The light grew in intensity, and from the broken, demonic form of the fire spirit, a new, ethereal, and impossibly beautiful figure began to rise.
It was a woman, or the form of a woman, woven from pure, solidified lightning and starlight. Her silver hair, crackling with static energy, flowed around her as if she were underwater. Her golden eyes, the same molten gold as the Fire Knight’s, held a look of profound, ancient, and serene power. She was Fang Fairy, the goddess of the storm, and she had just been revealed to the world in all of her Transcendent, divine glory.
The crowd, whose minds were already a shattered ruin, could only let out a collective, groaning gasp. The challenger had not just one, but two divine, magnificent, and terrifyingly powerful spirits. The paradox, the contradiction, the sheer, impossible reality of the man, had just deepened to an infinite, incomprehensible degree.
Fang Fairy floated in the air for a moment, a silent, beautiful, and awe-inspiring vision. She looked at the Fire Knight, and a silent, perfect communication passed between them. She then turned her gaze to the empty center of the arena, and she raised her slender, graceful hands.
A low, humming, and deeply resonant sound began to fill the arena, the sound of a rising thunderstorm. The sky above the coliseum, which had been a brilliant, cloudless blue, began to darken with a sudden, unnatural speed. Great, swirling clouds of a deep, bruised purple and angry gray boiled into existence from nowhere, blotting out the sun. The world was plunged into a sudden, premature twilight.
And then, the lightning began. Not a single, jagged bolt, but a thousand of them. A silent, beautiful, and terrifying web of pure, azure and silver energy began to crackle and dance within the clouds, a celestial, divine, and utterly silent storm.
The Fire Knight raised his own, massive greatsword of solar fire, its brilliant, white-hot light a stark, defiant sun in the new, man-made darkness. He was no longer just a warrior; he was a conductor, and he was about to command a symphony of pure, elemental destruction.
He looked at the empty spot where the Jahl had died, where its essence had dissolved back into the world. He was about to give it a proper, and truly magnificent, funeral pyre. He plunged his greatsword of solar fire deep into the white-crystal floor of the arena.
And then, he unleashed his final, and most glorious, technique.
“Mountain of Fire,” his dual-resonant voice said, the words not a shout, but a quiet, calm, and utterly absolute command to reality itself.
And from the point where his sword had pierced the crystal, the world erupted.
It was not an explosion. It was a birth. A violent, beautiful, and world-altering act of pure, elemental creation.
From the heart of the arena, from the single, small point where the Fire Knight’s solar blade had touched the crystal floor, a mountain began to grow. It was not a mountain of common rock and earth. It was a mountain of pure, roaring, and incandescent fire.
A great, circular fissure opened in the crystal, and from it, a geyser of liquid, white-hot magma shot a hundred feet into the air. The magma did not splatter and cool. It flowed, it coalesced, it began to build upon itself, layer by searing layer, with an impossible, architectural precision.
The Fire Knight stood at the very center of this rising, volcanic apocalypse, his form a calm, still point in the heart of the inferno he was commanding. The mountain of fire grew around him, a roaring, swirling vortex of molten rock and solar flame that seemed to be scraped from the very surface of a sun.
It grew with a terrifying, exponential speed. Fifty feet. A hundred. Two hundred. It rose higher and higher, a roaring, incandescent spire that threatened to pierce the very heavens. The heat it radiated was a physical, palpable force, a solid wall of energy that washed over the stands, making the very stone of the coliseum glow with a dull, cherry-red light. The spectators were not burned; they were protected by the arena’s ancient, powerful wards, which were now straining and groaning under the sheer, impossible, and sustained thermal load, their magical energy glowing with a frantic, desperate light.
High above, in the storm-wracked, man-made sky, Fang Fairy, the goddess of the storm, began her own part of the symphony. The thousand silent, crackling bolts of lightning that had been weaving through the clouds now began to descend. They did not strike the mountain of fire. They struck the air around it, weaving a vast, intricate, and impossibly complex cage of pure, azure lightning, a beautiful, divine prison to contain the raw, chaotic power that was being unleashed within it.
The two forces, the pure, creative fire of Iffrit and the pure, disciplinary lightning of Fang Fairy, worked in perfect, breathtaking harmony. They were two gods, a creator and a warden, a builder and a guardian, and they were performing a miracle of such profound, cosmic scale that it was a thing of pure, terrifying, and almost religious beauty.
The mountain of fire reached its final, magnificent height, a three-hundred-foot-tall, perfectly conical volcano that now dominated the city’s skyline, a new, and very temporary, addition to the kingdom’s geography. And then, as its peak solidified, the Fire Knight, who had been at its heart, simply… rose.
He ascended through the heart of his own creation, the molten rock and roaring flame parting before him as if he were its rightful king. He rose to the very peak of the fiery mountain and stood there, a solitary, four-meter-tall figure of shadow and light, his greatsword of solar fire held at his side. He was a god, standing on the pinnacle of his own, freshly made world.
And then, he gave his final command.
The mountain of fire, which had been a thing of raw, upward, creative energy, now turned its power inward. It began to compress, to collapse upon itself, the roaring, expansive flames now becoming a dense, implosive, and infinitely hotter core.
The light it emitted became so intense, so absolute, that it was no longer possible to look at. The entire world, for a single, breathtaking moment, became pure, undiluted, and silent white.
And then, with a final, soft, and almost gentle whoosh, it was gone.
The mountain of fire, the lightning cage, the storm-wracked sky—all of it vanished in an instant, as if it had never been.
The sun, which had been blotted out, returned, its normal, gentle light now seeming weak and pathetic in comparison. The arena floor, which had been a field of pristine, white crystal, was now a vast, circular expanse of smooth, black, and perfectly polished obsidian glass, still shimmering with a faint, residual heat haze.
And in the very center of that new, black, glassy plain, where the Jahl had died, and where a mountain had been born and had died in the space of a minute, there was a single, small, and deceptively simple object. It was a pile of fine, white, and almost luminescent ash, no larger than a common burial urn.
It was all that was left. All that remained of the ancient, powerful, and once-unbeatable Demon of Jahl. It had been fought, it had been unmade, and now, its very essence had been purified, refined, and reduced to its most fundamental, and most peaceful, state.
The Fire Knight, the being of shadow and solar fire, was also gone. In his place, standing beside the small pile of white ash, was a simple, unassuming man in a tattered, scorched, and blood-soaked healer’s robe. His hair was a simple, dark brown. His eyes were a gentle, compassionate brown. He was leaning heavily on his simple, unadorned practice sword, his chest heaving, his body trembling with a profound, and seemingly very human, exhaustion.
He had done it. He had not just defeated the monster. He had given it a funeral. A glorious, magnificent, and world-altering funeral. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel※fire.net
The silence in the arena, the silence of a world that had just been completely, utterly, and beautifully broken, continued. No one moved. No one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe. They could only stare, their minds a blank, white canvas of pure, unadulterated, and holy terror. The Challenger had won.