Even though assassins were naturally superior to other professions in speed, stealth, and lethality, the Iron Saints shattered that law, slaughtering assassins like chickens in a coop.
Their aspis shields slammed the nimble killers into the dirt with bone-crushing force, while their spears found throats, hearts, and eyeholes with uncanny precision.
Some swept their weapons in graceful arcs, slicing open jugulars mid-flip.
The assassins’ blades, crafted from Titanium, an ultra-rare ore mined from the divine depths of Eden, had always cut through any armor like butter. But against the Iron Saints, their weapons barely left scratches. It was like using common steel against Elden Ore.
The assassins were stunned, never had they encountered armor so impervious, so cruelly unyielding.
Meanwhile, the six Awoken Ones had joined the fray, each radiating the vast power of their inner worlds. Their might was enough to subdue the average battalion in seconds, but these Saints were no ordinary warriors.
They moved like one organism, shielding, covering, flanking, and pulling each other from death’s grasp with unnatural synchronicity. Slaying even one was a herculean task.
"Enough of this!" Blood roared, her voice splitting the air.
The ground convulsed, and from the crimson-cracked soil erupted serpents of blood, towering, writhing things with fanged maws and glistening eyes. Still tethered to the bleeding earth, they struck toward the Iron Saints with murderous intent.
At the vanguard stood Moses, his presence steady as iron, eyes locked on Blood. Her dagger pulsed in her hand and morphed into a blood-forged longsword, glinting under the overcast sky. Behind her, the blood serpents loomed, each hissing with feral hunger.
Then her aura exploded outward like a wave of death. An immense, crushing pressure descended upon the battlefield. The Iron Saints’ armored boots cracked the soil beneath them as they sank slightly, the weight unnatural and suffocating.
But just as the battle tilted, the Awoken One who had sealed this realm, a pale man veiled in a cloak, froze. His eyes widened.
He inhaled sharply and saw his breath. Snowflakes drifted down in slow spirals. He turned with dread toward Winter, one of the youngest Awoken Ones, who had just recently awakened, and not even by natural means.
Winter’s eyes were wide with disbelief. He hadn’t summoned this.
"...God," the Awoken One whispered, voice shaking.
The very fabric of space twisted, warped, and then split.
A monumental crescent of sword light tore through the air with divine finality. Ice followed in its wake, erupting in a jagged, sky-piercing wall that cleaved the battlefield. The ice surged forward like a frozen tidal wave, splitting the land for nearly a kilometer.
On one side of the glacial divide stood Blood.
On the other, her severed half.
The cut was impossibly clean. She hadn’t even had time to blink.
A sword that had cleaved through the void itself.
Kryos’ Avatar materialized behind the Awoken One who wielded ice, silent as a breath of frost. The air grew still. Sensing danger, the Awoken One spun with blinding speed, his blade cleaving twice through the shimmering figure behind him.
But the Avatar stood unscathed, eyes calm, an eyebrow raised in quiet disapproval.
Then, he raised his sword, a curved shard of glacial essence that pulsed with ancient cold.
"I am not a man," he said, his voice sharp and empty. "And this ice... disappoints me."
The words themselves seemed to freeze the air. Before the Awoken One could blink, his head was severed from his body, spinning into the snow like a discarded stone.
In the same breath, towering ice spikes erupted from the ground, caging Summer and Purple within a prison of jagged crystal. Purple’s face twisted with fury as she summoned a thunderbolt from the heavens. It crackled against the frozen bars with divine fury. But when the smoke cleared, the ice stood untouched. Gleaming. As if it had only been freshly polished.
"It seems the world has truly forgotten what Kryos means," the Avatar murmured, shaking his head with a tinge of melancholy.
Then came two more pillars of death, blades of ice that shot up from the earth with such ferocity that Summer and Purple were impaled before their bodies could even react. Blood spattered the snow in arcs of crimson, their inner worlds collapsing like brittle glass.
But this was no mere ice, it was Asher’s will made manifest. His terrifying fusion of talent and inner world crushed theirs effortlessly.
Void, the Awoken One capable of manipulating space itself, was in Asher’s sight.
With sword in hand and a single step, Asher appeared behind him. There was no warning, no aura, only motion.
Void’s head flew cleanly from his shoulders.
Asher didn’t even use power. He used speed. Precision. A technique forged for assassins and honed through countless near-deaths.
But Blood had been too proud to use such tactics.
The Awoken One who ruled the wind fled the instant Blood was slain, vanishing in a current of fear and self-preservation.
The one who commanded water chose to fight. Surrounded by Iron Saints, she lashed out with ferocity, wounding many. But in the end, her throat was pierced by a cold iron spear.
The battlefield quieted.
Asher stood still, sword dripping, his expression unreadable as he turned to the golden barrier glowing at the battlefield’s edge. Inside it stood his wife and children.
His head tilted slightly as he looked at them, eyes flickering with a storm of emotion.
It was desperation that had birthed that impossible slash.
A technique he hadn’t known resided in him.
Power enough to cut through the void.
With slow, deliberate steps, he returned to them. His boots crunched softly in the snow. He crouched before the twins, their eyes wide and fixed on his massive red blade.
"Permit me to return to my duty?" he asked quietly.
Sapphira nodded, her gaze steady.
Asher stood tall once more. His voice rang out like steel.
"Pack up. We’re heading back to Ashbourne. The war isn’t over. It was foolish to rest when my enemies still draw breath."