Chapter 98 Aria
Chapter 98 Aria
The subterranean ritual chamber beneath the Grand Solar smelled strongly of crushed quartz, ancient salt, and the sweet, metallic tang of pure royal blood. It was a circular room carved entirely from black obsidian, with no doors leading in or out save for the heavy stone hatch above us. The only illumination came from a deep trench running in a complete circle around the floor, filled with liquid silver that hissed and bubbled with faint, violet energy.
I stood in the exact center of the trench, my bare feet planted firmly against the cold stone.
The accelerated second trimester had turned my pregnancy into a heavy, unmistakable reality. The tight, prominent curve of my stomach pressed heavily against the midnight-blue silk of my robe. Inside me, the twins were completely silent, but their presence felt like two miniature suns spinning in orbit, their powerful, steady heartbeats vibrating through my entire skeletal structure.
Kael stood just outside the silver trench, his massive obsidian armor stripped away, leaving him in a dark, close-fitting battle tunic. His long white hair was loose, falling around his shoulders like snow, and his mismatched eyes—one burning gold, one swirling emerald—were locked entirely on my face with an expression of desperate, focused intensity.
"Are you certain of this, Aria?" Kael’s deep, velvet voice echoed softly against the obsidian walls. "To rewrite the entire Citadel ward system with your bloodline's resonance... it will draw the remaining fragments of Malakor's soul straight to this room. He will feel the frequency shift the second we break the seals."
"He's already coming, Kael," I said, lifting my right hand.
The silver Sage rune beneath my skin flared into a blinding, beautiful white starlight that cut through the darkness of the chamber. "If we don't overwrite his old anchors tonight, he will use our own walls against us during the solstice. Start the ritual."
Kael didn't hesitate. He pulled a silver dagger from his belt, dragging the sharp edge deeply across his left palm. A thick stream of dark, royal crimson blood pooled into his hand before he knelt down, pressing his palm flat against the bubbing liquid silver in the trench.
The moment Kael’s blood mixed with the silver, the entire room trembled.
The liquid silver flashed into a brilliant, blinding emerald and gold fire that raced around the complete circle of the trench, forming an absolute barrier of royal magic.
"Now, Aria," Kael whispered, looking up at me, his face pale with absolute devotion and strain as he channeled every drop of his Sovereign power into the floor. "Draw the core."
I closed my eyes and let my consciousness drop straight down, past my own thoughts, past the frantic rushing of my pulse, and straight into the warm, glowing center of my womb where my children rested.
The moment I touched their energy, a violent, breathtaking shockwave of pure, colorless white starlight exploded from my chest.
It didn't hurt. It felt like opening a dam that had been locked away for five centuries. The silver Sage rune on my hand dissolved into pure light, traveling up my arm and shooting directly into the air above the ritual chamber. The white starlight hit the obsidian ceiling, branching out in a thousand intricate, glowing geometric patterns that immediately began to sink into the stone blocks of the castle above us.
CRACK. HISS.
Through the absolute silence of the subterranean room, we could hear it. Across the entire Citadel—from the lowest dungeon cells where Julian slept, to the highest ramparts of the Frost-Spire pass—the old, dark blood-seals built by Malakor were shattering. The black, rotting magic of the old king was being systematically burned away, replaced by the brilliant, warm starlight of the Creators.
Inside the trench, Kael let out a sharp, ragged breath, his body shaking under the immense pressure of holding the anchor. "The frequency... it is shifting! The old anchors are gone, Aria! The mountain is ours!"
Suddenly, the air inside the obsidian chamber didn't just grow cold—it turned into an absolute, suffocating void.
The emerald and gold fire in the trench violently twisted into a sickening, bruised violet hue. The stone hatch above our heads didn't open; it exploded inward, showering the chamber with heavy shards of black rock.
A thick, oily cloud of dark midnight smoke poured down through the opening, smelling of old tombs, ash, and the unmistakable, rotten cedar musk of Malakor’s ghost.
"You think you can rewrite my house, little Creator?" a voice hissed from the smoke—a cold, collective harmony that vibrated straight through our skulls.
From the center of the dark smoke, a towering, skeletal figure formed. It didn't have Julian's flesh this time; it was a pure projection of Malakor’s ancient soul, a massive shadow entity draped in tattered royal robes, its face a blank void save for two burning, incandescent gold eyes that stared down at my stomach with absolute, rabid hunger.
"Kael!" I shouted, stepping forward through the glowing silver trench.
I didn't wait for the ghost to strike. I thrust my right hand upward, unleashing a torrential beam of pure, colorless starlight straight toward the center of Malakor’s shadow chest.
The white light hit the shadow entity with the force of a falling meteor.
SCREEECH!
A horrific, ear-splitting sound echoed through the chamber as Malakor’s projection was thrown backward against the obsidian wall, the ancient dark magic smoking and sizzling wherever my starlight touched it.
"Father!" Kael roared, rising from the trench in a single, terrifying blur-speed motion.
He didn't have his broadsword, but he didn't need it. The shadow claws on his left hand were fully extended—three feet of solid, smoking midnight energy that crackled with a volatile emerald fire. He leaped across the glowing trench, driving his claws straight into the center of the shadow king’s chest, pinning the entity to the black stone wall.
"You died five hundred years ago!" Kael’s voice was a low, sub-zero drone of absolute executioner rage. "This is not your throne anymore!"
Malakor’s burning gold eyes looked past Kael's shoulder, fixing directly onto me with a mocking, blood-soaked grin.
"The throne was never the prize, my son," Malakor rasped, his voice echoing like breaking glass as his shadow form began to dissolve under Kael’s claws. "The solstice... the blood moon... the core is already open. The twins will be born in the void."
With a final, violent shriek, the shadow projection shattered into a million pieces of black dust, completely evaporating into the obsidian air before it could touch the floor.
The chamber went dead silent.
Kael stood alone against the black wall, his chest heaving, his claws slowly retracting as he dropped to his knees. The ritual was complete. The Citadel wards were rewritten. But as Kael turned around and rushed over to catch me as my knees briefly buckled from the massive energy expenditure, we both knew the ghost’s warning was real.
The winter solstice was here.