In the very heart of Paradise, where people once gathered for transportation before the sacred runes of old Tenaria, a massive stone platform began to thrum with power.
For months, it had remained dormant—silent, forgotten. But now, it pulsed with radiant golden light. Ancient symbols carved into its surface shimmered to life, casting complex shadows across the stone plaza.
And when the light faded, fifty knights stood where there had been none.
Their figures were wreathed in the auras of their force—each one now Emberframed. Transformed.
Clad in radiant armor forged from Elden Ore, they were titans among men. They mounted their colossal steeds, creatures bred for war, with chests like boulders and eyes that gleamed with sentient fury.
From the heads of the mounts sprouted blade-horns of enchanted gold, sharp enough to cleave steel and shimmering like sunlight through a broken prism.
But the awe of their arrival faded the instant their eyes beheld the land before them.
Ash rained like black snow. Smoke curled upward from what had once been a bustling district of shops and homes, now flattened.
Fire danced along fallen beams and shattered tiles. Bones lay where bodies once were, brittle and pale.
Not a single soul stirred. Laughter, once the music of these streets, had been replaced by silence more deafening than war drums.
A few meters away from the fifty stood a solitary figure, serene atop a beast of legend.
Asher sat astride Sirius, his majestic white wolf. The beast’s fur was thick and wind-tossed, its muscles taut with restrained fury. Its crimson eyes locked onto the skies above where the monstrous flying ship loomed—a juggernaut of metal and flame. From every direction, it rained ruin. Beams of searing energy lanced down upon the city like divine judgment, turning stone and steel into vapor.
Portions of the First and Second Wall were gone—just gone. Where once had stood ancient battlements, now only smoking craters remained.
Screams echoed through the smoke-choked air. Women. Children. His people.
Asher’s eyes burned, but not from the ash.
“To the Lord’s Manor,” he commanded, his voice a blend of iron and desperation. “Now!”
Sirius responded with a howl that made the very earth tremble, and then it was moving—vanishing across the ashen ground like a ghost of vengeance. The fifty paladins spurred their mounts in unison, hooves pounding in a cadence that shook the bones of the dead.
Snow began to fall.
It came without warning. Not the gentle snow of early winter, but a thick, unnatural blizzard. The third month of the year was supposed to be spring, but the heavens wept white tears. Heavy flakes clung to charred stone and bloodied armor.
Asher leaned low, his cloak billowing behind him. The air in his lungs turned cold, then colder still, until even breathing felt like swallowing shards of ice. His heart thundered. Not from fear—but from a pain more intimate.
He was a lord. A protector. But in this moment, with his city burning and his people screaming, he was powerless.
Because he could not turn back.
He could not stop.
Not until he had reached her.
His woman. His soul.
Sapphira.
That decision—to keep riding, to trust others, whose fate were unknown, with the defense of Paradise while he rode toward the heart of his world—nearly shattered him.
But he rode still.
And behind him, fifty paladins of war thundered.
___
Finally, the looming silhouette of the Lord’s Manor appeared through the falling snow, its once-proud banners charred and torn by fire. The gate had been lowered over the wide moat, but no guards stood watch. Silence clung to the walls, thick and wrong.
Asher urged Sirius onward, and they thundered across the bridge. The moment he entered the courtyard, his eyes widened.
A formation of a hundred fairies stood poised in glimmering armor—glowing with an eerie, cold light. Behind them, the crumpled bodies of a dozen Gray Knights lay in a corner, twisted and discarded like broken tools. Their silver cloaks were stained red.
Then the manor’s grand doors groaned and fell inward, splintered at the hinges, and from the dust stepped two figures.
One—a massive white-haired man clad in thick, rune-etched armor. The other—a golden-haired fairy of imperial bearing, wings folded like a celestial monarch. In his arms, limp and cradled like something sacred, was Sapphira.
Her head lolled against his shoulder. Unconscious. Her dress torn.
Barefoot.
“Shing!”
Asher and his paladins drew their blades in unison, the ringing steel like a war-choir’s first note. The air thickened with killing intent. Their aura surged—a pressure that made even the fairies flinch.
But Gerald’s right eye ignited with searing gold.
Without warning, he swung his broadsword in a casual, horizontal arc.
A lightning wave erupted from the blade, screaming across the courtyard like a storm unleashed. It tore through air and snow and slammed into Asher and the Emberframed paladins with catastrophic force.
Boom!
The impact buried them into the thick stone walls ringing the courtyard. Web-like cracks rippled outward, snaking through stone like fractured glass. Some of the knights fell to their knees, heads bowed—unconscious but not dead.
None bled either.
Gerald’s expression darkened.
That strike was forged from my inner world.
Yet their armor still held.
Their hearts still beat.
“They’re not men…” he muttered, brows knitting. “They’re something else.”
He raised his sword again—but paused.
A heartbeat thundered through the courtyard like the tolling of a war bell.
He turned.
From the wreckage of the wall, a man stepped forward.
Snow-white hair. Skin dusted with frost. Shoulder-length strands framed a face carved from the divine. Gerald’s breath hitched—not in fear, but in sheer disbelief.
For the first time, he had met a man more beautiful than Alexander.
“You wear the infamous looks of Kryos…” Gerald said slowly, catching a snowflake in his palm. He clenched his fist, and the flake turned to dust.
“You must be him. The lastborn of the First Men. Kryos’ vessel. The one who summoned this cursed snow.”
Asher didn’t respond. He touched his lips—blood.
He stared at it.
Then, slowly, he raised his gaze to Alexander, voice hoarse with grief and fury.
“Give her to me.”
Alexander arched a brow. Then laughed—a cruel, ringing sound as he ascended into the sky on beating wings, his form glowing faintly against the storm clouds.
“Kill him,” he said, amused. “Kill the man who dared desecrate our Empress.”
Gerald lifted his broadsword, muscles tensing—
Then he froze.
What stood before him now was no longer just a man.
Asher’s body rippled, reshaped. His eyes burned white with primal rage. His limbs swelled. Fur burst across his skin. Claws extended from his fingers. He stood taller, broader, a living storm of wrath.
He had become a Voldibear in Warform.
Gerald took a step back, his grip tightening.
His voice came out quiet.
“…I sense the mark of my ancestor.”
His eyes widened.
“Lamech…”