Chapter 8 - Father and Daughter
"Kill her!" Marcus shrieked, panic overriding his aristocratic composure as he pointed a trembling finger at his twin sister. "She's a leech! She stole the family's bloodline magic! Kill her right now!"
Half a dozen Sun-Wardens rushed forward, their longswords infused with blazing solar energy, aiming to decapitate her in a single synchronized strike.
Aurora didn't even blink.
She raised her right arm and swept it horizontally in a wide arc. A wave of white-gold plasma erupted from her fingertips like a scythe of pure sunfire. The wave slammed into the charging guards with the force of a falling meteor, shattering their swords, vaporizing their armor, and sending them crashing through the stained-glass windows into the courtyard outside.
Silence descended upon the grand ballroom—a terrified, suffocating silence.
Valen Ignia stepped down from the dais, his broadsword drawn, the blade glowing with a fierce, blinding orange fire. He was a master of the seventh tier, a veteran of a hundred magical wars.
"So," Valen said, his voice dropping into a cold, calculated growl. "The rat learned how to bite. It seems I made a tactical error eighteen years ago. I should have crushed your skull myself instead of trusting the drainage pipe."
"You trusted your arrogance," Aurora replied, her voice steady and chillingly calm. "You believed the Primordial Flame was a crown that only a son could wear. You thought my blood was just fuel for a machine."
"The bloodline belongs to the house!" Valen roared, charging forward with terrifying speed. He swung his broadsword in a vertical cleave meant to split her in half, the heat of his blade hot enough to melt stone.
Aurora didn't dodge. She raised her bare left hand and caught the razor-sharp, flaming edge of his broadsword squarely in her palm.
*HISS.*
Flesh met white-hot steel, but there was no blood. The metal simply ground to a halt against her skin, locked in place by an invisible barrier of compressed thermal energy.
Valen’s eyes bulged with absolute horror as he tried to push harder, but the sword wouldn't budge.
"You called me empty," Aurora whispered, stepping closer until she was inches away from his face, looking directly into his terrified eyes. "Look inside me now, Father. I am the fire."
With a flick of her wrist, she shattered Valen’s legendary sword into a thousand glowing shards of shrapnel. Before he could react, she drove her fist straight into his chest plate.
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A shockwave of white-gold fire blasted through Valen's back, blowing a hole clean through the heavy oak doors behind him as the high patriarch collapsed onto the marble floor, coughing up blood and sputtering for breath.
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