Return of the Mythic Bloodline

Chapter 499: Blood bath

As Celestia reached closer to the city walls, its iron door was shut tight with soldiers standing guard on the ramparts. They were preparing for a possible monster invasion on the city, their faces tense with anticipation.

"There is someone outside the gate," one of the soldiers said, noticing the approaching figure of Celestia in the distance.

They would have immediately opened the door for any possible survivor from the monster attacks on the villages outside the city’s protection. However, Celestia looked anything but a survivor. With her eyes burning in blue flames like living energy and a sword with a crimson-stained blade in her hand, she appeared even more terrifying than the monsters themselves.

The soldiers drew their bows, the heads of arrows pointing directly at Celestia. Bowstrings creaked under tension.

"Stop right there!" The commander of the guards shouted from the wall. "State your identity."

Celestia did not stop. She continued with her consistent, slow movement.

"I said do not move any closer," the commander shouted again. Other guards stretched the arrows further on their bows, muscles straining.

Instead of stopping, Celestia raised her sword, its tip leaving the ground and its surface lacing itself in Sword Aura. The blade hummed with a low, deadly resonance.

The commander’s eyes widened, sensing something dangerous emanating from her sword, a pressure that pressed against his chest even from atop the wall.

"Subdue her!" He ordered.

More than fifty arrows were shot in an instant, whistling through the air at a terrifying pace and raining down upon Celestia like a deadly hailstorm.

Before they could reach her, she swung her sword in a wide arc toward the incoming projectiles. A sharp blade of energy materialised from the movement of her sword and shot upward. It obliterated the arrows into nothingness in its wake and approached the wall at a blinding speed like a crescent of destruction.

The commander instinctively stepped back, his lips shivering as he murmured, "T-twilight Sword? B-but why—"

BOOM!

The wall crumbled, unable to withstand the single strike of the Aura Blade. The soldiers stationed upon it were buried under the stone debris before they could even have the chance to retreat. Dust and rubble billowed outward in every direction.

Those soldiers were innocent, Ezekiel Silverhart. They did not kill your family. Why did you kill them?

"I will slaughter anyone who stands in my path of revenge," Celestia muttered as she moved forward, her voice cold and unyielding.

The iron door of the city, which had stood against countless monster invasions and attacks from neighbouring nations, fell with a single swing of Celestia’s blade of fury.

She moved forward, stepping onto the fallen iron gate, her boots clanging against the warped surface.

Several hundred soldiers and armoured knights stood at the entrance, blocking her way to the inner city, while several hundred more were quickly joining in from behind, their hurried footsteps echoing through the streets.

"You will not move any further!" Ned, a knight who had once served under Ezekiel and was a close friend of Tristan, stood against her, his sword pointed directly at her.

"Get out of my way!" Celestia roared with a sharp glare, her gaze alone sending shivers through the ranks of the army. Men who had faced monsters without flinching now felt their blood run cold.

"Y-you are Celestia, Tristan’s wife," Ned murmured, recognising her. He had visited Tristan once or twice after his retirement, sharing drinks and old war stories. "Wh-why are you attacking the city? What is the meaning of this?"

"Tristan is dead!" Celestia shouted, her broken voice filled with fury and grief. "Catherine killed him and my whole family. Step out of my way."

A heavy gasp left Ned’s mouth, his eyes widening in shock. The soldiers beside him let out similar gasps of disbelief. There was no one in the knight’s order who had not heard the name of Sir Tristan, the only knight who had seen the last moments of the Twilight Sword and escaped from the bottom of the ravine of Monster Land.

"Tr-Tristan is dead?" Ned murmured, trying to settle the weight of the news, his mind reeling. "H-how could it happen?"

Celestia began moving again, her eyes fixed on the castle standing at the centre of the city.

"Wa-wait, Celestia," Ned said, pulling himself out of his daze as she approached closer. "There must be some kind of misunderstanding. Why would the queen... k-kill.."

His words gradually came to a stop as his eyes fell on the sword in Celestia’s hand and the energy it radiated. The familiar pulse of power, the distinctive hue of the aura, it all clicked into place.

He had seen it before. Not just him, but every knight who had served the empire for more than five years recognised the unmistakable aura surrounding Celestia.

"Y-you are the Twilight Sword?" Ned asked, completely bewildered, his voice barely a whisper.

"Will you stand in my way?" Celestia demanded one last time, her burning gaze boring into his soul.

Ned clearly knew how much the Queen adored Ezekiel. Her killing Tristan no longer seemed like an unfounded accusation. The pieces fit together in a horrifying picture.

Still, as a knight of the Valtorian Empire, Ned was bound by his oath.

"Please forgive me, Sir Ezekiel," he said, drawing out his sword. The blade scraped against the scabbard with a metallic hiss.

"I-is she really the Twilight Sword?"

"Why would the Twilight Sword attack the city?"

"N-no! W-we are as good as dead if we are really facing Sir Ezekiel Silverhart."

Whispers of fear rippled through the ranks, spreading like wildfire among the soldiers. She was alone, standing against an army of trained knights numbering closer to a thousand.

Yet not even a single soldier who had seen Ezekiel fighting before could confidently say that the battle was in their favour. Memories of the Twilight Sword’s legendary prowess haunted the older veterans among them.

Nonetheless, they had to fight. For the people. For the Valtorian Empire. Duty demanded it, even in the face of certain death.

Celestia did not say a word further. She grabbed her sword with both hands and bolted towards the army with zero hesitation in her eyes, her body a blur of blue light and fury.

Thus, a brutal one-sided massacre began. The Valtorian knights, who were incapable of manifesting sword aura, could not survive more than a single strike of Ezekiel’s blade. Each swing claimed multiple lives, the sword cutting through flesh and bone as though they were paper.

Every weapon thrown at her was shattered by the radiance of her Soulforce. Every shield or piece of armour that tried to protect its wielder from her attack was sliced open like a hot knife running through butter. Steel offered no more resistance than cloth.

The walls of the city were painted red with blood. Fallen bodies of the soldiers lined the streets, their limbs severed, their heads separated from their shoulders, or their guts cut open and spilling onto the cobblestone. .

---

"I-I’m s-sorry... I w-wasn’t there when y-your village was attacked and Tr-Tristan was killed..." Ned murmured, his eyes half open, blood spilling out of his mouth and dripping down his chin. "S-still, I kn-know... it is presumptuous of me... b-but please spare the ci-citizens..."

His lips remained parted. His eyes remained still, staring into nothingness, the light already faded from them.

Celestia neither accepted nor rejected his request. She pulled her sword out from his chest with a wet, sucking sound and moved forward, toward the castle, leaving behind a hell of crimson. The streets behind her had become a river of blood.

A small trail of blue flame had started burning out from her eyes, licking at the air like candlelight in a storm. Several cracks of abyssal black were spreading across her skin like veins, branching outward from her heart.

dOnTlookatUswearefeAlThy

yOUKIlledinnoCEnTPEopleyOUArefilTHylIkeUd

Voices of death screamed at her, a silhouette of black aura covering her from behind from which several disfigured souls clung to her body, their spectral hands grasping at her shoulders, her hair, her arms.

"So this is how she suffered the Corruption of Death," I murmured with a deep sigh, watching from my translucent form above. Perhaps, because I was connected to her, the voices of death that screamed at her caused me throbbing pain as well. The ache pounded behind my eyes and deep in my head. But I had long grown accustomed to this pain. It was an old companion now.

However, the deep voice that spoke to her in her mind was different from the voices of death. It had said that it was her inner voice, come to warn her about the Wheel of Fate. But I had doubts about it. If it truly came to warn her, why do so when it was already too late, after the tragedy had already unfolded?

Was it truly her inner voice, or something else entirely?