Chapter 1736: The war across dreams

Book 17 – Devouring the Sun

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Crimson banners snapped in hurricane winds as the Scarlet Crusade advanced across the central plain of the vast Bloodmar Continent. Their armies were forged of dragons that followed the guidance of the Sacred Dragon Empress Tiamat and saitnesess that followed the teachings of the Three Moons.

The opposition moved in living tides of ivory skin and midnight armor—vampiric legions whose very footsteps bled scarlet mist across the trampled soil. Intermixed with them were werewolf troops, each lupine behemoth massing a dozen tons, corded with raw sinew and adorned in moon-forged iron.

Over their heads burned twin celestial glyphs: a blood-red moon for the vampires, a silver hunting moon for the lycans. Those lunar crowns were not symbols but conduits—open throats through which their patron gods poured strength, reflex, and endless rage.

It was not merely a battle; it was a continental cataclysm. Tens of millions fought from horizon to horizon.

Mountain chains cracked under the weight of unleashed spells; riverbeds boiled as sanguine sorcery clashed with dragon fire; whole forests ignited, then withered into ash-clouds carried on hurricane gales birthed by titanic wing-beats.

Lightning—both natural and arcane—stitched the sky into a luminous spider’s web. For days the sun vanished behind drifting curtains of smoke and charred feathers.

At the heart of the chaos, where shockwaves folded the air and turned sound into a constant thunder, three figures eclipsed all others. On one side floated a woman of impossible beauty, her brow marked by a dark, ever-blazing sigil of a demonic eye.

Of course, she was no other than Meylin, Depravita of Pride. Every time she waved her sword, crescent arcs of shimmering light cleaved outward, sundering flesh, steel, magic, and even hope itself.

Wounds dealt to her healed in an eyeblink: flesh knitting, bone restoring, blood evaporating into glimmering motes that re-stitched her immaculate form. When overwhelmed, she dissolved into incandescent vapor, re-forming seconds later in a dozen new locations like a living constellation.

Facing her stood the Vampire Princess—tall, alabaster, crowned by the keening halo of her blood-red moon. In her left hand she held a rapier of coagulated vitae whose tip whispered like a rattlesnake; in her right, she wielded a broad crimson great-sword that pulsed with each heartbeat of every soldier on the field.

With a single sweep, she summoned tidal rivers of liquefied blood that spiraled into spear-storms, each spear homing on an enemy pulse. Where her blade carved the earth, veins of molten blood erupted, scorching everything in a centrifuge of acidic gore.

Beside her, the Werewolf Titan towered thrice the height of an ordinary lycan. His hide was plate-steel muscle beneath silver-white fur, and behind him loomed an argent moon avatar the size of a fortress.

Each swing of his double-headed axe generated shockwaves potent enough to shear granite ridges in half. When he howled, the resonance ruptured eardrums and set rivers surging backward.

He moved with predatory bursts—one heartbeat a kilometer away, the next instant at Meylin’s throat, silver axe descending with planetary weight.

The three collided in flashes that outshone lightning. Meylin’s golden scythes met the Titan’s silver arcs, spraying electro-plasma across the battlefield.

When the Vampire Princess thrust her blood-spear barrage, Meylin answered by becoming mist—each spear passed harmlessly, then detonated into roses of crimson thorns that tore through the werewolf ranks instead.

Meylin re-formed above, weaving glyphs of blinding pride that detonated into coronal flares, incinerating night-spawn to atoms. The Princess retaliated by turning every drop of spilled blood—friend or foe—into chain-blades that wrapped Meylin in a constricting lattice.

The lycan leapt, axe poised to cleave her encased form. Yet in the moment of impact, all chains shattered as Meylin’s body burst apart and re-assembled behind them, unleashing a double-wave of auric force that blasted the duo, gouging a canyon into the ground.

Below, ordinary soldiers fought with matching savagery. Dragons were torn from the sky by vampire commanders who surfed on spears of blood; lycans were pinned by saintesses’ swords. The battle was growing more and more intense every single day, and it did not seem it would reach an end anytime soon.

—

Far, far away from the massive battlefield, on the Helix Continent, a very different yet equally fearsome kingdom writhed beneath a sun that never set. Once this land was the seat of the Sun Church, radiant citadels devoted to the Sun Lord. But after the Archangel’s demise and the deity’s disappearance, the charred basilicas fell into the talons of the Tiamat Sect.

Tens of thousands of dragons—some with bodies bathed in fire, others cloaked in solar coronae—glided through ash-filled thermals, honing their fire-breath in the realm’s furnace winds.

While dragons typically roam freely, shunning all forms of restraint or order, even the wildest and most feral among them tread with caution around the ancient central castle of the former Sun Church. That ruined fortress, blackened by divine fire and echoing with history, remains the only structure on the Helix Continent untouched by the architectural ambitions of the Tiamat Sect.

Temples were repurposed into dragon forges, cathedrals reformed into aerial barracks, and sun sanctums twisted into molten arenas—but not the castle.

No one dared.

Not out of reverence for what it once was, but out of awe and fear for what now resided within.

That crumbling bastion of sanctity and war had become the throne of the most feared being on the continent.

The man who struck down Archangel Michael, the shining spear of the Sun Lord and high sovereign of the Sun Church. The one whispered to have faced and defeated an avatar of the Sun God himself.

He did not demand tribute. He did not issue proclamations.

But his presence was enough.

Even dragons, whose arrogance was rivaled only by their power, bowed their heads when they flew above that ruin. The winds there carried whispers of divine death and apocalyptic glory, and the scorched stones still radiated the memory of celestial blood.

Cain Laurifer, slayer of divinity, did not need walls or titles to command respect.

Yet everybody bowed to the Scarlet King.