“You’ve done a bad thing, Elder Rahm,” Eithan said as he slowly turned around.

“Not yet.”

The Ruler technique snapped into place. It was crude, but as soon as it completed, Eithan felt a genuine spike of alarm.

It wasn’t aimed at him.

A line of light focused on the wooden house.

Where the focused sunlight streamed down from heaven and touched the wood, flames leaped up as though the house had been soaked in lamp-oil.

Screams came from inside, but it would take a moment before the fire reached them. They could escape.

Eithan had already dashed back, seizing Rahm by the front of his robe. “What is this?” he asked quietly.

Elder Rahm’s jaw remained stubbornly shut, but there was a gleam of hatred in his eyes.

Heaven’s Glory members had filtered out from all over to watch. They muttered about the fire, but their attention was focused on Eithan.

He had come here prepared to be betrayed. If they all jumped him at once, he could still walk out with ease.

But now, he would have to abandon people under his protection.

A Kazan prisoner stumbled out of the door, but a line of Heaven’s Glory madra streaked in front of him, burning through the doorframe and setting it on fire. The prisoner staggered back, then turned to find another exit. The fire hadn’t spread fully yet. He could escape.

More Striker techniques poured in from the bystanders.

They couldn’t fight him.

But they defied him now.

Eithan turned his attention back to Rahm. “You would rather die than let them leave?”

“Rather die than bow to you.”

Eithan watched the old man’s face, and it was as though he saw Rahm through a new lens. He looked alien, like he had transformed into something other than human.

But he hadn’t changed. This was what people had always been like.

“Very well,” Eithan said.

He shoved Rahm back two steps, where a star from the Hollow King’s Crown hung in the air like a blue-white jewel. The Jade looked up.

The pure madra blasted down, spearing him through the soul.

His Remnant slowly split itself in half as it tried to rise, but Eithan had turned his attention to the rest of Heaven’s Glory. They had piled Striker and Ruler techniques onto the house, openly defying him, and still none had dared to actually attack him.

With his powers restricted, their numbers mattered. They could overwhelm him if they figured out something that would penetrate his Archlord body. Once he ran out of his weak and limited madra, anyway.

He could still leave, regroup with Lindon and Yerin, and together they would plow through the Heaven’s Glory School.

He would just have to leave twelve people in a burning building.

Eithan had made that choice long ago.

He stripped his turquoise outer robe, letting it fall to the snow. Before it landed, he’d reached an Iron Ruler holding sword and shield.

One twist, and the man’s arm was broken, his sword falling. Eithan reversed it, shattering his shin with the hilt.

A Striker technique lanced through the air where Eithan’s head had been a second ago. He stood in front of the Striker who’d launched it, breaking the woman’s jaw with the flat of his new sword.

A trio of Enforcers approached together.

Seconds later, when he was done with them, he stood over their groaning, bleeding, but still-living forms with blood spattered all over his face.

“Anyone who comes into that building with me will be forgiven,” Eithan said.

Several Heaven’s Glory ran away. Most people peeked around corners, unwilling to get closer. The house was all but consumed by fire now.

Eithan turned to the home himself. The sleeves of his under-robe were too long, so he tore them off. “I will remember this.”

Then he plunged into the flames.

Striker techniques followed him.

13

Yerin wasn’t really sure how her Moonlight Bridge worked.

When Ruby had stolen the Bridge to go to Lindon, she hadn’t given the Bridge any directions, and hadn’t known exactly where Lindon was. She had just willed the Divine Treasure to take her to Lindon, and it had done so.

Did the Bridge scan the whole world, find the person who matched her thoughts, and then take her there? Did it read her mind for some coordinates that even she wasn’t aware of? If she told it to take her to her closest living relative, or to the person who hated her the most, would it be able to do that?

Lindon would have already tested it to find out. Eventually, she would too. If you relied on a weapon you didn’t understand, you might find it turning in your hand.

But when she finally escaped the suppression field of Sacred Valley and willed the Moonlight Bridge to take her to Akura Malice, she was terrified.

What if the destination was off-track again? What if it stranded her far away, then took the full three days to recharge?

As it turned out, there was no need to brace herself. She was washed away in white light, re-forming immediately on the outstretched branch of an enormous tree.

Just the branch was as wide as a road prepared for wagons, and it looked thin as a twig next to the trunk of the tree itself, which stood as tall and wide as one of Ninecloud City’s towers. An icy wind blew leaves big enough to use as tents, and darkness covered the lands beneath her.

Shadow aura.

Akura Malice hovered above Yerin’s tree, close enough that Yerin could have lobbed a pebble and hit the Monarch in the back of the purple silk dress. Spread out before them both was a broad valley, not too unlike Sacred Valley, filled with buildings that looked as though they had been stolen from all over the world. They resembled toys from this distance, but no two were alike.

Except in their condition. If they were toys, the child playing with them had gotten bored and smashed them, poking holes in them or tossing them here and there. Long holes were gouged into the earth, and there was a broad indent in the center of the valley in which several buildings had been crushed. Yerin was uncomfortably certain it was a footprint.

A bow appeared in Malice’s hands, its shaft seemingly made of glacial ice that shimmered like moonbeams. Yerin’s spiritual sense shivered as she felt it, and while she didn’t examine it any closer, she tasted a confusing riot of impressions.

Malice lazily pulled back the string, and an arrow of the same material as the shaft appeared on the bow. She spent a moment taking aim, then loosed the arrow.

In the distance, a flock of silhouettes flapped furiously away. They were far enough away that they looked like a featureless cloud until Yerin focused on them.

That entire cloud dropped to the ground at the same instant Malice released her bowstring. Yerin tightened her gaze, finding her Herald body responding easily.

As she’d suspected, there was an iridescent blue-and-green arrow stuck in the body of each gold dragon.

“I’m so glad you decided to visit,” Malice said warmly, though she didn’t look down. She seemed to be tracking another target. “Would you like a turn?”

Yerin didn’t want to openly express her disgust at the sight of a Monarch taking lesser lives out of petty revenge, and she was in a hurry. “Don’t have so many seconds left that I can spare one.”

“Quite understandable. Would it help you if you knew what they’d done?” She flicked a hand, and tendrils of shadow seized a gold dragon halfway across the valley. Yerin wasn’t even sure how she’d understood where to look; maybe Malice was transmitting her intentions directly.