Blackout Ascension: Return of Primordial Heir-Chapter 43: Invasion

The night air in the Zephyros Kingdom was usually a comfort to Luna Zephyros. He was unofficially known as the Night Emperor. He naturally ruled the dark shadows. But tonight, the freezing wind whipping across the jagged mountains felt different, and incredibly heavy. It felt like a deadly, silent warning.

Luna stood completely alone at the dark, rocky bottom of Moonspire Hill. He had just safely sent Soltheia back to her home kingdom in her pristine white carriage. He had actually proposed to her and she had actually accepted. He was officially going to be a husband. He had a real future now. He had every single reason in the world to just go straight home, crawl into his warm, comfortable bed, and sleep peacefully for three days straight.

But he couldn’t do it. The chilling memory of the scary Black Mist Knight calmly carving runes into the mountain dirt was precipitously carved into his brain. Kairos was out there in Solaris, training with defeating dungeon beasts. If Luna just lazily ignored this dark, ancient threat hiding in his own kingdom, he didn’t deserve to stand next to his best friend. He definitely didn’t deserve to protect Soltheia.

"I really hate doing extra work," Luna muttered quietly to himself, staring blankly up at the jagged black rocks of the forbidden mountain. "But I guess my lazy days are officially over."

He started climbing heavily, but he didn’t use the main dirt path. He bypassed it, using his gravity magic to walk straight up the steep cliff. His black boots smoothly slid on the solid stone, defying the natural laws of physics.

He hiked the dangerous mountain. His breathing remained steady, but his mind was racing.

I absolutely need to know exactly what that thing was, Luna thought firmly, his pale eyes focused in the dark night. It definitely wasn’t a normal monster. It possessed high intelligence. It knew ancient magic. If there is an entire army of those things hiding in the shadows, the royal kingdoms will be slaughtered before the Great War even officially begins.

He finally reached the terrain of Moonspire Hill. The shimmering moon hung in the dark sky, casting long, creepy shadows across the distorted trees.

Luna erased his physical presence. He walked silently toward the exact spot where the Black Mist Knight before. The ground was completely ruined. The dry grass was turned into grey, lifeless ash. Carved deeply into the hard dirt was the highly complex magic circle. The alien runes weren’t glowing anymore, but they still made Luna’s pale eyes burn into watery just by looking directly at them.

"What kind of ancient magic is this?" Luna whispered quietly, slowly crouching down in the dirt. He carefully hovered his bare hand a few inches above the jagged, black carvings.

The atmospheric mana lingering rigidly in the dirt felt wrong. It didn’t feel like normal elemental magic or like holy light. It felt like pure sickness, and rotting decay.

Luna jerked his hand back with sheer annoyance.

"I need to memorize these symbols," Luna thought, forcing himself to stare at the headache causing runes. "If I can carefully draw them for the elite royal scholars in Solaris, maybe they can somehow translate this garbage. Kairos needs to know what was the true goal of Black Mist Knights."

Suddenly, the loud crickets in the grass stopped chirping. The gentle night wind instantly died. The ambient temperature on the mountain peak plummeted, instantly turning the normal air into a chilling gale.

Luna’s elite survival instincts screamed out in panic. The same terrifying, suffocating pressure from earlier returned. But this time, it was much heavier. It was focused on him.

He didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. He instantly lunged his physical body forward, rolling across the rocky, hard ground.

WHOOSH!!

A jagged sword made of pure, solid darkness cleaved through the empty space exactly where Luna’s head had been a fraction of a second ago.

Luna instantly snapped back up to his feet, swirling around, his silver hair fluttering wildly in the cold air. His pale hands glowed with concentrated, dark purple gravity magic.

"Shadow Domain!" Luna roared loudly, expanding his mana core. The dark shadows on the ground stretched, trying to firmly lock the silent attacker in place. But his elite shadows passed right through the target like it wasn’t even physically there.

Standing silent in the pale moonlight was the Black Mist Knight. It was heavily clad entirely in black, jagged armor. Smothering black mist oozed from the sharp joints of the metal armor. It had just a dark, empty helm. The Knight slowly lifted its massive dark sword. It didn’t look angry. It looked like a bored executioner doing his routine work.

"You actually came back?" Luna gritted his teeth, a bead of sweat crawling out on his pale forehead. "You are bold for trespassing in my kingdom. I am an Elite General of Zephyros."

The Black Mist Knight ignored his proud royal title. It lowered his tip of the sword onto the ground, hovering inch above the rocky terrain.

It wasn’t going to fight him with a blade.

The Knight stood perfectly still, and then, it slowly opened its unseen mouth beneath the dark helm.

It spoke, sounded like rusted iron vehemently screeching against another iron slab. It sounded like a thousand dying souls intensively whispering at the same time inside an empty, sealed tomb.

"Kael’thos... Vaneer..."

The second the terrifying, alien syllables rigorously hit the silent air, Luna’s entire physical body rigidly seized up.

"Argh!" Luna gasped loudly, his eyes snapping wide open.

He involuntarily dropped his gravity magic. He clamped both of his hands heavily over his ears, squeezing his pale eyes tightly shut. But it was utterly useless. The mysterious, cursed language didn’t travel smoothly through his ears. It avoided the ears, evading inside directly. The dark, jagged words skimmed directly into his brain like a rusty, spinning iron bolt.

"Xylo... Rell... Zul."

The Dark Knight chanted much louder. The alien language defied the normal laws of all magic. It wasn’t a normal mana chant or spell casting chant. It was a mind evasion chant.

"Stop... stop it!" Luna screamed out of his lungs, in agonising pain.

He knelt heavily onto the jagged terrain. The hard rocks brutally scraped his skin, cutting his legs, but he couldn’t even feel the physical damage. The raw pain inside his own head was so overwhelming that he can’t feel physical pain anymore. It felt like his fragile brain was being pushed entirely through a meat grinder.

His trained mana core was destabilized. The atmospheric gravity around him fluctuated, randomly crushing small rocks into dust and then weirdly floating the broken dust into the air.

A thick warm drop of crimson red blood slowly oozed out of his left ear. Then his right ear.

"Vaneer... Kael’thos..." The Knight continued to chant smoothly, its terrifying, grinding voice echoing inside Luna’s skull.

SCREEEE!!

Luna violently smashed his own pale forehead into the rocky ground. He desperately tried to use sharp physical pain to distract his brain from the mental torture. It didn’t work at all.

His physical vision blurred into double, then triple images. The silver moon clinging in the sky looked jaggy and distorted, actively turning into a bleeding red eye looking down at him.

"Ahhhh!" Luna roared loudly, coughing up a handful of blood onto the mud.

The dark, suffocating black mist leaking from the Knight’s ancient armor slowly crept across the ruined ground. It slowly crawled straight up Luna’s shaking legs, wrapping around his chest and flowing over his bleeding face.

The physical world vanished entirely. Luna was frantically pulled out of reality. He was thrown entirely into his own internal mind space. He was suddenly gliding helplessly in an endless, pitch-black void.

Out in the real, physical world, his body had collapsed into the dirt. He was spasming abruptly on the ground while thick blood cascaded from his nose and ears. But entirely inside his own mind, the inescapable nightmare was just beginning.

The massive heavy chains made of pure, solid black mist thrusted out of the dark void trying to aggressively wrap around Luna’s wrists and ankles. They stretched him out like a helpless prisoner strapped to a medieval torture rack.

The sinister, hustling voice of the Black Mist Knight echoed loudly from every single direction inside the dark, empty void.

"You are fragile, and you are merely a mortal. You are nothing." These words are understandable and hit Luna like sharp, jagged black daggers inside his mind. They stabbed into his most precious, protected memories.

Luna screamed as the daggers hit. He clearly saw the terrible image of Kairos being brutally erased from existence by a dark sword. He clearly saw the heartbreaking image of Soltheia crying loudly, turning into grey ash right in front of his eyes.

The Black Mist Knight wasn’t just trying to quickly kill him; it was torturing his very soul. It was intentionally breaking his sanity into shattered pieces.

Luna couldn’t breathe or cast a spell. He was completely trapped inside his own broken, bleeding mind. He was bleeding from the inside out.

I can’t... I can’t lose right here... Luna thought weakly, his mental consciousness fading deep into the dark, endless abyss. Soltheia... I promised her... I promised I wouldn’t be weak anymore...

But pure human willpower was nowhere near enough to stop an ancient magic attack. He completely needed a miracle. He desperately needed highly forbidden power.