LEGACY OF THE FORBIDDEN ARCHMAGE

The scent of sulfur mingled with the metallic tang of blood thickening in the air. The sky of Aethelgard, once a symbol of purity, was now torn apart by jagged rifts of deep purple—the manifestation of The Great Void summoned by the black army. Below, the capital was no longer a place of refuge; it was a slaughterhouse.

"Hold the line! Do not let the Shadow Walkers touch the inner gate!"

The voice was hoarse, coming from a guard commander who had lost his left arm. However, the command was futile. From atop the ramparts, Ignatius Valerist could see thousands of the city’s inhabitants being slaughtered like cattle. The silver-armored guards fell one by one, their bodies exploding as they were struck by decay curses from the air.

Ignatius stood on the highest balcony of the Altar Tower, his hands trembling. It was not out of fear, but from holding back the weight of mana that was nearly exploding the circuits within his body.

"You cannot do this alone, Ignatius."

A soft yet firm voice sounded behind him. Ignatius turned. There stood Seraphina Ashcroft. Her face was deathly pale, her white mage robes soiled with the dust of ruins, yet her eyes remained bright with an unshakable resolve. Surrounding Seraphina, the last six protector mages from the Ashcroft Order sat in a circle, chanting a synchronization spell.

"Seraphina... go below. Take the children through the secret tunnel," Ignatius commanded in a low tone.

"No." Seraphina stepped forward, her hands forming a seal of light in the air. "The duty of the Ashcroft Order is to be the shield for the Archmage. If you fall, this world is truly finished. I will hold them here, even if I must drain every last drop of my life."

In the distance, a massive explosion shattered the main gate. A figure in black armor radiating absolute darkness flew through the air, landing atop a giant mechanical dragon made of metal and tortured souls.

Zoltan Draken.

"IGNATIUS! COME OUT OF YOUR NEST!" Zoltan’s roar shook the entire tower. "Watch your women die! Watch your people crawl and beg me for mercy!"

Zoltan raised his Soul Eater blade. Instantly, thousands of shadow arrows launched toward the tower where Ignatius and Seraphina stood.

"Now!" Seraphina shouted.

Seraphina and the six guards released their power all at once. A massive dome of light—The Aegis of Ashcroft—stretched out to envelop the tower. The shadow arrows slammed into the dome with the sound of a thousand cannons exploding simultaneously.

Seraphina staggered, blood beginning to flow from her nose. This protective spell consumed the user's lifespan as fuel. One by one, the mages behind her collapsed, their bodies disintegrating into dust of light, unable to withstand the energy feedback from Zoltan’s assault.

"Another one!" Zoltan laughed maniacally, striking his blade repeatedly against the cracking dome. "Come on, Seraphina! How many more lives will you burn for this loser?"

Finally, only Seraphina remained, standing alone against the pressure from Zoltan, who was only inches away behind the thinning layer of light.

"Ignatius..." Seraphina turned for a moment, a faint smile on her face which had begun to wrinkle as her age was forcibly siphoned by the spell. "Remember me... in the next life."

"NO! SERAPHINA!"

At that exact moment, the dome of light shattered into pieces. Zoltan’s blade lunged forward, tearing through Seraphina’s chest and piercing her heart. The woman's body was thrown toward Ignatius, her warm blood splattering across the Archmage’s face.

Ignatius caught Seraphina’s frail body. His eyes, once a clear blue, instantly turned pitch black with terrifying flashes of purple. The sorrow vanished, replaced by an irrational fury. He knelt, dipping his fingers into the blood flowing from his own chest—blood that slowly began to glow with a sickening purple hue.

Ignatius drew forbidden Rune symbols on the floor with impossible speed, while his lips chanted verses that did not originate from any language of this world. The air around them suddenly went still. Time seemed to stop. Gravity vanished, causing the ruins of buildings to float upward.

"You want my power, Zoltan? You shall have it. But not in this world."

Ignatius stared at Zoltan, who had landed on the balcony with a smirk of victory. Ignatius's voice was now layered, as if thousands of entities were speaking through his mouth at once.

"Ichor Astralis... The Thirteenth Apocrypha: UNSEAL!"

Zoltan’s eyes widened. His body trembled violently as his primal instincts screamed that something was wrong. "What... what are you calling? That is not white magic!"

"You always sought power out there, Zoltan. But you never knew that the Thirteenth Sky God never ascended to heaven. He was buried within the Valerist bloodline as a curse. Ichor Astralis is not mere blood... it is the destruction code that will erase you from history."

A massive surge of purple energy exploded from Ignatius’s heart. It was not an explosion of fire, but an explosion of space and time. The light swallowed Zoltan as he tried to flee, disintegrated his mechanical dragon into atomic dust, and leveled all of Aethelgard in seconds.

"ABSOLUTE ERASE."

The world became a void of white. The space around the tower folded into a single point in Ignatius’s chest, pulling all matter into an unstable vortex of time. Within that vortex of destruction, Ignatius saw the image of Seraphina’s shattered soul, carried by the same dimensional current as he was. He tried to reach for it, but his consciousness began to tear apart.

"500 years..." Ignatius murmured in the midst of the void. "Wait for me there... I will find you, and I will kill anyone who touches you."

And in a single flash of blinding light, the history of Aethelgard ended. The soul of Ignatius, now bound to the Ichor of the Thirteenth Sky God, hurtled through the dark corridors of time, seeking a vessel lowly enough to hide his existence from the eyes of the enemies who might also have survived.