CHAPTER 488: BANNER IV

The world itself bent around Leon’s hand.

The fracture gathered not as a sphere of light, nor as flame, nor as shadow—but as something wrong. A shard of silence that cut through every law, every rhythm. Even the pulse of the Fifth itself went quiet, as if fearful of what it was becoming.

Kaelith did not move. His towering figure straightened, inevitability coiling around him in a last defiant surge, yet he made no attempt to strike. Instead, he spread his arms wide—like a sovereign greeting the end of his reign.

"Inevitability accepts... only the purest rebellion." His voice was no longer thunder. It was reverence.

Leon’s vision blurred into bleeding white, but he stepped forward, each pace costing him more than bone or blood. His very existence cracked with the motion. The fracture pulsed once. Then again. With every heartbeat, Leon felt his own essence unraveling into that abyss.

He thrust his hand forward.

The cavern, the sky, the throne—all of it broke.

The fracture tore reality apart, unmaking the inevitability that Kaelith embodied. No shield of law could contain it. No path of destiny could redirect it. It was the scream of existence refusing to bow.

The blast consumed Kaelith in silence. His armor of inevitability cracked, splintered, then dissolved into threads of light. His colossal form staggered—then began to fade, his laws unraveling like smoke in the wind.

Leon collapsed to one knee, his arm half gone, body shredded, the fracture still burning in his veins. He could not tell if he had survived or was already fading with the echoes.

Kaelith’s form knelt in turn, a giant bowing to the victor. His eyes, no longer filled with law, burned with respect.

"You are the Flamebreaker." His words rang clear, reverberating through every shattered echo of the Breach. "You carried fracture into inevitability—and won. The throne... is yours."

With those final words, Kaelith dissolved completely, inevitability fading from the world like a dream upon waking.

The ruins of the throne chamber groaned, light seeping through the cracks above. The war for the Upper Thrones had begun, and Leon—bleeding, half-broken, yet unyielding—was now its newest sovereign.

The silence that followed was not peace—it was the weight of reality resetting itself.

Cracks of light spread across the broken chamber, weaving threads of creation back together, yet nothing truly returned to what it had been. Where Kaelith’s inevitability once ruled, only absence remained.

Leon’s breath was shallow, every inhale scraping against ribs that no longer felt entirely his. His right arm—the one that had cast the fracture—hung useless, charred veins glowing faintly with echo-fire. His vision pulsed in black and white.

Then—

BOOM.

The chamber doors splintered. His team burst in—Naval at the front, wings flaring with panic, Milim’s aura surging uncontrollably, Liliana pale but sharp-eyed, Roselia rushing with healing magic already spilling from her hands, Roman dragging himself even though half his armor was dented.

"Leon!" Naval’s voice cracked, something rare for the always-calm strategist.

They froze at the sight. Their leader on one knee, surrounded by the ruins of inevitability, the shattered throne behind him.

"...he’s alive." Roselia whispered, rushing forward to kneel at his side. Healing light flared, but it faltered almost instantly—the fracture energy within Leon rejected

any attempt to smooth it over.

Milim’s eyes burned crimson as she clenched her fists. "Who did this? Where is he?"

Leon forced his head up, meeting her gaze. His lips moved slowly, voice hoarse, yet steady."Gone. I broke him."

The team stared at him in stunned silence.

Then the Tower itself answered.

A deep, resonant gong shook the air. The walls melted into light, and above the ruined throne, a new sigil flared into existence—dark flame entangled with a fractured circle.

Flamebreaker.

The title seared itself across Leon’s aura. Every Ascender in the Tower would feel it. Every Throne would now recognize him—not as a challenger, but as one of their own.

Naval swallowed hard, wings folding tight. "You... really did it. You shattered inevitability."

Leon tried to rise, but his body faltered. Roselia and Liliana caught him, their arms trembling under his weight—not because he was heavy, but because his presence had grown too vast.

Roman, voice grim, spoke what all of them felt."This isn’t just victory. This is declaration. The Throne War has begun."

Outside, far beyond the chamber, the Tower’s higher floors stirred awake. Distant Thrones, ancient sovereigns bound to laws of existence itself, turned their gazes downward.

One had fallen.Another had risen.And the war for dominion would no longer wait.

Far above, in the unreachable heights of the Tower, silence fractured into whispers.

The Upper Thrones stirred.

Their domains—universes folded within themselves, seas of law and time—shivered as the resonance of Kaelith’s erasure spread. His absence was not merely a gap, but a wound in inevitability, one that screamed across every echo-thread binding existence.

And all of them felt the name.

Flamebreaker.

In a chamber where stars bent like glass beads strung on black thread, a throne of obsidian bones cracked as its ruler leaned forward.

A woman draped in veils of shadow, her eyes like pools with no bottom, whispered, "The Ants were right to gamble... but they did not foresee this." Her lips curled faintly. "A mortal who wields fracture. Amusing."

In a desert made of molten suns, a colossal figure made entirely of radiant armor stood, every breath distorting galaxies. He tightened his gauntleted fist, voice like thunder striking a bell:

"Kaelith, the inevitable, fallen. And by a hand unmarked by the Upper Sigils. This Flamebreaker... either harbinger or usurper." His gaze turned outward, burning through the fabric of the Tower. "If he seeks the Thrones, he will find us waiting."

In a hall carved from the frozen screams of forgotten gods, an old man with no face chuckled. His skeletal fingers tapped against the arm of his throne.

"Fracture Requiem..." he hissed, savoring the words like poison wine. "So the Fifth Pulse breathes again. Hah. They will flock to him, or they will hunt him. Either way, the war begins."

And somewhere deeper still, where no throne dared intrude, something older stirred. It did not whisper. It did not roar. It merely watched.

Back in the chamber of ruin, Leon shuddered as he felt their eyes upon him. Not Kaelith’s inevitability—not one will crushing all—but a thousand gazes, heavy, calculating, hungry.

His team felt it too, though dimly. Naval grimaced. "They know. Every last one of them."

Milim stepped closer, fists trembling not with fear, but with violent eagerness. "Then let them come. If they want war, we’ll burn everything in our way."

Leon raised his head, voice raw but resolute.

"No. We don’t rush to them." His gaze sharpened, fractured aura burning brighter. "We make them come to us."

Because now... the battlefield was no longer just the Ants’ arena.

The Throne War was spreading across the Tower.