Isabel leapt to her feet, braids whipping behind her. “Ms. Dusko, you’re incredible! Finish that fiend!” she cried, voice echoing against the marbled pillars. Percival’s strength waned, his breathing grew ragged.
At last, Esorin could bear the spectacle no longer. He flashed skyward, ready to intervene, only for a thunder-rich voice to roll from the horizon. “People from the Malevolent Path Hall, how dare you run rampant within my Celestial Palace!”
In that fraught instant, a vast presence awakened deep inside the palace. The air vibrated with a sovereign might that pressed on every soul present.
The power surged outward like a relentless tide, irresistible, enormous, each wave a silent decree demanding obedience.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Faces tilted toward the palace’s inner darkness, eyes wide with a mingling of awe and dread.
“T-That aura—tell me I’m wrong, but… Could that be the Quartet Celestial Guards of the Celestial King Palace?”
The color drained from Enaricus’ face. A nameless dread crawled up his spine, pricking every nerve with icy needles.
He had come armed with schemes and swagger, convinced that no hidden power remained beneath those ancient eaves.
Now the plan he had rehearsed so carefully began to crumble, pebble by pebble, inside his mind. After all, the Quartet Celestial Guards were only legends. No one alive had ever laid eyes on them, until this moment.
Seeing this, Esorin knit his brows.
“So the palace still hides strength like that,” he murmured, and the reverence in his weathered gaze unsettled even him.
For a man accustomed to steering calamities, the situation suddenly felt far more tangled than anything he had bargained for. Onneas felt her heart kick against her ribs; realization flashed through her like white lightning.
Only the Quartet Celestial Guards could unleash a presence so vast, so terrible, that the very air seemed to warp beneath it.
Since time immemorial, those four had been the palace’s living bulwark, their fathomless power woven into every brick and banner. Today, the clamor raised by Enaricus and his allies had finally roused them from their centuries of silence.
A hush rippled outward as a single figure emerged from the palace’s inner darkness, each step measured, inevitable.
He wore gilded armor polished to a mirror, the plates catching stray sunlight and hurling it back in blinding shards. His face, firm, middle-aged, and carved with unyielding authority, radiated a sanctity that brooked no defiance.
In his right hand rested a longsword whose steel glittered with a cold, silent promise of limitless force. The power rolling off his body felt almost solid, pressing every bystander to avert their gaze or be crushed beneath its weight.
Onneas, seizing the moment, drove Percival back with a single whirl of energy, then strode to stand directly before the golden warrior.
“Mr. Guardian, we salute you!” Onneas and the Celestial Guards behind her dropped to one knee, voices trembling with reverence. Relief flickered across their faces; his arrival rewrote the board.
The Guardian dipped his chin, a silent acknowledgment heavier than any spoken oath.
“Insolent rabble,” he thundered, voice booming like cathedral bells. “You dare create havoc outside the Celestial King Palace? Are you so eager to throw your lives away?”
The words reverberated through stone and marrow alike, leaving a high-pitched ring in every ear.
Enaricus flinched yet forced himself to sneer. “And who might you be to meddle in the affairs of the Celestial Halls?”
Though he reached for bravado, a betraying quiver threaded his words.
“I am one of the Quartet Celestial Guards,” the armored titan declared, each syllable hammered in fire. “My mandate is the palace’s safety. You trespass, you threaten the master of the Fourth Hall, your death wish is noted.”
Each charge rang like a verdict, weighty with righteous fury.
Esorin advanced a cautious step.
“So the legends breathe after all,” he said, forcing a brittle smile. “Yet even four legends together will not halt our resolve.”
The boast landed softer than intended, its steel dulled by honest fear.
“Is that so? Then show me,” the Guardian replied, disdain curling his lips as he beckoned them forward like children.
With that, his aura surged anew, a tidal wave of pressure sweeping across the forecourt in a single breath.
It struck Enaricus, Percival, and Esorin like a fist to the lungs, robbing them of air and courage alike. Enaricus felt a chill lance through his confidence.
The plan had always seemed foolproof, overwhelm the Celestial King Palace with numbers, lean on Percival’s backing from the Malevolent Path Hall, walk straight through the gates. Now, a single golden figure barred the path, radiating power so dense, it pressed against Enaricus’ ribs like stone.
A truth settled over him with suffocating certainty: this would be nothing like the easy conquest he had imagined.
