Chapter 8 ( Abyss Invasion ARC )

The air in Frista Hills crackled with dread, the battlefield a frozen graveyard where Ayom’s colossal halves steamed in the snow, 

severed by Sira’s void-scythe. The defenders of Neu stood frozen not by cold, but by shock as the General of Flying Death hovered above, 

his tattered void-wings blotting the pale sun, his army of winged horrors shrieking in a storm of claws and beaks. 

Sira’s laugh sliced through the wind, a sound like shattering souls, his armor of liquid shadow rippling as he raised his scythe, ready to carve through the kingdom’s heart.

Empress Kiku stood before her newly forged ice wall a towering bulwark of spiked glaciers, 

its surface a maze of frozen thorns that gleamed like diamond under the northern light. 

Her right hand lingered in the air, the gesture that summoned it deceptively soft, her white robes swirling in the blizzard of her own making. 

The land itself froze harder around her, the snow compacting into ice, the air so cold it burned. Her pale blue eyes, 

usually playful, burned with a fury that made the guards step back, their frost spears trembling. 

Ayom’s death wasn’t just a loss it was a wound torn open from a decade past, a memory of blood and guilt she’d buried under smiles and ice castles.

Ten years ago...

Frista Hills was no kingdom then, just a cluster of wooden huts nestled in a valley of eternal snow, where families carved out life against the biting cold. 

In a modest home, a man paced outside a room, his breath fogging as his wife labored within. 

“My child is born today,” he said, voice thick with hope, hands rough from years of tending frost-covered fields. 

The door creaked open, and the village healer a weathered woman with eyes sharp as icicles beckoned him. “You have a daughter.”

He entered, tears freezing on his cheeks, and lifted the newborn, her tiny form wrapped in furs. 

Her eyes, pale blue like glacier depths, met his, and the air chilled sharper, frost creeping up the walls. 

“Her name is Kiku,” he said, voice trembling with awe, as his wife smiled weakly from the bed. 

The healer’s gaze narrowed. “She carries extraordinary frost within her. This child is no ordinary soul.”

From that moment, Frista Hills grew colder. Snow fell heavier, winds howled fiercer, as if the land bent to Kiku’s existence. 

By age seven, she was a prodigy her small hands shaping snow into blades, weaving blizzards to dance for her village’s children. 

One day, alone in a field, she giggled to herself, “I wonder what else I can make.” Raising her hands slowly, gently, as if coaxing a flower to bloom she summoned her will. 

A deafening crack split the air, and a massive glacier wall erupted from the earth, towering like a frozen cliff, its surface shimmering with frostfire. 

Kiku stumbled back, wide-eyed, whispering, “What...?!” The village shook, screams rising as the ground quaked. 

Kiku ran home, heart pounding, crying, “Mom!” Fear gripped her she hadn’t meant to unleash such power. 

But her joy turned to dread as the mountain above the village split open with a roar. 

Two massive blue eyes snapped open, glowing like twin moons. Ayom, the ice leviathan, guardian of Frista Hills for centuries, 

awoke its colossal body of diamond-hard scales and frozen fins breaking free, the cavern crumbling like paper.

The village burned in chaos, not with fire but with frost. Ayom’s wrath was a blizzard of destruction its breath froze homes to brittle shards, 

its fins crushed roofs, its roars sent avalanches thundering. Kiku’s father, a farmer with no magic but a heart of iron, rallied the villagers. 

“Protect the children!” he shouted, wielding a spear against a beast that dwarfed mountains. 

Ayom’s eyes locked on Kiku, sensing her power as a threat to the hills it had guarded since time immemorial. 

It lunged, tail sweeping like a glacier’s fall, crushing her father and half the village in a single blow. 

Blood stained the snow, screams drowned in the storm, as Kiku watched, a seven-year-old frozen in horror.

Tears froze on her cheeks, but her fear turned to fury. “Stop!” she screamed, raising both hands. 

The air obeyed, a blast of frost surging from her small frame a storm colder than Ayom’s own, ice wrapping its scales, pinning its fins. 

The leviathan thrashed, but Kiku’s will was unbreakable. She climbed its frozen flank, staring into its eyes, her voice a child’s yet carrying a queen’s weight: 

“You will not take more from me.” Her frost sank deep, taming the beast’s heart, binding it to her. 

Ayom knelt, its roar softening to a rumble, but the village was gone her father a lifeless smear, her home ash beneath snow. 

Kiku fell to her knees, sobbing, “It’s my fault... my powers did this.” From that ruin rose Neu, built by survivors who saw Kiku as their savior, 

not their curse. She became Empress, her playful demeanor sculpting ice castles, teasing guards a mask to bury the guilt that gnawed her soul. 

Ayom became her guardian, a reminder of her sin and strength, until Sira’s scythe stole it away.

Present day...

Kiku’s eyes burned, tears freezing before they fell, as she faced Sira’s flying death. 

Ayom’s death ripped open that old wound her father’s blood, her village’s screams, all because of her power. 

She wouldn’t let Neu fall too. The flying horrors dove, beaks slashing, void-wings tearing the air. 

Sira hovered above, scythe gleaming, his laugh a blade in her heart. “Your beast was nothing, Empress,” he mocked. “Bow, and the Abyss might spare you.”

Kiku’s smile returned, sharp as a shard. “Spare me?” she said, voice light but laced with ice. “You’ve taken enough.” 

She thrust both hands forward, and the ice wall exploded outward spikes launching like spears, impaling dozens of demons mid-flight, their bodies shattering like black glass. 

The blizzard surged, a maelstrom of her will, freezing wings to brittle husks that crumbled under their own weight. 

Sira charged, scythe swinging in a void arc; Kiku dodged, her body blurring with frost, and countered with a wave of ice daggers that pierced his armor, drawing ichor.

The battlefield became her canvas ice pillars erupting to crush demons, blizzards blinding their ranks, her power a storm that rivaled Ayom’s. 

But Sira was relentless, his flying death overwhelming, their numbers darkening the sky. Kiku’s heart pounded, guilt whispering: 

You’ll fail them again. She pushed it down, raisin be continued.g her hand once more, ready to cook to unleash a frost that would bury the Abyss itself.

In the far east, Sean trekked through a scarred valley, Ayumi’s katana a steady weight at his hip, its hilt etched with Lila’s lion glinting faintly under the dusk sky. 

The air carried the tang of ash and blood remnants of his last bandit hunt, their dragon-scale masks shattered in his wake. 

His starry scars pulsed faintly, the Cosmic Dragon’s whispers quieter now, but never silent. You cannot outrun me, child. 

Sean ignored it, his vow steeling his steps: no more innocents would die, no more reliance on the monster within. 

The Land of Power trembled under the Abyssal Monarch’s first moves fissures, demons, the lava leviathan 

he’d slain but his hunt for bandits kept him grounded, each kill a step toward redemption.

A chill wind swept from the north, unnatural, biting through his cloak. Sean paused, eyes narrowing. 

Frista Hills loomed on the horizon, their peaks jagged and snow-draped, glowing faintly with an aura that made his starry veins hum. 

Power raw, immense, like a storm of frost locked in human form. It wasn’t abyssal, not void-tainted, but something else: pure, cold, commanding. 

“What the hell is that?” he muttered, gripping the katana. Curiosity tugged, overriding his instinct to stay alone. 

He changed course, boots crunching on frost-dusted stone, drawn to the hills like a moth to flame.

In Frista Hills...

The battlefield was a frozen inferno of chaos. Kiku, Empress of Neu, stood before her towering ice wall a fortress of spiked glaciers, 

its surface a labyrinth of thorns that shimmered like frozen stars. Her white robes whipped in the blizzard of her making, 

pale blue eyes burning with arctic fury as she faced Sira, the General of Flying Death. His void-wings blotted the sky, 

tattered and vast, his army of winged horrors swarming like locusts beaks slashing, claws dripping ichor. 

Sira’s void-scythe gleamed, the same weapon that had cleaved Ayom in half, its edge warping the air with abyssal hunger. 

His laugh was a blade, cutting through the wind: “Your leviathan was a toy, Empress. The Abyss will feast on your frost.”

Kiku’s smile was sharp as a shard, her playful mask gone. “Feast? You’ll choke on it.” She thrust both hands forward, 

and the ice wall roared to life spikes erupting like spears, impaling dozens of demons mid-flight, their bodies shattering into black frost. 

She spun, her frost a dance of destruction: blizzards swept the battlefield, freezing demon wings to brittle husks that crumbled; 

ice pillars surged from the ground, crushing horrors in explosions of shards. 

A pack of flyers dove, beaks aimed for her heart Kiku raised a hand, and a vortex of frostfire blasted outward, 

encasing them in crystalline tombs that exploded under their own weight. The defenders of Neu cheered, their frost spears joining her storm, the battlefield a canvas of her dominance.

Sira’s eyes narrowed, his void-armor rippling. “Bold,” he hissed, wings beating with hurricane force. 

He vanished in a blur, faster than thought, his scythe arcing in a void crescent a strike that split the air itself, reality fraying at its edge. 

Kiku reacted, summoning a shield of ice thicker than stone, but Sira’s attack was no mere blade. 

The scythe tore through, void energy erupting in a shockwave of black lightning that shattered her shield and slashed her side. 

Blood sprayed, red against her white robes, as Kiku staggered, a gash from hip to ribs steaming in the cold. 

The pain was fire, her frost faltering as she fell to one knee, the blizzard weakening. The defenders gasped, their morale cracking like the ice wall behind her.

Sira hovered closer, his laugh a screech. “The strongest falls so easily. The Monarch will savor your soul.” 

His flying death surged, claws and beaks descending like a storm of knives.

Kiku’s vision blurred, guilt clawing her heart her father’s blood, her village’s screams, Ayom’s death. I failed them again. 

But she gritted her teeth, frost curling around her wound, refusing to break. “Not… yet,” she growled, raising a trembling hand.

A shadow flashed across the battlefield not void, but human. Sean burst from the ridge, katana drawn, a streak of controlled fury. 

He’d seen the fight from afar, felt Kiku’s power clash with Sira’s darkness, and moved without thought his vow pulling him to protect. 

A demon dove at Kiku; Sean’s blade arced, severing its head in a spray of ichor, the body crumbling before it touched her. 

Another charged his katana danced, slicing wings, piercing cores, three kills in a heartbeat, his strikes fluid as water, precise as death. 

“Stay back!” he shouted to the guards, standing between Kiku and the swarm.

Kiku’s eyes widened, meeting his scarred, glowing faintly with starfire, a stranger yet not. Sean knelt beside her, ignoring Sira’s looming shadow. 

“Hold still,” he said, voice low but steady. His hand pressed to her wound, starry veins igniting, Cosmic Dragon power surging despite his vow. 

Starfire flowed, warm against her frost, knitting flesh and staunching blood in a glow of nebulae. 

The pain faded, her side healing in seconds, though starry scars lingered faintly on her skin a mark of his touch.

Kiku stared, breath catching. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t the protector, the strongest, the one carrying Neu’s weight. 

This stranger, this scarred boy with a blade and glowing hands, had stepped in, shielding her when she faltered. 

Her heart stirred a fleeting warmth, the “normal” she’d craved since childhood, to be guarded, not always guarding. 

“Who… are you?” she whispered, voice soft, almost breaking.

“Sean,” he said, standing, katana ready as Sira’s swarm circled. “And you’re not dying today.” 

He glanced at her, a flicker of Lila’s smile in his eyes, then faced the General. Sira’s scythe spun, his laugh mocking: “Another ant? The Abyss welcomes you.”

Kiku rose, frost surging anew, her power amplified by the moment’s respite. She met Sean’s gaze, a silent understanding passing two souls shaped by guilt, 

now standing together. “Let’s bury this void filth,” she said, her smile returning, sharp and deadly. 

The ice wall pulsed, her blizzard roared, and Sean’s blade gleamed. The bond was struck, and the fight was far from over.

To be continued.