The air inside the grand drawing-room of the Flare mansion became suffocatingly heavy.
His newly transformed hybrid body trembled—not out of fear, but from the shattering of a lifelong illusion.
His skin, a deathly whitish-gray marred by jagged black marks The twin horns protruding from his forehead, sharp and demonic like those of a mythological conqueror, cast a long, jagged shadow against the pristine walls.
"After everything I've done... so you decide to treat me this way," Valerius whispered. His dual-layered voice cracked, a horrifying mixture of human agony and Zethrian malice.
Two hot, heavy tears welled up in his eyes, tracing a path down his cheeks before dropping into the ground.
He looked at his father, Valerion, and then at his grandfather, Icarus. Both men stood with their arms crossed, looking at him as if he were a stray animal that had wandered into their sanctuary. There was no remorse in their eyes. No regret.
"I see," Valerius muttered, his head dropping as his silver hair fell over his face. He took a slow, deep, shuddering breath, and the trembling stopped completely. When he lifted his head again, the tears had dried, replaced by a hollow, terrifying emptiness. "Now it's all clear to me."
The room's temperature plummeted for a fraction of a second before skyrocketing into an unbearable furnace.
"Looks like I'll kill everyone in this family," Valerius said flatly.
"Insolent wretch!" Valerion roared, his patience snapping. He didn't wait. As the head of the Flare family, his authority was absolute, and his flame was legendary. Valerion extended his right hand, and a torrential blast of bright crimson fire erupted from his palm, tearing across the marble table, instantly incinerating the wine glasses and the leather armchairs as it surged directly toward Valerius.
BOOM!
The explosion shook the drawing-room, blowing out the reinforced glass windows and sending a shockwave across the estate. A thick cloud of black smoke and crackling embers filled the space.
Valerion lowered his hand, his cuffs smoking. "A failure to the very end."
Before the smoke could even begin to clear, a terrifying silhouette burst through the flames. Valerius was completely uninjured. The fire of his father hadn't even singed his flesh. With insane, blinding speed that completely bypassed human reaction time, Valerius appeared right in front of Valerion.
Valerion's eyes widened in sheer panic. He didn't even have time to raise his arms to guard. Valerius drove he's fist directly into his father's stomach.
CRACK!
The sheer physical strength behind the punch shattered Valerion's high-grade protective vest instantly. The shockwave traveled through his spine, and Valerion gasped, vomiting a fountain of blood as he was lifted off his feet and launched through the reinforced stone wall of the drawing room, crashing heavily into the grand central courtyard outside.
"Valerion!" Icarus Flare shouted, his composure finally shattering. The elderly patriarch stepped forward, his reddish-white hair flaring upward like a crown of literal fire.
Icarus's flame was a blinding, superheated white-gold fire, the mark of a master who had reached the pinnacle of elemental manipulation.
"You monstrous abomination!" Icarus bellowed, slamming his palms together. ": eruption!"
A massive cylinder of white-hot flame erupted directly beneath Valerius's feet, shooting straight through the roof of the mansion and into the sky. The heat was so intense that the surrounding pillars began to melt, turning into liquid white stone that hissed as it poured onto the floor.
But Valerius didn't yell. He didn't scream.
Inside the roaring pillar of white-gold fire, Valerius simply unleashed his own elemental power. As a Flare, fire was his birthright; as a Zethrian hybrid, his fire had mutated. A torrent of pitch-black flame
No flare has ever achieved such power before with the sole exception of skull , he was the first flare to unlock the black flames.
The flame erupted from his skin, swirling aggressively around him like a protective armor. The black fire clashed with Icarus's white-gold fire, creating a violent, multi-colored vortex that ripped the ceiling of the mansion to shreds.
With a single, powerful flex of his muscles, Valerius parted the white-gold flames with his bare hands. His gray skin was blistered and charred from the intense heat of his grandfather's peak technique, but within a single millisecond, a brilliant flash of white energy washed over his body.
The burns vanished instantly. The charred skin peeled away, revealing perfectly regenerated, smooth gray flesh beneath.
"Regeneration...?" Icarus whispered, taking a step back, his heart skipping a beat. "You've completely discarded your human limitations."
"You only loved my ability, grandfather," Valerius said, his layered voice echoing from the center of the inferno. "So let me show you what my ultimate ability looks like."
Before Icarus could counter, the alarms of the Flare estate began to blare at maximum volume. The sound of rapid footsteps echoed from the long, winding corridors of the mansion. The rest of the elite Flare family bloodline had arrived, alerted by the catastrophic structural damage.
"Stop right there, traitor!" a sharp voice yelled.
Bursting into the ruined courtyard came Alistair Flare, Valerius's uncle, alongside his two cousins, Blaire Flare and Claire Flare. Following closely behind them was Sola Flare, Valerius's own biological mother, her face pale with horror as she looked at the demonic form of her son.
"Valerius... what have you done to yourself?!" Sola screamed, her voice shaking as tears filled her eyes. "I wished you've never been born, you're a Deville".
Valerius looked at his mother, his gaze remaining colder than ice. "A devil is that what you think I am
You are the devil ."
"Don't talk to your mother like that!" Alistair Flare roared, his hands instantly igniting with localized, high-velocity blue flames. He was the speed-fighter of the family. "Jet Strike!"
Alistair ignited the soles of his boots, launching himself forward like a human missile. He zipped across the ruined courtyard, leaving a trail of blue light in his wake. He appeared above Valerius, unleashing a barrage of rapid, flaming punches aimed at Valerius's vital points.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Every punch landed, exploding against Valerius's chest and face in bursts of blue heat. But Valerius stood perfectly still, his boots anchored to the ground, taking the full force of the attack without moving an inch. The blue fire blackened his face, but his hyper-regeneration healed the tissue faster than Alistair could burn it.
"Is that all?" Valerius muttered.
Alistair's eyes widened in horror. Before he could ignite his boots to retreat, Valerius's hand snapped out like a striking viper. He caught Alistair by the throat, his claws sinking deep into the man's neck.
"And they say I'm a failure," Valerius said.
With a brutal twist of his wrist, Valerius channeled his black fire directly into Alistair's body.
Alistair user didn't even have time to scream as the black fire consumed him from the inside out, turning his entire skeleton to ash in a matter of seconds. Valerius opened his palm, and the ashes of his uncle scattered into the wind.
"Alistair!" Valerion, who had managed to stand up in the center of the courtyard, gasped in agony as he witnessed his brother's instantaneous death. "You monster! Girls, burn him to dust! Don't hold back!"
Blaire Flare and Claire Flare crossed their arms, their twin energies synchronizing perfectly. They were known as the dual embers of the main house. "Combined flames: Twin sun !"
They threw their hands forward, and two massive spheres of volatile orange fire manifested in the air, fusing together into a singular, miniature sun that hovered over the courtyard. The heat wave was so massive that the remaining walls of the Flare mansion began to crack and crumble under the thermal expansion. They launched the giant sphere straight at Valerius.
At the exact same time, Icarus Flare unleashed his maximum remaining power, throwing a massive wave of his white-gold fire from the opposite side, trapping Valerius in a devastating crossfire of elite elemental destruction.
The orange sun and the white-gold wave collided directly on Valerius's position. The resulting explosion was so immense that it could be seen from miles away.
A massive mushroom cloud of pure fire erupted into the sky, completely vaporizing the central courtyard, the fountains, and the stone pillars.
Blaire and Claire dropped to their knees, panting heavily, their energy severely depleted. "Did... did we get him?" Claire gasped, wiping sweat from her brow.
The smoke began to part.
Valerius was walking forward through the sea of flames. His clothes were entirely burned away, revealing the terrifying black marks pulsing across his muscular, gray torso. Half of his face had been completely burned down to the skull by the white-gold fire, his teeth exposed in a gruesome, skeletal grin. But as they watched, the white energy surged wildly around his head. New flesh, skin, and an eye knitted themselves back together in less than two seconds. His regeneration was absolute.
"Insane... his speed and strength are off the charts," Valerion whispered, his knees trembling as his son approached.
Before anyone could react, Valerius vanished from their sight.
Spurt!
Valerius reappeared right between Blaire and Claire. He didn't even use his fire. With his raw, hybrid strength, he swung both of his heavy arms outward. His claws slashed cleanly through their defenses, eliminating the twin cousins in a single, fluid motion. They collapsed onto the scorched earth, their flames dying out forever.
"No!" Sola Flare screamed, dropping to her knees as she watched her nieces fall . "Valerius, please! Stop this! I'm your mother! I carried you!"
Valerius stopped, standing directly over her. He looked down at the woman who had spent his entire childhood locking him in training rooms, forcing him to surpass his limits until his fingers bled, all so she could boast at the high table of the elite families.
"Why after all I'm a devil," Valerius said, his voice cold .
Sola looked up at his whitish-gray face, his demonic horns, and the sheer emptiness in his eyes. She realized, with absolute terror, that the son she knew was completely gone.
Valerius raised his right hand, his palm igniting with a small, concentrated orb of pitch-black fire. "Goodbye, mother."
He drove his hand down. The black fire erupted outward, consuming Sola Flare in a silent, painless vacuum of heat. She vanished into the darkness, leaving nothing behind but her hair pin resting on the ash.
The grand mansion was now nothing but a hollow, burning shell of stone and steel, the sky above choked with thick, black smoke.
"We have to go all out, father," Valerion said, his voice dropping all pretense of arrogance. He was terrified. He knew that their survival was no longer guaranteed.
"I never thought... that our own bloodline would be our executioner," Icarus said, his old eyes hardening as he took a final, deep combat stance. Both men ignited their bodies completely, flames covered their entire bodies.
They launched themselves forward in perfect unison, their bodies transforming into a massive, roaring bird of pure, concentrated fire that tore through the ground, heading directly for Valerius with the intent to vaporize his core before he could regenerate.
Valerius stood his ground. He didn't move an inch. He planted his boots into the ground, bent his knees, and drew both of his gray arms back. The black marks on his body flared with a violent, bleeding violet light as he drew gathered black flames in both hands.
" Let's see who's the failure now !"
Valerius thrust both of his palms forward. A torrential, apocalyptic wave of pitch-black fire exploded from his hands, forming a massive, crushing wall of darkness that collided head-on with velarion and Icarus
CRACK-BOOM!
The collision created a localized shockwave that flattened every standing structure within a two-mile radius. The grand walls of the Flare mansion finally gave way, collapsing inward as the sheer pressure of the elemental struggle shattered the foundations of the estate.
For ten long seconds, the white-gold and the pitch-black flames wrestled in the center of the ruins, melting the stone into a glowing lake of lava. But the phoenix began to waver. Valerion's flames were the first to flicker out, his energy completely exhausted. Without his support, Icarus's white-gold fire was instantly overwhelmed by the sheer, unending weight of Valerius's hybrid malice.
The black fire swallowed the both of their flames whole.
"No... this can't be!" Valerion screamed as the dark inferno closed in around him.
The black wave washed over them. Valerion and Icarus Flare were completely engulfed, their bodies disintegrating into the dark void of the blast as the remaining pieces of the main house were reduced to absolute nothingness.
Then velarius killed every last flare ,all of them
His body was filled with blood at the end
no elite bloodline. There was only a bodies,ashes of the entire flare family.
Valerius stood alone in the center of the crater.
He looked down at his hands, his dark claws slowly retracting as his black flames subsided into his skin.
The wind howled through the empty space, carrying the ashes of his family away into the outer sectors. The Flare bloodline, one of the strongest, wealthiest and powerful , had been completely eradicated within hours by the very child they had rejected.
Valerius turned his back on the burning crater, as he lifted off the ground, flying back toward the horizon where King Orlox's palace awaited. The human elite had fallen, and the true war for the Border was about to begin.