The summit of Eternal Frostspire loomed like a frozen titan, its jagged crown lost in the haze of storm clouds. Snow drifted in slow spirals, dancing through the cold silence before the world broke open.
Marcus stand there still like a frozen beast cover with blood but his eyes were full of rage and agony.
Lucian stood still, breath misting. The wind tugged at his cloak, the obsidian fabric flaring like a shadow's wing. Across from him, Marcus exhaled through gritted teeth, steam curling from his skin like smoke from a forge. His chest rose and fell in steady rhythm, muscles tight beneath his reinforced robe—every fiber of him coiled with violent restraint.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other.
No words. Just breath and silence.
Until Marcus raised his fist—thick, calloused, lined with golden light.
"Behold the Heavenly Fist Art!" His voice was gravel and thunder.
He launched forward with terrifying force. Each footfall was enough to shake the surrounding, thundered through the summit. Lucian didn't flinch. His fingers wrapped calmly around Obsidian Oath's hilt, blade drawn in a fluid, elegant motion.
Steel met fist.
Clang!
A shockwave rippled outward, shattering the snow into a thousand jagged motes. The clouds above trembled. Lightning arced overhead like divine wrath uncertain of its target.
Lucian held his stance, blade steady at the spine of Marcus's fist. "Using your full strength already, Martial Saint?" he said, voice chill as glacial mist. "I expected more."
Marcus grunted, the edge of a smile playing across his cracked lips. "That… was the prelude."
He stepped back and dropped into a deeper stance. Then—he vanished.
Or so it seemed.
Lucian's gaze tracked the blur just in time.
A barrage of fists rained down. Not wild, not brutish—every strike was honed, deliberate, timed like percussion in a grand martial symphony. Marcus unleashed Titan's Ruin, and the mountain shook under its weight.
Lucian parried the first few, blade singing, but even he had to shift—sidestepping between strikes, deflecting some with the flat of his sword, others with subtle twists of his cloak. His boots skidded across ice, carving trails as he moved.
He took a breath, sharp and short.
Then he stopped retreating.
Sheathing his blade for a moment, he let his fingers linger on the hilt—not rushing, not panicking.
"Umbral Dominion," he whispered.
The moment the blade left its sheath, the air folded. Obsidian energy swirled in a spiral around him, dragging the surrounding mana into itself like a silent storm. Every incoming strike from Marcus dissolved into the vortex, sucked into an unnatural void.
Marcus twisted his arm in a tight clockwise arc, forcing his mana to spiral outward in an attempt to scatter the crushing weight of Lucian's blade—but even then, the void-carved strike drove his mighty fist backward, inch by inch, against his will.
The mountain groaned. Then… stillness.
Marcus stood hunched, chest heaving, his once-blazing aura sputtering like a dying flame. The brilliance of his blue light faltered, flickering weakly at his trembling fists—fists that only moments ago had shattered mountains with their weight.
Lucian's gaze cut through him, sharp and merciless. His steps echoed like a verdict—one… two… three. Each footfall seared the frost, leaving molten imprints in the snow. Shadows curled and thickened, wrapping around him like a mantle of judgment.
His voice was calm. Cold.
"This ends now."
The blade rose.
Lucian summoned the fifth form of the Blackthorne Tenfold—
Eclipse of Desolation.
The Obsidian Oath flared, blacker than night even beneath the glaring sun. Void energy snarled along its edge, spiraling upward as though it meant to cut the sky itself.
Lucian moved. Not with fury. Not with desperation.
But with precision. With inevitability. With a sorrow carved into the marrow of his bones—a regret for the parents he would never see again.
Marcus flinched. His breath caught. Above him stretched a sky split in two—one half drowned in the radiance of a dying sun, the other swallowed by the abyss coiling around Lucian's sword. Beauty and terror entwined.
Golden light erupted around Marcus's hands. Mana seared his veins raw as he forced it into his right fist, his body quaking under the strain. He held his stance, waiting. Waiting for the strike that would decide his fate.
Lucian descended.
His sword carved down with the weight of annihilation, and the heavens obeyed. A beam of void mana erupted, cutting the clouds in half, plunging the battlefield into apocalyptic twilight.
Marcus bellowed in defiance. He waited, body tensed, eyes wild, until the last possible instant—then hurled his fist upward. The snow beneath his feet vaporized, leaving only scorched earth.
His golden punch collided with the abyss.
The world exploded.
A sphere of cataclysm bloomed—a half of black void, half of radiant azure. Energy spiraled outward in screaming waves, shredding mountainsides, uprooting glaciers, devouring the land. The shockwave blinded, deafened, annihilated all else. For a moment, even the air seemed erased.
When at last the radiance faded, the snowy valley was gone. In its place yawned a crater—a hollow wound upon the world.
Marcus's arms hung heavy at his sides, trembling as though ready to tear free from his shoulders. Lucian's palm bled steadily, crimson dripping down the hilt of his sword. Every muscle in his body quivered, refusing to obey—but neither man yielded. Both still clung to the same resolve. To fight. To endure. To see it through to the very end.
They charged once more.
Lucian rose high into the air, shadows coiling around his frame. Marcus followed, his massive form surging upward, the air itself bending beneath his ascent.
Steel met flesh—Lucian's blade clashed against Marcus's colossal, mana-forged hands. The impact split the sky with a thunderous crack, hurling shockwaves that shattered peaks in the distance. Lucian expected to drive him down, to break his balance—but Marcus stood firm in midair.
A Martial Saint. His mastery over mana transcended mortal law. Even the void could bear his weight.
Lucian was not deceived. His eyes shifted, vision burning cold. The world with only threads of mana paths remained. He read them, mirrored them, and willed himself to stand upon air as Marcus did.
But unlike Marcus, his mana was not endless. Each second he forced his body upward was stolen time, carved from what little remained.
Marcus's aura flared, his frame igniting with golden radiance. With a single burst of mana, his body flickered forward, appearing before Lucian in less than a heartbeat.
A fist came straight for Lucian's chest.
Lucian swung to intercept, his blade shearing through the air—but Marcus shifted in the blink of an eye, twisting his strike. The blow slammed into Lucian's ribs, bone crunching under the force.
The world spun.
He was hurled backward like a broken doll, crashing against the mountain with a sound like splitting stone. Rock cascaded down, avalanches roaring into the abyss below. Blood spilled from his lips in a dark spray, staining the snow at his feet.
Marcus's voice followed, low and guttural, thick with contempt.
"Tch… even my fists can't break your damned bones. Blackthornes… stubborn bastards to the very end."
Lucian staggered. One hand pressed to his side, ribs cracked and screaming, the other clutched the Obsidian Oath like a lifeline. He forced himself upright against the mountain's jagged face, eyes burning cold despite the blood dripping from his chin.
He did not bow. He did not kneel.
Not yet.
With the last of his strength, Lucian hurled his blade at Marcus, his body collapsing to the ground like a corpse drained of will.
Marcus sneered—he had expected Lucian to cling to his weapon, not fling it away in desperation. Abandoning the sword, he lunged straight for Lucian, his killing intent surging to its peak. But just as his hand was about to crush Lucian's throat, the figure before him dissolved into nothing.
A shiver stabbed Marcus's spine. Slowly, he turned—only to find Lucian standing behind him, wreathed in a suffocating aura, Obsidian Oath gripped in both hands. The blade had swelled into a colossal arc of void, blotting out even the sky itself.
"Abyssal Exile…" Lucian's voice was a whisper of death, "…the Ninth Form of Blackthorne Tenfold."
Marcus's pupils shrank. For an instant, he could see nothing but his own end reflected on the edge of that sword. Yet even cornered, a monster like him still had claws. With a roar, he summoned every shred of his mana, molding it into two additional spectral arms—an Asura's fists of blazing gold—and hurled them forward with all the fury of a dying titan.
Lucian didn't flinch. His body was breaking, blood dripping freely, but his will had sharpened beyond mortal restraint. And then—his eyes shifted.
The world bled of color. White drowned everything, black carved only the outlines of death. In that frozen vision, one singular path of darkness stretched through Marcus's chest like fate itself had painted where the blade must fall.
Lucian's grip tightened. He did not hesitate.
They passed each other in silence. No roar. No blast. Only the sound of stillness so absolute it crushed the breath from the world.
When the colors of reality returned, Marcus was on his knees. A gaping hole marred his chest, blood cascading like a broken fountain. His four arms twitched once, then crumbled away into sparks of mana.
Lucian turned slowly, each step heavy, his muscles trembling yet unyielding. Shadows writhed at his back, his blade dripping with abyssal light. His gaze fell on Marcus—not with triumph, but with cold inevitability.
The battle was over.
Marcus's breath rasped, shallow and broken, each exhale clawing at the air. His body trembled—not from the cold, but from the weight of a defeat he could no longer deny.
"H…how… how did you…do that?" His voice cracked, blood spilling between his lips.
Lucian slid Obsidian Oath into its sheath with deliberate slowness, the click echoing like a death knell across the barren battlefield. His smirk was razor-thin, merciless.
"My sword is engraved with a spell," he said, tilting the hilt so Marcus could see the faintly glowing etching. "A bond that ignores distance. That even space itself cannot sever."
Marcus's eyes widened, a flicker of disbelief drowning in the hollow light of defeat.
"You were the strongest of them," Lucian murmured, his tone flat, stripped of warmth, each word colder than the wind gnawing at the snow. "Had you remained in the Light… perhaps you'd still draw breath."
No answer came. Only silence. Either Marcus had nothing left to say, or breath itself had abandoned him.
And then—
Stillness.
Lucian stood over the kneeling giant, shoulders squared, shadows weaving around his frame like a shroud. There was no celebration, no satisfaction—only the sharp, cutting quiet of inevitability.
He lowered himself, one knee pressing into the blood-soaked snow, and with a gloved hand shut Marcus's lifeless eyes. "I never wanted this," he whispered, so softly it was devoured by the frost.
From within his cloak, Lucian revealed the Voidheart Sigil—not a weapon, but a ring upon his finger. Its surface was black as a starless abyss, and veins of silver light crawled across it like serpents, writhing with a muted hunger. The relic pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, humming in anticipation, as though eager to claim the fallen for itself.
Lucian raised his hand. The Sigil answered.
Marcus's body shuddered once before dissolving into shadow, every fragment of flesh, bone, and blood swallowed whole. No core consumed, no essence stripped—only his entire body sealed, imprisoned within the infinite dark of the ring.
Leonidas was next. His axe fell from his hand with a dull thud before his massive frame was torn into strands of pale light, coiling into the Sigil like smoke into a tomb. Then Ignatius followed—burned, broken, erased. Not even ash remained.
The battlefield grew colder. Silent. The relic's veins throbbed faintly, alive with the weight of three corpses bound in eternal confinement. Not devoured. Not freed. Caged.
Lucian lowered his hand. The Sigil dimmed, its glow retreating into stillness, as though sated—for now. His gaze, cold and relentless, shifted to Alaric's corpse.
The snow crunched beneath his boots as he began to walk forward—each step heavy with inevitability, each shadow bending closer around death.
Then—
A crackle tore through the clouds.
A ripple spread across the air like a shiver.
Lucian looked up. A massive magic circle burned into existence above, the sky trembling beneath its light.
From the fog stepped Alaric—blood dripping down his torn robes, the stump of his left arm frozen over in jagged ice.
Tiny circles spun at his right fingertips, their glow unstable, violent.
"I'm going to die anyway…" he rasped, his voice cracking through the silence. "So why not drag a few more souls with me?"
He thrust his hand forward.
The runic circles flared, spiraling upward, merging into colossal rings that aligned above Lucian—each one humming with catastrophic intent.
But Lucian didn't stop.
He kept walking.
Unhurried. Unshaken. Eyes steady, steps deliberate—the air itself bent around his calm.
"You don't have the strength to raise your sword anymore!" Alaric shouted, blood spilling from his mouth. "This is your end!"
"He doesn't have enough mana to sustain this," Lucian thought, eyes narrowing. He channeled power into his vision, tracing the invisible currents of energy threading through the air. "There… that flow—he's leeching mana from something else."
A faint glimmer pulsed near Alaric's chest. "A relic… so that's what's feeding him."
Lucian's hand tightened around his sword's hilt.
Panic crept into Alaric's face as he yanked out the Decima Vitae Relic, the cursed artifact glowing sickly in his grip.
"Stay back… don't come near me!" he hissed, stumbling backward.
Lucian's irises turned crimson—deep, glowing red, like the heart of a dying star.
The relic screamed with spectral light as Alaric began chanting—ancient syllables steeped in necromancy and resurrection.
A low breath escaped from Lucian lips, half a whisper, half contempt.
"The National Hunters think they've unraveled the secrets of the Blackthornes… but they've only ever seen the surface."
They never understood the Tenfold—a sword art born not of light, but of remembrance and ruin. Each form was a requiem to a fallen Blackthorne, every strike carrying echoes of their vengeance. The Tenfold didn't follow logic or mere technique—it followed emotion, the pulse of the wielder's will. Its power wasn't measured by mastery… but by how much pain the heart could bear.
The Blackthorne Tenfold is an exceptional sword art where every form connects to the next, each sequence weaving into the other—creating new layers of destruction with every transition. The deeper the flow, the greater the devastation.
His grip tightened on Obsidian Oath. The air trembled, shadows crawling toward him like summoned beasts.
"They've forgotten that shadows don't reveal everything."
Mana condensed into a sphere at the center of the uppermost circle, thunder groaning in its wake.
Lucian moved.
The sound of his blade leaving its sheath split the air like judgment.
No hesitation. No mercy.
Five forms, unleashed in absolute sequence:
Obsidian Genesis — shattered the circles, ripping a hole through the sky.
Midnight Veil — severed the mana flow feeding by the Decima Vitae Relic.
Sable Tempest — consumed the relic's energy beneath a devouring black storm.
Umbral Dominion — divided the very air, isolating Lucian and Alaric from the world.
Phantom's Requiem — descended, cleaving the relic—and Alaric's last hope—in half.
The spell collapsed.
The sky went still.
Alaric stared blankly, his lips trembling. "You… you can even destroy relics…"
Lucian seized him by the hair as he fall down. His voice came low and edged, like the whisper of a blade.
"The only reason you killed my parents was that cursed relic. Without it, you couldn't have touched a single strand of their hair."
Alaric coughed blood, words faltering between dying breaths.
"I… I never wanted this… if only your clan… had saved my sist—"
His core ruptured before the sentence could finish, mana bursting through his body like fractured glass.
Lucian didn't hear the rest.
All he saw was the memory—Alaric's laughter, echoing on the night his family was slaughtered.
He drew Obsidian Oath once more.
One clean motion.
No anger. No hesitation. Only silence.
And Alaric's life ended.
Few Weeks Later — Vanguard City
The city pulsed with life.
Neon towers stretched into the dusk, their light bleeding across rain-slick streets. Sky-rails glided overhead like veins of steel and luminescence, carrying passengers who never looked up. Vendors shouted, drones buzzed past, children laughed as holographic toys danced above their palms—everything alive, everything moving, yet utterly blind to the storm walking among them.
Lucian moved through it all, a phantom beneath the lights. His hood was drawn low, his steps silent, leaving faint ripples in puddles as though the rain itself feared to touch him. After the last battle, his body had nearly broken—mana exhaustion, shattered nerves, burns still hidden beneath his coat. It was only through the Blackthorne's devouring ritual, the art of reclaiming power through fallen cores, that he had healed at all.
Ignatius. Leonidas. Marcus. Alaric.
Four monsters turned fuel for his resurgence.
He passed under the flicker of a neon sign, his reflection splitting in the glass like two versions of the same man—one human, one no longer certain.
Lucian stopped at a crowded plaza. The scent of roasted chestnuts and ozone drifted in the air. A child tugged on his mother's sleeve, begging for a new holo-drone. Lucian's gaze lingered on them, just long enough to feel something he couldn't name.
Then—
A sharp flicker above. The colossal holo-screen changed. The emblem of the Hunter Association rippled across the skyline, followed by the measured voice of a reporter.
Aldric had already issued the official decree of the National Hunters' deaths across the global network. The announcement came with forged footage and falsified mana readings. Without the bodies—because Lucian had sealed every last one into the Voidheart—the world had only Aldric's word to trust. His reimaging troops still scoured the mountain ruins, planting their story, ensuring the truth could never rise again.
The screen shifted—Aldric Voss appeared, sharp in his black suit, calm as a hanging blade. Beside him stood Sebastian Stratagem, sorrow perfectly sculpted across his face.
"Chairman Voss, can you confirm who is responsible for the recent massacre?"
The image stabilized—Aldric Voss, sharp in a black suit, calm as a hanging blade. Beside him stood Sebastian Stratagem, sorrow perfectly painted across his face.
"The culprit is clear," Aldric said, his tone carrying the weight of final judgment. "The murderer of our National Hunters… is Lucian Blackthorne."
The plaza froze. A ripple of silence spread like frost across glass. People stopped mid-step, mid-word, mid-breath.
Sebastian leaned forward, his voice soft, deliberate.
"He devoured the mana cores of Marcus Ironfist, Leonidas Wildborne, and Ignatius Emberlord. Once a prodigy… now consumed by darkness. Even his own parents—fell to his hand."
Lucian's jaw flexed, his breath a thin mist against the cold.
"The Blackthornes once stood for unity," the reporter stammered. "Are we truly to believe—""They were," Aldric cut in, his words falling like hammers. "But no longer. Lucian Blackthorne is hereby designated as an Abyssal Calamity. A bounty of one hundred million credits is placed on his head."
The broadcast cut. The screen went black.
And then—the noise returned.
Gasps. Whispers. Fractured disbelief.
"Lucian Blackthorne?""He saved the eastern district from the Eldritch Bloom when he was a child…""That can't be true. The Blackthornes protected us for centuries!""A hundred million credits? That's higher than any known S-rank!"
Lucian stood in the center of it all, unmoving. The light from the screen bled against his cloak, painting his silhouette in cold blue. His eyes lifted—meeting Aldric's frozen image as though time hadn't yet moved on.
No rage. No words. Just breath.
Slow. Controlled. Inevitable.
(Inner Thought)
So, Aldric.
You've chosen your battlefield.
Let's see how long your resolve lasts… when the dark starts hunting back.
He turned, the hem of his cloak sweeping through the fog. The crowd parted without knowing why.
And just like that, Lucian Blackthorne vanished into the pulse of the city—
not as a man,
but as a reckoning walking quietly among them.