An uncanny stillness, a pregnant pause thick with disbelief, descended upon the Zenith Tech Conclave. In the vast, glittering stadium, thousands of the city's most powerful and influential figures were frozen, their collective consciousness snagged on a single, jarring anomaly.
Every holographic news feed, every hovering camera drone, every pair of eyes was fixed, locked in a state of suspended animation, upon the four figures now occupying the stage.
For an event of this magnitude, a meticulously choreographed ballet of dynastic power and corporate ambition, every variable was meant to be calculated, every outcome predicted.
The sudden, unscripted appearance of two unknowns was a wrench thrown into the gears of a machine that never malfunctioned. It was a crack in the flawless chrome facade of Zenith City's elite. And in the rigid, stratified hierarchy of their world, anomalies were not just unwelcome; they were dangerous.
Nobody could fathom it.
Why, in the name of the Aether that pulsed through their very veins, would the proud heiresses of the Wintercroft and Vance families bring these... strangers to the forefront of their grand declaration of war?
A flicker of profound displeasure, a shadow marring his perfect, sculpted composure, crossed Cassian Valerian's handsome face. He didn't even deign to glance at Orion or Lyra, his dismissal of them so absolute it was a tangible insult, a physical wall of contempt.
His gaze, sharp as obsidian and twice as cold, locked onto Elysia, pinning her in place.
"Miss Wintercroft," he stated, his voice a smooth, condescending blade that sliced effortlessly through the stunned silence. The stadium's acoustic enchantments carried his every syllable, dripping with aristocratic disdain. "Just what is this? Your new security detail? Do you not think this is a profoundly inappropriate time to showcase something so… inconsequential?"
In a heartbeat, the air around Elysia crackled, the temperature dropping several degrees as her Ice Aether flared instinctively. Beside her, Lisanna's confident, sunny smile sharpened into a dangerous glare, the light in the air seeming to coalesce around her.
The simple thought, the mere implication of Orion being looked down upon, was a spark on a mountain of dry tinder in their minds. It was an offense that simply could not, would not, stand.
But before Elysia's frosty retort could be formed, a blur of motion seized the stage, so swift it defied perception.
With a brazen, predatory confidence that defied all decorum and tradition, Lyra and Orion had already leaped forward. They didn't walk; they flowed, their feet landing without a sound at the stage's absolute center.
The audacious, disrespectful action drew every last wandering eye, yanking the spotlight from the three heirs and forcing even Cassian to finally acknowledge their existence, a tide of pure, unadulterated disdain overflowing in his gaze.
Lyra, utterly uncaring of the tense atmosphere, the thousands of burning stares, or the weight of history being made, gave Cassian a lazy, bored, once-over glance.
"So," she remarked, her voice dripping with a casual contempt that was more insulting than any shout. "You're that Cassian fuck that won't shut his ugly mouth, right?"
Complete. And. Utter. Silence.
It was as if the world itself had stopped breathing. In the tiered, anti-gravity seats, jaws hung agape. Nobles blinked, their minds refusing to process what their ears had just heard. Seasoned C-Rank heroes shifted uncomfortably in their seats, a mixture of shock and morbid fascination on their faces.
Had a street urchin, a nameless gutter rat, just insulted the heir of the mighty House Valerian on the most-watched broadcast of the year?
Cassian's gaze turned from ice-cold to absolute zero. His Aether began to ripple outwards, a palpable pressure that would make an average C-Rank Hero break into a cold sweat. The very air around him seemed to chill and grow heavy as the winds from the stadium's advanced climate control systems elegantly blew through his perfectly styled hair.
"What an utterly disgusting tongue," he remarked, his voice low, resonant, and seething with danger. "I suppose the Wintercrofts and Vances can only dredge up pathetic savages from the Sump."
Orion merely blinked, a placid, almost amused look gracing his handsome features. "Hm," he said, his tone as light and conversational as if he were discussing the weather. "We've only met for a few seconds, and I can already tell that ninety-nine percent of what comes out of your mouth—both now and in the future—will be complete and utter dogshit."
Another pin-drop silence, this one even more profound, more absolute than the last. Then, it broke.
A few heroes in the audience, men and women who appreciated raw nerve over polished words, couldn't contain their snorts of laughter, which quickly turned into barely suppressed chuckles.
Murmurs began to rise like a tide, a wave of disbelief and amusement crashing against the wall of noble outrage.
"Well, would you look at this," Captain Comet whispered to his companion, a wide, incredulous grin splitting his face. "They're truly saying what's on their mind. No filter, no fear."
Another C-Ranker chuckled loudly, earning a scathing look from a nearby noble. "More like what's on everyone's mind. Sheesh, they're not even trying to pull their punches."
These murmurs earned them a storm of furious glares from the more righteous and proper nobles.
"You all find this amusing?" one spat in disgust, his face a mask of puce indignation. "This is nothing more than a clown's opening act! An embarrassment to our entire class!"
"Indeed!" another huffed, his monocle nearly popping out. "Where did these two little things crawl from? They speak as if that dirty Sump is the only world they know."
All the while, standing near the stage entrance, Elysia let out a long, weary sigh, massaging her temples with delicate fingers.
"I knew something like this was going to happen," she uttered under her breath, "but it still pains me to witness it."
Beside her, Lisanna giggled, her eyes sparkling with pure, unadulterated mirth as she patted Elysia's back reassuringly. "It's not so bad, Ellie. At least they're making an impression nobody will ever forget."
This only made Elysia sigh harder. She knew, of course, that this was intentional, a calculated act of psychological warfare.
In their gilded world, vulgarity and crude language were seen as the marks of the lesser, the unrefined. True power, true elegance, was expressed through layered, coded speech, where a simple phrase could hold a dozen hidden meanings. It was the language of politics, of nobility, of the powerful villains who held the world in their silken grasp.
But Orion and Lyra?
They didn't give a single damn about being perceived as proper or elegant.
Lyra did it out of pure, unadulterated spite for the system she so thoroughly despised. Orion, on the other hand, simply found it endlessly amusing to watch the so-called elite get so riled up over mere words, when it was action—brutal, decisive, and overwhelming—that truly mattered in the end.
On stage, Cassian's carefully constructed patience had finally run its course. His handsome face twisted into a full-on sneer of disgust. He raised a hand, gesturing dismissively as if to swat away a pair of annoying flies.
"You two," he began, his voice dripping with the cold finality of a death sentence, "scram."
"Alright, look here, idiot," Lyra interrupted him bluntly, her silver eyes glinting. "The name's Lyra." She paused, flicking a glance at her brother, who stood with an air of relaxed confidence.
"And mine's Orion," he added smoothly, a faint smile playing on his lips.
A predatory, terrifyingly beautiful smile bloomed on Lyra's face.
"And we siblings," she declared, her voice ringing out with the force of an iron bell, filled with absolute, unshakeable certainty, "can be considered the new Guardians of the Wintercroft and Vance Families. And as Guardians, your Valerian family is particularly displeasing to our eyes. So here's what's going to happen. You will begin the process of submitting your family to ours, or we'll personally, piece by painful piece, break everything you and your pitiful family hold dear."
A whole beat of silence descended once more, a vacuum of pure shock. And then, it shattered into a million pieces.
Cassian burst out with pure, scornful laughter. It was a loud, ugly, braying sound that echoed through the stadium, and it was the signal for the other disdainful nobles to join in, their derision cascading through the stands.
"Guardians? What are these two little things? Are they brain-damaged?"
"Hmph, in terms of putting on an entertaining show, I'll admit the Wintercrofts and Vances are excelling tonight! What a farce!"
Cassian shook his head, wiping a tear of theatrical mirth from the corner of his eye.
"Just what on Earth is this clown show?" he said, his voice laced with venomous amusement. "Hmph, Miss Wintercroft, Miss Vance, have your fathers finally gone senile? To think they would place their hopes in these mere gutter trashes, they truly don't know their—"
BOOM!
His words were choked off, swallowed by a thunderous impact that was felt more than heard. A howl of displaced air, a shockwave of pure, invisible force, thundered throughout the stadium.
The soundless release of Aether power was so immense, so violent, that it silenced all laughter, all thought. A powerful gust of wind burst out from the stage, a physical manifestation of kinetic energy so immense that hundreds in the audience were forced to surge their own Aether, bracing themselves in their seats to resist being blown away.
Cassian couldn't understand what had happened. One moment, he was basking in the glow of his own superiority, the master of the stage.
The next, his entire world had been turned upside down, his reality fractured.
Lyra was now standing directly in front of him, so close he could see the cold fire in her silver eyes. A single, slender, perfect finger was poised a mere inch from his forehead.
He, Cassian Valerian, the pride of his generation, with passive Aether Senses honed through brutal, torturous training, with combat instincts so sharp they bordered on precognition, had failed to register her movement. He hadn't seen a blur, hadn't sensed a flicker of Aether, hadn't detected an ounce of killing intent.
She was simply… there. As if she had teleported through a wrinkle in space-time itself.
An instinctive shiver, a primal jolt of pure, undiluted fear he hadn't felt in years, shot down his spine like a bolt of lightning.
Lyra chuckled, a low, dangerous, throaty sound. "Hey, hey," she taunted, her voice a predatory purr. "Where's all that bravado now, huh?"
"You—!" Cassian clenched his fists, his Aether core roaring to life as he instinctively, hastily, leaped backward, creating distance. Beads of cold sweat, foreign to his composed demeanor, rolled down his face.
His core began to thrum wildly as the advanced, custom-built technology within his suit flared to life, amplifying his power. His aura surged, an imposing presence of churning water Aether that materialized around him like a stormy sea, potent enough to cause other average C-Rank Heroes to feel as though they were drowning.
He tried to regain his momentum, to reclaim his dominance.
"How shameless!" he shouted, his voice booming with forced indignation. "Trying to use a surprise attack to—"
"Surprise?" Lyra laughed out loud, a sharp, mocking sound that cut him to the core. "Okay, since you're clearly too slow to keep up, allow me to slow down the pace for your tiny brain. I'm going to slap that disgusting face of yours. I want to see if you can even block a casual slap from me."
"Why you—!" Cassian roared, his pride shattered, his rage boiling over, once again attempting to speak, but Lyra gave him no quarter.
An aura far, far greater than his own, an incandescent, world-altering power, suddenly exploded from her body. A pure, blinding golden gleam fluttered around her like a celestial cloak forged from a dying star, a pressure so immense it utterly dwarfed the churning blue ripples emanating from Cassian, making his impressive display look like a child's tantrum.
"This—!"
And now, every single person in the stadium froze, their mouths hanging wide open, their minds short-circuiting. They were sensing it—an extreme, overwhelming, suffocating surge of power that didn't just dwarf the average C-Rank Hero; it made them seem like flickering candles before a raging, apocalyptic sun.
Stronger and stronger winds, born from nothing but her sheer Aetheric presence, continually burst across the atmosphere, forcing more and more of the audience to desperately surge their Aether just to breathe.
The pressure became so intense, so physically crushing, that the frantic officials of the Zenith Conclave slammed their hands on emergency controls, activating the stadium's primary defensive mechanisms.
A shimmering, hexagonal barrier of solidified energy materialized around the audience stands, a desperate testament to the raw, untamed, and utterly terrifying power now on full display.
Even as they operated the controls, their faces pale and slick with sweat, the officials could not hide the utter, world-ending shock in their eyes.