Chapter 546: Abyssal IX
The stair was no longer stone.
It pulsed. Every step, every fracture in the marrow, thrummed with the rhythm Leon drew from the chorus. The battlefield itself had become a great, resonant instrument, each clash of flame and decree striking chords that reverberated through the Tower’s bones.
The erased did not simply rise now—they multiplied faster than the decrees could erase. For each Throne-Bearer destroyed, a dozen echoes kindled, their voices woven into Liliana’s threads, their blades reforged in Roselia’s emberlight, their wills roaring with Naval’s dragons.
Roman’s laughter split the chaos, his phantom duels swelling into a legion of his own—a thousand specters of himself through time, swinging in rhythm. "Aha! Even death remembers ME!"
Milim was pure ruin. Her violet fire no longer danced—it devoured decree at its root. Every law she consumed became wild fuel, and with it, her laughter grew almost feral, like the joy of a predator who found prey endless.
But still, it was Leon who held the storm.
His flame bent not merely against decree—it reshaped decree. Where the bearers sang commands, his chorus answered with counter-song. Time bent, only to be pulled into loops that favored the erased. Shields erased wounds, but Leon rewove those erasures into fire scars that burned harder. Gravity fell, only to be lifted into ascent by the hymn.
The Tower shook harder.
Above, the Thrones grew restless.
"Stop him!" a voice commanded, shattering across the rift like lightning.
"He binds marrow to flame! That song is not his to sing!" another thundered.
But one voice—older, softer—broke into their uproar.
"You fools. That song was never ours. It was the Tower’s. He merely remembers what you buried."
The silence after was sharper than any decree.
And then—the chains broke.
Not all of them, not yet. But enough. A crack deep beneath the marrow split the abyss wide, and from it poured sound. Not fire, not decree—pure resonance. The Tower’s voice, ancient and vast, answering Leon’s hymn.
The battlefield changed.
The erased no longer rose as embers alone. They returned in full, shaped in flame and memory both, their forms truer than specters, sharper than echoes. They were not ghosts now. They were climbers reborn—not as mortals, but as chords of the Tower’s awakening.
Roselia gasped as one fought beside her, the outline of a woman she remembered only as legend. Naval roared as a dragon not his own soared at his flank. Liliana wept as her threads tangled not just the erased, but the marrow’s resonance itself.
Leon’s voice carried, not shouted but undeniable:
"This Tower was never a throne. It was a climb. And it remembers every step."
The marrow howled with him.
The stair lit with flame-song, the abyss glowing like dawn breaking from within.
And for the first time, the legions of decree broke—not remade, not returned, but torn apart, their decrees rewritten into silence.
The Thrones above reeled, their unity cracking. Some raged. Some faltered. Some whispered.
And in the marrow’s hum, a single word echoed back at them all.
"Awaken."
The War of Flame and Decree was no longer resistance.
It was ascension.
The word did not end—it reverberated.
"Awaken."
It rippled through the marrow, through the abyss, through every rung of the Tower’s impossible spine. The stair was no longer a battlefield alone; it became a conduit. Each clash was not just war, but transmission, carrying resonance into places the Thrones had smothered for ages.
And those places answered.
Steps far below, where nameless climbers had perished without witness, began to glow. Faint embers rose from bones long turned to dust, coiling upward like smoke made of memory. Hallways collapsed in forgotten depths stirred with voices, whispers sharpening into verses of the same hymn Leon had drawn.
Above, higher steps where the crowns’ decree had long ruled unbroken, cracks began to show. Sigils unmade themselves. Thrones of command flickered as their bearers wavered, their decrees no longer absolute but trembling under the pull of the chorus.
The Tower was no longer theirs alone.
On the stair, the battle reached a fever pitch. Throne-Bearers screamed, their decrees unraveling mid-verse as resonance ate the foundations of their law. Some shattered outright; others broke and reformed, not into soldiers of decree but into climbers once erased—reborn not by crown’s command, but by the marrow’s will.
Roman nearly dropped to his knees when one such figure struck at his side—an old rival he had slain in youth, laughing just as hard as him, their blows matching rhythm as if time itself had kept them in step. "You—! Hah! Even my enemies remember me!"
Liliana trembled, threads shivering, as spectral hands reached through her weave—hands of students she had once trained, friends she had lost, binding into the song with her. She wept but did not falter.
Roselia’s emberblade struck in perfect tandem with the legendary figure at her side, their flames twinning like a teacher and pupil meeting across centuries. Naval’s dragons roared in harmony with a wyrm so old its scales bore constellations.
And Milim—Milim’s violet fire howled with a new wildness. She swallowed decree after decree until her form blurred, her fire taking shapes no mortal eye had seen. She laughed louder, higher, wilder, but now her voice carried not chaos alone—it carried joy unshackled, feral and pure.
But Leon was the axis.
He felt it—the marrow humming beneath him, the chains groaning, the Tower rising with him. Every note of the chorus, every strike of flame, every soul reborn, threaded through his pulse. He was not guiding it anymore. He was part of it.
And above, the Thrones panicked.
"He is binding us to the marrow!"
"Silence him before it wakes further!"
"No—listen! Strike wrong, and the Tower will turn!"
"Then let it turn! Better broken than stolen!"
Their voices no longer one.
And then, a single decree split the tumult like a blade:
"Enough. I will descend."
The rift tore wider, spilling light not of flame nor memory but of raw, unyielding law. The stair quaked as a presence stepped forward—heavier than armies, sharper than silence, vast as the crowns themselves.
A Throne itself was coming down.
The erased faltered. Even the chorus dimmed for a breath, resonance bending beneath the crushing weight of authority raw and absolute. The marrow groaned, resisting but not yet free.
Leon lifted his hand, flame flaring steady against the oncoming tide. His voice was quiet, but it carried through the silence:
"Then descend. But know this—every step you take, every word you speak, every law you write... will sing."
The chorus roared again, shaking the abyss as the first Throne set foot upon the stair.
The War of Flame and Decree was no longer just ascension.
It was confrontation.