SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant-Chapter 419: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXXIII]
The chamber did not erupt after Icarus died. The corruption that had saturated stone and air began to withdraw in slow recession, as though drawn back into a source that no longer existed. The thin grey film that had coated the fractured floor lightened by degrees. Cracks once threaded with diseased mana returned to dull mineral tones. The oppressive density in the atmosphere loosened until the air felt breathable again, clean in a way it had not been since the battle began.
Where plague had clung, there was now only ruin.
The ground around Valttair was a vast crater carved by overlapping forces that had exceeded structural tolerance. No walls stood intact. The inner architecture of the castle had been reduced to jagged edges and collapsed corridors. Above, the ceiling had ceased to exist entirely, leaving the chamber exposed to the open night. Moonlight spilled downward through drifting dust, illuminating devastation without prejudice.
Nothing lived within the immediate radius.
The Void Creatures that had once poured through rifts had been erased by proximity alone. The clash between two peaks of power had generated pressure that lesser beings could not endure. What remained were fragments of stone and silence.
The ten swords continued their slow orbit around Valttair for a final breath.
Then he willed them away.
One vanished.
Then another.
Each blade dissolved without flare or residue, fading like distant stars disappearing at dawn. The circling constellation thinned gradually until the last of the ten dissolved into nothing, leaving only the weapon in his dominant hand.
Valttair stood alone in the hollowed center of destruction he had created.
The moon traced pale silver across his shoulders.
Valttair’s gaze drifted across the cratered chamber as if it were a ledger rather than a battlefield, measuring loss and gain with the same quiet clarity. Icarus was dead. Kaedor had been eliminated. Thal’zar had been broken from the inside, its spine softened by plague and panic, its authority exposed to whoever arrived first with the will to claim it.
House Morgain would ascend. With one of the Eight removed and another weakened to the edge of collapse, the Council’s balance would shift whether the remaining families welcomed it or not. Thal’zar was leverage in its purest form, a wounded giant that could be guided, restrained, redirected, and made useful. Controlling them would open political doors that had remained sealed for generations, would tighten influence in the Council without needing open confrontation, would turn territorial uncertainty into mapped advantage, would allow expansion without the crude stain of direct conquest.
Valttair did not smile at the thought. He did not savor it.
He calculated it the way a blade measured distance, the way pressure measured resistance. Even the future felt like something he could position, provided the variables remained obedient.
And yet the chamber did not feel finished.
The air had cleared, the plague had receded, the immediate threats had been erased, but something persisted beneath that clean surface, a faint wrongness that did not belong to victory. It was not the memory of Icarus’ words, not fear for any individual life, not doubt in his own supremacy.
It was sharper than that.
A bad presentiment.
The unease did not come from strategy.
It came from memory.
Valttair’s mind returned, not to the clash of blades, but to a single sentence spoken through blood and broken pride.
"I hope nothing has happened to your family..."
The words had been delivered lightly, almost conversational, yet they lingered with a persistence that outlived their speaker. He did not assign them immediate truth. Bluff was a common weapon among the dying. Distraction was an old tactic.
Still, war did not discriminate.
This was a battlefield.
Anyone could fall.
Even him.
He did not accept that outcome as probable. He did not consider himself outmatched by any present force. But probability was not certainty, and he understood risk with clinical precision. He had nine heirs when the battle began.
If one died, eight would remain.
He did not romanticize them. Most were assets before they were sons. Extensions of influence. Instruments through which House Morgain projected authority into the world. Each represented future leverage, future stability, future dominance. They were not fragile ideals; they were structural investments.
If one fell, he would be given proper rites. Honor would be observed. A formal burial would take place, as it had for Mordrek. The house would remember. The Council would see strength in composure.
Valttair would not display grief.
He would display continuity.
Yet the presentiment pressing at the edge of his awareness did not root itself in loss already occurred. It was not mourning. It was anticipation.
His gaze lifted slightly toward the open sky.
"The Void Creature," he murmured under his breath.
That was the unresolved variable.
It was still alive.
And as long as it remained within the castle, this battle had not truly ended.
Valttair closed his eyes.
He did not invoke a technique. He did not channel a detection skill. There was no visible shift in aura, no flare of mana to announce the attempt. He simply allowed his perception to extend outward, the way breath expands into lungs without conscious effort.
At his level, mana was not something hidden behind veils. It was a current that flowed through everything, subtle in motion yet distinct to those capable of refinement. The battlefield itself spoke, not in sound, but in density, in rhythm, in presence. Only someone standing at the apex of their race could read it without tools.
He listened.
Maeron.
The signature was sharp and steady, disciplined as expected. Not far from him, Helgar’s presence burned heavier, less restrained but still intact. Close to Helgar was Rivena; their energies overlapped slightly, suggesting proximity rather than coincidence. They had likely regrouped.
Valttair’s awareness shifted.
Nym.
Her mana flickered with residual strain, positioned deeper within the castle’s interior. Darion’s presence stood nearby, broader in range, while Elira’s aura felt stable, anchored at the outskirts where external resistance had been strongest.
He extended further.
Lysandra.
Then—
Trafalgar.
Valttair paused.
The density of his mana had changed. It was not merely stronger. It was more defined, more compressed, as if his core had undergone recent tempering under extreme pressure. The difference was not explosive. It was structural. Valttair registered it without commentary.
He counted.
Once.
Twice.
Three.
Four.
Five. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Only eight.
The pattern was clear.
One was missing.
