The three-hundred-foot spear of crimson gravity shrieked as it fell from the clouds.
Air compressed beneath its barbed iron tip, glowing white-hot with friction.
Below it, the crumbling stone gatehouse of White-Lotus Academy seemed fragile as a bird’s nest.
Elder Sterling stood alone on the highest point of the shattered parapet.
He didn’t step back. He didn’t drop into a defensive stance.
He lowered his straight sword to his hip, his knuckles whitening against the ray-skin grip.
His Nascent Soul Early core circulated at absolute maximum speed, humming with pure, unyielding sword intent.
When the spearhead was fifty feet from his face, Sterling drew.
