Ascension of the last Celestial

It was a horrifying sight. A face entirely devoid of eyes, a nose, or any other facial features. There was only a mouth, a cavernous maw filled with sharp teeth, heavily coated in the fresh blood of the orphanage’s children.

Valerian forgot to breathe for a second. He took a shaking step backward, retreating toward the raging inferno of his own cosmic flames. The moment the abomination "saw" him backing away, it didn’t hesitate for a single second. It lunged at him with blinding speed, aiming its sharp, nail-like claws directly at Valerian’s throat.

Pure instinct took over as mana surged from his newly forged core into his limbs. Valerian threw his body aside as fast as he could. He barely managed to dodge the lethal blow, but he wasn’t fast enough to escape completely unscathed. After taking several frantic steps back, he felt a sharp sting radiating from his neck. Tristan, who had remained unconscious throughout the entire ordeal, was still hovering safely behind him, carried by the stretcher made of pure mana.

Without breaking eye contact with the monster, Valerian pressed his hand against the source of the pain. When he pulled it away, his palm was painted crimson. The monster had managed to leave a shallow cut across his throat.

The humanoid abomination raised its long, clawed nail to its mouth, licking the skin with a tongue that had no business being that long. Tasting Valerian’s blood, the creature quivered in sheer excitement, seemingly finding the boy’s divine heritage to be an exquisite delicacy. Craving more, it lunged a second time, desperate for another taste. But this time, Valerian was prepared. His body was already heavily augmented with mana, allowing him to completely evade the monster’s strike.

Yet, the creature didn’t stop at a single attack. Pivoting instantly, it swung its right hand downward, cleaving through the air with a velocity that was far too fast for Valerian to dodge or counter. But just as the claws were about to split his skull in two, Valerian’s body vanished from reality.

Confused by the sudden disappearance of its prey, the monster blinked its sightless head around the hallway. A few meters away, it spotted Valerian standing near the exit, looking completely disoriented.

’Was that... my space affinity?’ Valerian thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. ’Damn it! Why do my affinities only activate when I’m a second away from dying?!’

Despite his deep frustration over his inability to command his magic at will, Valerian didn’t waste the monster’s momentary confusion. He made a desperate run for it, keeping a tight grip on his mana control to ensure Tristan’s platform continued to float behind him. Seeing its prey escape, the monster pursued them. The way it moved would leave any normal person utterly disturbed. With its humanoid build, backward-bent knees, and freakishly long arms, its sprint looked like a twisted, grotesque imitation of a human running.

Meanwhile, the six dog-like monsters that had remained in the basement didn’t dare get in the way of the humanoid abomination. Now that it was gone, they calmly continued their gruesome feast upon the children who had falsely believed the basement would be their safe haven.

While Valerian sprinted through the old, blood-slicked hallways of the orphanage, with his cosmic fire slowly eating its way down from the ceiling above, Aurelia continued her desperate battle against the serpentine titan outside. The monster was stronger, faster, and more importantly, it had no reason to hold back. It didn’t care if the battlefield or the building behind it was destroyed.

Aurelia used her smaller size and superior agility to her advantage, barraging the titan with a relentless storm of water and ice spells. Every now and then, she wove devastating lightning magic into her assault. Unfortunately, the monster’s thick, deep-red scales blocked every single one of her attempts, leaving it completely unharmed. Knowing that her time and mana were rapidly running out, Aurelia formulated a dangerous plan: she needed to force the monster to open its mouth, flying close enough to blast its vulnerable throat with her strongest spell.

As she hovered directly in front of the titan’s massive maw, the beast parted its jaws slightly.

’Good. Maybe this will actually do some damage.’

Just as Aurelia was about to unleash her stored mana, she noticed a blinding crimson light emerging from deep within the monster’s throat. The temperature around them skyrocketed in a fraction of a second.

’Huh-’

’I... I have to dodge!’

As the terrifying realization crashed over her, Aurelia canceled her spell and threw herself aside. She barely made it out of the direct path as a massive, sweeping wall of fire erupted from the beast’s maw. The torrential stream of flames shot high into the sky, but Aurelia knew that if a blast like that ever hit the orphanage, the protective runes in the basement wouldn’t stand a chance.

’If I can’t injure it, I have to lead it away.’

Settling on her new objective, she flew at maximum speed past the titan’s torso, intending to draw its attention. But as she accelerated past its flank, something massive and deep-red whipped upward from below. The monster’s tail.

Aurelia didn’t have enough time to react. The tail struck her head-on with the force of a meteor. The sheer, devastating impact catapulted her hundreds of meters through the air like a shooting star. Her brutal descent tore through the ancient forest, uprooting massive trees before she finally slammed into the earth.

Once the dust and smoke cleared, Aurelia’s battered form was revealed. Her left leg had been violently torn off past the knee, her right arm was bent at an impossible, unnatural angle, and a splitting headache made her realize her skull had been cracked open. She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t even muster a single drop of mana.

With the absolute last of her remaining energy, she forced her head to the side. Looking through the clearing of uprooted trees, she could see the orphanage in the distance, now heavily burning with deep purple flames. And standing right in front of the building, locking eyes with her, was Valerian.

The five-year-old boy, fresh from his awakening, stood there with the mana stretcher carrying Tristan floating right behind him. Looking into his eyes, Aurelia could clearly read the chaotic storm of emotions within them: terror, profound sadness, disbelief, and a crushing weight of guilt.

Undisturbed by the emotional scene playing out, the serpentine monster slithered over, towering directly over Aurelia’s broken body. It opened its massive maw once more, and a highly compressed ball of fire began to form within its jaws. The sphere expanded, compressed, expanded, and compressed again, tightly packing an overwhelming amount of raw heat and power into a small, volatile sun.

Sensing the cataclysmic fire mana gathering above her, Aurelia knew this was the end. She had failed. She couldn’t protect her home. She couldn’t protect the children.

’I’m sorry... I’m so sorry. I failed you all...’

Leaving one last, gentle, grandmotherly smile for Valerian to see, she closed her eyes and accepted her death.

The monster released the compressed ball of fire directly onto her. The resulting explosion turned everything within a hundred-meter radius completely to ash, leaving only the titan’s own fireproof body standing amidst the wasteland without a single scratch.

The violent shockwave of the explosion ripped through the clearing, throwing Valerian and Tristan backward. Valerian hit the wooden wall of the orphanage hard, causing the back of his head to bleed profusely. The massive wave of hostile mana released by the blast instantly dispersed his concentration, shattering the mana stretcher. Tristan’s body was hurled ruthlessly across the grass.

The walls of the orphanage creaked and groaned, fighting against the gale-force winds. As the shockwave finally subsided, the true extent of the devastation was laid bare. Aside from the hundred-meter zone of absolute ash, every ancient tree in the vicinity had been completely flattened. The orphanage was the only structure left standing in the ruined landscape, burning with purple fire, on the absolute brink of collapse, but still stubbornly upright.

Finally done dealing with the annoying insect, the serpentine monster turned its massive head. Not sensing anything else worthy of its attention, it began to slither back toward the deep cavern it had emerged from, ready to return to its age-long hibernation.

Seeing the beast that had just murdered Aurelia calmly walking away, without even looking back at the lives it had brutally extinguished, filled Valerian with a sudden, overwhelming emotion. A primal, unfiltered, burning rage.

"GET THE FUCK BACK HERE, YOU LIZARD!!!" he screamed, his voice cracking with absolute fury.

But whether the titan didn’t hear him, didn’t understand, or simply didn’t care about the cries of a tiny ant, it didn’t slow down. It simply continued its departure. Nearby, however, something else heard his outburst. The humanoid abomination had finally tracked him down. It stepped out from the ruined threshold of the burning orphanage, taking slow, deliberate steps toward the small, white-haired boy kneeling in the grass.

Seeing the faceless thing approach, the rage boiling inside Valerian shattered all remaining boundaries of his sanity.

’This thing... it killed everyone else.’

"I WILL MAKE YOU PAY!!!"

Finally finding a target to unleash his absolute wrath upon, the purple cosmic fire that was already consuming the orphanage responded to his soul. Deep violet flames ignited across his hands, racing up his forearms to his shoulders, cascading down his back, and enveloping his legs until his entire small frame was transformed into a living, beautiful pillar of cosmic fire.

"JUST FUCKING DIE!!!"

And the flames listened to his absolute command. They expanded outward in a single, cataclysmic, flaming explosion. The roaring wave of cosmic purple consumed everything in his surroundings within a fraction of a second.

The monster. Tristan. The orphanage.

All of them were incinerated in an instant, reduced to absolute nothingness. Leaving Valerian completely, utterly alone in this world.