Chapter 89: A Huge Issue!

Once Ashanti finished her test, the duo decided to leave the forest, and the forest itself did not resist their departure.

Where once the land had felt tight and watchful, every root tense, every breeze strained, it now loosened around them, mana settling back into its natural rhythms. The ground no longer pulsed beneath Ashanti’s feet. The air no longer tasted like cold iron and lightning.

Life resumed as normal. With a large part of the Star Panther clan killed by them, the other creatures could regain their rightful habitat once more.

Insects began to creep back into the underbrush, birds relaxed and flew around, calling out without their usual caution, while leaves rustled in the wind.

Ashanti noticed it all as they walked. Her senses no longer felt like open wounds. They were tools. Extensions of her will that responded when called and rested when not.

Jax walked beside her, hands loose, posture relaxed, as if they had merely finished a morning stroll instead of erasing an entire pack of apex stellar predators without scarring the land.

“You’re quiet,” he said eventually.

Ashanti smiled faintly. “I’m… listening.”

“To the forest?”

“To myself,” she corrected.

They continued in companionable silence for a while longer, the trees thinning gradually as elevation shifted and the terrain sloped upward. Ancient stone outcroppings emerged from the earth like the ribs of some long-dead titan, worn smooth by centuries of weather and time.

It was Ashanti who spoke next.

“Let’s go back,” she said, certainty in her voice. “To Aurelion’s Fall.”

Jax glanced at her. “Ready?”

She nodded. “They deserve to see me like this. And… I think I deserve it too.”

He smiled, slow and approving. “Then let’s go.”

Ashanti unfurreled her wings while Jax used Magic to fly, and they shot into the skies. Both of them could sense Aurelion’s Fall using their powers, so they moved there as fast as possible, seeing the scenery change around them continuously to approaching the hidden floating city.

As they flew, the sky changed.

At a glance, it was subtle, clouds thinning, light sharpening—but the farther they flew, the more wrong it felt. The blue above them fractured into layered gradients, as if someone had pressed too hard against the fabric of the world and left stress lines behind.

Ashanti felt it in her wings.

The air resistance fluctuated, sometimes thick as syrup, sometimes so thin she had to consciously adjust her balance to avoid overcorrecting. Mana currents, usually smooth and predictable at this altitude, stuttered and curled back on themselves in short, violent eddies.

Jax noticed it too.

His flight magic compensated instinctively, sigils blooming and dissolving beneath his boots as he recalibrated every few seconds. His relaxed posture didn’t change, but his awareness sharpened, presence spreading outward like a net.

“This isn’t residual fallout,” he said calmly. “This is active instability.”

Ashanti’s jaw tightened. “Aurelion’s Fall is warded against this. Multiple layers. Divine-grade.”

“It was,” Jax corrected.

They crested the final cloud bank.

And then they saw it.

Aurelion’s Fall hovered ahead of them, as it always had, an immense floating city of pale stone and silver architecture, its foundations anchored to nothing but ancient enchantments and faith.

Except now, those enchantments were failing.

The space around the city warped visibly, rippling like heat haze layered over broken glass. Whole sections of air bent inward, distorting the skyline into jagged reflections. The cloaking veil that normally rendered the city invisible to outsiders flickered erratically, revealing fragments of towers before snapping back into concealment.

And the city itself had a much dimmer glow.

Once, Aurelion’s Fall had shone softly even in daylight, a constant hum of restrained power radiating from its core. Now that light pulsed unevenly, sections of the city flickering as if power was being rerouted, or lost.

Ashanti’s breath caught. “That shouldn’t be possible…”

Before Jax could answer, movement exploded across the city’s perimeter.

Dozens of Fallen Angels poured out from the upper terraces and gate platforms, wings beating hard as they evacuated in controlled chaos. Some carried injured comrades.

Others hauled crates, relics, or glowing cores of condensed mana. Their formations were tight but rushed, fear bleeding through even disciplined movements.

Alarm sigils flared and died in rapid succession along the outer ring.

Ashanti’s heart sank. “They’re abandoning positions.”

“Not abandoning,” Jax said, eyes tracking the flow. “Redistributing. Something compromised the core.”

A Fallen Angel streaked past them, eyes wide, barely sparing them a glance before diving toward the lower cloud layers.

That decided it.

Ashanti angled sharply upward, wings snapping open fully. “We’re going in.”

Jax didn’t argue. He simply accelerated, flight magic flaring brighter as he matched her speed effortlessly.

They crossed the city’s outer threshold—

And the pressure hit.

The moment they breached the unstable boundary, the air screamed.

Spatial resistance spiked violently, gravity tugging sideways for a split second before correcting. Ashanti faltered mid-flight, only stabilizing when Jax reached out, his presence flattening the distortion around them like a hand smoothing wrinkled fabric.

“Focus,” he said, voice steady. “The city’s fighting itself.”

They passed shattered veil anchors, floating runic constructs that should have been humming quietly, now sparking and misaligned. One collapsed entirely as they flew by, dissolving into raw mana that bled uselessly into the void.

They landed hard on one of the central platforms, boots and talons scraping stone.

The plaza was chaos.

Fallen Angels rushed in every direction, wings flaring as they relayed orders, reinforced barriers, or evacuated civilians deeper into the city’s inner sanctums. The great spires that housed the administrative and strategic cores pulsed erratically, their support glyphs struggling to stay synchronized.

Ashanti grabbed the arm of a passing sentinel. “What happened?!”

The angel swallowed, eyes darting toward the city’s heart. “The spatial stabilizers started failing all at once. It seems the City’s Divine Residue it was using to sustain itself all ran out simultaneously, so now everything is failing,”

Jax released the sentinel and turned sharply toward the tallest spire at the city’s center.

“Xara,” he said. “She’ll be there.”

Ashanti nodded, already running.

They cut through corridors and open-air bridges, ignoring startled stares and half-formed questions. Jax’s presence parted crowds instinctively. Everyone getting calmed as they saw the Demon King return, his immensely powerful aura causing everyone to stop.

They burst into the central command chamber.

Xara stood at the heart of it, wings flared wide as she directed half a dozen projections at once, mana maps, spatial readouts, and cascading failure warnings hovering around her like a storm of light.

Her usually immaculate composure was strained, jaw tight, eyes blazing with controlled fury.

She looked up as they entered.

“…You picked one hell of a time to come back,” she said sharply.

Ashanti stepped forward. “Xara, what’s happening?”

Xara exhaled hard, dismissing several projections with a flick of her fingers. “The energy we’ve been using to sustain the City seems to of run out, now, it’s only a matter of time before we fall from the sky,”

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