As Asher was about to pull out his sword, a deep, rapid thud-thud-thud filled the air. He tilted his head upward, his white eyes narrowing. The flapping of wings, vast, leathery and powerful, grew louder, and from beyond the curtain of clouds, a colossal wyvern descended.
It was massive, the size of a young dragon, its wings stretching wide like sails of death. Behind it ca more... a squadron of nightmares. Over a dozen wyverns spilled into the sky like a tide of scaled wrath.
The heavens darkened further as the swarm grew. Fire poured down like rain. Jets of fla bathed Asher’s army below. Swiftwings, smaller, faster, swooped with surgical precision, picking up soldiers mid-charge and ripping them apart in the air, flinging limbs and armor into the skies like bloodied confetti.
Asher’s gaze sharpened.
Now, nearly twenty of them were barreling toward him in formation.
He wrenched his Kingsword from Garen’s body in one smooth motion, turning to face the oncoming fury. The instant the blade left flesh, the wyverns let loose a chorus of fla.
Orange mixed with blue, a superheated blend of destruction, erupted from their mouths. It ca from every direction, engulfing the very space where Asher stood. The inferno roared upward like a volcano breaching the skies.
Without hesitation, Asher raised his hand and summoned a do of pure ice, thick, crystalline, humming with ancient frost. But even as the barrier shimred into being, the heat intensified.
Cracks webbed across the ice.
He could feel it, the flas beginning to bite through, the once-immaculate walls slowly lting and groaning under pressure.
Above, more shadows arrived. More wyverns.
The sky was now a roiling hive of death, thirty adult wyverns, their wings stirring the stormclouds, their mouths spewing fire with wild, unrelenting ferocity. Thirty of such beasts were enough to raze an entire city to the ground without resistance.
Within the flickering safety of his failing do, Asher’s eyes, those glowing, frost-white eyes, suddenly flared. The light from them intensified, casting eerie shadows across the dod interior. It was no longer just light. It was power made visible.
Then...RUMBLE!
The clouds above groaned not with re weather, but with wrath. A rumbling, primordial and terrible, shook the heavens. And then, lightning like divine spears, struck.
They ca in waves.
Forks of raw power blasted the battlefield, crashing down on n and beasts alike. So soldiers were turned to ash in an instant, their screams ending before they even began.
Count Rimmon gritted his teeth, scanning the battlefield through squinted eyes. The stench of ozone clung to his nose. The hairs on his arm tingled with static.
A sound like the earth itself being split cracked above him. He and the other riders jerked their heads skyward.
"God!" Rimmon breathed, aghast.
From the churning clouds, lightning converged, dozens of arcs coiling into a single monstrous flash that struck down with unthinkable speed. None of the wyverns had ti to retreat. Wherever the bolt touched, it pulverized.
Wings, torsos, heads, reduced to raw matter, charred into glowing embers. Wyverns froze mid-flight, their nerves shocked beyond motion, and a mont later, other bolts followed, finding their marks with divine ruthlessness.
Not a single one escaped unscathed.
Reuel, high above, cackled with bloodlust as his Swiftwing caught an Iron Saint, slamming into him mid-air. Its talons pierced armor and flesh with ease, tearing the man’s limbs off in a storm of blood and shrieks. Reuel roared with laughter, until he saw it.
A brilliant light, far too bright for fla, split the sky. His mirth died in his throat.
His eyes widened in horror as he witnessed a thunderstorm descend like judgnt, and wyverns burned to cinders in its fury.
Then his gaze dropped to the ground to Aaron.
He lay sprawled, eyes wide and protruding, as if witnessing the end of the world. His hands lay limp, fingers twitchless in the grass.
No wound marked him. No blood flowed.
But no sign of life stirred in him.
Reuel’s breath caught. For the first ti, a chill crawled across his spine.
His eyes remained on Aaron’s lifeless form and without knowing why, the hairs on his body stood on end.
’I must leave this battlefield, imdiately!’ he thought, gripping the reins and turning his Swiftwing sharply toward his distant camp. The creature flapped its vast wings, beating the air in rapid bursts as it lifted higher to flee the storm-wracked sky. But then, Reuel saw her.
A towering figure, like sothing only told of in stories. A woman, radiant and terrifying, her long silver hair whipping in the gale like a banner of ruin. She stood at the rear of the battlefield, calm amidst the chaos, and in her grasp was a warbow fit for giants, drawn to its limit, its nocked arrow glinting with mana, longer than a man and thicker than a ballista bolt.
Their eyes locked.
Ti seed to stop. The thunder, the screams, even the flapping of his mount’s wings, all faded into silence.
Then the arrow flew.
In a blink, it tore through his chest, bypassing his enchanted armour as if it were nothing but soaked parchnt. A deafening crack accompanied the explosion of blood and mana as a gaping hole blew open in Reuel’s torso, wide enough to see daylight through.
He was flung from his Swiftwing like a ragdoll. His limbs flailed as he tumbled through the air, hair whipping across his bloodied face. Even as the wind rushed past him, even as the light dimd from his eyes, he couldn’t believe it.
Was this real?
That question was answered by two jagged bolts of lightning that descended like judgnt. One pierced through his Swiftwing’s skull with a blinding flash, cracking bone and brain matter apart; the other speared its thick neck, frying nerves and flesh in an instant.
The beast let out a screech cut short by death, its limp body spiraling down like a falling star.
And Reuel followed, plumting through the storm-dark sky, his eyes still wide, locked in that final expression of disbelief.
Sitting astride her horse, Nephis’s expression twisted in horror and disbelief as she watched Reuel plumt from the heavens, limp, broken, his body trailing smoke and blood. There fell her dream. Her ambitions. Her would-be emperor.
The man she had chosen over Asher. The man she had risked everything for.
A part of her broke in that instant.
Lifting her gaze with hollow fury, she spotted Asher hovering mid-air, suspended like a vengeful ruler above the battlefield. A bitter chuckle escaped her lips, sharp and cracked.
"You think you’ll live?"
She raised both hands to the storm-choked sky, fingers trembling not from fear, but fury. Her voice began as a whisper, but with every syllable, it deepened, graver, older, almost inhuman. The air shuddered with the weight of her words.
Then the skies tore open.
Hundreds of teorites burst through the clouds like the fangs of heaven, screaming toward the earth. They rained down without rcy, blinding streaks of molten death that turned n to ash before they could scream.
The battlefield vanished under fire and chaos. Hundreds died in the first wave, friend and foe alike. Ash, dust, and blood filled the air. The sll of burning flesh stung the winds.
Nephis spread her arms wide as if conducting the end of the world. Curtains of lightning fell on both flanks of the field, slowly pressing inward, a death march of crackling blue fla. Her power surged, but so did the cost.
Her youthful face withered with every second. Wrinkles crawled along her skin like cracks on porcelain. Her jet-black hair dulled with streaks of grey. Her eyes turned bloodshot, vessels bursting under the weight of power she wasn’t ant to bear.
Through those tornted eyes, she watched Asher defy death itself, fending off teors, slicing through vengeful wyverns and maddened Swiftwings, their lords long dead. He stood unyielding.
Then ca a voice, quiet, resolute, behind her.
"Lady Nephis, you face the wrong side."
Nephis turned her head, just as Yuna thrust out both palms. Flas erupted, wild, golden-red infernos that surged over Nephis and her horse in a brutal, blazing wave.
Screams tore from her throat, raw and primal, as her skin blackened and lted. Her horse shrieked in agony, rearing up before it bolted blindly through the fire, only to collapse a short distance away, a dying ember of a beast.
Nephis was flung from the saddle, her body crashing into the scorched earth. She writhed in agony, clawing at her burning flesh as the flas devoured her.
Yuna’s fire lacked the incinerating heat of dragonfla. It lingered. It tortured. Every nerve scread. Every mont was a lifeti of pain.
Yuna stood unmoved, her eyes catching the reflection of her own flas dancing across the battlefield.
With a small, cold smile, she turned to face the stunned ranks of soldiers, hundreds of blades drawn, hundreds of eyes fixed on her.
"Go ahead," she said softly. "I’m done."
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