The battlefield trembled.
From its highest towers to the sunless dungeons beneath, the shadows quaked with an unnatural rhythm. Candles flickered without wind. Stone walls bled dark mist. Birds refused to sing. Even the fires in the grand hearths of noble halls gave no warmth. It was as though the world held its breath, the field desolate.
In the eastern tower, I stared out across the distant horizon. She could feel it. Not see, not hear, but feel it.
"I wonder how he is doing..." then I remember how he bested Alaric, I remembered the holiness of the Themnion... 'No, he'll be fine.'
Behind me, Princess Vaeloria sat silent, uncharacteristically still. Her usual venom was gone. Replaced by an anxious tension, like a lion caged during a storm.
"What... is happening out there?" She whispered, her voice trembling. Pride gone, she spoke like a girl, a crying child.
There was no sound. Not from the guards. Not from the steward who had just returned from the inner court. Not even from the birds.
From across the realms, from the cliffs of the Skyborne Elves to the coral cities beneath the Sea of Vhalis, the effects rippled.
Crops wilted.
Children wailed without cause.
Wolves howled at the wrong moon.
And in the great sanctuary of the Nine-Tongued Oracles, every seer screamed in unison before falling into comas. All their paintings, spells, visions, turned white. Blank.
It was as if reality itself had cracked, allowing destruction to reign.
The battlefield was no longer a field.
Where grass once lay now sprawled endless shards of fractured terrain, ruptured mountains, and clouds frozen mid-motion. The sky was a boiling storm of clashing colors, and the air smelled of burnt blood and fire.
Lucien held Themnion.
It did not glow. It did not crackle with flame or hum with energy.
It was silent.
And that silence was deafening.
Ashkeroth, still fused with Prince Alaric, stood on the far edge of the crater where their army once gathered. The shadow legions were gone, consumed by Lucien, or scattered beyond reform. The sky overhead still crackled with remnants of null energy, but none dared approach now. Even the strongest commanders lay broken, charred, or disintegrated across the field.
Alaric breathed heavily, his limbs shaking from strain. Ashkeroth's voice trembled in his throat.
Lucien walked.
He did not run. He did not leap. He walked. Step by step, dragging eternity behind him with each motion. And as he did, Themnion shimmered faintly, not with light, but with truth. The kind of truth that burns away illusion, strips kingdoms bare, and unmakes gods.
Alaric raised his hand, summoning a final veil of darkness. A dome of pure void, layered with hexes from every known plane.
Lucien pointed Themnion.
And the dome unraveled. Not shattered. Not exploded.
It simply... ceased to exist.
The blade judged it unworthy.
Ashkeroth stirred in Alaric's spirit. Alaric surged forward, blades spinning like twin comets, his body aflame with every ounce of corrupted magic he possessed.
He vanished from sight, a blur of fury.
But Lucien was faster.
He stepped once. That was all.
And Alaric stopped.
His body hung in the air. Suspended.
Not by force. But by understanding. Lucien's power was now a law, a scripture the world could not defy.
He slashed Themnion once.
The cut did not touch Alaric. It touched his corruption.
And it fled.
Alaric dropped to the ground, no longer glowing with power. His eyes, confused, turned inwards to his father. still fused, still resisting.
"Father... what... what did he do to me...?"
Ashkeroth snarled and arose in rage from Alaric's body.
Lucien looked to him.
"So it ends."
Ashkeroth roared, darkness erupting into the heavens. He grew. Gigantic, draped in cosmic shadow. His form touched the clouds. Stars blinked and turned away. His face was a crown of flame, and his arms the rivers of death.
"I AM THE FINAL KING!" Ashkeroth bellowed.
Lucien lifted Themnion and breathed.
"You are the final lie." He said, his voice barely heard.
He leapt.
The earth shattered.
He struck.
The heavens split.
Ashkeroth, god-king of despair, screamed.
The Themnion pierced him and began desiccating his body.
Ashkeroth desiccated screaming.
Not in agony.
In understanding.
And as his body turned to ash, the sky cleared. The war paused.
Not ended. Not yet.
But the heart of darkness had been silenced.
Lucien landed. Themnion disappeared.
He looked up.
And somewhere far away, in a city of shadows, Mirelleth felt it.
Hope.
To be continued...