The sky above the Obsidian Tower had become a chaotic tapestry of fire and wind.
If the dragons could speak, they would have agreed—with terrified reverence—that the man floating before them deserved the title of Wind-walker.
It was an impossible sight. Seven massive Inferno Dragons, were circling a single human. Yet, it was the dragons who looked cornered.
Aegis Kazar hovered in the air, his cloak billowing not from the wind, but creating it. He moved with a fluidity that mocked gravity. On land, he walked; in the sky, he belonged.
"Burn him!" Gareth roared from the back of his lead dragon, his golden armour reflecting the flames.
The seven dragons opened their maws in unison. A convergent stream of liquid fire, hot enough to melt stone, rushed toward Aegis.
Aegis didn't flinch. He raised one hand, his eyes glowing a pale, eerie white.
"Goath Muro."
The air in front of him solidified. A wall of compressed, hyper-dense wind formed instantly. The dragon fire slammed into the invisible barrier and washed over it, splitting around Aegis like water around a rock. He floated untouched in the center of the inferno, his expression bored.
"My turn," Aegis whispered.
He snapped his fingers.
"Goath Mur."
The wind wall shattered outward, transforming into hundreds of translucent, razor-sharp spears of compressed air. They launched with the sound of a cracking whip.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
The dragons screeched, banking hard to evade. The spears tore through the air, seeking gaps in their scales. Most missed as the beasts dove, but one spear grazed a dragon's wing, punching a clean hole through the membrane.
Aegis shot upward, ascending faster than the beasts could climb.
"You call yourselves rulers of the sky?" Aegis's voice was amplified by the wind, booming in the ears of every rider. "I will show you why the night sky belongs to me."
He looked down at the scrambling formation. 'Thane pushed me back because my feet were on the ground. He had the leverage of the earth. But here... here there is no earth. Here, I am the law.'
He thrust his palms downward.
"Goath Speir Presion."
Gravity seemed to double. A massive column of atmospheric pressure hammered down on the dragons.
The formation broke instantly. The dragons' wings buckled under the invisible weight. They dropped hundreds of feet in seconds, their riders screaming as they fought to stay in their saddles.
Far below, in the twisting, writhing gloom of the Marsh Forest, the battle was less elegant and more brutal.
The Serpent's Maw knights were hacking their way through the living barricade of trees to reach the Obsidian Tower.
Norvin moved with them, though he moved like a shadow. He ducked under a massive, swinging oak branch that pulverized the ground where he had stood a second before. He didn't fight the forest; he flowed through it, his dual axes severing vines that tried to snare his ankles.
"Norvin!"
Chief Varic cleaved a path through a wall of thorns and fell in step beside the boy. Varic was covered in sap and sweat.
"Why are you here?" Varic grunted, blocking a root with his shield. "You completed your task. This is no longer your fight."
Norvin decapitated a snake-like vine with a backhanded swing. He didn't look at Varic.
"I have debts to repay," Norvin said, his voice cold and steady. "And I choose who I pay them to."
Varic looked at the boy—really looked at him—and saw the change.
Varic nodded once, a gesture of warrior's respect. "Then keep your head down. We break through in two minutes."
Back in the courtyard of the Obsidian Tower, the ground shook.
Cahir, the Titan, had just finished throwing a Bronze Falchion knight into a wall when he felt a sudden, oppressive pressure.
Boom.
A figure landed in front of him, cracking the paving stones. The dust settled to reveal Sir Corell. The Prime Nexus stood relaxed, his copper-trimmed armour pristine amidst the gore.
Cahir looked up at the sky, where Aegis was dismantling the dragon formation.
'Master is showing off', Cahir thought with a smirk.
"Eyes on me, big man," Corell drawled. He drew a slender, elegant longsword. He was significantly older than Cahir, his movements efficient and minimal. "You're a Titan Anchor, aren't you?"
Corell lowered his sword, leaving his chest wide open.
"You can have the first blow, boy. Make it count."
Cahir's smirk widened. "You old men always underestimate the youth."
Cahir didn't hesitate. He lunged, his iron fist glowing with kinetic energy. He aimed to turn Corell into paste.
Corell didn't move until the last microsecond. He sidestepped with blinding speed, a blur of motion that the eye couldn't track, slapping Cahir's fist away with the flat of his blade.
"Slow," Corell laughed. "Strong, but slow. Is that all?"
Above the clouds, the massacre had begun.
Gareth had ordered the squadron higher, hoping the thin air would slow the Wind-walker down.
Aegis caught up to the straggler of the pack—a green-scaled drake. The rider turned, raising his lance, but Aegis was already there.
"Goath Guadana."
Aegis swept his arm horizontally. The wind condensed into a massive, invisible scythe blade.
Shhh-tck.
The sound was wet and final. The rider was bisected at the waist. The blade carried through, shearing the dragon's wing off at the joint.
The beast and its rider plummeted silently toward the earth.
"Go higher!" Gareth screamed, his voice cracking with panic. "Into the clouds! Use the cover!"
The remaining dragons pumped their wings, breaching the cloud layer.
In the white mist of the clouds, visibility dropped to zero. It became a game of cat and mouse.
Suddenly, a dragon loomed out of the mist to Aegis's left. The rider didn't attack with a lance—he jumped.
The knight launched himself off the dragon's back, sword raised, trusting blindly that his beast would catch him. It was a suicidal maneuver born of absolute trust.
Aegis banked, dodging the falling knight, only to find the dragon snapping its jaws at his legs.
"Coordination," Aegis muttered, impressed. "You bond with your beasts well. But..."
The air around Aegis began to vibrate. The clouds darkened, swirling inward toward him. He stopped moving. He hovered in the center of the white void, gathering an immense amount of Awen.
"I am a Phantom," Aegis whispered. "And you are just birds."
"Goath Dominio."
He unleashed his domain.
The clouds didn't just swirl; they collapsed. A massive, dark-grey tornado formed instantly, with Aegis as the calm, silent eye.
The suction was apocalyptic.
"Hold on!" Gareth roared, gripping his saddle. 'Damn it! That's why no one likes to fight a phantom. No one can guess how much awen reserves he has left.'
The dragons screamed, flapping frantically against the pull, but the wind was stronger. They were dragged backward, sucked into the vortex.
From the ground, it looked as if the sky had opened a drain. The clouds spiraled down into a dark funnel.
Inside the storm, it was chaos. Dragons were tossed like leaves. The knights who had jumped were ripped away from their mounts, disappearing into the grinding winds.
Aegis floated in the eye, calm and terrible. He raised a finger.
Thwip. A wind spear pierced a dragon's skull. Thwip. Another rider fell, chest caved in by pressure.
One by one, he picked them off. The sky rained blood and scales.
Within a minute, the storm was empty save for the debris of six dragons.
'I have been using spells back to back, the mental pressure is increasing. I need to end this soon.'
"Only one left," Aegis murmured, his eyes scanning the swirling grey walls of his tornado. "Gareth, leaving the party so soon?"
He looked left. Right. Down.
He didn't look up.
Gareth hadn't fought the pull. He had ridden the outer updraft, pushing his dragon to the breaking point, climbing above the storm.
Now, he was directly over the eye.
"Of course not!"
Gareth leaped.
He didn't fall like a man; he fell like a meteor. He plummeted straight down through the clear center of the eye, his sword held in a two-handed executioner's grip, his body glowing with the desperate, explosive power of a Vortex Nexus pushing past his limits.
Aegis sensed it a fraction of a second too late. He looked up.
CRASH.
Gareth slammed into him.
There was no spell to block it. The impact was purely kinetic. Gareth's sword slashed across Aegis's chest, cutting through the wind armour and drawing deep blood. The force of the collision knocked the breath out of the Wind-walker.
Aegis gasped, his concentration shattering.
The tornado began to dissipate, unraveling into wisps of harmless cloud.
But gravity remained.
Both men—the Wind-walker and the Dragon Rider—were now freefalling from ten thousand feet.
Aegis clutched his bleeding chest, his eyes locking with Gareth's. Gareth was screaming in a mix of rage and terror, flailing in the air.
Above them, diving through the dissolving storm, Gareth's dragon folded its wings, plummeting in a desperate dive to catch its master before they hit the ground.
Aegis Kazar fell back-first, blood streaming from the slash across his chest. The pain was sharp, grounding, but his mind was already calculating the vectors of the air currents around him. He looked up at the plummeting knight above him.
"Nice blow!" Aegis shouted, his voice snatched away by the gale but carried by his magic to Gareth's ears. "But you won't get that chance again!"
Aegis twisted his body in mid-air. He didn't slow his fall; he accelerated it.
"Goath Mur."
A dozen spears of compressed air materialized around him, pointing upward. With a flick of his wrist, he launched them at the falling knight.
Gareth, tumbling through the void, saw death coming. He had no ground to leverage, no stirrups to brace against. He swung his sword wildly, parrying the first three spears.
Clang. Clang. Crack.
He couldn't block them all. The lack of friction betrayed him. The impact of the blocked spears pushed him into a chaotic spin, leaving him open.
Thwip. Thwip.
One spear grazed his thigh, shattering the greaves. Another sliced across his cheek, taking a piece of his helmet and drawing a line of bright red blood.
"I will not die today!" Gareth screamed, his eyes wide and manic. "Not by a gust of wind! Not today!"
Below him, a massive shape broke through the dissipating clouds.
The Inferno Dragon had completed its dive. It didn't try to catch Gareth on its back—that would break every bone in his body at this speed. Instead, it matched his terminal velocity, positioning its massive head right beneath him.
Gareth reached out. He didn't grab the saddle. He grabbed one of the dragon's protruding fangs, a tooth as long as his leg.
He swung himself onto the beast's lower jaw, digging his boots into the soft scales of the dragon's chin.
"NOW!" Gareth roared.
The dragon flared its wings. The sudden drag snapped them out of the freefall. They swooped upward in a crushing arc, pressing Gareth flat against the dragon's snout.
Aegis watched them pull up. He righted himself, hovering in the air as if standing on a solid floor.
He leaned forward and blasted off.
The chase was on. But the dynamic had flipped. Moments ago, seven dragons had hunted one man. Now, the Wind-walker hunted the last dragon.
Aegis was a silver bullet cutting through the sky. He was faster than the dragon. He weaved through the air currents, closing the distance with terrifying ease.
Gareth looked back, wind tearing at his exposed face. He saw the Phantom gaining on them.
"Are you ready, friend?" Gareth whispered, patting the dragon's snout.
The dragon roared, a sound of defiance and loyalty.
They banked hard left, diving toward the Obsidian Tower. It wasn't a retreat; it was a lure. Gareth knew he couldn't win a dogfight againstthe wind-walker. But on the ground... on the ground, the Primes were waiting.
Aegis saw the dive. He saw the trajectory leading back to the earth.
"Good observation," Aegis mused, angling his body to follow. "Your men lost because you went higher."
He followed them down, ready to end the Golden Knight once and for all.
Miles away, the spectacle in the sky was not a battle to be admired. It was an omen of something terrible.
In the town of Ruxwax, the neutral zone that was supposed to be safe, panic had set in.
The commoners had seen the fire in the sky. They had seen the dragons falling like burning stars. To a peasant, there is no difference between a "Wanderer" and a "Knight." There is only war, and war eats the poor first.
"Move! Move the cart!"
A father whipped his mule, screaming at the animal. The cart was piled high with blankets, sacks of grain, and terrified children.
The streets were gridlocked. Carriages slammed into each other. People abandoned their homes, running with whatever they could carry. Mothers clutched babies to their chests, weeping as they pushed through the crushing crowd.
"The sky is falling!" a woman shrieked, pointing at the descending dragon.
They ran like insects scattering from a kicked anthill. There was no order. There was no nobility. Just the raw, frantic biological imperative to survive the clash of gods happening above their heads.
The courtyard of the Obsidian Tower was a ruin of cracked stone and settling dust.
Cahir stood panting, his iron skin glowing faintly. Opposite him, Sir Corell looked as fresh as if he had just stepped out of a salon.
Corell held a sword made of Yellowstone—a precious, ultra-dense mineral that was usually too heavy for normal men to lift, let alone swing with finesse. Yet in Corell's hands, it danced like a feather.
"You fight with hate," Corell observed, idly spinning the yellow blade. "It makes you predictable."
"I fight with purpose," Cahir growled. "We are here to kill the Demon. To wipe the stain from the earth."
Corell sighed, shaking his head. "You Wanderers. You are so... wasteful. Why kill the Demon? It is a magnificent specimen. Strong. Durable."
"It is filth," Cahir spat. "It is not human. The Goddess of Night decreed that the world belongs to us. To share it with beasts is a sin."
"We agree on the first part," Corell smiled, stepping over a piece of rubble. "Humans are indeed supreme. But that is exactly why we shouldn't kill them. We should own them. Why exterminate a horse when you can ride it? Why destroy a Titan when you can shackle it and make it build your walls?"
Corell pointed his sword at Cahir.
"You want to erase them. We want to enslave them. We are the true masters, boy. You are just a butcher."
Cahir's eyes narrowed. The philosophical difference was slim, but to a zealot, it was an ocean.
"Then you are worse than they are," Cahir declared. "To mix your fate with theirs is heresy."
Cahir stomped the ground.
"Iarann Huitzli!"
The earth exploded. Dozens of massive iron spikes, thick as tree trunks, shot up from the ground, aiming to skewer Corell from below.
Corell didn't panic. He moved like water. He hopped from one spike to another as they emerged, his yellow sword flashing.
Ting. Ting. Ting.
He parried the tips of the spikes that came too close, using the momentum to flip closer to Cahir.
"Too slow!" Corell laughed.
Cahir didn't retreat. He clapped his hands together.
"Iarann Macasamhail!"
The iron from the spikes liquefied and reformed. Instantly, five clones of Cahir, made of solid, grinding iron, rose from the ground. They were crude, faceless effigies, but they hit with the weight of a wrecking ball.
The clones surrounded Corell, swinging massive iron fists.
Corell's smile vanished. He switched grips on his Yellowstone blade.
"Heavy Style," Corell whispered.
He swung. The blade moved so fast it hummed. It shore through the first iron clone like it was butter. The Yellowstone was denser than iron; it shattered the construct instantly.
He spun, decapitating the second clone. He ducked a punch from the third and drove his sword up through its torso.
"Impressive toys!" Corell shouted, kicking the debris aside.
Cahir was already moving. He realized the clones wouldn't hold him. He inhaled, his skin turning a dark, metallic grey.
"Iarann Puas!"
Cahir's body erupted. Thousands of needle-sharp iron quills shot out of his skin, turning him into a massive, deadly porcupine. He charged Corell, intending to impale him on a thousand points.
Corell's eyes widened. He couldn't parry a thousand needles. He leaped backward, putting distance between them.
"You act like a beast yourself!" Corell sneered. "For a human supremacist, you fight like a badger!"
Cahir stopped his charge. The quills retracted. He looked at Corell's sword—the Yellowstone. It was worth a fortune. A single shard of it could buy a mansion.
"That blade," Cahir said heavy breathing. "Yellowstone. A king's ransom in your hand."
"Do you like it?" Corell smirked. "It cost more than your entire bloodline."
"I don't care about the cost," Cahir said, raising his hand. His fingers curled, not into a fist, but into a claw. "I care about the metal."
Corell frowned. "What?"
Cahir's eyes glowed with a magnetic violet light.
"Ferrum... Obliterate."
He didn't aim at Corell. He aimed at the iron particles in the air, in the ground, and in the debris around Corell.
A magnetic field of crushing intensity slammed down.
Corell's armour—which had iron clasps—suddenly weighed a ton. The debris on the ground flew toward him, sticking to his legs, trapping him.
Corell stumbled, his speed neutralized.
"Iron obeys me," Cahir roared, rushing forward with his 10-foot blade forming in his hand. "Iarann Guillotina!"
"Wealth means nothing to the Goddess!" Cahir screamed, bringing the massive blade down. "Die with your gold!"
Corell looked up, unable to dodge, forced to raise his Yellowstone sword to block a blow that carried the weight of a Titan's faith.
CLANG.
The impact shockwave shattered the windows of the Obsidian Tower ten floors up.