The throne room was a crater.
The walls had collapsed. The roof split open to the gray skies above. The floor lay shattered in fault lines radiating outward from the clash.
Vell knelt at the center, panting, power still crackling across his skin like burning threads.
His staff was the only thing keeping him from falling.
But Endrith still stood by his throne.
Not scorched. Not scarred.
The mask glowed faintly, the same unreadable, frozen visage his soldiers had worn for generations. Behind it, no breath, no strain.
Vell forced himself upright, ready to strike again, but his body refused him. Every fragment of strength had burned away in that single blow.
He had nothing left.
Endrith stepped down from the throne. Each movement was slow, deliberate.
He stopped before Vell.
A pause.
Then his hand closed around the old staff.
Vell tried to resist. His arms barely answered him.
The silence split with the crack of wood. Endrith broke the staff as if it were a reed.
Energy burst outward, a scorching wave that washed across the ruin and guttered into ash and nothingness.
The satchel at Vell's side kindled. Flames with no smoke devoured it in an instant. In the next breath, it was gone, reduced to nothing, as if it had never existed.
At the edge of the ruin, Sonder stood frozen. Shielded by Vell's last protection, she stared, wide-eyed, into hopelessness made flesh.
And then, Endrith turned his masked face toward her.
Something inside her broke.
Her hands shot forward, and a cascade of spells erupted from her in ragged desperation, every ounce of training, every scrap of magic she had ever learned, hurled at the radiant figure.
Each spell struck.
Each vanished like sparks.
Endrith did not raise a hand. Did not even tilt his head.
When her fury guttered out, leaving her heaving and empty, he looked at her once, in contempt of her weakness.
Then he lifted his gaze skyward.
The air shimmered. His body rose, weightless, silent, drifting into the broken shaft of light.
In that moment, he was a god, unbound by those below the heavens.
And then he was gone. Forever.