[A/N: Yay! 250th chapter, hit small milestone. I deserve a Cola. Jk.]
...
The battlefield, which moments ago roared beneath the clash of two overwhelming forces, now settled into a suffocating silence.
Dust drifted through the distorted air, settling over land torn open like raw wounds.
Deep fissures crawled across the flatland in jagged lines, and entire sections of the land had collapsed into sunken basins. Yet through all this ruin, the tall monolith still stood untouched, rising like an ancient pillar of fate, inscrutable and indifferent to the devastation around it.
Reynold lowered himself from the sky, the collapsed winds parting around him.
In his arms rested Silica's sealed body, her figure encased in a smooth layer of obsidian. Dim veins of runic light pulsed beneath the dark shell, casting faint ripples of eerie illumination across his armor.
