Nightbreaker fell again, and old ice shattered beneath it.
The blow did not merely break the ground. It tore memory out of it. The frozen plain of Solania had known too many wars, too many corpses, too many prayers shouted before death. Now it knew wrath again. Ludwig's aura rolled from him in red waves, thick enough that even the monsters nearest him recoiled before the mace descended. Their bodies remembered what their minds did not. They remembered who had once owned these mountains. They remembered the thing that had made the Dark Continent keep its distance, not out of respect, not out of strategy, but out of fear so ancient it had settled into instinct.
Nightbreaker struck, and the servants of Sloth broke.
