He did not come alone.
He came on the Doom Stallion.
It descended out of the red sky like a piece of the sky itself coming loose, a vast dark steed wreathed in crimson fire, its hooves striking nothing and cracking the air anyway, and on its back rode the Doom Monarch, and the moment he appeared, the world began to change.
That was the thing about the Doom Monarch that no announcement had prepared anyone for. He did not simply fight. The world bent around him. Where he rode, the land reshaped itself, the sky reshaped itself, reality itself flexed to match his will. The broken coast behind the combined force rose into jagged mountains. The red sky folded into a dome of crimson fire. The ground beneath the battle became something that was not ground, a shifting surface of his own making, and the entire war was suddenly being fought inside a world the Doom Monarch was building around them as they fought.
The four X-rank holders rose to meet him.
