The dawn over Aetherflame Palace broke without ceremony—no horns, no banners, no war drums—yet the very air seemed to hold its breath. The first rays of sunlight clung to the high volcanic ridges like molten gold reluctant to let go of the stone. Even the mountain wind, usually sharp and restless, moved in slow currents, as though unwilling to disturb what gathered below.
On the southern bastion, Alter stood with his arms folded behind his back, his posture steady as the fortress walls. Starsever rested across his lower back, its scabbard humming with a faint, resonant pitch—a sound almost too low for human ears, but enough to make the stone under his boots vibrate. The blade's restrained energy bled into the air around him, a constant reminder that battle was coming.
Below, the fortress courtyard was a living engine of discipline and precision.
The Dragoons: one hundred and fifty sovereign-trained warriors, each clad in dragon-forged plate that caught the dawn light in shifting metallic tones—gold for flamebearers, pale blue for frostwardens, deep black shot with silver veins for the shadowbreakers. Every warrior bore a Riftcarver at their side, the scabbards inscribed with runes that glowed faintly as they synced with the Resonating Crystals in their armor. The crystals pulsed in unison—one vast heartbeat spread across a hundred and fifty chests.
The 14 Commanders: veterans of countless campaigns, standing at the head of their divisions. Their presence was quieter than the Dragoons'—not from lack of power, but from control. They carried themselves like the calm before a storm, the kind that breaks the moment steel meets steel.
Allied Forces: siege arcanists adjusting the runes on mobile mana cannons, griffon riders patrolling the air currents for anomalies, formation captains barking low-voiced orders as they confirmed marching sequences.
Above, the skies tore open.
Ignivar descended first, his body trailing an aurora of sovereign fire that turned the cold mountain light into a blaze. His roar rolled down the slopes, deep and resonant enough to stir the bones of the soldiers below. He was followed by the skyguard:
Storm-drakes from the Windspire Range, each wingbeat laced with arcs of blue-white lightning.
Crystal wyrms from the Hollow Depths, bodies refracting light into a storm of razor beams.
Tundra serpents from the Frostmantle, their breath freezing the air in long trails that glittered like shards of glass in the dawn.
They fell into formation overhead, casting moving shadows over the gathered host.
Alter's draconic aura pulsed once—silent command, silent greeting. The dragons dipped their wings in acknowledgment, then locked into a low, protective spiral above the outer formations.
No speech was given. None was needed.
"Begin the march," Alter's voice carried through the resonance network, clear and level.
The ground rumbled. The army moved.
The march wound down the long volcanic pass, the black stone underfoot groaning under the combined weight of steel, flesh, and scale. Frost clung to the edges of the road where the sun had yet to reach, crunching faintly beneath armored boots. The Resonating Crystals hummed softly as their networks adjusted to the pace, linking the flow of mana between soldiers so the entire host breathed in unison.
The land beyond the palace was scarred—burnt tree husks jutted like broken spears from frozen soil, and the scent of charred moss hung faint in the air. Higher above, ash clouds drifted in from the eastern sky, painting the horizon in bruised purples and greys.
Hours passed before the silhouette of Aetherreach rose on the horizon.
It should have been a fortress-city, proud and immovable, its walls a symbol of Teravane's defiance. Instead, it wavered in the distance like a mirage—one moment whole, the next in ruin, then reshaped into a grotesque crystalline form bristling with jagged spines. Its towers leaned at impossible angles before snapping back upright. Portions of the wall blinked in and out of existence, as though refusing to choose what state they were in.
The air shifted the closer they came. Sound dulled, as if every noise had to fight through layers of water. Even the dragons above altered their wingbeats, circling wider as they passed over invisible pockets of pressure. The wind tasted faintly metallic, and the longer they breathed it, the more their tongues tingled.
At five hundred paces from the gate, Alter raised one hand. The army slowed.
Selene stepped up beside him, her silver-engraved armor gleaming faintly under the flickering sky. Her hand rested on her sword's hilt. "No movement. Not even birds."
"That's the movement," Alter said quietly, eyes narrowing. "The city's alive, just not in the way it should be."
Behind them, the Dragoons adjusted their stances, Riftcarvers loosening in their scabbards. The Commanders exchanged brief looks with their squad leaders. Overhead, Ignivar's growl rolled low and warning through the air.
The gates loomed ahead—warped, bent, and shifting between forms just like the rest of the city. Every soldier present could feel it now: the hum of something vast and wrong, woven into the fabric of the place. The air tasted thicker here, the weight of it pressing faintly against their skin.
And then the distortion thickened—like oil poured into water—forming the first shimmer of what would step through.
The distortion ahead of Aetherreach's gates thickened into a roiling wall of shifting glass. Colors bled into one another like oil spilled on water, each ripple showing fractured reflections of the army in twisted forms — Dragoons as corpses, Commanders as demons, dragons as skeletal husks.
Then it stepped through.
The Illusion Demon God did not walk so much as slide between moments. Its form refused commitment — one instant it was a towering colossus plated in abyssal armor, the next a writhing lattice of faceless eyes, then suddenly a perfect mirror of Alter, down to the exact shimmer of his armor and the faint hum of Starsever. Its aura poured out like cold smoke, sinking into the ground and curling upward into every lung.
When it spoke, it was not sound. It was thought — dripping into the mind like molten wax.
"Steel, scales, and courage… all of it is mine to unmake."
The world broke.
No flash. No sound. Just a vertigo snap, and the army was gone.
Alter's PrisonHe stood on an endless plain of black sand beneath a bleeding sun. Heat shimmered in the air, but the warmth never touched his skin. Around him lay the corpses of every Dragoon — armor scorched, Riftcarvers shattered, crystals dark. Selene knelt furthest away, her head bowed.
When she lifted her face, her eyes were glassy, her voice trembling."You promised… and you failed."
In the distance, a roar broke the stillness. He turned just in time to see Ignivar falling from the sky, wings torn and aflame, his body vanishing into the black horizon.
Selene's PrisonShe was back in the throne room of Aetherflame Palace — but it was wrong. The walls bled black ichor, pooling across the floor. The banners were shredded, the air heavy with the scent of ash and decay.
On the dais lay Alter, Starsever through his chest, his golden eyes dimmed.The Demon God's whisper slid against her ear like a cold blade: "You could have stopped this… but you chose to hold back."
Her knees felt weak. Her grip on her sword faltered.
Finn's PrisonSnow fell in slow spirals, heavy and wet. The ruins of the Mythral Dawn's training ground lay buried under ice. In the center, Mira knelt, her white-crimson armor cracked and blackened, a dagger jutting from her side.
He was on his knees before her, hands shaking as he tried to stem the bleeding, but every time he touched her, she grew colder. Her voice was a ghost in his ear:"You weren't fast enough."
When he blinked, she was gone — only frost-covered stones remained where she had been.
Mira's PrisonThe world was crimson, the sky torn open. Finn's body lay at her feet, pierced by a dozen shadow-forged spears. His eyes were open, fixed on hers without recognition.
She reached for him — and his skin turned to ash under her touch, scattering into the wind.
Rhed's PrisonFlames licked the sky, the heat blistering against his skin. His village burned around him — but when he broke through the debris to reach his family's home, the doorway was empty. Only ashes swirled in the embers.
A voice he couldn't see chuckled. "You were strong enough to break stone… but not to save them."
He roared, swinging his hammer at shadows that broke apart into smoke before he could land a blow.
Elira's PrisonShe moved through darkness — not shadow, but a suffocating void with no walls, no sky. Yet she knew she wasn't alone. Eyes opened in the dark around her, dozens, unblinking, each one reflecting her own face twisted into something monstrous.
Every time she struck with her blade, her target dissolved into an exact copy of herself, smiling.
Selin's PrisonHe stood in a rain-soaked alley. At his feet were bodies — not demons, but civilians — each bearing the wounds only his blades could make. His hands were wet, red, trembling.
From the shadows ahead, more stepped forward, their faces familiar — comrades, allies — all marked by his own killing strokes.
Vellmar's PrisonThe battlefield was an open plain, empty but for him. Then the ground opened beneath his feet, a hundred demonic chains lashing up to bind his arms and legs.
He pulled, muscles straining, but every link was forged from the faces of those he'd fought beside, each one silently watching him fail.
The Dragons' PrisonIgnivar flew through endless black skies, but every wingbeat brought more shadow-wyrms. They clamped onto his wings, tore through the membrane, dragged him down. Storm-drakes flailed as their lightning fizzled to sparks, crystal wyrms shattered mid-flight into glass dust.
Each dragon felt the moment of the fall, the helpless spiral into an unseen abyss.
The Demon God's WebThe Illusion Demon God sat above them all, suspended in a throne of black glass high in a sky that wasn't a sky. Every Dragoon, Commander, and dragon floated in a bubble of their own nightmare, held fast in place like flies in amber.
It leaned forward, its face shifting between a smooth mask of gold lines and a blank void."Mortals are such simple instruments," it murmured, each word vibrating through every prison at once. "Pluck a string of regret here, tighten a chord of guilt there… and they play their own requiem."
The air between the bubbles shimmered, and the Demon God's slitted gold eyes turned toward Alter's prison."But you… you will fight until your last breath. Good. The deeper the prey resists, the sweeter the collapse."
Its fingers twitched — and the illusions deepened. The dead spoke louder. The wounds bled more vividly. The smell of ash, rot, and blood grew thick enough to taste.
The Demon God's voice filled the fractured realms like the tide filling a canyon.
"Bend…"
The word rippled through every prison, each syllable heavy enough to make the air in their lungs turn to stone. Every step felt heavier. Every weapon felt slower. The illusions thickened, not just images but entire worlds pressing in on their minds.
Alter's boots sank into the black sand of his own prison with each breath. The bleeding sun above pulsed slower and slower, and every corpse at his feet seemed to breathe in rhythm with it. Selene's voice kept coming — "You promised… you failed." Over and over, timed perfectly with his heartbeat.
He exhaled, forcing himself to ignore the sound. To ignore the sight. He shut his eyes, cutting himself off from the vision entirely, and reached inward — past the heat in his blood, past the echo of his draconic heartbeats, to the deep, low hum that had been with him since the Dragoons' formation.
It was faint. Almost swallowed by the Demon God's pressure. But it was there.
A pulse.
One beat — not his own — somewhere distant, like the throb of a war drum under a mountain. Then another. Steady. Ordered.
He opened himself to it, letting his awareness sink into that rhythm.
The black sand blurred. In the corner of his vision, faint silver strands shimmered against the void — thin as spider silk, vibrating with each beat. He reached for one, fingers brushing the thread.
And he felt her.
Selene — not the broken, kneeling figure from the illusion, but the real Selene. Her presence burned like a silver-white flame, sharp and steady. For a fraction of a second, the voice in his illusion faltered.
Selene's true voice bled through, faint and strained: "Alter…?"
The thread flared.
He seized another, pulling it taut. Finn — cold, his breath ragged with the weight of the snow around him, but alive. Beyond him, Mira's heartbeat echoed against his, their presence linked even here.
One by one, he felt more:
Rhed, anger simmering under chains.
Elira, her heartbeat quickening as she turned toward the thread's warmth in the void.
Selin, pulling his blades free of the bodies in his illusion to grasp something unseen.
Vellmar, straining against the faces in his chains, now shattering them link by link.
Ignivar, roaring in a far-off sky, the pressure of the thread giving him strength to climb again.
The Demon God noticed.
Its gold-slit eyes narrowed, and the bubbles holding each prison began to thicken. The air inside turned viscous, colors bleeding into tar. The threads quivered as though something was chewing through them.
"No… no…" the Demon God hissed. Its voice now cracked, layered with static, the earlier calm unraveling. "You will not take them back."
Alter wrapped his grip around as many threads as he could hold. The resonance pulsed harder, brighter, each beat syncing faster — until the hum became a drumbeat pounding in unison across every prison.
"Hold to it," he growled through the link, his voice cutting across realms. "Don't let go."
Selene straightened in her throne room, her armor shedding the illusion's ichor like oil sliding from steel.Finn stood over Mira in the snow and saw her blink back at him — no longer dead, but fierce-eyed.Rhed's hammer burst into flame, melting the chains around his wrists.Elira's doubles dissolved into smoke at her feet.Vellmar's chains turned to dust.Ignivar spread his wings, shattering the swarm that clung to him.
The Demon God's throne cracked down the center. The glass threads holding the bubbles shivered, fine fractures spreading like frost over ice.
Alter braced Starsever's point into the ground of his illusion, the blade's core rune flaring gold. The weapon's hum joined the crystals' pulse, amplifying it into a wave of sound and light that raced along every thread.
"Now," he said — not a shout, but an absolute.
The light detonated outward.
Every prison shattered at once in a storm of glowing shards.
The world tore open.
Light from the shattered prisons bled into a single blinding pulse, then collapsed inward with a snap like the breaking of a continent-sized bowstring. For a split second, there was no sky, no ground — just the raw whiplash of re-entry as everyone was hurled back into the material plane.
They fell into chaos.
The ground beneath Aetherreach was scorched and cratered, the gate walls cracked like brittle bone. The air boiled with clashing currents of heat and frost, lightning and shadow, each eddy carrying the stink of sulfur and scorched metal.
Above it all loomed the Illusion Demon God's true form.
It had shed the shifting disguises of the prison realm. Now its body was a towering lattice of black crystal and sinew, its chest split down the center into a vertical maw lined with jagged obsidian teeth. Where its head should have been, a halo of floating glass masks spun in slow orbit, each showing the face of someone in the army — twisted, dying, screaming.
From its back sprouted twelve jointed limbs, each ending in a weapon-shaped extrusion — scythe, glaive, chain-blade, pincer — shifting fluidly between forms. The ground around it warped, tilting and sinking as if the earth itself recoiled.
It roared — but the sound wasn't heard through ears. It was felt, rattling every bone, shaking teeth in their sockets. The concussion wave shattered several of the outer siege constructs the Dragoons had set earlier.
There was no regroup order. No time for it.
The moment their boots hit dirt, the front ranks of the Dragoons slammed shields into place, catching a volley of black crystal shards the Demon God flung like shrapnel. Each shard detonated on impact, kicking up arcs of searing shadowflame that hissed against barrier wards.
From the flanks, the 14 Commanders surged into motion:
Caelum Dray vaulted high on a burst of wind, spearing his blade into one of the Demon God's upper limbs to lock it in place.
Veyna Lux split the air with crystal pillars, pinning two more weapons before they could scythe through the forward line.
Revyn Mistclaw vanished entirely, his afterimages cutting across the Demon God's knee-joints in flashes of shadowlight.
The Dragoons followed with synchronized aggression. Rhed Velgroth crashed forward like a battering ram, hammering his runic maul into the Demon God's shin and leaving a burning marker that exploded seconds later. Elira Mistshade flickered in and out of sight, leaving shadow markers that linked into a chain of detonations across its flank.
The dragons struck next.
Ignivar descended in a blazing spiral, trailing a vortex of sovereign flame that scorched the Demon God's carapace until it bled molten crystal. A storm-drake wing strafed along the western wall, bolts of lightning hammering the Demon God's upper limbs, forcing it to shift its defense upward.
The Demon God retaliated instantly — limbs snapping like whips, hurling burning chains that hooked around a storm-drake's neck and dragged it toward the maw in its chest. Alter was there before the beast was swallowed, Starsever cleaving through the chain with a burst of golden light.
"Keep your spacing!" he barked through the resonance link. "Don't get caught in its center line — it's pulling everything toward that maw!"
The battlefield itself began to twist.
Black glass spires erupted from the ground in jagged lines, cutting through formations and forcing squads into smaller pockets. The Demon God swept its arms in a scissoring motion, forcing the Commanders into reactive defense rather than pressure.
Selene was the first to push back the momentum. She slid between two converging limbs, her sword flashing in a crescent of light that severed one of the Demon God's elbow-joints entirely. As it staggered from the loss, Finn and Mira surged in together — Finn's wind-daggers ricocheting off Mira's rune-sealed orbs, each impact exploding into a shockwave that drove the Demon God back a step.
From the rear lines, ranged Dragoons fired marker arrows into weak points identified by Alter. Every third strike detonated in sync, forcing the Demon God's movements to slow as its limbs locked against the blast patterns.
But it wasn't passive.
The masks orbiting its head flared white, each firing beams of refracted illusion-light into the ranks. Any Dragoon struck reeled in confusion, momentarily seeing their comrades as demons or corpses. Friendly fire nearly broke out twice before the resonance link steadied their perceptions.
"Eyes on your marks, not your targets!" Veyna shouted, her crystal wards intercepting another beam before it could lance through the front line.
The pressure built fast.
Even with the illusions gone, the Demon God's physical form fought like a siege engine with a mind sharpened for murder. Its reach was longer than any melee range, its strikes heavy enough to crater the ground, and its shifting terrain meant there was no safe zone to regroup in.
The only path was forward — and up.
The Illusion Demon God shifted its stance.The glass spires jutting from the battlefield quivered, shedding flakes of black crystal that evaporated into smoke. The ground underfoot began to hum — a low, throbbing vibration that carried through the bones.
Alter recognized it immediately."Brace!"
The world erupted.
From the maw in its chest, the Demon God exhaled a torrent of shadowflame laced with refracted light — fire that twisted into spirals midair, each spiral carrying the afterimage of a hundred different attack angles at once. The illusions and the reality were indistinguishable until the moment of impact.
Three Dragoons in the forward wedge went down instantly, shields glowing red-hot from the direct blast. Behind them, the force was so intense that it scooped a chunk of earth the size of a building out of the ground and hurled it into the western wall of Aetherreach.
Selene slammed her sword into the ground, sending a shockwave of light through the resonance link to break the illusions before they could disorient the squads. But the Demon God had already moved.
It vanished.Not in a blink, not in a step — but in segments, its limbs and torso phasing apart and reappearing behind multiple formations at once.
A pincer-arm speared toward Finn from his left while a glaive-shaped limb scythed down at Mira from above. They didn't retreat — Finn caught the pincer with a crossing dagger lock, redirecting its point just enough for Mira's runic shield burst to slam upward, exploding into a dome of light that shredded the glaive into molten shards.
To the east, Rhed Velgroth was locked against a spinning chain-blade limb that struck like a hurricane. Every impact against his runic maul sent ripples through the ground, but the limb's speed only increased, forcing him into a defensive rotation that kept his heels grinding trenches into the dirt.
Vellmar broke that stalemate — charging in low and smashing a Sky Piercer: Zero Distance thrust directly into the limb's joint. The blast detonated from the inside out, ripping the chain apart in a spray of black ichor.
Above them, the masks around the Demon God's head accelerated their orbit. They blurred into a halo, and from it rained hundreds of needle-thin beams of illusion-light. Each one refracted midair into a dozen different trajectories, saturating the sky like a storm of glass.
Dragoon archers dropped to one knee, firing arrows tipped with resonance markers. Every successful intercept caused a beam to shatter prematurely — but dozens still punched through, stabbing into the earth and blooming into illusory terrain traps.
One squad suddenly found themselves fighting waist-deep in illusory quicksand. Another saw the ground beneath them turn into a narrow cliff ledge above a thousand-foot drop. Only the constant mental reinforcement through the resonance link kept them from panicking.
Then it escalated further.
The Demon God's twelve limbs split at the mid-joints, each segment sprouting a jagged spear-point. Now it had twenty-four striking arms, moving in overlapping arcs so dense it was like watching a black hurricane of steel and crystal.
Selin Varrow slipped between two arcs, cutting shallow lines into the limb's crystal skin — not for damage, but to seed runic markers that Rhed detonated seconds later. The blast knocked three limbs out of alignment, creating a temporary opening in the whirlwind.
Ignivar took it — plummeting from above, his talons clamping around the Demon God's shoulders. He unleashed Solar Roar point-blank, the wave of divine flame so bright it painted every shadow gold. For the first time, the Demon God reeled, its limbs jerking erratically as cracks spidered through the armor around its torso.
But the retaliation was immediate and vicious.
The maw in its chest snapped wide and inhaled, dragging everything toward it with a gravitational pull that warped the air. Loose weapons, chunks of shattered stone, even full-grown Dragoons were pulled off their feet. Two squads slammed barrier stakes into the ground to anchor themselves, but the pull only grew stronger.
"Anchor to each other!" Alter's voice cut through the resonance.
Selene and Finn linked arms, Mira anchoring herself to them both with a runic tether. Veyna Lux drove a crystal pillar into the dirt and grabbed hold, dragging two wounded soldiers against it.
Even so, a storm-drake lost its grip and was pulled toward the maw. Alter moved instantly — Ghost Stepping across the battlefield in a blur of gold to intercept, slamming Starsever into the maw's edge. The golden blade sparked against crystal teeth, forcing the jaws to snap shut before the drake was consumed.
The ground stilled.The limbs retracted.
The Demon God's masks slowed their orbit, but now each one glowed a deep, burning crimson. It wasn't probing anymore. It had committed.
Alter felt it in his chest — the shift from calculated pressure to pure intent to kill.
The battlefield was in motion, but the tempo was chaos — the kind the Demon God thrived on.
Alter planted Starsever point-down into the dirt, golden light surging through the resonance link."Listen. We break it now — or it takes us apart one squad at a time. Follow the chain exactly. No gaps."
The link pulsed once, steady and strong, carrying his intent into every mind. In the heart of the storm, a unified rhythm began to take shape.
Caelum Dray burst upward first, riding a vertical gale that tore a gap through the mask-beam barrage. His spear caught the nearest glaive-limb and drove it into the ground, the impact splitting stone.
From the opposite flank, Veyna Lux thrust her palms forward — crystal spires erupted from the ground in perfect sequence, catching and pinning three more limbs mid-swing.
Selin Varrow appeared as a streak of steel, cutting a line across another limb's outer plating. Behind her, Rhed Velgroth hammered his maul into the cut with bone-rattling force, the marker detonation fusing the limb to the earth in a burst of molten crystal.
Above them, Ignivar wheeled into a dive, raking two of the upper limbs with molten talons. The sound was like tearing metal, and the Demon God's bellow rolled across the sky.
Selene Virellia took point.She sprinted straight into the narrowing kill zone, Star of Veyra humming with wind and light. A twisting upward slash tore open a seam from the Demon God's lower rib plating up to its shoulder joint.
Finn and Mira followed as one. Finn's wind-charged daggers ricocheted off Mira's runic orbs, each strike exploding into concussive bursts that widened the seam. The air rippled with each impact, the overlapping shockwaves forcing the Demon God to stumble back half a step.
From the rear ranks, Elira Mistshade flung a shadow-laced spear into the opening. It didn't pierce — it vanished into the crack, detonating inside the carapace and forcing shards of black crystal outward like shrapnel.
Alter moved now.Ghost Step carried him through three intersecting limb strikes, his form phasing just enough to pass between the killing arcs. He drove Starsever into the shoulder seam Selene had opened, twisting the blade until golden fractures webbed across the Demon God's upper torso.
At the same instant, Vellmar Dreadmoor charged in from below, slamming a Sky Piercer: Zero Distance thrust straight into the joint beneath the maw. The impact sent a shockwave through the Demon God's core structure, forcing its chest to snap wider for a fraction of a second.
"Now!"
The signal rippled through the resonance link, and every unit moved in perfect sync.
Caelum Dray wrenched his spear upward, tearing the pinned glaive-limb from its joint entirely.
Rhed Velgroth detonated a triple-stack runic marker against the remaining grounded limbs, the blast throwing debris high into the air.
Selin Varrow vanished again, reappearing inside the chest cavity to drive her blade between the crystal ribs before blinking clear.
Veyna Lux collapsed her spires inward, crushing pinned limbs into each other like a vice.
Overhead, the dragonflight committed fully — storm-drakes lancing arcs of lightning into the exposed cracks, frostwyrms breathing sub-zero torrents to make the crystal plating brittle. Ignivar spiraled through it all, trailing sovereign fire that scorched the wounds white-hot.
The Demon God staggered. Its limbs flailed without coordination, several now hanging limp or severed. The masks orbiting its head flickered erratically, beams scattering harmlessly into the dirt.
For the first time since the illusions broke, the monster looked unsteady — vulnerable.
Alter's voice cut through the link again, steady and sharp."Hold the gap. I'm ending this."
The Dragoons tightened the perimeter, every Commander reinforcing the fractured openings to keep the maw and core line exposed. Above, the dragons began a circling climb, ready to dive in support if the killing strike failed.
The kill window was open.
And Alter was already moving.
The air shifted.
It was the kind of shift every veteran on the field felt in their bones — the sudden drop in temperature, the pressure spike in the ears, the faint ringing in the skull.The Illusion Demon God was cornered, and cornered gods didn't die quietly.
Its masks stopped flickering. Instead, they locked into place around its head in a perfect sphere, glowing deep crimson. The fractured limbs drew inward, curling into a defensive shell.
Alter knew what was coming.
"Brace! Do not step inside that field until I'm through!"
The masks detonated their stored light all at once, releasing a sphere of refracted energy that expanded in every direction. It wasn't heat, or cold, or blunt force — it was displacement.Soldiers caught in its path didn't burn or freeze; they were thrown hundreds of feet away as if the battlefield itself had rejected them.
Veyna Lux erected a crystal dome, its surface fracturing instantly but buying just enough time for the nearest Dragoon squads to anchor themselves. Several dragons tumbled from the air, only to be caught mid-fall by their wingmates.
Inside the field's heart, the Demon God's torso armor regenerated in jagged spurts. Its maw split wider, drawing in more of that unnatural gravity, preparing to pull everything — and everyone — into its core.
Alter moved.Ghost Step carried him past the distortion wall, the outer field slicing at his aura like razors. Every inch forward cost a surge of energy to keep his form intact.
A limb lashed toward him — one of the few still intact — and he met it head-on. Starsever bit through the joint in a single rising cut, golden sparks scattering like meteors.
Another limb descended, faster and heavier. Alter didn't dodge. He caught it in his left hand, claws digging into the crystal plating, then twisted until the limb snapped with a bone-deep crack.
The Demon God's roar was a psychic shockwave, trying to overload his senses, but the resonance link flared — Selene's voice cutting through:"Stay with us. You're almost there."
The Demon God abandoned coordinated strikes. Instead, it unleashed a wall of overlapping illusions — hundreds of Alter's own form, each swinging Starsever back at him.Every false blade carried weight and impact. Every one could kill if ignored.
Alter's eyes narrowed. His aura surged, golden light flooding the space around him. The clones collapsed under the pressure, shattering like glass until only the real Demon God remained.
It struck again — a pincer limb from the left, the maw snapping from the front, and a glaive-limb from above. Perfect three-way kill shot.
Alter vaulted over the pincer, deflected the glaive with Starsever's edge, and slammed his boot into the maw's upper plate, forcing it closed before it could bite.
He rose into the air, aura flaring until every crack and seam in his armor glowed like molten gold. Starsever lengthened in his hands, the blade's light stretching until it was a lance of condensed divinity.
"Strike XVIII — Creator's Banishment."
The descent was silent — no roar, no wind, no flash — just inevitability. The blade pierced the gap Vellmar had opened earlier, driving straight into the Demon God's core.
Light erupted from within, not outward but inward, collapsing the space the Demon God occupied. Its body convulsed, limbs flailing wildly as the core shattered into motes of white-gold that were sucked into the singularity forming in its chest.
The singularity tightened, crushing the Demon God's mass into nothingness. Fragments of armor and crystal plating spiraled inward before vanishing entirely. Its roar turned into a long, drawn-out distortion before cutting off mid-note.
Alter landed in the space where it had stood, the ground beneath his boots scorched in a perfect circle. Behind him, the singularity winked out — and with it, the Illusion Demon God was gone.
Silence followed.Not the quiet of peace, but the stunned stillness of soldiers realizing they were still alive.
Then the resonance link pulsed once more."It's done," Alter said, voice steady. "Regroup. Prepare for next movement."
The army exhaled as one, banners lifting again. But in the distance, the skies over the Black Expanse churned — a reminder that this was only one victory in a much larger war.