The portal's dying glow still shimmered behind them, fading like the last breath of a star. Sorin's boots sank into the black, ash-strewn ground of the Titan's Graveyard, each step echoing across the bones of forgotten gods.
The air was thick with the metallic tang of ancient blood, laced with the musk of something primordial an eternal rot buried deep in the marrow of the world.
Above, the bruised sky churned with jagged clouds, split by spears of lightning that illuminated skeletal titans sprawled across the horizon. Their colossal bones formed a landscape of death and memory.
To the east, Valrik's warriors emerged from the haze, his spear burning with ghostly blue fire. Dren flanked Sorin, eyes scanning the shadows between spires of bone taller than castles. Lys whispered a warding charm, her hand on her curved blade, tension tight in her voice. Kaelen stood poised, bow drawn, silver-tipped arrow gleaming, every muscle coiled.
The ground pulsed beneath them, a heartbeat swelling into quake. From a ridge of vertebrae, a titan's skull shifted with a grinding groan.
From its maw spilled sinew-and-chitin horrors, some skittering on too many limbs, others dragging segmented, glistening bodies, mandibles clicking in insatiable hunger.
"Positions!" Sorin's command cut through the chaos.
A six-limbed brute lunged at Dren, who countered with a shoulder strike that cracked bone. Sorin rolled under a claw swipe, driving his Bone Flame deep into a beast's abdomen. Lys darted low, severing joints with lethal precision. Kaelen's arrow hissed past Sorin's ear and embedded in a creature's skull.
Then the titan itself stirred.
A skeletal arm, as large as a siege tower, tore free from the ash. Obsidian claws crushed stone to powder. Lightning danced through its ribcage, revealing a molten heart pulsing with volcanic life.
"Core's in the chest!" Kaelen shouted.
Valrik skewered a lunging beast. "Easier said than done," he muttered.
Sorin's team moved as one. Dren smashed a foe into a jagged rib. Lys deflected a dripping stinger and severed it in one motion. Sorin pressed forward, letting Bone Flame blaze through the chaos.
The titan roared, a force more than sound. The shockwave cracked bone and split the ground, glowing fissures vomiting swarms of smaller aberrations. They released shimmering spores that burned eyes and clouded vision.
"Don't breathe it in!" Lys warned, covering her face.
Sorin's lungs screamed, but he locked eyes with Valrik's. In that silent exchange, both knew: neither could win alone. The titan's claw descended like divine judgment, and Sorin sprinted forward, Bone Flame blazing, ready to meet it head-on.
The battle for the Titan's Graveyard had begun, and Sorin knew this storm would rage far beyond the horizon, testing not only strength but the bonds forged in fire, bone, and blood.