Outside the dome, the battlefield steamed.
Crimson fog drifted from every ruin, craters smoked, and in the distance, buildings collapsed one after the other, folding into themselves like paper set aflame.
Twenty meters in the air, Anele looked down at Rhesa below.
The sight of her struggling to stand, still burning the last of her Vira even though she knew it wouldn't change anything, disgusted him.
Who gave her the right to stand in the same space as him and call herself a Kyrios?
"Give up, Rhesa!" he roared, his voice thundering across the field.
"You're bleeding out. I can feel it. Your body's cracking. End this farce."
Rhesa wavered but rose.
Blood ran down her chin, her eyes burning with something feral, and though his domain pressed in, she was strong enough to keep her blood from seeping into it. As long as Anele didn't strike her directly, she could resist its pull.
She cast a tired glance upward and rasped, "You'll pay for what you've done. You'll answer for every scream, for every soul that died today."
Anele's smile died.
Virans born with an affinity to the water element, like him, didn't feel certain emotions. Rage was one of them. But if he could truly feel it, this would be the moment.
Because why the hell was she still wasting time? Why in the world was she still standing?
'I was told she wouldn't last long. Not with her condition. But this is dragging on too long.'
He clicked his teeth and muttered in a low voice, "I'm tired of this."
His gaze turned toward the Veil, then to the horizon.
'I've already used sixty percent of my Vira.
The others have probably sensed it by now...
I can't trust they'll stay out of it, especially Sael. That idealistic brat.'
He clenched his jaw.
In truth, he was being cautious. Ending this now would require one of his strongest summoning arts. It would be devastating but costly, and it would burn through all of his Vira, leaving him spent and exposed.
Rhesa was right. Just by being here, he was breaking the rules. If another Kyrios appeared, it would mean war, a war triggered by his trespass. And he was not ready to face more than one today.
But he had no choice. He needed to kill Rhesa.
Anele raised both arms, his eyes darkened and he screamed into the blood-stained sky:
"Come, Malahk of the Vein!"
The sky screamed back.
Above, the Veil convulsed violently. The clouds behind it recoiled, curling inward as if afraid, and the horizon darkened, swallowing the light.
Then… silence settled over the field. Even the screams of the souls trapped in the Veil began to fade. For a moment, it felt as if time itself itself had froze.
Then came the oppressive pressure, pressing down on the world like a divine punishment, vast, ancient, and merciless in its descent. Beneath the Veil, the ground groaned and split apart in long, moaning fractures.
Inside the armored dome, Ren dropped to his knees and vomited violently, his whole body trembling.
'What… what the hell is that?' he thought, his entire body suddenly going weak.
He could feel it, something unholy, something very wrong in the air itself.
Simon held Anya tighter. She had gone limp in his arms, her small body unable to handle the weight of the pressure.
His own blood felt unbearably hot, as if it wanted to escape his veins.
On the battlefield, Rhesa raised her eyes to the sky and saw them.
From the torn Veil above, hooves emerged, glistening and wet, descending slowly until something massive pulled itself through the tear. It stood sixty meters tall, crowned in horns like crescent moons. Its body was forged from steaming, coagulated blood, sculpted into wet, pulsing muscle. Veins squirmed just beneath the surface, like serpents trapped in a jar. Its head resembled a goat's, but stretched and distorted, like a skull sculpted by something that had only heard of mammals. The angles were too sharp, the jaw too long. Its black eyes looked like ancient pits of pressure, something that did not perceive the world the way mortals did.
The creature did not roar or scream. It simply arrived.
Rhesa's lips parted, her breath catching in her throat. 'Shit… shit… shit. I'm out of Vira,' she thought, swallowing hard.
The creature's hooved feet slammed into the ground with a sound like thunder cracking bone, each step fracturing the earth as a ribcage of exposed vessels stretched down its torso like chains, pulsing wetly beneath glistening blood-soaked muscle.
It looked at her and moved.
Rhesa gave the mental command instantly. The metal knight golem surged forward, massive arms raised. She triggered a pulse of Vira, willing it to charge faster, but Malahk did not even flinch.
It raised one hand, and the sky answered. Blood fell, pillars of it towering like divine hammers of pressurized liquid. The first slammed into the knight's side, flinging it away. The second came faster, crushing it into the earth with a wet explosion.
Malahk waved again. The pillar lifted and smashed down once more, then again, and again, until nothing remained but twisted limbs and molten gears.
The archer golem raised its bow to strike the blood fiend. Swirling metal gathered in the air, forming a piercing javelin, but before it could fire, a pillar of blood slammed down from the Veil, collapsing its frame in a shrieking mess of warped steel.
Then Malahk shifted. Its swollen form convulsed until, with a sickening tear, wings burst from its hunched back. They were ragged and jagged, not made of feathers, but of sinew and pulsing veins.
It rose with a shriek, soaring above the ruin and blotting out what little sky remained, until it spotted Rhesa behind her fortress, small and still beneath the shattered sky.
Only the tank golem remained, her final defense. Its plated arms spread wide as it stepped forward with a seismic clang. Rhesa looked up, her mouth going dry.
Malahk pointed a claw at her, and immediately a pillar of blood plummeted from the heavens like a falling star.
"Warden's Carapace!" Rhesa screamed, desperation sharp in her voice, eyes wide with fear.
The tank golem shattered into plates, folding around her body and sealing her in a dome of metal and light.
The impact came a heartbeat later and a shockwave tore outward, flattening what little still stood.
The dome held, but barely. The reinforced shell vibrated under the impact, every layer of metal groaning under the strain, its seams shrieking as if on the verge of tearing apart. Rhesa, already spent, felt her Vira burning away, draining fast just to keep it intact.
'Please…'
Then came Malahk.
It fell from the sky like judgment, slamming into the dome with a force that cracked the shell on impact and the dome shattered, exploding outward in a rain of steel and smoke.
Maybe the dome would've held if she'd had more Vira to give.
But that was the cruel truth: the strength of an art is measured by how much Vira you pour into it. And she had nothing left.
The shards of her domain collapsed. The knight, the fortress, and the archer, everything she had forged and everything that had once stood as a testament to her strength, was broken. The carapace that had protected her family and her legacy lay in ruin, collapsed alongside them.
Rhesa collapsed, hitting the earth hard, gasping. Her body shook, drenched in sweat, blood, and tears. Every breath was a battle and her limbs would not respond. All around her was silence, broken only by the slow, heavy steps of something ancient, something that did not belong to this world. The ground pulsed beneath her cheek with each tremor, every step echoing like the heartbeat of a world she no longer belonged to.
Rhesa exhaled. 'So this is what it feels like to die.'
Regret began to flicker in.
'If I had known he'd come… I'd have taken them far away.
I said I'd protect them…'
Her throat tightened as the thought struck her like a dagger between her ribs.
'I said they'd be safe.
Will he let them live?
Ahhh… what do I do now?
He won't let them live…
Anya…'
Tears slid down her cheeks, carving lines through the blood and dust.
'Please… not Anya. Not her.
She's just a child.
She doesn't understand what I am. What I was. What this war is.'
Now broken beneath the shadow of that repulsive being, Rhesa wanted nothing more than to hold her children, to gather them close and breathe them in.
'Ahh… Ren… I wish you'd never have to touch this world of Virans.
I wish I could've kept you small a little longer…
I wish I could stay with you both. Just a little longer.'
Then the shadow of Malahk deepened. Rhesa forced her eyes upward.
Malahk stood over her, colossal and steaming. Its chest rose and fell with an inhuman calm, like the breath of some ancient, slumbering demigod. It tilted its head, curious about the person lying at its feet. Rhesa hated how it looked at her, as if she were already gone, just part of the dirt beneath its hooves.
Her lip trembled as a sound escaped her, a sob strangled and raw. Her vision swam, blurring at the edges until the world around her bled into red and lightless haze.
Then she heard footsteps. Anele had landed nearby, his boots crunching on shattered stone.
Above, the veil of blood unraveled in slow, bleeding strands. Droplets fell like crimson tears, and the sky, ashen and bruised, peeked through once more.
"You can go, Malahk," he said quietly.
The blood-fiend dissolved into red mist. With it, a silence colder than death settled over the ruins.
Anele approached, his steps unhurried. She heard his voice again, low and cruel, laced with a mocking softness that slid through the air like poisoned silk.
"Look at you," he murmured.
"The Iron Will… reduced to a whimpering insect."
Rhesa's breath stuttered, but somehow she managed to drag her body forward inch by inch until she reached him at his feet. Her hand, bloodied and shaking, closed around his ankle.
"Please…" she whispered. "I don't want to die…"
Anele looked down at her, his expression twisted in disgust.
"You were a Kyrios," he said. "And now you beg?"
He knelt slowly, then seized a fistful of her hair and yanked her head up. Then he said coldly,
"A Kyrios who grovels forfeits more than their life. You forfeited your legacy."
Rhesa whimpered. Her lips quivered, and her wide, red, broken eyes met his.
"Spare them," she whispered, barely audible.
"Please…"