The pitch-black dome had fallen less than a minute earlier.
Duke Darian Solmere charged through the Academy's pulverized gates, Platinum-Rank lightning blazing around his broadsword. Behind him, Marquis Lancelot Raven led a flood of elite Imperial Knights onto the campus, with several Platinum-Rank commanders at the front.
They had spent the last hour attacking an impenetrable wall, bracing themselves for whatever nightmare required a barrier that dense.
By the time they reached the central courtyard, the battle was already over.
The Imperial forces ground to a sudden, collective halt.
There was no enemy left to fight.
Instead, they walked into a graveyard of shattered bedrock, collapsed faculty buildings, and a fifty-meter crater bleached entirely white. The air smelled of ozone, burnt blood, and scorched stone. Black ash fell over the courtyard like snow, drifting from the spot where a twenty-meter Calamity had just ceased to exist.
