The pulse did not fade.
It sank inward.
Aethric's vision dimmed as the forbidden magic in his hand dissolved into threads of light, slipping beneath his skin, burrowing into memory rather than flesh. The ruined hall of Eldryth blurred, stone pillars stretching into silhouettes of another age.
The air changed.
It grew hot, charged with the taste of ozone and blood.
The silence was shattered by war.
The sky burned.
Not with fire alone, but with magic so dense it bent light into fractured colors. Vast runic arrays hovered above the battlefield, each the size of a mountain, rotating slowly as they fed power into the world below. Spells collided midair, collapsing into storms of raw arcane force that tore trenches into the earth.
This was the First Era.
This was its final hour.
Aethric stood at the heart of the battlefield, unarmored, robes snapping violently in the storm of power. His hair, unmarked by age, flowed freely despite the chaos, untouched by ash or flame. Around him lay the aftermath of gods clashing craters where cities once stood, shattered relic-weapons half-buried in molten stone, and the remains of archmages whose names would later be erased from history.
He did not look at the dead.
He never did.
His eyes were fixed on the horizon, where the sky itself had split open.
From the tears emerged something that did not belong to the world.
A shadow crowned in fractured light descended, its form shifting between impossibilities: too many limbs, too many eyes, none of them reflecting the same reality. It moved without moving, its presence warping distance and thought alike.
The Hollow Sovereign.
Not a title.
A state of existence.
Once, it had been an Archmage like the rest of them. Once, it had stood among the Twelve Arches, debating ethics and power as though the world were not already trembling beneath their feet. But it had sought something beyond mortality, beyond magic itself, and found only hollowness in return.
It spoke.
Not in sound, but in certainty.
You remain, Aethric Solvaen.
Aethric raised his hand.
The battlefield responded instantly.
Dozens of layered spell-constructs unfolded around him, defensive wards nested inside temporal anchors, reality stabilizers interwoven with raw destructive matrices. Every movement was precise, practiced. He did not rely on overwhelming power. He never had.
He relied on inevitability.
"You should not exist anymore," Aethric replied, his voice calm despite the chaos. "You were sealed. Broken. Unmade."
The Hollow Sovereign laughed.
The sound collapsed a mountain.
You mistake sealing for ending. You mistake survival for victory.
A wave of void-magic surged toward Aethric, unraveling spells as it passed, turning structured arcana into screaming entropy. Three archmages were caught at its edge and vanished, not destroyed, but erased, their spells collapsing as though they had never been cast.
Aethric stepped forward.
One step.
The ground stabilized beneath him, reality reasserting itself where his foot touched. He extended his hand and twisted his wrist, not a gesture of force, but of command.
The void wave froze.
Then reversed.
The Hollow Sovereign recoiled as its own magic folded inward, collapsing into a singularity that Aethric redirected skyward. The explosion tore a hole through the upper atmosphere, scattering clouds across the horizon.
Aethric did not pause.
He moved.
Every spell he cast served a purpose beyond destruction, cutting off escape vectors, sealing dimensional fractures, isolating the Hollow Sovereign from its sources of power. Where other archmages hurled devastation, Aethric dismantled.
Tactical.
Relentless.
Absolute.
The Twelve Arches had once debated who among them was strongest.
None of them debated anymore.
You cannot kill what has surpassed death, the Hollow Sovereign intoned, reforming itself from fragments of shadow and light. You cannot undo what has already become truth.
Aethric's eyes hardened.
"I know."
He raised both hands.
The world screamed.
Ancient relics buried beneath the battlefield awakened artifacts from the earliest days of magic, when laws were still suggestions. Obelisks of pure mana erupted from the ground, forming a vast containment array. Runes burned into the sky itself, written in a language that predated speech.
The Hollow Sovereign thrashed as the array closed.
For the first time, it hesitated.
What are you doing?
"Ending the era," Aethric said quietly.
The array did not destroy the Hollow Sovereign.
It removed it.
Space folded. Time fractured. The Sovereign was pulled into a sealed void between moments, bound by sacrifice and law. The cost was immense; entire continents would later sink beneath the sea, and magic itself would weaken across the world.
The First Era died with that spell.
When the light faded, the battlefield was gone.
So were the Twelve Arches.
Only Aethric remained.
The vision shattered.
Aethric gasped as he returned to the ruined hall of Eldryth, his knees nearly buckling beneath him. Dust drifted through shafts of pale light. The city was silent once more.
But his hand still burned.
Fragments of the past lingered in his mind, not memory, but warning. The Hollow Sovereign had not been destroyed. It had waited.
And now…
Aethric closed his eyes.
A new vision forced itself upon him.
Cities drowned in shadow.
Magic twisting into something cruel.
Relics awakening in the hands of the unworthy.
The sky is tearing open once more.
And at the center of it all
Him.
Standing alone again.
Aethric opened his eyes, gaze sharp.
The future was moving.
And something, somewhere, had just realized he still existed.
The Hollow Sovereign was never destroyed, only sealed. And the seal is weakening. As Aethric glimpses a future drowning in darkness, one truth becomes clear: the First Era's greatest enemy remembers him… and is preparing to return.