SKREEEEEEEECH!
Melodius's head snapped toward the battlefield as a deafening, metallic screech rippled through the cold night sky of Athervale.
The Flesh-Titan reared back, its colossal, deformed torso stretching upward.
It raised its grotesque, amalgamated claws toward the cloud-choked moon, its jaws completely unhinged in what sounded like an apocalyptic wail of absolute victory.
The sound violently rattled the blood-soaked mud and vibrated up the hundred-foot expanse of the Obsidian Gates.
High above the slaughter, within the sterile, heavily warded scrying chamber of the Whispering Hollows, the crushing tension finally broke.
A collective, breathless wave of joy erupted among the Elven advisors.
They abandoned their sophisticated, aristocratic composure, giving in to the raw, ugly adrenaline of surviving a massacre.
"Burn in the deepest pits of the abyss, you Tamaskritian filth!" one of the senior generals roared, slamming his fist onto a marble table.
"Let the worms feast on his arrogant flesh! Let him rot in the mud!" another spat, his face flushed red with manic relief.
The advisors aggressively congratulated themselves, their voices overlapping in a chaotic chorus of vulgar, unrestrained triumph.
They had won the war.
With the invisible Mana Barrier completely re-sealed above Athervale, it was a physical impossibility for any Tamaskritian reinforcements to breach the dome and aid the battered vanguard.
The enemy was entirely broken.
Darius was trapped on the Great Barrier, desperately guarding the severely burnt Kyanos and the one-armed Vane.
Valerius lay completely unconscious in a crater, his armor scorched and his mana drained.
Malakor was emotionally shattered, on his knees in the dirt, smearing the ashes of Vespera onto his own face.
Only Ignis stood his ground on the battlefield, gripping his legendary Crimson Blade.
But Ignis was a swordsman. Against the entirety of the reinforced Elven army and a legion of mages perfectly positioned behind their vanguard, his survival was highly improbable.
And now, with Aurelius gone... swallowed whole by the Titan... it was definitively over for the Tamaskrit Empire.
"We have shown those traitorous dogs the absolute wrath of the Elven Empire!" one of the high councilors cheered, aggressively raising a copper goblet filled with wine into the air.
"We have taken their Crown Prince! This is exactly what you get when you dare to invade the peaceful Elves on our sacred Lunar Night!"
"This is for all our fallen Elven warriors," a younger general added, his voice dropping into a heavy, emotional tone. Thick droplets of tears glistened in his eyes as he looked at the rippling water of the scrying pool.
"Their sacrifices will never be forgotten."
The entire chamber nodded solemnly, raising their goblets in memory of the slaughtered Vanguard.
Everyone was celebrating.
Except for King Aelroth.
The Elven monarch stood rigid at the edge of the scrying pool. His expression was completely grim, his jaw locked so tightly the muscles twitched beneath his skin.
He was entirely oblivious to the clinking of goblets and the emotional cheers echoing in the chamber.
His ancient brows furrowed deeply.
Something is wrong. Incredibly, dangerously wrong. Aelroth stared at the image of the roaring Titan.
Aurelius... Aurelius Tamaskrit.
The same boy who stared me down with those dead, golden eyes when he was merely ten years old a decade ago.
He cannot lose. Not like this. Even though the Crown Prince was the single biggest threat to the existence of Athervale, something deep within Aelroth's hardened warrior instincts violently refused to acknowledge that Melodius had actually managed to kill him.
Even though Melodius had been unleashed specifically to end Aurelius... the math simply did not add up.
The celebrations began to falter as the advisors finally noticed the suffocating, grim confusion radiating from their King's face.
"Your Highness... is something bothering you?" one of the generals asked hesitantly, his copper goblet lowering.
"Why aren't you celebrating, my King? We killed their greatest warrior. The Crown Prince Aurelius is dead."
Aelroth's face darkened instantly at the words.
"No!"
He spat the word without even looking away from the water.
His terrifying, sovereign presence exploded outward, instantly suffocating the entire scrying chamber.
The sheer atmospheric pressure of his aura seeped under the heavy wooden doors, causing the maids in the adjacent corridors to abruptly collapse to their knees, gasping frantically for air.
"Your Majesty... please spare our insolence..." the general choked out, immediately dropping to his knees on the polished floor.
He desperately tried to flatter the enraged King. "Of course, his death is not something worth your royal acknowledgment... You could have taken him down on a whim—"
"No!"
Aelroth roared, his voice shaking the crystal chandeliers.
"You blind fools! You actually think that we killed Aurelius? You think the Golden Boy of Tamaskrit simply lost to Melodius?"
Aelroth let out a dark, incredibly bitter chuckle. The sound echoed harshly through the sterile chamber, vibrating the room so violently that the water in the scrying pool began to aggressively ripple and splash over the stone edges.
The faces of the advisors and generals instantly drained of all color.
"But... but Your Highness..." a general stammered in sheer disbelief, pointing a trembling finger toward the rippling water. "The... The Titan—"
His words were violently cut short.
Another deafening, soul-wrenching screech ripped through the night sky over Athervale, echoing straight through the scrying pool.
Every single head in the chamber snapped back to the water.
Their eyes blew wide in absolute horror.
Aelroth cursed viciously under his breath.
SKREEEEECH—CRACK!
It was a horrific mixture of a wail and the sickening sound of thick bone and steel violently shattering from the inside out.
The Titan was no longer roaring in victory. It was wailing in unimaginable agony.
The monstrosity aggressively clawed at its own swollen torso.
Its colossal body convulsed wildly, thrashing against the stone pathway and the mud.
Through the jagged, tearing wounds in its chest, the trapped, weeping souls—the very souls Melodius had forcefully guided into the amalgamation using his bone lyre—were literally bleeding out, escaping into the night air like glowing, pressurized steam.
The Titan shuddered violently, its fused rhino-horn gauntlets ripping into its own abdomen as if desperately trying to dig something out.
"For gods sake... what the hell is happening?" one of the advisors spat, his face turning an ashen, sickly pale as he watched the beast tear itself apart.
"Melodius..."
Aelroth muttered under his breath, his eyes darkening with absolute, freezing realization.
"You sneaky bastard..."
"Heh... heheh..."
A low-pitched, bubbling sound began to vibrate at the base of the Obsidian Gates.
Melodius lowered his bone lyre.
The sound crawled up his throat, growing louder and more erratic, until an evil, maniacal laugh erupted from his chest.
"AHAHAHAHA!"
The psychotic laughter echoed in violent, rhythmic intervals, bouncing off the towering black stone and carrying across the bloodied plains of Athervale.
He threw his head back, aggressively covering his pitch-black eyes with his bloody, dirt-caked fingers. His entire frail body shook violently with the sheer force of his own hysteria.
The remaining Elven vanguard, and even Ignis in the distance, froze in their tracks.
The breath caught in the throats of everyone present on the battlefield.
"Oh, Uncle Sloth..." Melodius purred, peering through the gaps in his bloody fingers.
He looked straight up at the miles-long, impenetrable canopy of the gigantic Whispering Hollows.
"I know you are watching... aren't you?"
He lowered his hands. He tilted his head to the side at a sickening, bone-cracking, unnatural angle.
"You promised me that you will play with me and [ ]... remember?
If I fought for you?" he called out, his voice dripping with a deliberate, wickedly innocent tone.
He stared up at the dark leaves, his void-like eyes completely empty of sanity.
"So sad it turns out that... I can't really fight anymore..."
Melodius slowly stuck his tongue out, dragging it across the silver strings of his lyre, licking the fresh blood from the bone.
He turned his back on the convulsing, dying Titan.
He walked slowly, his boots clicking softly until he stood directly in front of the colossal, hundred-foot Obsidian Gates.
He raised his bone lyre.
He lifted his pale fingers.
And he softly plucked the silver string directly against the black stone.
"NO!!!"
King Aelroth spat in the scrying chamber.
The King's sudden, explosive panic sent the nearby generals and advisors violently trembling, collapsing fully onto their stomachs as the sovereign aura crushed the air from the room.
But it was too late.
Thrum.
A single, incredibly deep subsonic hum spread through the hundred-foot Obsidian Gates.
Everything on the battlefield went completely, suffocatingly silent for a fraction of a second, save for the pathetic, wet death wails of the convulsing Titan behind him.
Then, a single, glowing violet line cracked across the smooth black stone of the gate.
Then another.
And in an instant, millions of fine, jagged purple and violet lines spider-webbed violently across the entirety of the impenetrable Obsidian Gates.
The black stone began to leak a dark, viscous energy from the fractures.
"Aww... it seems like the gates are crying..."
Melodius purred, his voice a perfectly crafted mask of wicked, childish innocence.
He looked back up at the canopy, his smile stretching impossibly wide.
"So bad, Uncle Sloth. You made it cry..."
He slowly reached out, placing his pale, bloody palm flat against the fractured, weeping black stone.
"Don't worry, Mr. Gate..." Melodius murmured softly to the stone.
He leaned in, his voice dropping into a chilling, dead whisper.
"Melodius... will make him pay."