The battlefield was silent. Not the silence of peace, but the suffocating silence of awe. The storm of shards hung suspended midair, frozen in place, their edges glinting with predatory hunger.Even the Hollow King faltered, its fractured body trembling beneath the weight of what had risen from the light.Kael staggered, his sword shaking in his grip. Mira clutched his arm, eyes locked on the radiant figure emerging from the crack. Lyra’s breath caught, her knuckles whitening as she tightened her hold on her broken blade.The figure rose fully now, towering over the ruins. Its form blazed with golden fire, every line of its body etched in radiance that shifted like molten metal.Its face was obscured, neither man nor god, only the suggestion of features carved in light. Upon its brow hovered the outline of a crown, not broken, not shattered, but whole.The Hollow King recoiled. The fractures in its body pulsed wildly, its voice losing its terrible certainty. “Impossible… You were undo

The light that swallowed the battlefield was not salvation. It was hunger.It tore across the ruins in waves, burning not flesh but memory shredding every soul-thread it touched. Soldiers who had survived the clash between Hollow and Radiant screamed once before being reduced to silhouettes of smoke.The earth itself blistered, carved into black glass. Kael stood at the center, sword braced, Mira’s hand locked around his. The blaze did not consume them. Instead, it circled, testing, like a predator choosing when to strike.The skeletal figures stepped fully into the world. There were three. Each moved as if their bones remembered shapes of majesty they no longer possessed.Their crowns were jagged arcs of broken fire, fused into skulls that still bore faint, indistinguishable etchings of kingship. Wings of fragmented shards twitched with every motion, each beat scattering waves of destructive resonance.The Hollow King reeled back, shadows streaming from its frame like blood. For the

The crown pulsed. One heartbeat, and the battlefield ceased to exist as it had. The broken earth collapsed inward, swallowed by concentric waves of golden-black fire.The air shivered like glass on the edge of breaking, every breath searing lungs raw. Soldiers on both sides clutched their heads, blood streaming from their eyes as the soundless resonance tore through them.Kael dropped his sword. It clanged against the fractured stone, dimming, almost extinguished. His body slumped forward before Mira caught him, arms wrapping around his shoulders.Her light flared weakly, a candle against the storm. “Stay with me,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Kael, don’t you dare leave me now!”His lips moved. Nothing came out. Only a faint tremor in his chest. His human eye rolled weakly toward her, barely conscious, but even then his gaze held one thing defiance.Lyra staggered to her feet, her own shadow-fire blade cracked in half, black smoke seeping from her wounds.She stared at the hoverin

Mira’s lungs burned as if she had swallowed the blaze itself. The heat clawed at her skin, blistering flesh, but she refused to step back.Every pulse of the crown’s fire flung her away, but she crawled forward, fingers digging trenches into the scorched earth.“Kael!” Her throat was raw, every scream cracking. “You fight it, I’m coming!”Lyra staggered beside her, one arm shielding her face from the inferno, the other gripping her blade so tightly her knuckles split. The knight’s voice broke through the roar: “Mira you’ll die before you reach him!”“I don’t care!” Mira spat blood into the ash. She forced herself upright, her vision tunneling. The fire spiraled around Kael like a cocoon, his body dangling in midair, chained by light and shadow.His chest glowed in jagged bursts fractures crawling across his skin like cracks in glass. He was being torn apart.“No…” Mira’s knees trembled. Her hand pressed to her heart, and beneath her ribs, the bond pulsed a fragile thread still tetheri

The void was not empty. It bled. Chains dripped fire like veins torn open, stretching endlessly into the dark.Fractured light pulsed through them, sometimes Kael’s warm, human, steady and sometimes the god’s blinding, jagged, endless.The clash between the two made the void quake as though the marrow of existence was unraveling. Mira stood barefoot on the shattering ground, Kael’s hand crushing hers, his grip desperate, as if letting go meant the end.His body here looked more whole than outside, but even so, cracks split across his arms and chest, glowing faintly with golden fire.The god’s talons raked across him, invisible but undeniable, pulling at the wounds to pry him apart. Kael staggered, but his jaw clenched. “You shouldn’t have followed me in.”Mira held tighter. “Then stop expecting me to let you die.”The void trembled with laughter too vast, too deep, echoing like molten iron poured across stone. “Mortal bond. Fragile thread. You think it saves him? It is the chain that