The world was completely pitch black. There was no light. There was no sound. There was only terrible, crushing weight. Landon Hale slowly opened his dark eyes. He could not see anything. He tried to take a deep breath, but a sharp, burning pain stabbed into his chest. His broken rib screamed in absolute agony. He was buried alive. When General Kade Rauth had unleashed the massive blast of dark energy, the entire underground cavern had collapsed. Thousands of tons of heavy stone, broken concrete, and twisted metal had fallen from the ceiling. Landon remembered diving on top of Claire Arden. He remembered wrapping his large, muscular arms tightly around her small body. He had used his very last drop of bright white Kinetic Echo magic to create a tiny shield over them. Now, the magic was completely gone. Landon felt a heavy, cold rock resting on his back. He was lying flat on his stomach in the dirt. "Claire?" Landon whispered softly. His mouth was full of dry, gray dust. He coug

"I know," Landon agreed. His dark eyes were totally calm. He had accepted his fate. "I cannot punch him. I need to strike him with a weapon. I need to channel every single drop of my remaining life force, all of my aura, directly into one single, perfect strike." Landon looked around the ruined crater. "I need a weapon," Landon ordered. "A strong weapon that can hold my magic without melting." Kade, Marcus, and Navarro immediately began searching through the heavy, broken rubble. They kicked gray rocks aside. They dug through the dirty snow. "What about this?" Kade called out. Kade pulled a long, heavy object out from under a broken concrete block. It was a jagged, thick shard of pitch-black steel. It had broken off from the massive gates of Bastion when the fortress exploded. The shard was six feet long. It was incredibly heavy, sharp, and straight. It looked exactly like a crude, primitive spear. Kade dragged the heavy steel shard over to Landon. Landon picked it up with his

The dark, freezing winter wind of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, howled like a pack of starving wolves. Landon Hale was flying through the icy air. He had used the very last drop of his physical strength and his bright white Kinetic Echo magic to launch himself across the ruined battlefield. He held the heavy, black steel spear tightly in his large hands. The spear glowed with a beautiful, warm mixture of Silas’s green Life Magic and Juno’s golden healing light. Landon was aiming straight for General Kade Rauth. But at the absolute last millisecond, General Rauth had opened his chest. Rauth had revealed a terrifying, pitch-black hole leading directly into the cold, empty darkness of deep outer space. Inside the black hole, Landon heard the horrifying, buzzing, clicking sound of a billion alien insects. It was the Star Eaters. They were waiting to consume him. Landon was flying at supersonic speed. He could not stop.

Rauth laughed cruelly. He backhanded Landon with his massive, armored left fist. The heavy blow caught Landon squarely in the jaw. Landon was thrown violently through the freezing air. He crashed hard into a pile of snow and broken glass. Blood poured from his split lip. His head spun dizzily. He tasted copper and ash. "Landon!" Claire cried out, trying to run forward. Navarro grabbed Claire's arm, holding her back tightly. "You cannot go out there, Claire! He will kill you! Let Landon fight!" Landon slowly pushed himself up from the bloody snow. He swayed on his feet. He gripped the broken metal shard tightly. General Rauth slowly pulled his giant red sword out of the concrete floor. "You are just a weak, mortal man, Landon," Rauth mocked him, walking slowly closer. "You have no magic left. You are broken. I am a God. I am the Iron Order. I am inevitable." Landon spit a mouthful of blood onto

The massive, blinding explosion of white, green, and gold magic changed everything. When Landon Hale drove the broken, magical steel spear directly into General Kade Rauth’s chest, the universe seemed to stop. The terrible, pitch-black armor of the Fallen God violently shattered. It blew apart into a million tiny pieces of harmless gray dust. But the incredible magical shockwave did not just destroy the evil armor. It destroyed the ground. The solid, frozen concrete beneath their boots completely gave way. A massive, gaping hole tore open in the earth. "Landon!" Claire Arden screamed. Her voice was lost in the deafening roar of the breaking world. Landon could not reach her. He could not grab her hand. The ground vanished. Landon and General Rauth plummeted straight down into the dark, empty abyss. They fell away from the snowy surface of the city, dropping deep into the ancient, forgott