It all happened at once.

  Fragments of the wall burst apart above him, scattering in every direction. The terrified screams of the guards were muffled by the pounding in Kael's ears and reached him only as distant noise.

  With Astra at his side, he could only stare in disbelief as the dense fog spread through the city and then parted at its center.

  Something emerged.

  Kael couldn’t describe it.

  He knew only one thing: this creature meant death.

  Its body glowed with a faint, shifting luminescence. Four eyes hovered within that light, their colors constantly changing yet radiating a terrifying calm. The certainty of a being that had never known fear.

  Its skin pulsed slowly and rhythmically as if responding to Kael’s heartbeat.

  He glanced at Astra. She was staring, too, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror.

  Before he could speak, a strange sensation crawled through his chest—a trembling, primal fear unlike anything he had ever felt.

  "Run," he tried to say.

  But the air changed.

  It grew heavy. Dark. Oppressive, as if the world itself had forgotten how to breathe.

  The creature opened its mouth.

  The air rushed toward it, drawn inward like a collapsing tide into a void.

  Then it spoke.

  The sound did not belong to language. It moved through space and time like a fracture, a vibration that reality itself struggled to contain.

  Kael stopped.

  He couldn’t move.

  His knees buckled and Astra collapsed beside him as the impossible unfolded before them.

  Guards. Citizens. People who had rushed outside to see the commotion simply fell.

  Bodies dropped where they stood, eyes open and expressions eerily peaceful.

  The silence was worse than screams.

  No wind moved through the fields.

  No insects hummed.

  Even the distant creaking of wood stopped, as if the world itself had forgotten how to make a sound.

  One man fell a heartbeat too late.

  Another stood for a moment longer with his eyes open and his mouth slightly parted, as if he had been about to speak. Then, his body collapsed without resistance.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Kael stared at the dozens of lifeless gazes fixed in his direction, and something inside him broke. He doubled over, retching, his trembling hands pressing against the ground.

  It was as if the creature had erased them.

  Not killed.

  Erased.

  He looked at Astra, horror clawing at his throat.

  "How..." Kael rasped. "How can it use a Word of Power?"

  There was no answer.

  Astra didn’t move. Her eyes remained fixed on the fallen bodies.

  "I'm sorry, Mother. Father . . .” she whispered, a single tear slipping down her cheek.

  Kael forced himself upright and tried to pull her with him, but she didn’t react. She remained on her knees, repeating the words like a prayer or an apology that had come too late.

  Hopelessness turned to anger.

  Kael turned back toward the creature, his expression hardening.

  It hadn't moved.

  Not even after speaking.

  Not even after destroying a city.

  Somehow, that stillness was the most terrifying part.

  “What is it?” Kael shouted at the creature, his voice cracking. "Why don't you finish it?"

  He picked up his sword, stepped in front of Astra, and gripped the hilt until his knuckles burned.

  The creature only watched him.

  Four pupils. Unblinking.

  The weight of that gaze crushed him. Kael’s fingers loosened. The sword slipped from his hand and fell to the ground with a dull thud.

  It was over.

  He didn’t know why the creature hadn’t attacked yet, but he understood one thing with terrifying certainty: he would not survive.

  The creature opened its mouth again.

  For the second time, it released that impossible sound. A vibration that crawled into bone and memory alike. The air shifted once more, growing unbearably hot. Every breath scorched his lungs. His skin burned as if the world itself had ignited.

  Flames erupted across the creature’s body.

  Its four shifting pupils turned red.

  The heat arrived before the flames.

  Kael’s skin stung, but not like fire. It was like the memory of being burned.

  Shadows stretched in directions they shouldn't have. The ground shimmered, as if time itself had begun to loosen.

  For a brief, horrifying second, Kael wondered if he had already died and this was simply what came next.

  Then, it moved.

  The sea of fire surged toward Kael, unstoppable and consuming everything in its path.

  Kael could only watch.

  "I can't keep my promise." Astra whispered behind him.

  Her voice cut through the terror.

  Kael’s eyes widened.

  The promise.

  He remembered the promise he had made to her.

  He exhaled.

  The heat blistered his skin, but he ignored it. His hand reached back toward Astra’s pack. His fingers closed around the hilt of the sword he had avoided. The blade that carried memories he could barely endure.

  The moment he touched it, Zaros flooded his mind:

  Laughter. Training. Arguments. Brotherhood.

  Pain.

  These memories clawed at Kael, trying to drag him under, but he refused.

  With a sharp breath, he pulled the sword free.

  Something changed.

  The sword grew lighter in his hand.

  Not physically. Conceptually.

  As if it no longer belonged to the present.

  For an instant, Kael had the terrifying impression that the creature was arriving from a moment that had not yet happened.

  The blade shifted colors, turquoise fading into violet. A faint glow spread along its edge, pulsing like a heartbeat that was not his own.

  Behind him, Astra noticed the light. She turned. And froze.

  Kael’s hair, once black, had returned to white. His eyes burned with an unfamiliar intensity, luminous and distant at once.

  What is happening? Kael wondered.

  But there was no time to figure it out.

  The creature was already upon him.

  Instinct moved him.

  Just before the inferno reached him, he swung.

  Not with precision. Not with skill.

  With desperation.

  The strike made no sound.

  Yet it passed through the creature as if nothing in existence could withstand it.

  The flames split.

  The inferno parted down the center. The creature released a deafening resonance, not pain or anger, but something older, before the fire collapsed inward.

  The light vanished.

  The creature dissolved into the fog as if it had never existed.

  Silence returned.

  Kael stared down at his sword.

  The violet glow faded.

  Cracks spread across the blade.

  Then, it crumbled.

  The weapon turned to dust in his hands and was carried away by the night wind—the last trace of a power he did not yet understand.