The sound of hooves, claws, wingbeats, creaking armor, and the relentless march of humanity's last hope thundered across the broken earth.

Asher stood at the head of the central column. To his left and right, the silhouettes of his most trusted generals held formation: Elara, Dravyn, Tormund, Jorven, Varkos—each a legend in their own right. Above them, drifting like twin omens of dusk and dawn, his bonded goddesses—Sylthara and Aetheros—glided in slow arcs, their senses combing the horizon for signs of ambush.

The mobilization had been swift—ruthless, even. In just two weeks, they had moved the full force of the unified host within striking distance of Nyxhold. By nightfall, the walls of that cursed ruin would rise before them.

And yet... no resistance.

Not a skirmish. Not a scout. Elara's network had scoured the route, and returned with only silence. That silence now stalked Asher like a shadow he couldn't shake.

He'd expected a siege. Expected to bleed for every mile gained. Instead, they marched unchallenged.

It didn't sit right.

Their plan was simple—brutal, even. The army was the smoke. He was the fire.

Every soul in this column knew what they were walking toward. Knew the odds. Survival was... unlikely. Even Asher had felt it in his bones when he looked into Vicky's eyes. Into Delaney's. He told them he'd return—but promises in war were the softest kind of lie.

Fallback points had been laid. Pockets of troops stationed to hold flanks, to intercept any force that might try to bypass his advance.

The New College had done their part too, developing anti-teleportation wards by embedding fragments of Asher's Void resonance into purified Aether crystals. With them, Veinforged portals could now be disrupted—at least near Nyxhold's perimeter. It was a small comfort, but one he clung to as they drew closer.

Elara flickered into step beside him, materializing from a ripple of shadow. Her voice was low, taut with tension. "My king, it's too quiet. No scouts. No ambushes. Nothing. It's like they vanished."

She didn't ask a question—but her eyes held one.

Asher nodded, his gaze never leaving the path ahead. "I know. My guess is they've pulled everything—emptied their hives, consolidated their rot. We're not advancing because they're losing."

He paused as Jorven fell in beside them, grim-faced.

"We're advancing," Asher continued, "because they're waiting."

He looked to the jagged horizon.

"When I escaped Nyxhold last time, their numbers were already beyond comprehension. A million strong, at least. A sea of patchwork horrors stitched from every nightmare that ever crawled. And that was before the Nine truly woke."

His voice lowered.

"There's no telling what they can summon now."

Jorven broke the silence, his voice rough but defiant. "More horrors to shatter, that's all, my king. We're at the climax now. We've forced their hand... let's see whose resolve gives first."

Asher nodded. The words were blunt—but true. Everything could be decided in the days ahead. Every death, every sacrifice, every moment of pain—they would either carve the path to victory... or mean nothing at all.

Hours crawled by. The march continued in uneasy quiet—until it didn't.

The horizon broke open.

There, at the border of the Red Wastes and the jagged throat of the Obsidian Ridge, Nyxhold rose from the ash like a wound that never healed.

But it had changed.

What once had been a fortress was now something far worse. It had swollen in scale, metastasized. Two new rings of walls coiled around the original citadel, thick with Veinforged corruption. Siege engines jutted from their ramparts like broken teeth, and smoke—black, greasy, unholy—poured from vents and spires like the fortress itself was breathing rot.

Asher's eyes narrowed.

Monsters moved within and above the stronghold—countless dots, countless wings. A hive. A factory of ruin.

And in the bloodied field before the first wall, he saw them: rank upon rank of Veinforged abominations. Once-sylvari, once-durnvar, once-human... now twisted into weapons of despair. Their armor was jagged, cruel; their weapons looked forged not from steel, but from hunger and hate.

At the head of each formation stood nine towering figures.

Each radiated an aura so thick with malice that even Asher's breath caught. Cold fingers of dread curled up his spine.

He swallowed hard, then cast a glance down the length of his own line.

Two hundred and fifty thousand. That was the count. Not all trained. Not all armed. Not all awakened to magic. But they stood—shoulder to shoulder—beneath his banner, beneath the silent promise that this was the final stand.

He reached inward, letting his aura spread—slow and deliberate—until it cloaked the army like a second sky. He felt them respond, not in words, but in will.

No fear. Not anymore.

They had buried too many. Watched too much. Mothers, fathers, children torn apart by claws and bile. They weren't fearless because they were brave.

They were fearless because there was nothing left to lose.

And rage—real rage—had weight.

It wasn't fire. It was gravity. A pull in the soul that demanded release.

Asher felt it stoking inside him, feeding the storm in his Core, turning his blood electric. His aura bristled with hunger—for justice, for vengeance.

The kind that didn't just burn enemies.

The kind that carved names into history.

Asher's column came to a halt.

Across the battlefield, the enemy stirred—monsters roaring, commanders barking guttural orders laced with hunger and hatred. Even from this distance, Asher could hear them. Not words, but intention. They weren't rallying an army.

They were loosing a plague.

He grimaced, letting the familiar burn of rage rise in his chest—not wild now, not blinding. Controlled. Sharpened. Tempered by the Void coiled within his Core like a waiting blade.

This wasn't the moment for speeches. That time had passed with the last funeral pyre.

His men knew what this was.

They could feel it in the air—thick with ash, with fate, with blood not yet spilled. Along the line, he saw it: a thousand clenched jaws. Eyes narrowed. Fingers twitching near sword hilts and spellknots.

His generals were statues of wrath. Elara stood slightly ahead, her eyes locked on the monstrosities across the field. No fear. Just calculation. Varkos rolled his shoulders, cracking vertebrae like knuckles. Jorven exhaled slowly, as if steadying a bowstring. Dravyn flexed his gauntlet—once fire, now ice.

Not one of them flinched.

Kill or be killed. It wasn't a battle cry. It was biology now—burned into the marrow of every soldier behind him.

Asher drew a slow breath, then stepped forward—just enough for all eyes to find him. The air around him shifted, his aura unfurling like a storm held at bay by nothing but will.

Asher drew his blade—the one Kaelan had forged for him long ago, etched with memory and vengeance. It thrummed in his grip like it knew what was coming.

He raised it high, its edge catching the dull light bleeding from the sky, and leveled it toward the Veinforged horde.

"Upon us rests the last hope of life!"

His voice rang out—not as plea, but as declaration. As judgment.

He paused, sweeping his gaze across the sea of faces before him: soldiers broken and reforged by war, generals carved from fire and frost, gods and mortals alike. All watching him. All waiting.

Then he let his voice rise, deepened by the power in his chest, amplified by his Domain as it surged outward like a collapsing star.

The field trembled.

Weaker Veinforged clutched their skulls—some staggered. Others burst apart where they stood, flesh and corruption folding inward under the invisible weight.

Asher's voice was thunder now.

"We are the army of light—of defiance! We are the reckoning, the blade that cuts through darkness! The last stand of the living!"

A roar erupted behind him—feral, desperate, unified.

He turned to his generals.

"You know your strengths. Use them. Break their lines. Exploit their rot."

He didn't have to say more. They nodded as one.

His gaze snapped back to the front. The blade in his hand pulsed.

"And leave their champions to me."

He stepped forward, voice dropping into a snarl.

"CHARGE!"

The thunder of boots rolled across the valley like a storm summoned from stone and fury—but Asher barely heard it.

His focus narrowed.

Every fiber of his being, every shred of Aether he possessed, surged forward. He didn't hesitate. Didn't look back. This was his place—at the spearpoint of the charge, where chaos waited to be carved. He wasn't just leading the assault.

He was the hammer the army would follow.

The wall they'd shatter their enemies against.

Even with the weight pressing on him—expectation, fate, the Sovereign's watching eyes—he smiled.

Exhilaration lit his veins like fire through oil.

His battle cry tore from his throat, primal and sharp, as he left the line far behind. Hundreds of feet ahead now—alone, undaunted—he called on his Aether.

It answered.

Cold and familiar, swirling ice burst around him, laced with the darker currents of Void and the locked corruption pulsing in the depths of his Core. Power radiated outward in a shockwave of frost and fury, the air fracturing with jagged rings of freezing pressure.

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Then he struck.

Asher slammed into the front lines of the Veinforged like a comet punching through the sky. Ice erupted. Flesh tore. Steel screamed.

The impact was so violent, so absolute, the distant walls of Nyxhold shuddered—and cracked but held.

Asher became war incarnate.

Three Veinforged Frostborn lumbered toward him—towering constructs of bone, steel, and corrupted ice. Their breath steamed in the chill air, mist curling from jagged jaws. They moved with brute confidence, ancient and hollow, expecting him to falter.

He didn't.

He smiled—vicious and unrepentant—and let the rage detonate.

"Burn, abominations!"

Fire exploded from him in a pulse of raw elemental fury, the ground beneath his feet rupturing under the sheer force of the release. Flames spiraled outward, coiling around him like a living inferno, searing through snow, stone, and steel alike.

The Frostborn roared, staggering under the onslaught—but Asher was already moving.

He surged forward through the fire, a crimson blur. His blade carved through the nearest giant's knee with a burst of Void-laced Aether, the limb folding inward like splintered wood. The creature toppled, shrieking in broken tongues, and he didn't even slow. His follow-through unleashed a cleaving arc of flame that severed the second Frostborn's arm at the shoulder, molten bone cascading like blackened snow.

Asher let out a roar—not of pain, not even of anger, but joy.

This was what he was made for.

Behind him, the army struck.

Across the field, his generals and warriors smashed into the Veinforged lines like battering rams, spells detonating mid-air, blades shrieking as they met claw and chitin. Magic tore the sky—bursts of lightning, flame, shadow, and frost cascading across the battlefield in a chorus of destruction. Battle cries echoed with defiance. Screams followed.

The Veinforged answered with horrors.

Serrated limbs. Acid breath. Wings that bled rot. They came in waves—too many, too fast—and each one more grotesque than the last. Some erupted from the earth like forgotten corpses reborn, others stitched together mid-charge from the limbs of the fallen. The clash of lines became chaos, the air choked with blood and magic and smoke.

But Asher held the center.

Through the soulbond, he felt her.

Vicky.

He didn't see her. He didn't need to. Her presence sparked in his mind like fire catching dry grass—her breath held, her hope burning.

Then her voice came.

Destroy them. Leave nothing... for Delaney. For our unborn child. Come home to me.

Something cracked inside him. Not from pain. From clarity.

He didn't shout. He didn't speak.

He simply drove forward.

Every step left a corpse behind. Every swing of his blade loosed Aether that sliced, froze, or incinerated whatever dared stand in his way. Blood sprayed. Limbs flew. He carved through the Veinforged like fate made flesh—merciless, inevitable.

Then the real shift began.

Aetheros and Sylthara arrived.

They didn't descend.

They crashed into the battlefield from beyond Nyxhold's inner wall—one on wings of voidlight, the other cloaked in silent shadow. The enemy faltered, turned, broke. Screams echoed from within the fortress now—panicked, wild. Asher felt the pulse of their power surge through the bond, unmistakable and familiar.

The trap had been sprung.

He reached out with his mind.

The siege equipment. Take it down.

Sylthara answered instantly, her voice cool and absolute.

It will be done, Master.

Aetheros didn't speak—but the acknowledgment came all the same, a flicker of divine resonance and the flash of ruptured stone in the distance.

And then the siege engines began to fall.

One by one, the massive constructs exploded in bursts of corrupted magic and crumbling steel, fire and void tearing through their frames from within. Towers toppled. Runes backfired. Defensive spells collapsed in on themselves, swallowing their operators in flashes of inverted light.

The field was far from won.

But in that moment—as the Frostborn fell, the siege shattered, and the Veinforged began to waver—Asher knew the tide had turned.

And he wasn't done.

Not yet.

Asher enacted the next phase of his plan.

Not against the fodder—their blood had already soaked the soil—but against the true threats. The generals. Apex beings. Living catastrophes. The kind of enemies who, like him, could shatter an army with a thought.

He didn't know their strength. Didn't know their strategy. But he knew this: hesitation would mean annihilation.

So he gambled.

He reached through the bond, voice sharp and absolute.

Aetheros—return. Now. Shield the army.

Sylthara. Lend her your strength. Layer the defenses.

Even as the words echoed through the shared link, Asher raised his head and screamed into the burning sky.

"FALL BACK!"

His voice, bolstered by Aether and command, rolled across the battlefield like a bell tolling doom. And yet, there was no panic.

His army obeyed without question.

A practiced retreat—clean, calculated, intentional. They drew inward, compressing the line, lances and halberds spearing forward as they fell back. The motion left a ripple of confusion through the Veinforged ranks. Some surged forward, snarling to capitalize on the perceived weakness. Others hesitated, casting glances toward Asher, sensing something was wrong.

The generals felt it. He could tell.

They hadn't spoken. But the shift in the horde's movement told him enough.

They were watching.

And they were trying to command the tide.

He imagined them—those nine monoliths of ruin—issuing orders directly into the minds of their monsters, tethered to their spawn through twisted veins of Aether and corruption.

The Veinforged lines began to shift, their focus tilting toward him.

They thought he was exposed.

They were wrong.

Asher grinned. Slow. Wicked.

"You'll remember this day," he murmured to himself, and then—

He let it go.

The lock on his Core shattered, and the singularity screamed free.

A maelstrom of force erupted from his body, so dense it twisted the world around him. Time warped. Space screamed. Air folded in on itself as the laws of existence buckled under the pressure.

Runes along his skin detonated with light, each one flaring like a dying star. His blood ignited within him—searing pain and perfect ecstasy mingling in every pulse.

The pull began.

Veinforged were dragged toward him, their howls ripped from their lungs as they clawed at the ground, at each other, at reality itself. Within seconds, the black core at Asher's center became a singularity—a living, devouring storm that bent the battlefield to its will.

Hundreds. Thousands.

Gone.

Their bodies collapsed into ash and bone dust the moment they crossed the event horizon. Weapons melted. Screams ended halfway. The pressure was unbearable. And still—it grew.

He felt it.

This was its purpose.

This was what the Core had been forged for: annihilation unbound.

Aetheros' shield pulsed above the army, vast and radiant—a dome of trembling power strained to its limit. He could feel her buckling beneath the gravitational pressure of the singularity, even bolstered by Sylthara's shadow-layered reinforcements. But they held.

They had to hold.

Because Asher couldn't stop.

Not yet.

The singularity throbbed with hunger, and he fed it. Every death. Every cursed piece of corrupted Aether it consumed made it swell. The sky darkened as light bent toward him. The air fractured with each breath he took.

And through it all, he laughed.

Drunk on destruction. Exalted by wrath.

This was what the Sovereign feared. Not the man.

But the weapon.

Asher raised his arms, aura blazing like a dying star, and shouted across the battlefield.

"You will all die! If it's the last thing I do—you will be made nothing before me!"

And for a heartbeat, the world obeyed.

Half a mile from the front, Aetheros and Sylthara hovered in the storm's wake—eyes wide, breath stolen by what they witnessed.

The force of it bent the air.

Their shields trembled beneath the strain.

They screamed through the bond, panic threading their voices—but nothing came back. No reply. Only a void where Asher's mind had been, swallowed by something deeper, darker.

They saw his body begin to rise, weightless now, suspended in the eye of annihilation.

They heard him.

Laughter. Screams. Joy and agony blurred together in a raw, exultant symphony that didn't belong to a mortal man. It was worship and war and the death of self.

They shivered.

And then it happened.

Veins of purified Aether—massive, living conduits—erupted from the ground like serpents called by blood. Each one thick as a siege tower, pulsing with blinding radiance, writhed toward him.

They struck.

Hundreds of meters long, they plunged into Asher's flesh—torso, spine, arms, legs—like divine harpoons. The impact wasn't physical; it was foundational. Aether flooded his Core, not as trickle or stream, but as torrent—pure, unfiltered, and infinite.

The singularity swelled.

It didn't just grow—it twisted, gravity bending in ways no mind could comprehend. Light folded inward. Time convulsed. The battlefield warped, like creation itself was being rewritten around a god that should never have been born.

Aetheros and Sylthara cried out, shields faltering as the pressure surged again—denser, sharper, closer to collapse. Sylthara's shadows flickered. Aetheros' light dimmed at the edges. Both of them bled from their noses, their ears, their eyes.

They screamed again through the bond.

"Asher! Stop! You're tearing yourself apart!"

But the bond was hollow. Silent.

He didn't hear them.

Or he no longer could.

The shield collapsed.

Aetheros' barrier—meant to hold back apocalypse—shattered with a soundless fracture that split the air like glass beneath a god's heel.

Then came the pull.

Thousands of Asher's soldiers were ripped from the earth, flung screaming into the devouring void at the heart of their own commander. No time for cries, no time for goodbyes—just a black hunger that tore men from life with mechanical indifference.

Asher convulsed midair, limbs twitching like a marionette gripped by unseen hands. The veins of Aether still pumped into him, pouring divine fuel into a Core already buckling under the weight. He wasn't channeling the world anymore.

The world was forcing itself into him.

On the ground, Aetheros and Sylthara huddled together—two goddesses brought low by the force of what they had helped create. All around them, soldiers, generals, and mages alike clawed at the blood-soaked dirt, trying to anchor themselves against the pull of annihilation.

It was useless.

Men screamed. Women sobbed. A cacophony of death and dread thundered across the field, merging corrupted and uncorrupted cries into one raw, primal chorus.

Even the Veinforged began to retreat. Their monstrous generals—those titanic composites of rot and wrath—shuddered and fell back, hissing in panic, no longer certain this war was theirs to win. Their auras surged like tidal waves—desperate, savage—but they broke against the singularity like foam on obsidian.

They weren't facing a man anymore. They were kneeling before annihilation given form. A god born of grief and ruin.

But then— The pressure shifted.

Not forward. Back.

The singularity—Asher's ultimate strike—wavered. Not from weakness, not from strain... From response.

Two presences, long unmoving at the edge of the battlefield, now stirred.

They had always been there. Watching. Waiting. And now, they walked.

The first was draped in a priest's tattered robes, flesh stitched from pages inked in forbidden tongues. Where it passed, the Veinforged parted like tide from reef, bowing without command. Its head was a cage of bone and rusted steel, and within burned a starved light—flickering, sentient, ancient. It didn't speak. It didn't need to. Reality listened.

The second glided beside it, barefoot across blood and ash. Humanoid only in outline, its form rippled and warped—as if the world itself rejected holding its shape. Its face was a blur of smiles. Too many teeth. No eyes. Just knowing.

Together, they moved toward Asher. Not in haste. But inevitability.

The ground around them flattened, pressed down as if by the weight of something too vast to be seen. Corpses twisted in their wake. Some tried to rise. Others simply crumbled to salt and smoke.

Asher's Core screamed.

The singularity buckled—then collapsed, folding into silence with a whimper more terrible than any scream. Power fled him. The hunger of his magic stilled.

And Asher dropped—like a marionette cut from its strings. He hit the ground hard. Cold. Gasping.

For the first time since he had received the core.....Asher felt true fear.

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