They both climbed down from the Zenith Spire, the night cool and peaceful against their skin. Imara was leading Eila, his hand in hers.
Then the air whistled, something was coming.
Eila, with his senses dulled by the emotional turmoil, failed to react in time. However, Imara's senses were at their peak.
THWAAACK.
Imara violently convulsed. The bullet tore through her back, missing her heart by a millimeter, and exited through her collarbone. She collapsed into the cold, wet ground, a thick stream of black, corrupted blood pooling in a circle.
"Imara?" Eila's mind went entirely blank, eyes popping.
Down in the city streets, an amplified voice echoed: "I'VE GOT HIM! THE HERO HAS FALLEN!!!"
Imara coughed. The wound glowed with a sickly purple light. The reversal mana of five hundred mages was acting as a hyper lethal poison, eating her soul from the inside out.
"Eila..." she vomited blood. "It burns..."
"No, no, no," Eila chanted. He slammed his hands against her chest, channeling torrents of pure, holy healing magic. But the poison fought back, tearing the healing magic apart.
His breathing came in ragged bursts. He was the strongest being on the continent, yet, watching the life drain from the only person who still loved him, he was utterly powerless.
"Stay with me," Eila commanded, his voice cracking, tearing through the fabric of his own sanity.
The midnight mass at the Cathedral of the Silver Cross was interrupted by the flattening and shattering of the sixty foot stained glass window.
Eila landed heavily on the central altar, holding Imara's limp body. His left eye were no longer blue, nor were they black. They were glowing with a terrifying, unholy purple light, the color of a dying star.
High Cardinal Vane stepped backward, his staff trembling. "Fallen Hero! You dare desecrate this holy place?"
Eila flicked his wrist.
A spatial distortion ripped open above the altar. A waterfall of wealth poured out. Hundreds of flawless emeralds. Thousands of stamped bricks of imperial gold. It was the hoarded wealth of the very ministers Eila had slaughtered. It buried the altar.
Eila laid Imara gently on the gold. He looked up at the Cardinal, his voice completely devoid of human frequency.
"She is poisoned, heal her, my mana isn't working."
He pointed a finger at the mountain of gold.
"This is your payment. Heal her." Eila stepped back, the silver light making the room physically vibrate. "If her heart stops beating... I will erase this religion from even the scraps of history."
The Cardinal fell to his knees, greed overtaking his fear. "We will do everything... I swear it!"
Eila looked down at Imara. He gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
"Hold on," he pleaded.
The air imploded, and Eila vanished, leaving behind a dome for protection of the Cathedral.
In the clocktower, there was an air of celebration. They thought the hero was dead, after all. General Thorne was particularly happy, celebrating his shot. "Drinks on me for the rest of our lives, boys!"
"Is that so?"
The torches instantly snuffed out, freezing solid. Eila stepped out of the darkness.
Thorne panicked, swinging his broadsword. But the blade met nothing. Eila didn't dodge. The gravity simply displaced him and his mass, in an instant.
Thorne gasped. The stone floor vanished. The walls disappeared. He looked around wildly. He was surrounded by dark, churning clouds. He looked down. The capital city was thirty thousand feet below him. Eila had teleported him into the stratosphere.
Gravity took hold. Thorne screamed, his sword slipping from his grip as he plummeted toward the earth, left with two excruciating minutes to contemplate his death.
Eila remained in the sky, hovering just below the cloud line.
A blinding, silver white light erupted from the heavens. Eila drifted upward, his arms spread wide in a crucifix formation. His head tilted back, rising.
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His voice rolled across the Kingdom, projecting directly into the minds of every citizen.
"Subjects of the Kingdom. My name is Elia, Make your peace, make your amends, fulfill your duties." In the castle, King Aldous gripped the stone railing until his knuckles bled.
"Tonight is the night where heavens shall weep." Eila promised.
He pointed his left index finger toward the sky. At the tip of his finger, a tiny, impossibly dense speck of blackness materialized. A physical manifestation of anti mass.
The physical laws of the world broke down. Roof tiles, massive stone blocks, and water from the aqueducts spiraled into the sky, sucked upward into the growing singularity.
Eila opened his mouth, and the mocking poem tore from his throat.
"Upon the tainted Sorrows... Let the sky fall."
The clouds were shredded, revealing a swirling vortex of deep space.
"The Raven speaks. The nights fall. Heavens weep. Tears fall."
King Aldous fell to his back as his royal guards were lifted off their feet, dragged into the sky. Eila closed his hand into a fist, crushing the space around the singularity to stabilize its core.
"CONCEPT: DOOM."
The singularity ignited. A shockwave of silent, localized gravity slammed into the earth. The Zenith Spire imploded instantly, ripped upward. The inner city began to ascend, spiraling gracefully into the sky before crossing the event horizon and being atomized into nothingness.
In the Ivory Tower of Magery, the Great Mage Orlon was in a deep meditation when he was woken up by a commotion of students and an unknown energy.
"Master! The Ancient Scribes! The Concept Technique! It is here upon us!" The students spoke in unison.
Orlon stood up slowly, his old bones protesting, and looked out through the tall window. The scene in the sky terrified every cell in his body.
"By the Heavens. This cannot be. It was a myth, merely tales meant to frighten children," he whispered, entirely dumbfounded. "Even then... no mortal vessel could hold such reserves of raw mana...."
His two centuries of discipline took over. He turned around, his heavy robes settling around him.
"Call every student! Prepare your minds! We form the Counter Circle at once! We must stop this abomination!" he commanded with authority. The students ran to wake the others and gather the sacred grimoires to prepare for the ritual.
Meanwhile, Eila floated before the black hole, a god witnessing the apocalypse he had authored. He raised his hand, preparing to expand the singularity to encompass the entire continent.
Down in the Cathedral of the Silver Cross, inside a translucent, silver dome Eila had left behind, there was a pocket of stillness.
The fifty clerics wept as they pushed waning holy magic into Imara. The chaotic mana curse was still fighting them.
Suddenly, Imara was healed. It was as if another energy had swooped in to save her, an energy this world wouldn't dare to defy. The curse vanished; the wound closed.
Imara pushed the clerics away and walked up to the dome, letting a little mana leak within it.
High above, Eila froze.
He felt the connection flare in his mind. He looked down through the chaotic debris and locked his silver eyes onto her.
Eila physically twitched. His right arm jerked downward, a primal urge to dive to the earth. But the singularity pulsed above his head, hungering for the world. To stop now was to let the Kingdom win.
Imara leaned heavily against the barrier, coughing a thick splatter of corrupted blood.
"Eila... Eila..." she gasped, her voice carrying through the connection straight into his mind. "please... no...no."
Eila's breath hitched. "Imara, I did try to make peace. You saw me. Then they shot you... Do they still deserve pity? Still deserve mercy?"
Imara forced herself to look up at him. "No. They don't deserve mercy. They can go to Hell for all I care! But you don't deserve this. I'm not asking for their mercy! I'm asking for yours!"
Eila stared down at her, the winds of destruction howling.
"If you drop that sky," Imara choked out, her vision fading, "you kill them. But you also kill the Eila I know. You become the Void. They took your sister... don't let them take your soul, too."
She slid down the barrier, collapsing onto the marble steps. Her eyes rolled back, and she went limp.
Time stopped. Eila looked at the lying girl. He looked at the black hole. It was the ultimate revenge. The perfect justice. But justice felt incredibly cold.
They don't deserve mercy. But you deserve peace.
The rage that had boiled in his veins suddenly hit a wall of profound, suffocating sorrow. He was so incredibly tired.
"You're wrong...but I agree," Eila whispered to the empty sky.
He lowered his left hand. He raised his right hand toward the apocalypse. He brought his thumb and middle finger together.
SNAP.
The singularity violently shuddered. It compressed inward, shrinking from the size of a mountain to the size of a pinhead. And then, it simply blinked out of existence.
The screaming winds died instantly. The millions of tons of debris lost their anti gravity, but Eila cast a gentle wave of kinetic magic, lowering the uprooted mansions and the terrified people safely back to the earth.
The apocalypse was canceled by a flick of a wrist.
Eila dropped from the sky, landing soundlessly on the Cathedral steps. He knelt beside Imara, placing his hand in hers, giving her a little mana, for energy was all she needed now.
Imara gasped, the tiredness vanished. She opened her eyes.
Eila offered her a faint, heartbroken smile.
"You win."
He scooped her gently into his arms. He looked at the High Cardinal cowering behind the altar.
"Keep the gold," Eila said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Buy yourselves a new Kingdom. I won't be here to save it the next time the demons come."
However, Eila and his Concept magic had interfered with the magical circle of Orlon and his disciples. The circle glowed with a chaotic light and screeched with malevolent energy.
"What is this?" Orlon shouted over the noise. "Halt the ritual! The magic is breaking!"
Then, a figure stepped out from the center of the circle. It was a sly looking man with slicked back hair, a cunning face, a sharp nose and narrow eyes.
Orlon prayed silently. This was clearly a being from another timeline. Speaking to it was the only way to see if it came in peace.
"Traveler of the circle, speak your name," Orlon asked with careful authority. "From what era do you come?"
The sly man merely stared. Orlon sensed a raw intent to kill, and then the stranger raised his hand.
But Orlon was faster. A mage of two hundred years does not hesitate. He raised his staff and chanted: "IGNIS MYTH REVERSAL: PILLAR OF HEAVEN"
Nothing happened. It was as if the chronos-link to his mana circuits had been completely severed. He felt entirely helpless for the first time in two centuries.
Just as Orlon drew his sword, a blade infused with a thousand years of pure mana, the man pointed a single finger at the old mage.
"LOGIC: SYNTHESIS"
The man leapt into the night. Tomorrow, the mourning bells will toll to announce the fall of the Great Warlock, Orlon.
CONCEPT, but they just accidentally downloaded a LOGIC glitch right into their own Ivory Tower.