The ruined eastern plains were a monument to suffocating despair. The dead gray sky above had literally shattered, leaving behind jagged, terrifying fissures of blackness that hung in the heavens like broken glass. The light of the battlefield was ruthlessly sucked into these abyssal wounds. From the largest tear in the fabric of reality, the aura of the Fallen Monarch descended like an executioner’s shroud.

Luna Zephyros knelt in the gray ash, his slender body trembling vehemently. He forced his heavy head up. His stark white hair was plastered to his forehead, soaked in sweat and the shining silver blood that leaked continuously from his left eye. He looked across the silent, devastated battlefield.

Thirty yards away, Velanor Banner lay motionless. The young Zephyros earth mage was bleeding profusely from his nose and ears, his leather armor buckled inward from his shattered ribs. He had tried to crush the god with the deep bedrock, and the god had merely swatted him aside with a whisper. A few feet from Velanor, Catherine Sylphyros collapsed on her back. Her beautiful, sleek white armor was broken, her enchanted ice staff snapped in two. The elegant princess of the Sylphyros Kingdom stared up at the cracked black sky, her silver-blue eyes wide and vacant, paralyzed by the overwhelming weight of the void.

Behind them, the ten thousand seasoned Solaris infantrymen were a weeping, broken mass. They had dropped their heavy iron spears and shields. They huddled in the dirt, their minds stripped of all courage and hope, waiting quietly for the ancient darkness to consume them.

Luna wiped a fresh, sizzling streak of silver blood from his chin. His chest heaved as he fought the oppressive atmospheric pressure. The despair aura radiated from the Fallen Monarch like a heavy tide, desperately trying to snap Luna’s sanity in half.

The Night Emperor refused to break.

A cold, terrifying fury flooded his chest. He refused to watch his friends bleed out in the ash. He refused to let the weeping soldiers be slaughtered while he still had breath in his lungs.

The Fallen Monarch stood thirty yards away, cloaked in shifting, elegant shadows. His midnight armor absorbed the faint, dying light of the bruised sky. The ancient god did not draw a weapon. He did not rush. He simply watched the mortal boy struggle, his hollow, void-like eyes filled with an infinite, terrible sadness.

"You bleed starlight, little Emperor," the Fallen Monarch spoke. His voice was smooth, melodic, and impossibly quiet, yet it resonated within the marrow of Luna’s bones. "You crushed the King of the Black Mist. You wield a fraction of the cosmos. But a fraction is nothing against the infinite. Lay down your heavy eye. Surrender to the quiet."

Luna slowly pushed himself up from the dirt. His knees shook, but he planted his boots firmly into the dead earth.

"I have been told I have a terrible attitude," Luna whispered, his voice reverberating with pure, unadulterated defiance. "I don’t know how to surrender."

He knew the terrifying risk he was about to take. Soltheia was flying toward the Eastern Front on the back of a Sylphyros Fast-Hawk, but she was still few miles away. Without her purifying water to constantly heal his nervous system, opening the Cosmic Lock further was essentially a death sentence. The infinite primordial mana would violently melt his mortal brain from the inside out.

But if he did nothing, the East would fall today. Luna closed his normal right eye. He turned his consciousness inward, entirely ignoring the crushing despair attempting to drown his mind. He focused on the deepest, most guarded vault of his soul.

He saw it. The massive, heavy golden chain wrapped tightly around his inner being, securing the infinite vastness of the universe behind heavy, conceptual doors. He had already opened the First Seal, a microscopic millimeter, to summon the black hole that crushed the Nightmare Warlord. But a mere fraction of a drop of the cosmos was nothing against the boundless, ancient void standing before him.

He needed more. He needed to shatter his mortal limits. Luna mentally reached out and grabbed the heavy golden chain. He didn’t gently pull it. He didn’t hesitate. He violently, ruthlessly ripped the two seals wide open.

BOOM!!

A massive, terrifying flood of raw, primordial silver mana poured into his mortal nervous system.

The reaction was catastrophic. The sheer, devastating force of the infinite cosmic energy instantly ruptured the delicate blood vessels in his nose, ears, and right eye. Thick, shimmering silver blood poured freely down his pale face, sizzling and smoking as it hit the gray ash. His skull felt like it was being split open by a wedge of white-hot iron. The pain was a tearing of his physical vessel, but the power was undeniable.

The shimmering silver light burning in Luna’s left eye erupted into a blinding supernova. The beam of starlight shot upward, piercing the suffocating darkness and illuminating the broken plains.

The gravity magic radiating from his small, fragile body spiked immensely. The dead gray ash beneath his boots liquefied instantly from the sheer, terrifying gravitational pressure. The volcanic bedrock groaned and cracked, unable to withstand the localized weight of a collapsing star.

The oppressive despair aura of the Fallen Monarch, which had blanketed the entire valley, was harshly pushed back. The suffocating pressure lifted from the lungs of the paralyzed Solaris soldiers. They gasped, dragging fresh air into their chests, their tear-filled eyes widening in awe as they stared at the blinding silver beacon standing between them and the ancient god.

Luna stood tall, his stark white hair whipping in the fierce, formed gale generated by his own shifting gravity.

"I am the sky!" Luna roared vehemently, the dual resonance of his voice echoing like thunder across the ruined plains.

He thrust his left hand forward. He didn’t cast a localized singularity, and he didn’t raise a simple defensive dome. He reached out with his mind and seized the fabric of space spanning the distance between him and the god. He compressed the gravity of the entire Eastern Front into a single, massive, horizontal shockwave.

It was a tangible distortion of reality. The air visibly rippled and tore as the crushing weight of the cosmos was weaponized into a blunt kinetic instrument.

CRASH!!

The gravity shockwave struck the Fallen Monarch perfectly in the center of his dark breastplate.

The sheer, overwhelming force was devastating. For the first time since the ancient Void Era, the god was physically moved. The massive impact shattered the immediate layer of shadows protecting him. The Fallen Monarch’s armored boots dragged across the bedrock, ripping deep, jagged trenches into the earth.

He was forcefully pushed back. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Thirty yards.

The elegant cape of liquid darkness whipped wildly as the ancient god struggled to anchor himself. The sheer density of Luna’s gravity actively tore at the god’s physical manifestation, attempting to flatten the midnight armor into a disk of crushed iron.

Velanor Banner, coughing blood into the dirt, forced his eyes open. He watched the ancient god slide backward. A fierce, desperate spark of hope ignited in the earth mage’s shattered chest. Luna had done the impossible. He had physically overpowered a god of the abyss.

But the Fallen Monarch was the master of the shadows, an entity born before the stars had even learned to burn.

The ancient god dug his armored heels deeply into the bedrock. The jagged trenches halted his backward momentum. He stood fifty yards away, stopping the slide.

The Fallen Monarch slowly raised his head. His hollow, void-like eyes locked onto the bleeding, trembling boy.

"You burn brightly, little Emperor," the Fallen Monarch whispered softly. His melodic voice carried effortlessly through the roaring gravity storm, untouched by the cosmic distortion. "But a fire that burns this hot only hastens its own ash."

The god adapted. The elegant, living shadows wrapping his midnight armor rapidly evolved. They shifted from a defensive, passive barrier into consuming black voids. The darkness reached outward, vehemently latching onto Luna’s horizontal gravity shockwave.

The shadows ate gravity.

Luna gasped loudly, spitting a massive mouthful of silver blood onto the dirt. He felt the terrifying shift in the atmospheric pressure. The raw, crushing weight he was projecting was being absorbed and nullified. The Fallen Monarch’s shadows were turning the gravity into fuel for the void.

"No!" Luna gritted his teeth, his pale face twisting in agony.

He pushed even more infinite mana through the Second Seal. He poured the entirety of his life force into his left eye, desperately trying to increase the gravitational pressure to overwhelm the shadows. The supernova in his eye flared so brightly that the surrounding bedrock began to glow red with ambient heat.

But the void was limitless. It had no bottom. It had no end.

The Fallen Monarch took a slow, deliberate step forward.

The ancient god effortlessly walked through the blinding gravity storm. The crushing weight that should have pulverized a mountain did not even slow his stride. His evolving shadows devoured the cosmic pressure, clearing a perfect, silent path through Luna’s ultimate magic.

Step by step, the Fallen Monarch closed the distance.

"Every star eventually dies in the dark," the god stated calmly, his elegant cape flowing smoothly behind him.

Luna’s knees buckled. The massive spike in his gravity magic was failing to hold the ancient god back. The immense, terrifying toll of the Second Seal was tearing his mortal vessel apart. His brain felt as though it were boiling in a cauldron of liquid silver. His vision blurred, the blinding light of his own magic obscuring the approaching darkness.

He tried to force himself to stand straight, to summon another gravity wave, but his internal core stuttered. The veins in his neck and arms bulged, turning a glowing, translucent silver as the primordial mana violently rejected his human anatomy.

The Fallen Monarch reached the twenty-yard mark. The suffocating despair aura, which had been momentarily pushed back, rolled over the battlefield once more like an unstoppable tidal wave. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The Solaris soldiers, who had just managed to draw a breath of hope, were violently slammed back down into the dirt, their weeping returning with redoubled agony. Velanor’s head dropped back onto the ash, his consciousness finally slipping away under the overwhelming weight.

Luna fell heavily to one knee. He caught himself with his hands, his fingers digging desperately into the liquefied ash. He coughed vehemently, a continuous stream of silver blood pooling beneath him.

The Night Emperor was losing ground.

Despite pushing his limits, despite ripping open the forbidden locks of his soul and weaponizing the fabric of the cosmos, it was not enough. The ancient god of the void was a predator that fed on light, and Luna was serving himself up as a feast.

The Fallen Monarch stopped ten feet away. The towering shadow loomed over the kneeling boy.

"You have fought well, mortal," the god whispered, raising a hand shrouded in obliterating darkness. "Now, close your heavy eyes. Let the void grant you peace."

Luna stared at the gray dirt, his chest heaving. The blinding supernova in his left eye began to flicker, threatening to go out.