The tower had always been cold at this elevation.

Jax had served as its Watcher for five years, long enough to know every sound the crimson stone made when the wind pressed against it, every shift in Mana that preceded a storm, every rhythm the structure had settled into across its long existence above the surrounding landscape. He knew this tower the way a man knew his own body, and what he had been feeling from it for the past days was wrong.

Crimson goblin-like creatures moved along the winding stairs in pairs, their small scaled bodies hunched under armaments they had requisitioned without asking, their yellow eyes sweeping corridors they had no authority to sweep. They were stationed at every level now, these demons, guards wearing the pretense of being on the same side as the warriors who had built and maintained this tower for generations. Jax had watched two of his subordinates step aside for them that morning and had said nothing, because the orders from the Murderous Saint had been clear and the definition of clear was not leaving room for Jax’s preferences.

He stood at the tower’s peak with the open night sky above him and the tension of the room pressing against his Eighth Circle cultivation from every direction.

Across from him stood the Demon Commander.

Burly. Humanoid in the approximate sense, the way a boulder was approximately round. Four horns rose from the crown of its head in a crown nobody had elected it to wear, and the scowl it directed at Jax had the patience of something that had been tolerating this conversation for too long.

"The Murderous Saint, The Crimson Emperor, has given orders for this tower to be on high alert." Jax kept his voice level. "Not for you to take over. We are the Watchers of this tower, and our duty has not ended. We will repel any threats coming to our Dominion."

...!

The Demon Commander’s scowl deepened.

"Being on high alert is demons taking control," it said, and its voice had the rough texture of something that ground its words out rather than forming them. "That’s the subtle part you weren’t told. Now move aside and follow orders." It looked at Jax with an assessment that landed like a dismissal.

"You’re so weak you wouldn’t even sense an enemy if they arrived."

...!

At such a time.

"Is that right?"

The voice came from above.

It came from the open dark sky at the top of the tower, from the space above the peak that had held nothing but night air and distant stars moments ago, and it arrived with a clarity that suggested its speaker was not far and had been listening.

"Those who are weak cannot sense an enemy arriving?"

Every face in the room turned upward.

They came into focus against the night sky like two pieces of a sun that had decided to visit. Radiant humanoid forms multiple times the size of any normal human, their bodies burning with ancient tattoos that pulsed green and gold and blue in the darkness, their wing-shaped pupils blazing with a light that turned the peak of the crimson tower into day. They floated without effort, without sound, with the casual composure of beings who had crossed hundreds of miles at terrifying speed and hadn’t found the journey tiring! 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Jax felt his Eighth Circle cultivation register what it was looking at and produce a response he had never felt it produce before.

The Demon Commander’s four horns stood very still.

The crimson goblin-creatures along the stairs below made sounds that their species produced when they encountered something their instincts classified as a natural predator several categories above their own.

Jax opened his mouth as he got ready to erupt with power...

Then the golden solar flames bloomed.

They came down from the two figures above the tower with the speed of light that had been given a direction and a purpose, and they hit the crimson stone of the tower’s peak in a wave that didn’t burn through the structure so much as it decided the structure was no longer relevant!

Stone that had stood for generations became rubble in the time it took for the screaming to start, and the screaming started and ended quickly because the flames were thorough.

BOOM!

The tower folded.

It didn’t collapse the way buildings collapsed when their foundations gave way gradually. It came apart heavily as the crimson stone that fell outward in chunks took the demons stationed on its stairs and the Dominion warriors who had been sharing those stairs with them and carried them down together!

Scorched remnants hit the ground below in a cascade that lit the surrounding landscape with the dying orange glow of still-burning materials.

A raging fire rose from where the tower had stood.

Damian and Serala watched from the sky above the flames, their figures casting shadows across the fire below them, and neither of their expressions held anything that resembled satisfaction or hesitation. They watched long enough to confirm what they had come to confirm, and then they turned and flew ahead into the dark.

Behind them, the fire climbed.

Ahead of them, the territory of the Dominion of Crimson Stone spread across the night in a landscape that Damian had last seen from the ground, eight years ago, as a child running from it. He was not running now!

He was coming back at speeds the Dominion’s forward scouts wouldn’t have time to report before the reports became irrelevant, and he didn’t care whether the Murderous Saint knew he was coming.

Let him know.

Let every tower between here and the capital see the flames rising in the distance and know what the flames meant. Let every Demon stationed in Dominion territory feel the purifying light moving toward them through the night air and understand what was at the end of it!

Let the Murderous Saint sit in whatever throne room he had built on the ruins of the Vakochev Empire and receive message after message about towers falling until the messages were coming too fast to process.

Tonight, the towers of the Dominion of Crimson Stone would fall.

He was coming.

He was returning.

To his home!

And the demons and the humans who held their hands would be scorched from existence equally, because the flames Damian carried didn’t ask which side of the arrangement you were on before they burned.

Another crimson tower appeared in the distance, its lights visible across miles of dark terrain.

Damian and Serala flew toward it without slowing!