Chapter 50: A new dawn of worlds
Yvonne and Radulff, who were about to come and stop Jorghan, stopped in their tracks, bewildered by the sound.
And then it happened again; the sharp, chilling noise erupted around them.
It was like the world screamed.
It began as a tremor, subtle enough that both combatants initially dismissed it as aftershocks from their apocalyptic battle.
But the vibration grew, intensified, and became something that transcended mere physical phenomenon.
The very fabric of existence seemed to convulse, as if creation itself was experiencing some fundamental seizure.
The sky above them—already scarred and bleeding light from their conflict—began to fracture in ways that defied comprehension.
Not breaking like glass, but folding, as if the solar sphere was origami being reshaped by cosmic hands. Stars wheeled in impossible patterns, constellations rewrote themselves, and the familiar dome of heaven became something alien and terrifying.
[CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED]
[DIMENSIONAL STABILITY: CATASTROPHIC FAILURE]
[UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS: FLUCTUATING]
[WARNING: REALITY MATRIX UNDERGOING FUNDAMENTAL ALTERATION]
[HOST ADVISED TO SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER]
Jorghan’s killing blow never landed.
His attention, along with every other conscious being within a thousand leagues, was drawn inexorably skyward as something impossible began to manifest.
And then, as if someone had flipped a switch in the heart of reality, everything changed.
Seven moons blazed to life across the heavens, each one a different hue and emanating its own unique resonance. Jorghan could see the seven bodies moving around their world; he could practically see them.
But even more shocking was what lay beyond them.
The planets—worlds that had always been distant points of light—suddenly blazed with terrible clarity in the transformed sky.
Jorghan could see them moving, not in their ancient, predictable orbits, but in purposeful formation.
There were several planets, aligned in the orbit of their system. One after the other.
[ASTRAL CONVERGENCE DETECTED]
[PLANAR BARRIERS: DISSOLVING]
[ANCIENT SEALS: BREAKING DOWN]
[HOST BLOODLINE RESONANCE: MAXIMUM]
The red tattoo on Jorghan’s neck blazed like a brand, responding to frequencies that hadn’t existed moments before.
Deep within his consciousness, the crimson dot pulsed with unprecedented intensity, and for one terrifying instant, he felt connected to something vast—a network of power that spanned not just worlds but entire dimensions of reality.
This is it, he realized with absolute certainty; this is what the goddess told about.
The moment everything changes. The end of one age and the beginning of another.
The phenomenon was so strong that everybody just stood frozen in place and watched it.
The world stopped shaking, and everything returned to normal, except for the planets and moons hung in the sky.
The silence was so penetrating that it felt as though time itself had paused.
All of them were so bedazzled that they couldn’t register someone appeared on the destruction-laid sky.
The figure materialized not with any dramatic display of power, but with the simple inevitability of sunrise.
One moment the air was empty; the next she hung suspended above the fractured sky isles, as if she had always been there and reality was only now catching up to her presence.
She was clothed entirely in white—not the white of purity or innocence, but the terrible white of absolute void. Her garments seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, creating an aura of emptiness that made the eyes water to look upon.
Most disturbing of all was the mask that covered the upper half of her face, a thing of pristine ceramic that revealed nothing of the intelligence behind it while somehow conveying the impression of vast, incomprehensible attention.
When she moved, it was with the smooth grace of something that had transcended the limitations of mortals.
She observed them—Jorghan frozen in his moment of near-triumph, Hawkin collapsed and bleeding in his shattered armor—with the detached interest of a scholar examining particularly fascinating insects.
[EXTREME THREAT DETECTED]
[POWER LEVEL: UNMEASURABLE]
[HOSTILE INTENT: PROBABILITY 97.3%]
[SURVIVAL PROTOCOL: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION REQUIRED]
Every instinct Jorghan possessed, every fragment of inherited wisdom from his slaughtered clan, every survival mechanism honed through six years of hiding—all of them screamed the same message: RUN.
This being, whatever she was, operated on a scale that made his recent transformation seem like a child’s first attempt at magic.
The pressure of her presence alone was enough to crack the foundations of reality around her, and Jorghan could sense that her attention, should it focus fully upon him, would be lethal in ways that transcended mere physical destruction.
She descended toward them with terrible purpose, and as she moved, Jorghan caught glimpses of what lay beneath that pristine exterior.
Shadows writhed within the white fabric of her robes—not absence of light, but presence of something far worse.
When she extended a hand toward the fallen Hawkin, space itself seemed to bend and twist around her fingers.
The healing she performed was not magical in any sense Jorghan understood.
Instead of channeling energy or invoking divine intervention, she simply... corrected the damage. Hawkin’s wounds didn’t close—they retroactively ceased to have existed. His armor didn’t repair itself—reality adjusted to accommodate a version where it had never been broken.
She was editing the fundamental narrative of existence with the casual ease of a scribe correcting a manuscript.
Hawkin rose to his feet, his body restored but his eyes now holding a quality that hadn’t been there before.
Not gratitude, not relief, but a kind of hollow recognition.
He just nodded to her. He knew her and didn’t think that she would be coming here.
"The convergence begins ahead of schedule," the masked figure spoke, and her voice was like power itself.
"The bloodlines must be preserved. This one still has a role to play."
She gestured to their ship, telling him to retreat for now.
As she helped Hawkin aboard, her masked gaze turned toward Jorghan, and for one heart-stopping moment, he felt the full weight of her attention.
It was like being examined by something vast and utterly allotrious, an intelligence that existed on scales he couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Behind him, Sigora’s voice cut through his paralysis like a blade.
"Jorghan! We have to go! Now!"
The older elf had appeared at the edge of the devastated battlefield, her usually composed demeanor cracked with visible fear.
In all the years she had protected him, through all the dangers they had faced together, Jorghan had never seen her look so genuinely terrified.
The killing intent that radiated from the white-clad figure was not the hot fury of battle or the cold calculation of an assassin.
It was something far more fundamental—the absolute certainty that certain existences were incompatible with her plans and would need to be... adjusted.
Jorghan could feel that terrible attention beginning to focus on him, like the gathering heat of a magnifying glass concentrating sunlight.
Without another moment’s hesitation, he abandoned his position and his fallen uncle, his lava wings carrying him across the broken landscape to where Sigora waited.
"What is she?" Jorghan gasped as he reached her side, his voice still carrying the inhuman harmonics of his awakened state.
"Something that should not exist in this reality," Sigora replied without taking her eyes off the intricate spellwork.
She opened a portal for them to leave.
The portal blazed to life just as the masked figure’s attention turned fully toward them.
Jorghan felt the weight of that gaze like a physical blow, a pressure that threatened to eat him as a whole.
But before that terrible scrutiny could complete its work, Sigora’s magic yanked them both through the portal.
The last thing Jorghan saw before the portal closed was the ship rising into the transformed sky, carrying his uncle away to destinations unknown.
The seven moons continued their stately dance overhead, and the world will never be the same again.