Chapter 133: End.
The sky rippled open.
From its black canopy spilled a single figure, descending like judgment itself. No roar of wings, no divine chorus — only silence heavy enough to make the ruins tremble.
Lan raised his head, his vision smeared with red, his ears ringing. Through the smoke and broken stone, he saw her.
Iris.
She did not walk the earth as others did. She floated downward in a slow, inevitable drift, as though the air bent itself to her will.
The folds of her dark dress licked and curled around her form, shimmering faintly with embers of power. Her wings — black as spilled ink, veined with streaks of pale light — unfolded in quiet grandeur, swallowing the battlefield in their shadow.
Karahad felt it too. The warlord’s face, once carved in cruel confidence, stiffened. His grip on the jagged blade faltered, the shadows around him twitching as though sensing betrayal.
"Another illusion?" he spat, voice hoarse. "No—something fouler."
Iris’s feet brushed the ground as lightly as falling ash. She did not reply.
Karahad surged forward, chains of shadow spiraling from his arms, blades of darkness screaming to life around him. The ground ruptured under his steps, power coalescing into a storm of violence.
He struck.
She moved.
It was not speed as mortals understood it.
One moment, Karahad’s sword was an inch from her. The next, his weapon clattered to the stone, his wrist bent backward at an unnatural angle, blood misting the air. A second motion — too delicate, too silent — and his chains shattered like glass struck by sunlight.
Karahad roared, darkness surging higher, consuming his flesh in a desperate transformation. A beast of shadows clawed its way from his skin, horned and faceless, shrieking with all the hatred of the underworld.
Iris simply raised a hand.
Her fingers cut through the air in a gesture almost casual.
The beast split down the center.
Karahad stumbled, coughing blood, his body convulsing as cracks of light burned through him. His eyes found Lan, wild, pleading — but not for help. For recognition. For witness.
"Remember me," he rasped, before Iris pressed a single finger to his chest.
The warlord disintegrated into nothingness. No scream. No final stand. Just silence, absolute, destroying his essence.
The battlefield knew terror then. Not the terror of blood or steel, but the kind that froze hearts and made even the wind refuse to move.
Lan staggered to his feet. His body was no longer flesh, only torn cloth, bone splinters, and stubborn will keeping him upright. Blood leaked in steady rivers down his arms and legs. Devil’s Lie shivered when returned in his hand, its edge dim as if mourning.
Yet he stood.
Because she had descended.
Iris turned toward him at last. Her steps did not disturb dust nor leave sound. When she arrived before him, she merely looked.
And he looked back.
Her eyes...
Lan had always remembered them as storms — violent, merciless, yet alive. Now they were something else. The ocean stripped of tide. A void without horizon. Not rage. Not grief. Just... absence.
The last shred of humanity had bled from her.
He opened his mouth, voice ragged:
"The horrors you went through—"
Her hand silenced him. No force, with the softness of a gentle touch. Her fingers brushed his lips, then slid across his cheek. They curled around his neck.
Lan’s entire body jolted.
Heat. Light. The song of bones knitting, tendons lacing, blood retreating into vessels. Wounds sealed, scars erased, ribs fused whole. The pain was gone. His chest filled with breath deep as the ocean, a vitality he had not tasted since breaking through.
Devil’s Lie quivered, its edge glowing faintly gold, as if savoring the resurgence.
Her lips finally parted.
"Clean up your business," she whispered, her voice a feather laid upon the storm. "I’ll wait."
Then her wings unfurled, blotting out the fractured moon. With one motion, she ascended, vanishing into the void above in a streak of lightless speed.
The silence she left behind weighed heavier than the clash of armies.
Lan exhaled. A sound half relief, half dread. His hand dragged Devil’s Lie against the ground, the rusted blade carving sparks as he walked toward the ruins.
There, amid collapsed marble and shattered banners, lay the king.
Karahad’s barrier had died with him, and the once-mighty sovereign was exposed. His robes were torn, his jeweled crown cracked. Yet the fire in his eyes had not gone out.
"Lanard..." the king rasped, clutching his chest as blood seeped through his fingers. "You have proven your strength, yes. But what now? Will you rule ashes and rubble? Tell me son? What now?"
Lan’s eyes narrowed.
"I am not your son."
The Devil’s Lie pierced his throat in one steady motion. The king’s words drowned in a bubbling choke, eyes wide in disbelief.
He clawed at Lan’s arm, but his strength had already fled him.
Lan leaned close.
"I fulfilled my promise."
The blade slid free. The king collapsed, lifeless, his crown rolling into dust.
Lan stared at Devil’s Lie as the rusted steel drank greedily of the man’s final deceit. The faint black shimmer along its edge pulsed once, satisfied.
He had fed his sword a king.
Lan stood amidst the ruin of what was once the Solaris capital, the kingdom that should have been his inheritance.
The city was no longer a city—it was an open grave, a shattered carcass of stone, marble, and flesh. Rubble rose like broken teeth against a blood-soaked horizon. The sky, once golden, was smudged with smoke.
He stood unmoving, the cold breeze carrying with it the stench of charred wood, scorched blood, and lingering death. All around him, silence clung like ash.
War.
The word itself tasted bitter.
For years, the kings and princes had spoken of it as though it were a sacred rite, a path to honor, a means to write themselves into the world’s history.
But war was none of those things.
War was a butcher’s trade. War did not create glory—it consumed it. It stripped flesh from bone, tore down walls and crowns alike, and demanded the blood of sons, brothers, fathers, and children alike.
War was the true king of empires.
And now, Lan thought as he stared at the broken spires of Solaris, it sat enthroned above the ruins of his family’s legacy.
His eyes narrowed.
He was supposed to have ruled this land.
He was supposed to have worn its crown, not as a usurper, but as a son. Yet all he had inherited were corpses and fire. The throne was ash, and the people who had once sung Solaris’s name were either dead or too broken to speak it again.
Still, a kingdom remained—even if its stones were scattered, even if its name had been disgraced. He would not let it vanish.
---
The march back to his people was long.
His body, slightly but still aching from the wounds Iris had mended, moved slowly but steadily.
Each step seemed to echo against the silence of streets littered with fallen soldiers, burned wagons, and toppled statues. The image of Karahad’s death replayed in his mind, the strength of that man shattered in an instant by the silent princess who bore no humanity in her eyes.
When he reached the plain beyond the capital, the sight awaiting him made his chest tighten.
Thousands knelt.
His own men—the Mad Vipers, Garran, Halmer, Venom, Miller—stood tall but bowed their heads as he approached.
Behind them, the surrendered Solaris soldiers, their armor battered, their faces weary, fell to their knees as well. The silence was absolute until a single voice, hoarse yet full of reverence, broke through.
"Hail... King Lanard."
The words rippled outward like fire catching dry grass.
"Hail King Lanard!"
"Hail the King of Solaris!"
The roars grew, rolling across the field, until the plain trembled with their unified voice. Soldiers who only hours ago had raised blades against him now bent their heads as though in worship.
To them, the man who had brought down their king, who had survived the assassin of darkness, was no longer just a prince cast aside.
He was the sovereign the land itself had chosen.
Lan’s pale grey eyes swept across them, unmoved by the spectacle. He did not bask in their chants, nor did he smile at their submission. Kingship was not in their cheers—it was in what came next.
"Stand," he commanded, his voice cold but steady. They rose like waves responding to the pull of a tide.
He lifted his hand and pointed toward the smoldering capital. "The civilians evacuated are to be taken westward—into Westerloch and some south into Verdelane. No one is to be left behind. The old, the weak, the children—carry them if you must. Their lives will not be squandered."
There was no hesitation in the answering roar.
"Yes, my king!"
He turned then to his men, to Miller and Venom at his sides. "The rest of you," he continued, voice like iron, "will march north with me. Ranevia. It will be the heart of Solaris reborn, the new capital carved in the north."
Another roar rose up—savage, loyal, resolute. The field seemed to shake beneath the voices of thousands.
Lan did not lift his fist with them, nor shout. Instead, he tilted his head toward Miller, his stone-faced guardian who stood silent as always.
His words came low, a whisper only the grey-haired guard could hear.
"The first prince must’ve escaped," Lan murmured, his tone dark, his eyes still scanning the distance as though the man might appear from the ashes. "I want him found. No matter the cost. No matter how far."
Miller’s head inclined by a fraction. "It will be done."
Lan’s gaze lingered northward, where the winds howled against the unseen mountains, and the path to Ranevia waited.
The roars of his men still thundered, shaking the bones of the land. Yet within him, silence reigned.
This was only the beginning and yet it seemed the end was near.