The battlefield still smoldered.
Ashen stood at its center, silverfire flickering low in his veins, his body trembling from the last battle. Around him, the Vanguard regrouped—wounded but unbroken, shaken but defiant.
Above them, the sky cracked.
Ten rifts tore through the clouds like a god's claw had raked the heavens open. From each portal descended a new Godslayer Frame, each one more terrifying than the last. These weren't just war machines—they were avatars of despair.
Each had a name burned into the world's memory:
Veyrith, the Hollow Maw – A serpentine Frame lined with rows of soul-eating mouths.
Kharaxis, the Time Reaver – A construct wrapped in broken clocks and cascading sands, able to unravel seconds.
Nyssala, the Mirrorborn – A shifting frame of mirrored armor that reflected and weaponized its enemy's emotions.
Draavel, the War Choir – A floating cathedral of mechanized hymnals, each hymn a weaponized frequency.
Gorex, the Stoneweeper – A juggernaut built from living mountain and bleeding ore.
And five more whose names had been erased from history—only felt in nightmares.
They descended not as soldiers.
But as executioners.
"Scatter!" Elara shouted, hurling a rune-blade that exploded midair, signaling retreat positions.
But Ashen didn't move.
He was already shifting—eyes glowing with lunar-white fire, breathing slow, controlled. His hands lifted, calling down sigils into the earth.
Elara grabbed his shoulder. "Ashen, we need to regroup. You're not ready for ten of them."
"I wasn't ready for one," he said calmly. "But that didn't matter. This isn't about readiness. It's about resolve."
The ten Frames landed like meteorites. The world convulsed. Trees caught fire. Rivers changed direction. The sky turned violet.
Oran darted into wolf-form, wind surrounding his body as he aimed for the Mirrorborn. Solis took the high ground, raining arrows of starlight into Gorex's approach. Mustan Korr led the vanguard troops to intercept Veyrith's snake-like slithering.
And Ashen...
He launched himself toward Kharaxis—the Time Reaver.
Kharaxis hovered inches above the ground, limbs like hourglasses turned sideways, its face a shifting sundial. As Ashen approached, the creature blinked—and time fractured.
Ashen was frozen mid-leap, watching birds flap in reverse and flames unburn into logs. His heart stuttered. The world was turning inside-out.
Then came the whisper:
> "You cannot kill what happens before you think."
But Ashen wasn't bound by normal power.
He had awakened.
He didn't fight the time shift—he flowed with it. Sovereign fire became liquid thought. His presence blurred across timelines, one flicker ahead of Kharaxis.
He struck not the Frame—but its anchoring rune. Every Godslayer Frame bore one—a seal that tethered them to the Council's will.
His fist, wreathed in fatefire, smashed through the rune hidden in Kharaxis' chest.
The creature screamed across centuries—and exploded into an hourglass of reversed screams.
Elsewhere, Brielle faced Nyssala—the Mirrorborn.
The mirrored armor shimmered with reflections: her worst memories, twisted into weapons. The moment she lost her brother. The day she sold her name to the shadows. The second she doubted Ashen.
Each regret became a blade, hurled at her.
She was bleeding, cornered, her own fears stabbing her again and again.
Then—she remembered Ashen's voice.
> "Fear isn't weakness. It's a reminder we still care."
With a cry, she shattered her last blade and hurled it into the mirror's heart—not to destroy it, but to accept it.
The Frame cracked—reflections unraveling.
Nyssala howled and burst like a dream rejected.
Veyrith coiled around a battalion, mouths opening to drain their souls—until Mustan Korr, dragging a broken ballista by hand, climbed its back.
With a roar, he jammed the ballista into its central maw and triggered a rune that exploded with phoenix fire.
The serpent disintegrated in a flash of cursed screams.
Solis aimed arrows that split midair into a thousand light-shards, embedding them into Gorex's joints. The beast slowed—and Elara, empowered by Ashen's lingering resonance, drove a spectral lance through its molten spine.
The tide shifted.
Five Frames fell. But five remained.
And they adapted.
The remaining Frames synchronized.
Draavel, the War Choir, began its death hymn. The battlefield shook. Eardrums burst. Memory fractured. The sound unwrote language. Soldiers dropped, clutching their minds.
Ashen turned.
"Cover your ears," he warned.
Then he rose.
With every step, his fire changed color—no longer silver, but crimson-gold. Phoenixfire. The essence of rebirth, unbound from mortality.
His wings erupted—not of flame, but of light.
He lifted into the sky, hovering over the War Choir. The hymn faltered as its own notes were out-sung.
Ashen sang.
A simple melody. A song Elara had once hummed after their first battle. Soft, haunting, filled with hope.
And the War Choir's notes wilted.
Ashen dove. Wings slicing air. His hand outstretched.
He struck Draavel through the heart of its hymn, and the cathedral burst into a storm of silent ash.
But then—reality split.
A second sun bloomed above the battlefield, its light black.
From it descended not a Frame—but something far worse.
A Leviathan of the Abyss.
The Council had released one of their final horrors.
Ashen fell from the sky, caught midair by Elara.
The Leviathan was a writhing mass of black flame and drowned gods. Eyes blinked across its skin. Chains floated around it, each bearing a seal.
"Council's not holding back anymore," she said.
Ashen stood, battered but blazing. "Neither will we."
Behind him, every surviving Vanguard soldier, wounded but furious, stood.
The battle had only begun.
And the Phoenix was far from finished.
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