Ashreth's cinders still drifted through the thick, red air like dying fireflies. Around him, flame-born minions were disintegrating, fleeing, or standing frozen, leaderless. Their wills had never been their own. The lieutenant's death had unraveled them.
Lucent Grave hummed low in Dævd's grip. Sparks danced across its edge. His breath was steady, but only barely.
Behind him, the street had collapsed into fractured rubble, burned-out cars, twisted steel, fallen streetlights. Screams echoed farther off, but not near him. Not anymore.
He turned slowly.
Civilians, hundreds, watched from behind barricades of overturned taxis and scorched scaffolding. Some recorded him. Others whispered.
The figure who'd come from the sky and ended the monster with light.
"It's not over yet." Dævd spoke quietly.
He looked up. Storm clouds rolled unnaturally overhead, spiraling like smoke from a funeral pyre. He could feel it. A stronger presence emerging.
Division-7 — Temporary HQ
Monitors flared.
Ashreth's bio-signature was gone. Civilians were panicking. Seismic data registered abnormal tremors beneath the earth, ones that grew stronger with each passing minute.
Agent Rena leaned forward over the central control table. Her eyes locked on a live satellite feed of the scorched battle zone.
"Keep drones on Subject Dævd. I want eyes from every angle. Scan for post-battle radiation. Heat trails. Anything." Rena commanded.
A junior operative turned, sweat beading down his temple.
Operative:
"Ma'am, we've got a subthermal spike east of his position. Energy levels rising, fast."
"Another anomaly?" Rena asked.
Operative:
"Not the same. Bigger."
"The final boss…" she straightened.
She tapped her comms.
"All field units: deploy defensive grids around high civilian zones. Evac priority one. We have a new threat emerging. Move. Now."
Division-7 Field Units – Ground Level
Transport carriers descended. Soldiers with plasma carbines formed walls around evacuating crowds. Holographic shields pulsed up from emergency towers, forming temporary barriers.
And yet, the ground kept shaking.
Out of the smoke to the east, flame returned, not scattered like before, but focused.
A tide of fire.
Trooper (shouting):
"It's them again! Minions! Dozens of them!"
Commander (yelling into comms):
"Where's the strike support?! We're being overrun!"
Suddenly, the skies parted, just slightly and a bolt of lightning fell like a sword.
It struck down five minions in a flash, leaving scorched glass in its wake. When the light faded, Dævd stood at the epicenter, cloaked in the residual pulse of Stormfall Reign.
He didn't speak.
He just charged forward, right into the swarm.
Underground — Irohk's Approach
Irohk felt it. The pulse of energy. The defiance. His branded eye glowed brighter.
"The cub finally bares fangs…"
The last of his embers curled around his fingertips. With Ashreth gone, the next move was his alone.
"Now it begins."
He ascended toward the surface.
Meanwhile, on the frontline… Dævd moved like lightning incarnate.
Lucent Grave flashed in arcs of electric vengeance, cutting through flame-forged beasts with surgical precision. Each strike left glowing, glassy craters in the pavement, sparking with residual energy.
Minions lunged from rooftops. Others surged from sewers and smoke. He weaved between them, his eyes glowing with the faint, divine shimmer of the King's Eyes, perceiving motion, pressure, instinct, even before it happened.
A brute with molten skin slammed down from above.
"Arc Severance." Dævd growled.
Lucent Grave split the beast in a crackling diagonal. The pieces crashed apart mid-air, falling in glowing chunks.
He didn't pause.
He didn't need to.
The suit built by Kade responded with seamless efficiency, absorbing recoil, pulsing energy to his limbs. His boots hovered inches off the ground, driven by faint Aetherian propulsion. Sparks danced at his heels.
"This is nothing," he thought. "Where's the real threat?"
High above the chaos, Agent Rena stood within the Sable-One's floating command bridge, watching multiple live feeds.
Rena (to comms):
"I want all thermal imaging east of quadrant 9B. The last spike didn't come from the minions. There's something deeper… buried."
Operative:
"Ma'am, our sensors are losing lock. The air distortion is messing with heat signatures. And… it's happening again."
The sky over Lagos twisted darker.
Not cloud. Not smoke.
Something else.
A crimson spiral formed overhead, subtly pulsing like a heartbeat. Atmospheric pressure dropped. Gravity distorted. Birds scattered. Glass shattered. Civilians screamed.
"We're not just dealing with flame minions. Something's… sending them." Rena spoke with tension in her voice.
Another officer turned from the console.
"Agent Rena, we've confirmed. The lieutenant's down, but a new energy source just spiked 400% in the underdistrict."
Rena's eyes narrowed.
"He's coming."
From the smoldering ruins of a half-collapsed metro tunnel, molten cracks widened. Dripping flame pooled into shapes. Fire crawled against gravity.
Boots hit ash.
Irohk emerged, bare-chested beneath a long scorched mantle of blackened cloth. His ember-colored dreadlocks swayed like flickering torches. His lone branded eye flared with hellfire.
He looked upward smirking.
"Oh Prince…"
A molten ember lit in his palm and exploded outward, lighting the entire underground in a wave of red.
"I'm here."
Above, Dævd halted mid-motion. He looked to the east. His eyes flickered, as if pierced by something distant… personal.
"…It's him." Dævd said to himself.
He exhaled sharply.
The last wave of minions surrounded him. With one motion, he stabs Lucent Grave to the ground.
"Crown of Storms."
Blue lightning erupted in a dome from his sword outward, flaring upward like divine wrath. The pulse incinerated the last thirty of the lieutenant's flame minions into nothing but ash, scattered on the wind.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the ground shook. From the east, a wave of fire blew through the city like a furnace opening its mouth.
Kade's voice on comms (somewhere distant):
"Dævd… whatever's coming… it's not just another brute."
"I know, I know." Dævd lowered his head.
Then looked toward the horizon.
"He's finally stepped forward." He said to himself.
Dævd shot forward like a bolt of lightning, his figure cracking through the air with a sonic ripple. Lucent Grave was already in his hands, its storm-lit edge howling for vengeance. Irohk didn't flinch.
With a flick of his hand, Irohk parried with a backhanded shockwave into Dævd's incoming strike.
BOOM!
The shockwave tore through the street like a cannonblast, crumbling glass, splitting pavement, and launching Dævd like a ragdoll through the air.
Crash! Crash! CRASH!
He barreled through three buildings, concrete erupting with each impact, before finally skidding across the ruined ground, a line of blood trailing behind him.
Coughing, Dævd struggled onto his knees, blood dripping from his lip, his vision spinning in slow, pulsing rings.
Before he could rise fully…
BOOM.
Irohk appeared out of nowhere, standing over him like a thunderclap.
"Stay down!" Irohk said coldly with a grin.
His ember-glowing fist connected with Dævd's gut, detonating another wave of fiery force. The sheer impact caved in the street beneath them and launched Dævd again, this time even farther.
CRASH!
He exploded through a support pillar and slammed into the charred remains of a parking complex, buried in rubble and smoke. The air trembled with residual energy.
A long, quiet beat followed.
Elsewhere — Rena's Command Post
The live feed from the drone cam glitched, blurred by static and smoke. But the devastation was clear enough.
Buildings collapsed like paper. Civilians scattered. Fires climbed higher than comm towers.
"Zoom in," Rena said sharply, leaning forward.
The technician obeyed. The screen flickered, then stabilized.
They saw it.
Dævd, a blur of light and fury, had just been launched across an intersection, cratering into the ground. Smoke covered half the screen. His sword had flown yards away. A collapsed building groaned behind him.
Irohk stood tall, surrounded by a wall of burning rubble and writhing flame-born minions.
Rena's lips parted, a breath caught in her throat.
"…He's toying with him."
Around her, Division-7 agents stood frozen. No one had words. No one could understand the sheer force they were witnessing.
Rena's eyes narrowed.
"We underestimated this. He's not just a threat. He's an extinction event."
She turned to her team.
"Deploy more squads to the eastern zone. Prioritize civilian corridors. Pull anyone you can out. And someone get me the full kinetic output from that impact. I want to know what we're up against."
Meanwhile — Kade
Smoke coiled around him. His plasma gauntlet pulsed a vivid blue, its core charged and humming. Across his chest, a plasma rifle. His mask, sleek, metallic, visor glowing, scanned the chaos.
Two flame minions lunged at a group of trapped civilians.
Kade moved.
With a roar, he leapt forward, his fist igniting with plasma charge. One punch, the minion exploded in a wave of molten fire.
The other turned, too late.
Kade spun mid-air and blasted its chest with a surge from his palm, disintegrating it with pure Aether-tech energy.
He landed hard, breathing heavy.
Behind him, the civilians stared.
"Move!" he barked. "North alley's clear!"
They obeyed, running. One little boy looked back at Kade in awe.
Kade didn't notice. His eyes were on the sky, now burning red.
A flash in the clouds.
Meteor trails.
The storm wasn't over. It was only getting worse.
From afar, he saw another streak of light, Dævd crashing again, bloodied.
Kade clenched his jaw.
"…Damn it, D."
His gauntlet whined as it overcharged. He looked down at it, then back at the crumbling skyline.
"You better not die on me, kid…" he muttered.
Then sprinted forward into the fire.