Chapter 7 - The Shattered Firmament
The shockwave flattened the remaining ancient forests around the base of Mount Vaelen, sending tidal waves of displaced air racing across the valleys.
Inside the defensive dome of glowing runes, Kellan gritted his teeth, his arms trembling as the immense kinetic weight of the celestial bombardment pressed down on his shoulders. The golden symbols across his face flared blindingly bright, and a thin stream of golden light trickled from his nose. The sheer pressure was immense, threatening to tear his mortal frame apart from the inside out.
“He can’t hold it!” Oakhaven screamed over the roar of the impact, pressing his face into the ash. “The core is cracking! The mountain will fall!”
"Not yet," Kellan whispered, his vision swimming with white-hot spots of light.
He thought of his mother, huddled in their small stone hut down in the lower quarters of Aethelgard, praying for a miracle she thought would never come. He thought of all the families in the city below, sleeping under a false peace, ignorant of the cosmic slaughter happening just above their heads. They deserved a real tomorrow. Not a stolen one.
With a sudden, explosive roar, Kellan pushed past his limits.
The amber light pulsing beneath his skin turned blindingly incandescent. He thrust his hands upward, piercing through his own defensive dome.
"Get out of our sky!"
The Colossus of Ouros responded with terrifying speed. The stone giant lunged upward, its massive hands grabbing the multi-ringed warden by its swirling halo of silver rings. With a deafening shriek of tearing metal and collapsing dimensions, the stone titan ripped the celestial leader in half, casting its shattered fragments back through the cosmic fracture.
The sight sent immediate panic through the rest of the celestial host.
“THE WARDEN IS FALLEN! RETREAT! RETREAT!”
The remaining entities scrambled backward, their disciplined formation dissolving into a chaotic rout as they fled through the closing tear in the atmosphere.
Kellan kept his hands raised, channeling the remaining surge of the mountain's core directly into the fracture. The glowing runes along the edges of the tear expanded rapidly, weaving a dense, impenetrable web of golden energy across the sky.
Crack. Snap. Seal.
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With one final, thunderous pulse of light, the fracture snapped shut.
The sky above Mount Vaelen instantly cleared. The stars—real, distant, peaceful stars—shone down through a quiet, unblemished night for the first time in ten thousand years.
