The rift widened above the Vale of Mournroots, its edges crackling with threads of fractured starlight. A wound in the firmament one not born of mortal hands, but of sovereign will. Through it, old truths began to bleed once more into the world.
From within that gash in the sky came a sound a heartbeat forged from thunder and sorrow.
Aralya's expression darkened. "They come."
Zeirion did not move. His eyes, ancient and fathomless, remained fixed upon the rift.
And then it stepped through.
The Herald of Broken Skies.
Its wings were woven of shattered constellations, its body half-metal, half-divine bone. It bore no mouth, only a halo of ever-screaming souls circling its crown. Once, it had been the right hand of the Pale Mirror now it served as the tip of the coalition's spear, the embodiment of every fear the realms had sewn into myth.
As it descended, the earth wept. The Vale cracked open, exhaling ancient rot.
Zeirion raised a single hand.
Behind him, the Obsidian Host his resurrected vanguard emerged from the ethereal rifts. Warriors of legend who had once died in his name, now drawn back by the power of the Sovereign's mark.
Steel sang.
Spells ignited.
And Aralya, ever his equal, stepped forward. "I will meet the Herald," she said.
He turned. "It seeks me."
"And it will find me first."
Without waiting, she vanished into light, ascending to meet the abomination midair.
What followed was no duel it was a celestial reckoning. Moonlight blades against void-fire talons. The sky split with every clash, raining stardust and shadow across the earth.
Zeirion watched, silent. For though he trusted her strength, he knew this was but the beginning.
Far above, in the shattered ruins of the Heavenspire, eyes watched. A forgotten force stirred. And in a language no realm remembered, a single prophecy was whispered:
"When the moon defies the sky, and the Sovereign remains still, the end of silence will begin."
Aralya's form shimmered as she ascended no wings, no divine flight granted by favor, but pure will bent into grace. Where the Herald brought screams and celestial ruin, she answered with silence and steel. Her blade, Vaelara, carved from starlight distilled in sorrow, sang through the heavens.
The Herald struck first.
A spiral of void-flame twisted from its clawed arm, hurtling like a comet wreathed in screams. Aralya bent around it midair, one foot grazing open wind, and countered with a sweep that sundered cloud and sky alike. The strike glanced off the Herald's outer shell, but not without impact a cascade of broken starlight fell behind them like meteors.
Below, the earth reacted. Trees twisted away. Rivers boiled. Even time itself wavered at the clash of such magnitude.
The soldiers in the coalition's camp Stormborn, Hollowblood, and Flamebound alike watched with widened eyes and trembling souls. Their champion was divine. But the woman defying him was something else entirely.
She was sovereign's shadow. And sovereign's equal.
Zeirion, still upon the jagged ridge, stepped forward as the torn sky pulsed like a wound refusing to heal.
A whisper reached him.
No voice. No sound. Just a knowing.
The Pale Mirror watched.
And worse still she stirred.
The world shifted. Reality cracked at its edges.
Above, the Herald surged, abandoning restraint. Its wings unfurled fully now, revealing galaxies caged in its veins. It spoke for the first time not with words, but with memory. With every scream of every world it had devoured. A storm of remembrance aimed directly at Aralya's soul.
She faltered, for a heartbeat.
A heartbeat was enough.
The Herald struck.
A blow like a thousand suns colliding slammed into her, sending her spiraling through miles of air, into a mountain's edge. The peak crumbled. Valleys shuddered.
"Aralya" Zeirion's voice shattered the silence.
And for the first time in an age, he moved with urgency.
He vanished from the ridge.
Reappeared mid-air between her and the Herald.
The sky froze.
Eclipsion the blade of sovereign fate rose.
With one swing, he cleaved the Herald's voice in half. Not its body its voice. Its essence. The scream died mid-thought. Light and darkness buckled.
And the heavens knelt.
The Herald reeled.
Zeirion did not.
He caught Aralya mid-fall, cradling her against him as if she were made of starlight and silence.
Her eyes opened. "You moved."
"I had to."
She smiled. "Took you long enough."
He turned to the Herald. Its wings had begun to mend. But it was too late.
The Sovereign had entered the battlefield.
And the skies themselves had judged the outcome.