The skies above the Cenotaph Wild Lands burned brighter than they had in eons.
Clouds once murky with the residue of Ancient Slumber parted like shy curtains, revealing a crystal do of radiant blue.
The land itself, still scarred and trembling, seed to inhale. As if waking from a nightmare it dared not recount. Down below, the gnarled forests and jagged crags of the Cenotaph Wild Lands teed with unease.
Evolutius Beasts- great towering things of fang and muscle- screeched with primal fear, their massive bodies curling in submission as their eyes turned upward.
Because at this mont above them soared legions of Phoenixes and Atlantians, their forms regal and their march furious.
A procession!
A gathering of fla and tide, of war and wrath!
Leading the charge was Solmyron, the Golden Pyre, the only remaining Ruler of the Acheron Phoenix Assembly.
His massive wings blazed with gold and vermillion fla, each beat of them splitting the winds apart. The skies rippled in heat where he passed, his burning eyes fixed on the horizon.
Next to him flew colossal Atlantian Behemoths and Atlantians, each bearing ancient armor along their scaled hides, tridents of living water coiled within their grasp. At his rear, thousands followed.
Their destination had shifted.
Neither the Everburn Aerie Continent or the Thalassphere Arx of the Atlantians could be located. Their ancient holands, once tethered to the Plane with unshakeable permanence, had beco phantoms.
And so they aid for the Lands of the Mythical Dragons.
Because in numbers, even despair could be made manageable!
Then, they could plan on how to decimate the vile human, Achilles Maxwell!
This was thr thought and idea.
But...
But then...everything changed.
HUUM!
A pulse. A low, thrumming resonance.
Then, out of nowhere, the world grew dim.
The sky, once wide and open, closed.
A blanket of shadow folded across the heavens. Not the emptiness of night, but a velvety, smothering darkness, stitched at its edges with crimson light- a hue so foreign and ancient that every Phoenix wing faltered. Every Atlantians grew still!
The brightness in the sky was stolen.
Solmyron’s flas wavered. His wide wings beat once, arresting his montum as he stared into the abyss forming above.
This power...he knew it!
He recognized it.
It coiled around him like the whisper. A power he had once bound himself to. A power he had trusted when everything else faltered!
"...Why?" he mouthed softly, confusion rising.
And then...a booming impact rained down as an answer.
BOOM!
A flash.
Then a wave.
The darkness trembled.
From within, Gamma Radiation blood in bursts, devouring everything in its path.
Phoenixes scread, Atlantians thrashed- yet their cries never left their throats.
Their minds burned out before their bodies fell.
Those below Astral Core Ascension were stripped of life within heartbeats.
Thousands.
Thousands!
All gone.
Solmyron watched their glowing bodies dim as if the stars themselves were being plucked from the heavens.
His mind buzzed with shock and rage and dread!
Only a few remained- himself and a sparse dozen, hovering in fractured formations, eyes filled with unspeakable dread.
"Why?!" Solmyron bellowed, voice cracking with fire and pain. "You were the oldest of us! The most powerful Ancient! Why now?!"
Black tentacles, slick and endless, slithered from the darkness above, writhing through the air with hypnotic grace. They wrapped around the still-warm bodies of Phoenixes and Atlantians alike, dragging them away in silence.
"We followed you," Solmyron roared. "We allied for peace. For unity!" His voice cracked. "What are we to you?!"
Then, the sky sighed.
It wasn’t wind or voice, and instead a slow, dragging pressure. And from the center of the darkness, he spoke.
The voice of the Primordial Light of Darkness was not cruel. It was tired. It was inevitable.
"Sotis, Solmyron... the why does not matter."
The skies trembled as the words settled like ash.
"Sotis, things simply are. And now... all those tethered to must be removed from the board. Sealing Azuryan’s mories alone was hard enough..."
...!
A silence followed.
Then...
BOOM!
The sky exploded once more.
Spear-like torrents of Gamma Radiation scread downward in a storm, sharp as daggers of light, final as death. Solmyron’s body lit up with golden fla, his wings spreading wide as he tried to cover those beside him.
But it was futile.
The lances of annihilation pierced through them like paper.
No screams. No cries.
The Phoenixes fell like feathers, burning. The Atlantians shattered like waves breaking on an empty shore.
Solmyron’s body cracked open.
And still... silence.
"..."
Above the Wild Lands, the darkness rumbled.
It moved, not just here, and instead also in other corners of the Plane. The veil of shadows pulled across lands far and wide, consuming the used, the bound, the connected.
The cleanup had begun!
---
Far to the west.
Above the battered ruins of the Lunaris Colony Dynasty’s Capital, Achilles stood in stillness.
His Primordium Evolutius Suit shimred with a silent wind, purple-gold and obsidian threads fluttering along his arms as if alive. The sun shone above, but a heaviness hung in the air. Not the weight of power.
The weight of knowing.
Beneath his feet, the sprawling city began to change. Runescriptures, woven from his authority and will, coursed through the ground, outlining massive sigils beneath the Capital’s foundations. They glowed faintly, preparing the scaffolding for what would beco another skyward Kingdom. Another piece of kand risen to the skies.
A new seat for his Adrastia Continent!
But Achilles’ gaze was not on the structure. It was on the people.
The humans within.
His spores had long since spread throughout the city, drifting like invisible pollen. They entered lungs and veins, unnoticed.
They carried no malice- only eyes.
mories flooded into him.
A thousand stories.
A thousand truths!
He watched the Overseers, those who stood by while the Lunaris Throne ordered slaughter.
He watched Commanders, those who carried out the executions and called them cleansing.
He watched n and won who defiled, destroyed, and delighted in it.
They had done it for power. For fear. For favor.
Or for nothing at all!
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