He had said it simply.
’...I can destroy hydrogen. But... helium—helium is a stable elent. It cannot be destroyed....’
He paused, feeling it press against the inside of his skull, that truth shaped not in words but in laws. The kind that governed stars. The kind that no empire, no crown, no lineage could rewrite.
"So I can only use.... Boron," he whispered, "to stabilize it."
And so, like a god dressing in mortal skin, he moved.
The sulphuric aura thickened, sizzling against his skin. It wasn’t warmth—it was corrosion, like his very nerves were being eaten by the breath of sothing ancient and wrong. His eyes stung, not from pain, but from the mory of it. That ti in the past...during the dragon attack . The hours—no, seconds—that stretched eternal in Aurora’s realm, watching her link nerve to nerve, soul to tongue, thought to utterance.
She had done it to start her rein on the dragons.
He did it now to end.
He inhaled, though there was nothing to inhale but poison and pressure. The mana burned like molten lead through his throat, stung like acid across his tongue. The words were not just sounds. They were bindings—chains forged in forbidden science, whispered by those who walked above the veil of mortality.
Mortals weren’t ant to speak the language of absolute power.
To link mana from the book to one’s mind—and then to one’s tongue—was like asking a heart to sing calculus, or asking bones to dance across ti. It was not magic. It was precision. And the world had rules.
Rules that said: only one in a billion could attempt it and survive.
Atlas did not survive. He beca.
He spoke.
His tongue, bruised by sulphur and char, moved against reason. The syllable clung to the air, not as sound but as vibration, a hum that echoed across layers of matter:
{Boron}
The world shuddered.
In that infinitesimal second, as the destabilized hydrogen sought to implode the battlefield into white silence, Boron crystallized mid-blast—stabilizing the radioactive chaos. A second? No. It was less. A blink stretched into a divine decision.
But in that one millisecond, a gap had opened.
And Atlas—he didn’t waste it.
He redirected the energy.
His body howled in silence. Veins spasd. Skin threatened to peel. But he hauled the residue. Not with arms. With skill and will. He gave it direction. Purpose. A command, written in agony and intention.
He aid it at the hill.
The far-away hill.
The Empire’s camp.
His heartbeat slowed. Not from exhaustion. From decision.
"...This war..."
He opened his fingers. Released.
The energy flared like a thousand suns compressed into a single filant. A laser of unspeakable brightness. Sound ca second, but light—light—ca first. It roared across the valley, faster than the brain could process grief.
And just like that—
They ceased.
Not burned. Not blasted. Not even killed.
Disintegrated.
The word couldn’t even describe it. They did not have the ti to prey, to think of their loved ones, or bond in so way at their final breath. The light ca, the light took, that was it. There was no ash. No bones. Not even shadow. A gaping absence, like reality itself had flinched away from the bodies that once stood there.
"...is over," Atlas said.
It wasn’t a declaration. It was a sentence.
Aurora—ters away—felt it first. Her defensive barrier, layered in spells older than kingdoms, hiccupped. Not broke. Just—glitched. Sothing new had entered the equation. A particle she hadn’t accounted for. Sothing beyond sulfur, beyond mass, beyond her understanding.
Her head turned.
Slowly.
Eyes wide.
Atlas stood, not as a man, not as a prince.
But as answer.
"...What the actual... fuck... what did you do?" she asked.
There was fear in her voice. Real fear. From a goddess who had not feared in millennia.
Atlas didn’t look at her. Not yet. His gaze was on the sky, and then down, to the place where the war had stopped. A battlefield frozen in reverent terror. The dark night, now replaced with the pale echo of artificial day.
He could feel their stares. Their breathing halts. Their minds—broken.
He saw her.
Elizabeth.
On her knees.
Her silver armor now dimd in reflected ash-light. Her eyes empty. Not of tears. But of knowing. That no matter how many Pris she commanded, no matter how divine her right...
She had lost.
Utterly.
Atlas exhaled.
A steam of mana curled from his lips.
He looked at his palms. The nerves flickering like circuitry. The blood beneath the skin no longer red, but pulsing—luminous. Mana fed into him, through him, from him.
He was not human.
He had left that boundary behind.
He rembered once—he had feared death.
Now he had replaced it.
A breeze curled around his ankles, but it wasn’t wind. It was vacuum—the air trying to rush back into a place where existence had been peeled.
Then ca rlin.
Floating. Gliding. Not with grace—but awe.
He moved toward Atlas, arms slack, face trembling.
Aurora lifted her hand instinctively. Ready to strike.
But rlin didn’t flinch.
He only looked at Atlas.
The Book of the Damned now hovered behind Atlas, pages turning slowly as if acknowledging its true master.
"...you spoke the language," rlin said.
A whisper.
A confession.
"...You spoke the language of science, didn’t you?"
Aurora stepped forward. "....I can end him now."
"No need, my disciple," rlin murmured. "He said it himself. The war is over."
Atlas chuckled.
A low, tired sound. Like thunder that had finally wept.
"Smart man. Who was about to do sothing VERY stupid."
rlin nodded. Voice cracking.
"...Yes. But maybe you—you—can enlighten . No. ...Please. ..Please enlighten . Please—"
He dropped.
rlin, the man who had hovered above kings and councils, dropped to his knees like a child.
"I beg you. .....Atlas Von Roxweld. Please..... Make your disciple."
The silence that followed could have shattered mirrors.
Atlas looked at Aurora.
His eyes—those fractured, glowing eyes—held a simple question.
’This is your master?’
He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.
Aurora looked away.
Atlas exhaled once more. The sll of burnt ozone followed. Like stars being born in his breath.
He raised a hand—not to rlin. Not to Aurora.
But to Eli.
She had not moved.
She had not blinked.
But her body rose. Slowly. Limbs hanging. Hair drifting.
Her face—
It had no defiance left.
"...Sorry, Eli," Atlas whispered. Voice soft. Choked, even. "....You’ll die tonight." He voiced as her neck ca to atlas’s hand.
But his next words roared like judgnt:
"YOUR EMPRESS HAS FAILED YOU!!"
The silence shattered.
Every soldier still standing—friend or foe—flinched.
"SO THAT CAN ONLY AN ONE THING..."
He raised one hand, the one which he held Eli.
Mana spiraled like stormclouds around his wrists. The taste of Boron and Sulfur still lingered in his mouth, bitter and righteous.
"THIS WAR!!!..."
A breath.
One final breath.
"...IS NOW OVER!!!"
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