"My Lady, it's not looking great." Darfin's voice was calm, but his jaw was clenched as he stood atop the blood-slick cliffs that overlooked the chaos below. The scent of scorched earth, ash, and burning flesh clung to the air like a curse. "Xutag is struggling against their new giant general, while Tara and Lucy are barely holding their own. The outcome of their fight is still unclear."
He paused, the words lingering in the space between him and the ethereal projection before him. The image of Seraphine floated just above the cliff's edge, glowing faintly with divine energy, her silver hair dancing in some unfelt wind. Despite the grim report, her expression didn't waver.
"We will win, Darfin," she said, her voice soft yet unshakable. "We have to."
Then she smiled, bright as the magic flares that lit up the sky in the distance, but he saw it. Behind the light was sorrow—a grief she refused to speak, tucked beneath the weight of command and divinity.
Darfin lowered his eyes, heart tightening in his chest. 'My Lady… it had to be done. Do not torment yourself over their lives.'
But he didn't voice the thought. He bowed, letting his long blonde hair spill over his face like a curtain to hide the shadow in his eyes.
"Yes, my lady. We will."
As the projection faded into glimmering particles, swallowed by the ambient magic in the air, Darfin turned to the soldiers gathered near the rear line. The obsidian beneath their feet radiated faint heat, still warm from the fire magic cast not long ago, and the coppery tang of blood never left his tongue.
"Llarm, give me an update on the battlefield," he ordered.
He regretted it the second his eyes landed on him.
On the far right side of the elven backline, Llarm stood—again—in that absurd hero pose. One arm up, chest out, chin high. His green cloak fluttered dramatically even though the wind had long died down.
Darfin groaned audibly.
"Llarm, stop doing that ridiculous pose right now and give me an update before I throw you into the front lines myself!"
Llarm jolted upright as if electrocuted, then snapped into a stiff salute, his expression paling with panic.
"S-Sir!" he stammered. "Both sides are evenly matched. Approximately 4,000 soldiers are on the field in total. About a hundred giants, five hundred ogres, two thousand elves, and the rest are beastkin and dragonkin."
He wiped his forehead with a trembling hand, clearing the sweat that clung to his skin from both heat and fear. "Oh, and—uh—the old elf you asked me to keep tabs on? He's fighting Gindu now."
Darfin's breath caught.
'What?' The words echoed in his mind as his pulse spiked. 'Why would the old bastard engage Gindu?'
The "old bastard" was none other than Vorn—the legendary elven general under Ithriel's command. A ghost of countless battlefields. A monster clad in grace.
"Llarm," Darfin said sharply, forcing steel into his tone, "get Gindu out of there. Now."
"Yes, sir!" Llarm turned, channeling a gust of wind to boost himself toward the left flank.
Darfin's thoughts spiraled as he clenched his fists behind his back.
'That man is a relic—a storm wrapped in skin. But he doesn't fight without purpose. If he's joined the battle, then something's shifted. Has he gone mad? Or worse… has he finally grown tired of mercy?'
The truth was, Vorn had served the gods longer than Darfin himself. He was the only soldier left who had.
A phantom of war.
Over the centuries, Vorn had built a reputation forged in absolute terror. No general dared challenge him unless commanded, just as Darfin had been instructed to do when the time came.
That's why Darfin remained at the back for now. Not out of fear, but preparation.
'I'm waiting for you, old man, Darfin thought, eyes narrowing at the shifting lines on the battlefield. When you make your move, I'll be there to end you.'
'I will not let you down, my lady.'
Yet even now, doubt clawed at the edges of his resolve. Could he truly win?
Vorn's power dwarfed his own—that much was certain. But power wasn't everything on the battlefield. Darfin had spent centuries proving that very fact.
Still, the taste of fear crept onto his tongue like bitter wine.
With a sharp breath, he turned his eyes toward the left flank where the healers operated.
"Alia!" he called, voice cutting through the crackle of elemental spells and the ceaseless cries of war. "Give me an update!"
Wind, spatial magic, and other forms of utility spells swirled across the field. Injured soldiers vanished from the blood-drenched obsidian and reappeared atop the cliff in pulses of magic, carried to safety by Seraphine's elite mages.
One such wounded soul, a young beastkin boy, no older than fifteen, lay before Alia with a missing arm and deep gashes torn across his chest. Blood soaked the rocks beneath him, but he wasn't crying.
Alia, her youthful face stoic and focused, pressed her glowing green palm against his side. Light spilled from her hand, and under its radiance, flesh and bone began to knit themselves back together.
She didn't look up.
"It's going alright," she said flatly, her tone as emotionless as a statue. Her long blonde hair blew in the breeze, the only sign she was alive at all.
Darfin sighed internally.
'We need to work on her communication skills,' he thought for the hundredth time that day.
"Got it," he said. "Keep it up."
Then, slowly, he turned his gaze back to the hellish battlefield spread out before him.
The night raged on—lit by fireballs, lightning strikes, and war cries that tore through the obsidian air like screams of the damned.
And somewhere in that chaos, the next move was waiting to be made.
Then, out of nowhere, he saw it.
A tremor passed through the obsidian earth beneath Darfin's boots, subtle at first, like the whisper of something massive moving in the distance. His sharp elven eyes scanned the horizon, following the wave of terrified gasps rippling across the battlefield. And then, he saw the shadow.
It stretched far across the blackened terrain, swallowing soldiers from both sides as the growing darkness enveloped them. The source loomed above the smoke and fire—a figure falling from the heavens like a collapsing mountain.
Xutag.
His colossal form, over three hundred feet tall, twisted unnaturally as it dropped toward the field, blood pouring in thick rivers from the jagged stump where his head once sat. The scent of burnt flesh and iron grew heavier in Darfin's nose, mixing with something bitter—giant blood, ancient and full of magic, tainting the very air.
Gasps turned to screams.
"Move! Get out of the way!" voices cried, small beneath the shadow of death.
Xutag's severed head landed first with a gut-churning crack, smashing a section of earth into a crater and sending shards of obsidian flying like shrapnel. Then, a heartbeat later, the rest of his titanic body slammed into the ground with an impact so powerful it shook the cliff beneath Darfin, knocking several soldiers off their feet.
A shockwave of dust, wind, and raw mana surged outward from the crash site, slamming into Darfin's cloak and nearly forcing him to step back. He braced himself with one arm over his face as the wind howled past.
Foot soldiers beneath the falling body were either crushed instantly or flung by the resulting quake. It was impossible to tell friend from foe under the falling debris.
Darfin's eyes widened, jaw tightening as he surveyed the devastation below.
'Xutag is dead… just like that?'