Onlookers gasped.
Kael staggered backward, voice trembling:
"What… what is that power…?"
Lady Sera fell to her knees, eyes wide with horror:
"No mortal should wield that."
The quiet, oppressive stillness of destruction hung in the air—a silence so profound that even the cracks in the ground seemed to hold their breath.
And then—
BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
A sound shattered the air like the wail of a dying beast—sharp, brutal, and relentless.
It wasn't a regular evacuation alarm. It wasn't the typical siren one would hear in times of disaster.
This was different. It was deafening.
A monstrous, mechanical howl that seemed to seep into every fiber of the earth itself. The kind of sound that made the skin crawl and the heart drop into your stomach. It echoed through the ruin of House Ignar's estate and beyond, carrying for miles.
The sound was jagged. Disjointed.
KRAAAAAAAAK—KRRRRK—KREEEEEEE!
And then… it hit.
The unmistakable message that none of the living could ignore.
"ATTENTION: HUMANITY'S SEVEN MONARCHS INBOUND. EVACUATION PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN VOIDED. ALL UNITS REPORT TO DEFENSIVE POSITIONS."
The ground vibrated with the weight of the message—its deep, penetrating force resonating with the very bones of those who heard it. Those who had felt invincible, those who had watched as Klaus wiped the Pyreborn Execrants from existence—now felt the cold hands of dread grip their hearts.
For those who knew, it was the sound of finality.
It wasn't the arrival of another alien faction. It wasn't an alert about reinforcements.
It was a call that only meant one thing—the arrival of the Monarchs.
The Seven Monarchs were humanity's last line of defense against a far more ancient and dangerous power. They were not gods, not yet—but they were the closest things to it. The seven individuals who held the power to shape reality itself, chosen from across the last remnants of mankind's most revered bloodlines.
And their arrival was the death knell.
For House Ignar. For the Execrants. For Klaus.
The very air felt thick—charged with a terrible electricity.
The remaining Monarchs were coming.
There were no evacuations, no retreats.
The gates of the city, the ones meant to protect humanity from the outside, were not designed to withstand the Monarchs.
The world was about to know what true apocalypse meant.
---
Klaus lay still—his body broken, limbs twisted, breaths shallow—but something stirred in him. Deep within his core, a burning hatred flickered. A primal desire to stand once more and tear apart everything in his path.
His body spasmed—jerking violently—but his eyes remained closed, a cold smile playing on his lips.
A silent monument of defiance.
Lady Sera Ignar sobbed uncontrollably on the distant ridge.
Kael Ignar, the Fire Heir, fell back against a shattered wall, eyes wide in horror.
"I-It can't be…" he whispered. "They are sending the remaining Monarchs…"
Elsewhere on the edge of the ruin
Varion Ignar stood, blood running down his temple, armor cracked and dimming with each breath. His flames were gone. His divine radiance snuffed out. He barely had the strength to stand.
His wife, Lady Sera, clutched his trembling arm. Kael stood beside them, expression pale, eyes wide and unblinking.
Sera – barely a whisper: "Varion… what… what have we done…?"
Kael – his voice breaking: "This isn't a battlefield. It's… it's hell."
Varion said nothing.
His gaze swept across the estate—no, the wound in reality. There was no more House Ignar. Only ruins, flame, and death. He saw what remained of the Execrants—his personal gods of war—sprawled like discarded corpses. He saw towers melted into slag. Blood sprayed across runes older than kingdoms.
A silence grew in Varion's mind, deafening.. His knees buckled slightly.
Varion's thoughts ran : "The alarm… it rang… and the source… wasn't a war. It wasn't a weapon."
"It was him."
"Just one man."
He turned his gaze skyward. The runes in the atmosphere were pulsing—millions of magical inscriptions, etched into the world's defense grid generations ago by the Monarchs. An omniscient detection system that sensed cataclysms, invasion-level threats… beings too powerful to be left unchecked.
They had scanned the battlefield.
They had scanned him.
And still—they rang the alarm for Klaus. Klaus alone.
"The detection runes measure ambient pressure, elemental disruption, soul harmonics. They shouldn't be able to misfire…"
"But they rang. They screamed."
"He didn't just match us."
"He shattered the scale."
Varion stared into the smoke—toward that lone figure, wind and lightning writhing around his body like chained gods.
His voice cracked, but it was reverent. Awed.
Varion softly whispered: "He's not a warrior. Not even a weapon."
"He's an anomaly."