Screams tore through the park as the churning orb of blood, unleashed by Anele, rose higher. Its mass was now vast enough to blot out the sun, drowning the entire district in a dark crimson glow.
It hung in the sky like an open wound, pulsing with a slow, monstrous rhythm. Its grotesque surface writhed like a beast barely caged. Thick veins writhed beneath the skin, crawling like living serpents. From its surface, massive tendrils whipped through the air, desperate to break free.
And within that churning red, faces formed, thousands of them, warped from flesh and straining against the pull. They twisted in agony, some resembling children, others elders. Eyes bulged; cheeks split wide, revealing raw gums and bone. Some vanished instantly, as though rejected by the mass, while others lingered, recognizable for a heartbeat before melting into the tide. The countless mouths screamed in a chorus of torment, their cries echoing from the crimson core like a mourning god flayed open.
An aura of dread spread out from the orb like an advancing stormfront, seeping into the hearts of everyone nearby and sending them bolting in every direction. People crashed into one another, some stumbling, others falling and injuring themselves in their desperate flight. Cars screeched to life as panicked drivers slammed doors and floored the accelerator, desperate to escape the encroaching horror. Some even abandoned their children, turning their backs to flee alone.
Then, the true horror began.
Those injured in the chaos, scraped knees, gashed foreheads, split lips, felt it first. Their wounds bled... but the blood didn't fall. Instead, it rose from their bodies in thin, trembling streams, lifting into the air as if summoned. At first, only fragile threads escaped, drifting upward. Then more blood began to flow, faster now, spilling out in steady streams, until the victims collapsed, completely drained of all the blood within them.
No matter how small the wound, any opening was enough; every drop of blood was pulled free, drawn out relentlessly by an unseen force.
A teenager tripped over a bicycle and screamed. Before he could sit up, the blood from his knee siphoned out in a painful jet, leaving him limp and cold.
A woman shielding her baby cried out as a sharp elbow hit her cheek. The small split under her eye flared, then emptied. Her knees buckled.
It wasn't just blood. It was life being pulled from them. And once it started, there was no stopping it.
Within moments, bodies began to collapse by the hundreds, each one pale, hollow, and lifeless.
Their blood spiraled upward into the sky toward the orb, where it was consumed and added to the crimson storm now stretching above District 6.
"We need to get out of here, Rhesa!" Simon shouted, clutching his youngest by the wrist. His voice was ragged and desperate. "We have to get the kids to safety, now!"
But Rhesa didn't move. She turned to him slowly, her hands coming together with practiced precision, like a ritual or the start of a prayer.
Her voice was unnervingly calm.
"We can't, Simon. We can't."
She glanced down at Ren and Anya, her eyes full of grief.
"Don't worry. I'll protect you."
Simon blinked. The way she said it chilled him.
'What the hell is happening?'
Nothing made sense anymore. Why wasn't she panicking? Why did her voice sound so calm, almost practiced, while the sky screamed and people were collapsing all around them?
He was still thinking this when the next shift came.
The orb in the sky flattened and spread, unfurling like a massive curtain of blood across the entire district. In less than a minute, a roiling crimson veil blanketed the sky, swallowing the clouds behind it.
Those who hadn't escaped by now screamed at the sky as blood began to rain from the veil in thin, hissing needles. The liquid struck not to kill, but to maim, cuts and bruises blossoming across backs, arms, and scalps. Flesh split, and every drop of blood that spilled was stolen, yanked upward in crimson streams to feed the veil above.
As people screamed and died all around her, Rhesa finally began to move. A deep crack rang out as a car's windshield shattered. Slowly, the vehicle began to rise. Another followed. Then another. One by one, dozens of cars lifted into the air, as if gravity had simply stopped. They hung for a beat, then crumpled violently, imploding into compact steel blocks.
Some of the cars still had people inside, fleeing the city or hiding from the needle-like rain falling from the veil above. They didn't even have time to escape. They screamed as the metal caved in around them, crushing their bodies and killing them all. Their blood, too, was taken, drawn upward through shattered glass to feed Anele's red domain.
But it wasn't just the cars. Everything metal began to groan and twist. Screws wrenched free from doorframes. Streetlights snapped backward like broken spears. Scaffolding peeled off buildings like molting skin. Every scrap of metal in the district was pulled into the sky, drawn toward something unseen.
And at the center of it all stood Rhesa. Her hands were joined together, her eyes half-lidded as if in prayer. Her chestnut hair whipped around her face in the rising current. Metal spun around her and around the entire district, drawn into the sky like iron filings toward a lodestone.
Her domain of steel, the one she ruled, was finally awakening.
Buildings began to collapse, one after another. The ground shook. Concrete split. Reinforcement rods screamed as they tore from their housings. Rooftops plunged downward like guillotines. Entire families were buried. People ran, only to fall, be crushed, or ripped apart by flying shrapnel. The blood of the fallen spiraled upward like thread pulled by invisible fingers.
Then Rhesa whispered, "Warden's Carapace."
The words slipped into the air, and the air pulsed.
Behind her, some of the metal in the air began to churn, spinning like a storm of razors. Then they descended, slamming into the ground and stacking around Simon, Ren, and Anya. Chunks snapped into orbit, bending and fusing into shape. A shield took form, layer by layer, until the dome sealed shut like a turtle's shell, layered, unyielding, and absolute.
Rhesa took a trembling breath. Her hands clenched tighter, knuckles pale against each other, as if in desperate prayer.
Then the rest of the metal, every scrap across a fifteen-mile radius, shrieked and surged toward her. It spiraled overhead, waiting for her command.
She drew in a deep breath and hesitated. The resonant art she was about to invoke… she had never used it before. Not even once.
This was her Dominion Technique, invoked only by those who had reached the Fifth Stage of power. And like hers, all Dominion Techniques were high-tier by nature and catastrophes by design.
But now, she had no other choice.
Anele had already unleashed his Throne of the Bleeding Sky, a dominion forged from agony, suspended in clouds that wept blood.
It fed on suffering. It grew with every heartbeat. A sky-wide veil of carnage, draped across the heavens like the skin of a slain god, dripping red and seething with malice.
To face that kind of darkness, she would have to summon her own catastrophe, born not from ambition but from the desperation to survive.
Rhesa sighed, then slowly, almost reverently, she whispered:
"Throne of the Iron Gospel."
The moment the words left her lips, the air fractured.
The swirling metal above condensed into three distinct whirlwinds, each one shrieking with rotational force. Sparks sprayed as rusted axles collided with fresh alloy, as old rail joints fused seamlessly with cabling and carbonized plating.
Then they took form.
The first, a colossal knight fifty meters tall, had armor that was a jagged patchwork of rail steel and train hulls. Its lance, forged from sharpened girders and anchored with coiled wire, let out a high-pitched shriek as it slashed the air, the sound alone enough to rattle windows across the district.
Beside it, a shieldbearer rose, thirty meters tall, squat and broad. Its torso was plated with welded train doors, and its left arm supported a massive tower shield, its surface engraved with pulsing runes etched in glowing alloy. As it shifted, magnetic pulses hummed beneath its joints, sending flickers of blue light across its frame.
Behind them, a towering archer unfolded from a tangle of cables and scaffold rods. Its bow was strung with taut, sparking wire, and its arrow, composed of fused copper rail and neon filament, glowed with a crackling magnetic charge. The construct stood still, aiming toward the horizon, as if already anticipating a threat not yet visible.
Above them, more metal hovered, rails, cars, wiring, plates caught in the swirling field. They orbited slowly, rotating with eerie precision, forming concentric rings in the sky, waiting for a command.
Rhesa staggered, her head pounding and blood trickling from her nose.
Her vessel was burning out.
This technique…this was the one that had earned her the title of Kyrios. It consumed an extraordinary amount of Vira. Dangerous, even.
Still, she stood firm.
Across the ruined park, Anele tilted his head, eyes wide with something disturbingly close to reverence.
"The Throne of the Iron Gospel," he murmured, almost in awe.
"I've heard it's devastating. I've always wanted to see what it could do."
He grinned. A wicked thing.
"Today's going to be fun."
Above him, the Blood Sky convulsed.
Three massive drops detached from its mass and fell toward him, streaking down like meteors. They struck him and burst.
Two of them spread behind him, forming jagged, asymmetrical wings made of writhing blood.
The third twisted in his grip, shaping itself into a massive, double-curved scythe that hissed with vaporized vitae.
He exhaled slowly.
"This is the end for you, Rhesa," he snarled, breathless with pleasure. "I've never liked you. Not your voice. Not your face. Not your damn throne."
He laughed.
"And today, oh today, I'm going to tear your dominion apart. Limb by limb. Plate by plate. Until there's nothing left of you but the echo."
Then he launched into the sky, wings flaring wide, blood trailing behind him like ink spilled in water.
Twenty meters up, he roared:
"Hands of Divine Judgment!"
And the sky split open.