The halberd of suns and the blade of black lightning clashed again, and again, until the sky became nothing but rifts and firestorms. Each impact was a calamity; each spark a fallen star.
The Sovereign pressed downward, every blow radiating the weight of empires. His halberd's arcs carved burning crescents into the void, each swing trailing entire rivers of flame. His voice boomed with a cruel finality:
"Your defiance will not outlast eternity!"
Kael met him, step for step, strike for strike, though every muscle screamed under the strain. His crimson aura writhed like a storm made flesh. Ashrend sang as it cut through flame, its black lightning unraveling the Sovereign's decree of fire.
But the strain was monumental. Every clash tore new wounds into Kael's flesh. His left arm bled freely, his ribs screamed with fractures. And still, he refused to falter.
Below, his companions watched in horrified awe—Serenya clutching her staff until her knuckles bled, Darius gripping his blade though he knew it was useless against such gods, and Lyra whispering prayers that wavered between hope and despair.
"Kael…" Serenya breathed, voice trembling, "if you fall—there is no world left for us."
Above, the Sovereign gathered flame into his halberd for a final, annihilating strike. The weapon pulsed with solar fury, brighter than dawn.
"Then let the world see its end."
He struck.
Kael's storm bent, shuddered, nearly shattered under the weight of the blow. His knees buckled. The sky screamed. The ocean below rose in a wall a hundred leagues high.
But Kael's eyes blazed crimson through the storm. His voice thundered with the fury of the forsaken:
"I… AM NOT… DONE!"
He let the storm devour him wholly. Black lightning poured through every vein, his aura no longer a mantle but a tempest incarnate. Ashrend split the air with a shriek as Kael met the Sovereign's final decree with a storm greater still.
The clash erupted—storm against sun, darkness against flame.