The Sovereign pressed Kael to his knees. His sword bore down, black and violet fire dripping from its edge, drowning the battlefield in annihilation.
Kael's gauntlets cracked. His blade screamed under the weight. His own bones threatened to splinter.
"Your defiance ends here," the Sovereign declared, voice echoing like a decree across time itself. "All things bend. All things kneel."
For a heartbeat, Kael's strength wavered. The world seemed to collapse inward. His vision swam with blood and smoke.
And then—he remembered.
The broken walls of Rivenhart Manor. The screams of his kin. The corpses of his brothers in arms. The faces of his companions who had bled and burned to stand at his side. The mentor who had lifted him from ruin. The endless nights carrying their hopes on his shoulders.
Something within him cracked.
Not in defeat.
In liberation.
The red storm around him collapsed inward, drawing into his chest, then surged outward with a roar that split heaven from earth. Black lightning fused with crimson fire, and his body blazed with an aura so intense it tore holes in reality. His eyes burned not just red, but with a light deeper—ancient and sovereign in itself.
The Sovereign faltered. For the first time in centuries, his grip trembled.
"…Impossible."
Kael rose to his feet, pressing back against the crushing blade, forcing it upward inch by inch. His voice thundered with the storm that now lived inside him.
"I am not your subject."
His power surged, blowing back the Sovereign's aura like a shattered tide.
"I am not your heir."
He raised his greatsword high, crimson lightning spiraling into a single blinding arc.
"I am Kael Rivenhart—Crimson Sovereign!"
With one swing, he cleaved through the Sovereign's blade. Black steel screamed as it split in two, the fragments dissolving into ash.
The Sovereign staggered back, his chest now bared. Kael's lightning-laced strike followed through, carving deep across the tyrant's body. Crimson fire poured into the wound, burning not flesh, but the essence of eternity itself.
The Sovereign gasped, disbelief twisting his features. He reached out, as though to clutch at the world slipping from his grip.
"I… forged an empire… with my blood…"
Kael's blade pierced his heart.
"Now fall with it."
The battlefield detonated in a pillar of crimson and black radiance, so vast it tore clouds from the heavens. When the light receded, the Sovereign's body collapsed, fading into dust upon the scorched earth.
Silence followed.
Every soldier, every companion, every shadow… all stared at Kael standing alone amid the ruin, crimson lightning still sparking across his body, eyes blazing like two suns of blood.
The Sovereign was dead.