The sky above Havenfall was no longer a sky.
It was a wound.
Violet fire bled across the heavens in rivers, and every drop that struck the ground birthed screaming voids that devoured stone, tree, and flesh alike. The Nine Harbingers hovered at the cardinal points of the valley like living eclipses, their cloaks of broken moons writhing with captured starlight.
Xavier stood at the centre of the ridge, barefoot on frost-rimed rock, Roshan blazing in his right hand. The eight-pointed scar over his heart had torn wider. Through the fissure, violet light pulsed in perfect rhythm with the god's laughter inside his skull.
Lyra flanked him on the left, claws dripping silver-white fire.
Lucian on the right, Wrath's End now a towering executioner's blade of molten rune-steel.
Zamiel behind them, gauntlets blazing, violet eyes bleeding light as he held a dome ward the size of the entire valley. The strain was already killing him—blood ran from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes—but he did not drop it.
Below, three thousand wolves of Havenfall formed ragged battle lines. They were not soldiers. They were survivors, refugees, children who had lost packs, omegas who had hidden for centuries. Tonight they were an army because there was nowhere left to run.
The first Harbinger—the woman with the shifting face—spoke, and the valley itself trembled.
"Give us the vessel, and the rest may live as cattle."
Xavier answered by raising Roshan.
The blade screamed. Half white fire, half violet void.
And the siege began.
Hour One – The Eastern Wall
The Harbinger called Veyra descended like a falling moon.
Where her feet touched the earth, reality inverted. Wolves found themselves running on the sky while the ground became a ceiling of teeth. Gravity tore bodies apart.
Lucian met her alone.
He leapt three hundred feet straight up, Wrath's End carving a white crescent that severed the inverted sky. Gravity snapped back. Dozens of wolves fell—alive—caught by omegas with makeshift gliders of leather and bone.
Lucian landed in front of Veyra.
She smiled with a mouth that opened sideways.
He smiled back with too many fangs.
And charged.
Their duel shook the valley. Every blow from Wrath's End carved glowing scars across reality itself. Veyra bled starlight and laughed, regenerating faster than he could cut. Lucian fought like a man who had nothing left to lose except the omega waiting behind him.
Hour Two – The Forge District
Zamiel's ward flickered.
A second Harbinger, a towering figure of rusted chains and screaming faces, punched straight through the dome. The impact drove Zamiel to his knees, gauntlets cracking, blood spraying from his mouth.
The chain-Harbinger reached for him.
Xavier was there before thought.
Voidstep.
He appeared inside the Harbinger's guard, Roshan plunging through rusted links and into the core of screaming faces. Violet light met violet light. The god inside Xavier roared in recognition—this fragment remembered him, wanted to crawl back into the whole.
Xavier snarled and twisted the blade.
The Harbinger detonated in a hurricane of chains that shredded half the forge district.
Zamiel collapsed.
Lucian caught him before he hit the ground, pressing gauntleted fingers to the omega's throat, feeling for a pulse that fluttered like a dying bird.
"Stay with me, damn you," Lucian whispered, voice cracking for the first time in centuries.
Zamiel's blood-slick hand found Lucian's cheek.
"I'm not going anywhere, alpha," he rasped, and forced himself upright, gauntlets reigniting with the last of his strength.
Hour Three – The Ridge
Lyra fought alone against two Harbingers.
One turned sound into blades. Every howl, every heartbeat became a weapon that flayed flesh from bone.
The other turned distance into hunger. The farther you stood, the more it devoured your soul.
Lyra refused to retreat.
She became Clawstorm incarnate—silver fire and black fury, a whirlwind that carved canyons through the ridge. Blood poured from her ears, her eyes, her claws, but she did not stop.
Because Xavier was watching.
And she would not let him see her fall.
Hour Four – The Breaking
The valley was burning.
Half the wolves were dead or dying. The ward was a tattered thing held together by Zamiel's fading life and sheer spite.
Xavier stood at the heart of the storm, surrounded by the remaining six Harbingers. The scar over his heart had become a gaping wound of violet fire. Void-light poured out like blood. His left arm was fully black now, veins of living darkness crawling toward his throat.
The god spoke through him again, voice layered and terrible.
"Enough games. Open. Let me out."
Xavier's right hand—still his own—tightened on Roshan.
His left hand—the god's—rose toward Lyra.
She saw it.
Saw the moment Xavier began to lose.
She walked through hellfire to reach him.
Every step cost her. Sound-blades carved strips from her arms. Distance-hunger tore pieces of her soul away. But she walked.
When she reached him, she did not speak.
She simply pressed her blood-oath palm flat over the gaping violet wound in his chest.
Skin to void.
Scar to scar.
Heartbeat to heartbeat.
Green fire met violet fire.
And held.
Xavier screamed—a sound that cracked the mountains.
The six Harbingers lunged.
Lyra looked up at them, silver-green eyes blazing, blood dripping from her fangs.
"Come on then," she snarled. "I've been waiting."
Behind her, Xavier's gold eye flared back to life.
The war for his soul—and for the world—had only just begun.