Captain Atheon had never seen so many ships gathered in one place in his entire military career.
Warships, carriers, mage-barges, floating artillery platforms. Hundreds of them, stretching across the storm-lashed horizon like a desperate steel wall. Every vessel was filled with veterans: disciplined soldiers, archmages, elementalists, spirit-binders. The strongest force the kingdom had assembled in generations.
And it still hadn't been enough.
The monster towered above the sea like a walking mountain of scale and fire.
Every spell they hurled at it. Every cannon blast, every incantation, every barrage barely left a mark. Some crews didn't even have time to scream before the monster's claws, its tail, its shockwaves ripped their ships apart.
Now only a fraction remained. Most were burning, sinking, or barely holding together.
The storm seemed to worsen just from being near the creature.
Atheon stood on the bridge of the Valkyrion, the strongest vessel in all of Valkeria. Knuckles white around the guard rail as another bolt of lightning illuminated the monster's silhouette. Its chest expanded. The scales along its neck began to glow a deep, ominous crimson.
The breath.
The hellish, red atomic breath that had wiped out entire battalions an hour earlier.
His crew fell silent. Mages clutched their staves. Gunners whispered prayers they hadn't spoken since childhood. Atheon could feel his heart crawling up into his throat. He didn't have the voice to speak orders. None would matter.
This was the end.
The monster inhaled.
The glow intensified.
And then-
Everything stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
The wind died.
The ocean went still mid-wave.
Even the monster froze in place, its chest half-expanded.
Then a light bloomed inside the creature's torso.
No- exploded.
A soundless, blinding blast erupted outward from within its massive chest cavity. The explosion was larger than any spell, larger than any weapon their navy possessed. Atheon shielded his eyes as the shockwave of red light washed over the fleet, bright enough to turn night into blinding dawn.
But before the heat even touched the water.
It reversed.
The entire explosion snapped inward like a collapsing star, dragged back into the heart of the monster. The light vanished. The sound vanished. The pressure vanished.
And then the creature began to crumble.
Not fall.
Not melt.
Crumble. Its colossal body dissolving into drifting particles, scattering like ash caught in a storm wind. Within seconds, the monster that had nearly ended them, nearly ended everything. Was simply gone.
The ocean roared back to life, waves slamming into hulls from every direction.
Voices rose across the remains of the fleet. Fearful, stunned, disbelieving.
"What happened!?"
"Was that a spell? Whose spell was that!?"
"Did the monster self-destruct!?"
"No, no, look! Look where it collapsed!"
Atheon didn't speak. He couldn't. His gaze was locked on the epicenter where the beast had stood.
Something floated there.
Someone.
A figure drifting in the stormlight, suspended between the broken waves. At first Atheon thought it was debris or wreckage. But then lightning cracked above them and he saw it clearly.
A man.
A human shape.
Barely visible through the sheets of rain.
But the eyes- Atheon's heart stopped cold.
Glowing.
Bright.
Burning red.
The same red as the monster.
The same red as its atomic breath.
Those eyes scanned the battlefield, the broken ships, the burning remains of the fleet… and then, slowly, they turned toward the Valkyrion. Toward Atheon.
For a moment, Atheon couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. His hand reached for his sword on instinct alone.
"Captain.?" one of his officers whispered. "Orders..?"
But Atheon didn't answer.
He couldn't.
The waves surged. The storm intensified.
The ocean split around the floating figure as if reacting to him, as if drawn or afraid.
Atheon opened his mouth, ready to shout the order to apprehend him, to aim weapons, to do anything.
But before a word could leave his throat.
The man vanished.
Gone.
No splash. No teleportation signature. No trace.
Just… gone.
Atheon's breath finally returned, shaky and cold.
Whatever had destroyed the monster wasn't finished.
And now it was loose in the world.