But the darkness did not come.
Instead, a warmth bloomed beneath his feet.
A low, sorrowful hum resonated from the World Tree behind him. It was the sound of a parent saying goodbye. Roots burst from the cobblestones, not to attack, but to embrace. They wrapped around Thorne's charred legs, pulsing with a transparent, ethereal green light.
The light didn't fix him—he was too far gone for that. It didn't replace the skin or regrow the bone. But it poured into his veins like liquid adrenaline, stitching his muscles together for one final purpose. It was not the energy of life; it was the energy of a final stand.
Thorne's eyes snapped open. The haze cleared.
He gasped, air flooding back into his lungs. He gripped the hilt of the scavenged greatsword. The metal grew hot in his hand.
As the green power flooded his broken body, a memory surfaced from the depths of his mind—sharp and vivid, as if he were a child again sitting by the hearth.
He saw his father's face, illuminated by the firelight, telling the story of the First War.
"Grandfather did not die from the Lich's claws, Thorne," his father had said, his voice hushed with reverence. "He died because he became the sword."
Thorne remembered the name of the technique. The Celestial Sunder.
It was the ultimate Paladin art, a forbidden technique of the High Sylvarians. It did not use mana from the atmosphere; it burned the user's very life force—their blood, their marrow, their soul—and converted it into pure, destructive radiance.
"He drove the Lich back," his father had whispered. "But his aim was shallow. He feared death, just for a moment, and held back a fraction of his soul. The strike missed the Core. The monster survived. Grandfather did not."
Thorne looked at the Lich floating above him. He looked at the boys cowering behind him.
He understood now. There could be no hesitation. No holding back. To save the future, he had to burn the present.
Thorne stood up.
The movement was stiff, unnatural, powered by the vines wrapped around his limbs. Smoke still curled from his shoulders, but his stance was rock solid.
The Lich, who had been preparing to drift toward the Tree, stopped. The green fire in Azaroth's eyes flared with genuine confusion.
"Impossible," the corpse-lord muttered. "You are dead. Lie down."
Thorne didn't answer. He shifted his grip on the greatsword. He closed his eyes and reached deep inside himself, past the pain, past the fear, past the love for his wife and children. He found the spark of his life, and he crushed it.
WHOOSH.
A pillar of blinding golden fire erupted from Thorne's body.
It wasn't the soft healing light of the Tree. It was violent, raging, and deafening. The mud around his feet turned to glass. The greatsword in his hands began to glow white-hot, humming with a terrifying pitch.
"Rian! Aael!" Thorne's voice was no longer a wheeze. It was booming, distorted by the sheer energy pouring out of his mouth. "WATCH! Watch and remember!"
He looked at the Lich, his eyes now glowing with pure white light, devoid of pupils.
"You want my life?" Thorne roared, crouching low, the ground cracking beneath the pressure. "THEN TAKE IT ALL!"
For the first time in centuries, Azaroth felt a sensation he had long forgotten: Fear.
As Thorne crouched, bathed in the blinding white fire of his own soul, the Lich saw a ghost. The image of the previous Chieftain—the one who had nearly ended his existence decades ago—superimposed over Thorne. The stance was the same. The desperate, burning resolve was the same.
He intends to burn it all, the Lich realized.
Instinct took over. There was no time for arrogance. Azaroth pointed his staff, shrieking the incantation for his strongest defense, the same void-magic he had used to crush the village gate.
"Nihil... VOK... TYRA!"
The black sun materialized at the tip of his staff, larger and denser than before. It was a hole in reality, designed to swallow all light and matter.
"FIEE!" the Lich screamed, firing the void beam.
Thorne did not dodge. He launched himself forward.
He moved so fast he blurred, a streak of white lightning tearing across the mud. He swung the glowing greatsword upward, meeting the beam of darkness head-on.
SCREEEEEECH.
The sound of the collision was high-pitched and agonizing, like the universe tearing itself apart. The black void pushed against the white fire. For a heartbeat, they were deadlocked—entropy against existence.
But Thorne was not alone.
The roots wrapped around his legs pulsed. The World Tree poured its final drop of ancient mana into the Chieftain.
Thorne roared, his muscles tearing, his skin cracking into glowing fissures. He pushed.
The white blade sliced into the black beam. It didn't stop. It sheared through the magic, splitting the void in two like a curtain of smoke.
Thorne flew through the gap, closing the distance in an instant.
The Lich's eyes went wide. He tried to teleport, but the atmospheric pressure of Thorne's aura locked him in place.
Thorne was airborne, the greatsword raised high above his head. The blade was no longer metal; it was a solid beam of pure, concentrated life-force.
"CELESTIAL... SUNDER!"
He brought the blade down.
There was no resistance. The sword of light struck the top of the Lich's skull. It passed through the bone. It passed through the enchanted robes. It passed through the glowing green Core in the center of the Lich's chest.
CRACK.
The Core split perfectly down the middle.
Thorne landed in a crouch behind the Lich, the sword buried deep in the earth.
For a second, the world held its breath.
Azaroth hovered in the air, a perfect vertical line of light glowing down the center of his form. The green fire in his eyes flickered once, twice... and then began to dim.
He looked down at the human who had defied the void, his skeletal jaw trembling as reality unraveled around him. He did not speak in the common tongue. He spoke his final realization in the dead language of the abyss.
"Vok... Rul... Nul..."
Void... Broken... Nothing.
BOOM.
The Lich detonated.
It wasn't a fire explosion; it was a violent release of bound energy. The two halves of the Lich dissolved into ash, and a massive shockwave blasted outward, flattening the remaining fires in the village and blowing the storm clouds from the sky.
The boys shielded their eyes as the dust washed over them. When they opened them again, the monster was gone. The army of skeletons collapsed into piles of harmless bone. The Orcs fell lifeless to the mud.
The silence returned to Silverleaf.
In the center of the crater, one figure remained. Thorne was kneeling, his hand still gripping the hilt of the melted sword, his back to his children. He was still glowing, but the light was fading fast, drifting away like embers in the wind.
The effect on the undead army was instantaneous.
Without the Lich's will to bind them, the magic collapsed. The thousands of skeletons that filled the streets didn't just fall; they shattered into powder, carried away by the wind like dry sand. The massive, iron-skinned Orcs let out one final, wet gurgle before collapsing into piles of rotting black sludge.
The war was over. But the nightmare was not.
As the shockwave of the Lich's explosion washed over the village, it carried a faint, sickly green shimmer. It passed through the wood of the houses. It passed through the remaining walls. And it passed through the bodies of the few survivors.
Aael, peering through his fingers, saw it happen.
A surviving spearman, who had cheered when the Lich fell, suddenly clutched his chest. He fell to his knees, coughing violently. When he pulled his hand away, his palm was stained not with red blood, but with a black, tar-like substance. Green veins began to crawl up his neck like spiderwebs.
The curse of the High Lich had been cast in his final breath: The Wasting Rot.
The dust settled, revealing the true cost of the victory.
Silverleaf was no longer a village; it was a graveyard. The great copper-wood houses were reduced to splintered skeletons, their roofs caved in. The main gate was a pile of sawdust. The streets were choked with the black sludge of the dead Orcs and the white dust of the skeletons.
The silence was deafening. There were no cries of victory.
Of the two hundred soldiers who had defended the walls, barely a dozen remained standing. They wandered through the smoke like ghosts, dragging their weapons, their skin already paling from the curse that now coursed through their veins. They looked at the ruins of their homes, then at their own trembling hands, realizing that while they had survived the battle, they would not survive the night.
In the center of the crater, only one figure remained untouched by the curse, protected by the residual light of his sacrifice.
Thorne was kneeling, his hand still gripping the hilt of the melted sword, his back to his children. He was still glowing, but the light was fading fast, drifting away like embers in the wind.