The sky was no longer a canopy; it was a glass ceiling being hit by a sledgehammer.
High above the Valkyrie, the flagship of the newly formed Alliance fleet, the Planetary Shield groaned. It was a sound that shouldn't have been possible in the thin air of the upper atmosphere—a tectonic grinding of magic against anti-matter. The Hive-Ship's orbital bombardment was relentless, a rhythmic pulsing of white-hot beams that turned the golden protective veil into a lattice of black, spider-webbing fractures. Every time a beam struck, "Void-Static" leaked through the cracks, manifesting as a heavy, purple sleet that caused the airships' compasses to spin like possessed tops and made the crew's hair stand on end with localized gravity shifts.
"Engines at 110 percent! We're redlining the mana-cores!" Pip's voice screamed over the howling gale.
The gnome was a frantic blur of motion, lashed to the main mast of the Valkyrie with heavy leather straps to prevent him from being sucked into the vacuum of the low-pressure slipstream. His hands were buried deep in the ship's Mana-Drive, his fingers glowing blue as he manually overrode the safety limiters. "The atmospheric pressure is building, Kaelen! If we don't clear the Iron-Crag peaks and dive into the low-pressure pocket of the West in the next three minutes, the turbulence is going to peel the copper plating right off the hull!"
Kaelen stood at the very tip of the prow, his heavy cloak whipping violently, sounding like a succession of gunshot cracks in the wind. He wasn't holding onto the railing; he didn't need to. His feet were magnetically anchored to the deck by the spatial distortion he now naturally projected. He was the anchor for the entire ship, his presence smoothing out the ripples in the air that threatened to flip the vessel.
His skin was a map of cosmic contradictions. Beneath the translucent Starlight-Steel, the emerald and orange fire of Ignis pulsed with the heat of a forge. But overlaid on that were the "Void-Scars"—jagged, violet lines that seemed to sit on top of his skin rather than in it, vibrating with a frequency that felt like ice-water in his veins.
"They're coming through! The veil is breached!" Ria's voice cut through the roar.
She stood mid-deck, her Soul-Piercer Spear glowing with a cold, azure light. She pointed her weapon toward the zenith, where the largest crack in the shield had finally given way.
The Hive-Ship wasn't just firing beams; it was "bleeding." From the black fissures, thousands of small, winged shapes dived into the atmosphere. They were Void-Fliers—biological interceptors grown in the vats of the Hive-Ship. They looked like jagged shards of obsidian glass forced into the shape of predatory birds. They didn't flap their wings; they vibrated them at supersonic speeds, creating a high-pitched, harmonic scream that shattered the windows of the airships' cabins and caused the weaker sailors to collapse, clutching their bleeding ears.
"All ships, defensive formation Delta! Close the gaps!" Commander Vane's voice boomed through the fleet's Aura-Link. The veteran stood on the bridge, his enchanted iron arm sparking as he gripped the steering column. "Protect the Valkyrie! If the Hero falls, we all fall! Archers, use the Cold-Iron tips! Mages, focus your fire on the wing-joints!"
The battle began with a deafening screech as the first wave of Fliers dived at the fleet like living meteors.
The Guild's airships fought back with the desperate ferocity of a cornered animal. Harpoons powered by high-pressure steam-pistons hissed through the air, trailing glowing mana-wires. Mages stood on the narrow outriggers, their robes snapping in the wind as they hurled bolts of concentrated frost to slow the Fliers' descent. But the invaders were unlike anything the Guild had ever faced. They didn't just dodge; they "phased."
A group of three Fliers dived toward the escort ship Iron Rose. Just as the ship's ballistae fired, the Fliers' bodies turned translucent, becoming flickering ghosts of violet light. The heavy bolts passed harmlessly through them. A second later, they re-solidified inside the ship's hull. The wood groaned and exploded outward as the Fliers tore through the lower decks, decapitating the engine crew with their glass-sharp wings before leaping out the other side to rejoin the swarm.
"They're phasing! They're shifting out of the physical plane!" Pip yelled, his voice cracking with panic. "Kaelen, our weapons can't hit them while they're in 'Shift-Mode'! We're firing at shadows!"
"THEY TUNE THEIR ESSENCE TO THE FREQUENCY OF THE VOID," Ignis growled, his voice vibrating in Kaelen's skull like a muffled explosion. "THEY ARE THE ECHO OF A DEAD UNIVERSE, ECHO. YOU MUST CHANGE THE MUSIC. SHATTER THE SCALE."
Kaelen stepped off the prow.
He didn't fall. He walked onto the empty air, his boots creating bright, concentric ripples of orange light in the sky as if he were stepping on the surface of a golden pond. He was a speck of light against the encroaching purple darkness.
"Ria! Korg! Clear the deck and brace for impact!" Kaelen commanded, his voice echoing with a dual-tone—his own human grit and the dragon's ancient roar.
Ria didn't hesitate. She grabbed Pip and Elara by their collars, dragging them toward the center of the ship as Korg slammed his Aegis of the Divide into the deck. A secondary golden dome erupted over the Valkyrie's bridge, shielding them from the impending fallout.
Kaelen closed his eyes, ignoring the thousands of Fliers screaming toward him. He reached deep into the Void-Scars on his arms, feeling the cold, hollow power they offered. Normally, his magic was about expansion—the heat of the dragon, the growth of the forest, the fire of life. But the Void was the power of absence. It was the silence between the stars.
He focused on the harmonic scream of the Fliers, finding the exact frequency they used to phase through matter.
"Spatial... Static," Kaelen whispered.
He slammed his hands together. A wave of violet-and-emerald energy erupted from his body, expanding in a perfect, shimmering sphere that spanned five hundred yards in every direction. It wasn't a blast of heat; it was a "hiccup" in reality. For one heartbeat, the laws of physics in that sphere were rewritten.
The effect was instantaneous and gruesome. Hundreds of Fliers mid-dive were suddenly and violently forced back into a purely physical state. Those that were halfway through the hulls of the escort ships were instantly fused with the wood and iron. The Iron Rose shuddered as three Fliers were "teleported" into its main mast, their obsidian bodies merging with the timber until the pressure caused the entire ship to shatter into splinters.
In the open air, thousands of Fliers stalled, their wings unable to find purchase in the "thickened" space Kaelen had created. They tumbled through the sky like stones.
"Now! Fire everything!" Vane roared, seizing the moment.
With the enemies no longer phasing, the Guild's hunters tore into them. The air was filled with the rhythmic thrum-clack of repeating crossbows and the earth-shaking boom of mana-cannons. The Fliers fell from the sky in burning heaps, their violet blood vaporizing into toxic mist.
But for every hundred destroyed, a thousand more dived from the cracks in the shield. The Hive-Ship was an infinite forge, and it was only getting warmed up.
"Kaelen, the shield's failing over the West!" Elara cried, pointing toward the horizon.
A massive section of the Planetary Shield—the size of a city—gave way. The golden light didn't shatter this time; it dissolved into black ash. Through the hole, a Star-Spire began its descent. It was three times the size of the one they had fought in the valley. It wasn't a troop transport; it was a kinetic hammer designed to level a province. It dived directly toward the fleet, its surface glowing white-hot from atmospheric friction.
"It's going to hit us!" Pip screamed, his goggles reflecting the descending doom. "We can't outrun that! We're in the center of the impact zone!"
Kaelen looked at the Spire. It was a spear aimed at the heart of the Alliance. He could feel the One-Week Clock ticking in the back of his mind—a physical sensation like a needle pricking his brain. Every use of this Void-power was shaving minutes, perhaps hours, off his remaining time. His Starlight-Steel skin was beginning to flake away in small, glowing scales, revealing the raw, unstable mana underneath.
"DO NOT THINK OF THE PRICE," Ignis urged, his voice now a desperate snarl. "IF THE WORLD DIES, THE CLOCK DOESN'T MATTER. BE THE DRAGON THAT SWALLOWED THE MOON, ECHO. FOLD THE HORIZON."
Kaelen launched himself upward, a streak of emerald fire meeting the falling obsidian needle.
As he neared the colossal Spire, the heat was unbearable. It stripped away his cloak instantly, leaving him bare-chested. His glowing ribs were visible through the cracks in his skin, looking like a furnace about to burst. He realized he couldn't stop the Spire with force—the momentum of a million tons falling from orbit was absolute. He had to use the Scepter of the Unspoken to do something he had only theorized: a mass-spatial displacement of a falling object.
He grabbed the very tip of the falling Spire. The impact nearly shattered every bone in his body, but he held on, his hands melting into the obsidian surface.
"Not today," Kaelen growled, the violet scars on his arms glowing with a blinding, terrifying light.
He didn't try to move the Spire. He moved the space the Spire occupied. Using his own body as the conduit, he forced the Void-energy to tear a "Folding Gate" directly beneath the needle.
The fleet below watched in stunned, horrific silence as the three-hundred-foot crystal tower entered a shimmering, violet hole in the sky and vanished. A second later, it reappeared three miles to the East, far away from the fleet, slamming into a deserted mountain range with an explosion that produced a mushroom cloud of purple fire, lighting up the entire West.
Kaelen plummeted.
He didn't fly down; he fell like a stone. He hit the deck of the Valkyrie with the force of a cannonball, shattering the reinforced oak planks and falling through to the lower cargo hold.
Ria was the first one down the hatch. She skidded through the debris, pulling Kaelen's heavy, metallic body from the wreckage of several supply crates. He was cold—not the cold of ice, but the absolute, soul-sucking cold of the void. The orange fire in his eyes had dimmed to a tiny, flickering point, and his breath came in ragged, wet gasps.
"We cleared the Crags," Pip whispered from the deck above, his voice shaking as he checked his brass instruments. "The turbulence is dropping. We're in the West. We've entered the Uncharted Territories."
Vane walked to the edge of the hole in the deck, looking down at the unconscious Kaelen and the massive, smoking crater on the distant horizon where the Spire had landed. The Commander turned to his remaining captains, his face pale and his iron hand trembling.
"Update the logs," Vane said quietly. "We've officially crossed the threshold of the known world. We are in the land of myths now. And may the gods help us, because I think the Hero just ran out of time."