"To succeed, you must come to terms with your nightmare. Stand ready, descendant of August; your trial starts now."
Darkness fractured, spilling into a violent, blood-soaked reality.
Luka's eyes snapped open, his vision immediately saturated by a living nightmare. The capital was a collapsing theater of slaughter. Demons—hulking, multi-limbed aberrations of muscle and malice—tore through fleeing humans with casual brutality. Down in the trenches of the carnage, his grip tightened reflexively around the hilt of his blade. His armor, dented and caked in coagulated gore, hung off his frame in jagged, splintered shards, barely holding together.
'Where did it all go wrong?'
He wrenched his sword upward, gutting the throat of a lunging fiend with mechanical, ruthless efficiency. Fighting without respite for days had long since pushed past exhaustion; it was a grueling, numbing nightmare, even for someone burdened with the rank of a Monarch.
Luka froze, his internal monologue stuttering.
'A Monarch? How? I was a Highmage just a moment ago...
A deafening roar of fire drew his focus. Tearing his gaze away from the immediate slaughter, he surged forward, his pace accelerating as he cut through the smoke-choked alleys, paying little heed to the hazards closing in around him.
'Hold on just a little longer,' Luka pleaded silently, his chest heaving as he targeted the looming apex of the Stormcove clock tower. He scaled the fractured stone facade, his fingers finding purchase in the jagged gaps and ancient cracks of the masonry to haul himself upward.
Reaching the summit, instinct took over. He seized the heavy cord and rang the bell—a desperate, resonant signal of withdrawal, echoing a deep, nagging premonition that help was on the horizon.
His eyes locked onto the sea of flames consuming the district. Out of the roiling smoke, a familiar silhouette cut through the sky.
A surge of fierce relief flooded his chest at the sight of Ingis and Diana. How deeply he had grown to love Diana; this district, Rosie, felt like a bizarre, haunting night-mystery. Yet, however illusory or surreal it seemed, the reality of it was crushing. The impossible, latent strength coursing through his veins was terrifyingly authentic. An archmage could never dream of wielding the authority of a Monarch, and yet here he was, a Tata-mage standing at the apex.
Then, the nagging dread in the back of his mind flared into an urgent alarm.
'Something bad is coming.'
The answer arrived with lethal speed.
Two streaks of death cut through the gray sky. One arrow pierced Diana straight through the chest; the other struck Ingis in the wing, shattering their momentum and sending them spiraling downward.
Luka's eyes dilated in pure, unadulterated horror.
'No'
He vaulted off the tower, launching himself through the air to intercept their crash. Ingis, using their own body as a desperate shield, slammed into the ground to break Diana's fall, but it was futile. Diana's heart had been pierced; her lifeless body lay cold and still against Ingis's feathered breast.
Ingis tried to speak, but her head was too heavy to match Luka's gaze, muffled by blood-matted feathers.
"It's not your fault," Luka murmured, his voice hollow as he reached down, gently closing Diana's eyelids to hide her beautiful, glassy black eyes from the burning world forever.
Luka straightened. The grief threatened to crush him, but he was not a man to indulge in paralyzing despair. There would be an eternity to mourn when the dust settled; right now, survival demanded forward momentum.
Above, the heavy clouds broke, and a relentless, freezing rain poured down, hissing as it tried to quench the inferno tearing the city apart.
How terrifying were the abilities a great sage possess. Where mortals ever ment to be able to command such power - the aspect exclusive for the gods that give them infinite amount of mana.
Into the ash stepped Cerci. Luke hid his grief. He was barely holding it together.
Recalling Ingis back into his core, Luka left her in the dust, planning to gather as many survivors as he could and lead them to the designated rendezvous with his party.
Cerci placed a hand on his shoulder, her voice seeping with a rare, heavy concern. "You have done enough, Luke. I'll handle it from here. You need rest."
Luke shrugged her off politely, his jaw set.'I can handle it. There are still more people to save.'
Even as the thought formed, reality asserted its cruel limits. An immense, crushing pressure suddenly weighed down on the atmosphere, suffocating the ruins. Cerci shrugged it off as casually as if brushing dust from her cloak, while Luke buckled beneath the gravity of it, gasping for air as his lungs burned.
As he fell to the ground, gasping for air, he caught sight of the Demon King, Albatron.
"How do you like the gift I prepared for you?" Albatron mocked Cerci. "The last time it was you who caused havoc in the demon realm. Look at how the tables have turned."
His commanding voice crackled with malicious intent.
The closer Albatron came, the more oppressive the pressure weighing down on Luka became. Luka's heart raced wildly. The suffocating mana presence of Albatron sent needles of pure dread straight down Luka's spine. All his life he had been trained to slay Albatron, but simply standing in his terrifying presence made all that preparation feel utterly worthless.
Yet, managing to get to his feet using his sword as a support, Luka gritted his teeth against the abyss, refusing to break.