The colossal warrior's blade descended like a mountain's judgment, meeting Draven's crossed swords with an impact that seemed to bend the night itself. Steel shrieked against steel, the vibration pitching above hearing until it became something felt rather than heard—a teeth-rattling buzz that lanced straight through bone.
Then the world detonated.
A concentric ring of force exploded outward, flattening grass, ripping moss from stone, and hurling corpses skyward in grotesque pirouettes. Living soldiers were tossed like dolls, arms wheeling, weapons spinning from slack fingers. A dead oak—already hollowed by age—shattered into splinters as the shockwave slapped its trunk. Shards of bark whirled through the moonlit haze, glittering like shrapnel.
