The Valley of Silence was broken.
A scar among scars, the battlefield still pulsed with fading traces of destructive magic. The scent of scorched grass and blood clung to the wind. Craters marked where spells had collided. Charred ruins—long-forgotten relics—jutted out from the earth like broken bones.
Now, the only movement came from the survivors.
The Empire's Special Forces gathered in grim silence. Some leaned on shattered weapons, others sat slumped in the dirt, staring at the horizon with hollow eyes. Medics moved between them in silence, stabilizing wounds too severe to fully heal in the field. Mana sensors lay cracked, their crystal cores dimmed or sparking weakly. They had tried everything.
And they had failed.
"She's not retreating," a voice said—low, steady. It belonged to a man who stood apart from the others, his coat torn and darkened with blood, though he bore no sign of exhaustion. Only focus. Resolve.
"The witch is ascending."
A senior mage turned to him, his brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"She didn't run," the man said, still watching the storm. "She became part of it."
Above them, the sky boiled.
Clouds spiraled unnaturally—fast, unnatural, heavy with mana. The storm wasn't weather. It was war made visible. A silence grew beneath it, heavy and pressing, choking the air from the lungs of even seasoned soldiers.
A junior mage dropped to her knees. Another stumbled away and threw up into the dirt. They could feel it: the pressure wasn't raw power. It was precision. Intent. The calm before a blade falls.
"She's heading for the capital," someone whispered.
No one denied it.
Far above, suspended in the heart of the rising storm, Minus stood alone.
The wind howled around her, carrying the weight of her will across the sky. Her cloak rippled behind her, and her staff—half-solid, half-formed from mana—drifted beside her like a tether. Lightning danced across the clouds, each flash a reflection of the fury that pulsed inside her.
Beneath her, the land sprawled. The Empire's capital shimmered in the distance, a fortress of towering spires and ancient pride.
She hadn't retreated.
She was rising.
They will never stop.
Even after all this—the slaughter in the Valley, the defeat of their finest—they would come again. She had seen it in the eyes of the last one who stood against her.
The hunter.
He hadn't broken like the others. He hadn't fallen to fear or pride. He had watched. Calculated. Survived.
And that made him the most dangerous of them all.
But not even he could stop what was coming.
They want my death? Then I'll give them something worth killing.
Because deep down, Minus knew the truth.
This won't end until I die again.
The Empire would never stop hunting her. Not while she drew breath. Not while she carried the power they feared. So she would meet them halfway—on her terms. In her storm.
If she was going to die, then it would be as a disaster, not a victim.
Her eyes narrowed. Her staff began to vibrate with condensed mana, humming with restrained devastation. The storm responded, clouds twisting tighter, lightning chaining through the heavens like veins of fury. Her magic spiraled, focused into a single, unstoppable mass.
Either I die dying… or I bring them all down with me.
Either way… I win.