The estate of House Ignar—once a monument of flame-forged pride—was now unrecognizable.
What once stood as a marble courtyard lined with obsidian statues of ancient conquerors was reduced to a cratered warzone, fractured beyond memory. The air reeked of molten stone and burned flesh. Flames danced along shattered columns, licking the sky like tongues of rage. Pools of blood steamed on broken tile. Debris littered the grounds, embedded with bones—some still twitching.
The fountain at the center, once a majestic dragon spitting flame, had been decapitated—its severed head hurled into a shattered wall where it bled magma like a dying god.
Each punch between Klaus and Varion split the world in two.
CRACK!
The sound of Klaus's wind-enhanced fist slamming into Varion's jaw echoed like a thunderclap—blasting a shockwave that leveled the remaining northern wing of the estate.
A group of nobles that had gathered to spectate from the balconies were disintegrated instantly, their screams lost in the wind.
BOOM!
Varion retaliated, unleashing
Solar Brand – Heaven's Scorch, a blazing pillar of concentrated flame that tore a ten-meter trench into the earth, glassing the ground beneath. Klaus was flung back—his body dragged across molten tiles, skin peeling from the sheer heat.
He staggered to his feet, blood dripping, hair smoldering—but his eyes were colder than ever.
Klaus - snarling
"You call that a divine attack? You're just a pyromaniac with a crown."
Varion - growling, voice layered with power
"I am your executioner, peasant.
Incinerate – Monarch's Wrath!"
He brought both hands forward—summoning a sphere of annihilation that pulsed with the fire of dying stars. The heat alone carbonized corpses in a fifty-foot radius. Klaus braced—but too late.
The blast consumed him.
---
The estate buckled beneath the force.
The central hall collapsed in on itself. Screaming soldiers were flung skyward like ragdolls. Walls became shrapnel. Statues wept molten tears before shattering. Every breath of flame carved through the earth like the blade of an angry god.
And then—
Klaus - voice like steel through gravel
"You'll have to burn more than my body to stop me."
---
Above, a transport landed—smashed and flaming from shockwaves, but intact.
Out stepped a woman in crimson robes and a young man clad in dragonbone armor.
Lady Sera Ignar—Varion's wife.
And beside her, their son—
Kael Ignar, heir to the fire throne. A towering youth with molten eyes and a greatsword forged from the heart of a volcano.
They looked upon the battlefield—horrified.
Charred corpses. Severed limbs. Ash clouds that rained blood. Their legacy in ruins.
Kael - voice trembling
"Father… what have you done…?"
Sera gasped as she caught sight of Klaus.
His back, flayed raw.
His hands, cracked with blood and lightning.
But his aura—it pulsed with something..
Primal.
Hungry.
---
Back to the Fight
Varion snarled and launched himself again, sword of living flame slashing sideways—
KLAANG!
Klaus blocked it with bare arms, sparks bursting from impact. Blood sprayed.
Klaus - calculating, voice razor-sharp
"You wind up before you strike. Too predictable."
He ducked under the next blow, countering with a blade of wind that slashed across Varion's torso—slicing flesh, leaving exposed muscle steaming in the air.
Varion hissed, fury boiling. He kicked Klaus into a fractured pillar—
CRACK!
Bone broke. Klaus's shoulder dislocated.
He popped it back into place with a grunt.
Klaus:
"Still too slow."
He blurred forward.
WIND FANG – GUTTER STRIKE!
Five rapid slashes opened Varion's stomach. Blood gushed. Intestines nearly spilled.
Varion screamed and erupted, casting Infernal Domain – Realm of the Eternal Flame.
---
The sky turned black. The stars vanished.
Reality split—around them bloomed a twisted realm of fire and bone. Rivers of lava replaced the courtyard. Burning corpses walked the molten landscape—mocking shadows of Ignar's victims. Towers of ash rose into the void above.
Screams echoed through the air—endless, layered.
This was not flame.
This was damnation.
Varion hovered, flames wreathing him like a god of apocalypse.
Varion - cold, godlike
"This has gone long enough."
Klaus fell to one knee.
The heat scorched the marrow in his bones. Blood boiled under his skin.
But then—
Kael screaming from the edge
"FATHER! STOP THIS!!!"
Varion paused.
His power wavered.
His gaze met his son's.
And just like that, the Infernal Domain crumbled into sparks—vanished.
The battlefield returned.
Charred. Twisted. But real again.
Varion stood frozen, breath shallow.
Klaus rose once more.
Half-dead.
Eyes hollow.
Aura unbroken.
---
The battlefield was no longer part of this world.
What had once been the sacred courtyard of House Ignar—a proud arena of rituals and tradition—was now a molten grave. The ground had ruptured in jagged, steaming fractures that oozed lava from the planet's heart. Twisted spires of charred obsidian jutted from the earth like fangs from a buried beast.
The sky was red—no, bleeding. Smoke had replaced clouds. Ash rained from above in slow, endless drifts. The dead littered the scorched ruins in grotesque formations—limbs twisted, eyes wide open in eternal horror. Nobles, soldiers, servants—none had escaped the firestorm unscathed.
And at the heart of it stood Klaus, broken but unbent
-But then
The Pyreborn Execrants arrived.
The crowd had gathered beyond the estate's cratered ridge—Varion's wife, Lady Sera, clutching her mouth in horror. Kael's fists bled from how tightly he gripped the hilt of his sword.
Kael - low whisper: "He's just... one man…"
Lady Sera: "No… he's something else."
---
The battle against the Pyreborn Execrants it was not a duel.
It was an execution.
And Klaus Aetherion was the one bleeding.
---
Flames raged around him. Bones shattered beneath him. His body had become a canvas for pain—slashes across his back, burns etched into his chest, ribs broken and grinding with every breath.
Rendix's axe had clipped his shoulder—shattering bone.
Igniss Vale's arrows had torn muscle from his thigh.
Draal's hammer had pulverized his side—an entire ribcage caved inward.
Selris's rapier had pierced his flank.
Maera's chains still wrapped one leg, dragging him down like a serpent of fire.
And Vorth… Vorth's voidfire had begun eating at the edges of Klaus's very being.
He should've fallen.
He should've died.
And yet—
He stood.
Eyes vacant.
Breath controlled.
Face devoid of emotion—nothing but the icy calm of a warrior who had long since made peace with death.
---
The Execrants circled him again.
Mocking.
Bleeding.
But confident.
They smelled weakness.
Saw his stagger.
Rendix roared, charging first.
The others followed—six avatars of fire converging on one broken man.
Klaus didn't move.
Didn't block.
Didn't even breathe.
---
A chain snapped his shoulder open. A flame-blade split across his chest—blood poured. A burning arrow struck his thigh. His knees buckled.
Still—he didn't attack. Didn't even grunt.
Instead, his eyes narrowed. A breath drawn in.
Another hit—his side gouged open.
And that's when it began.
A spark.
On his arm.
Tiny. Violet.
Then another. On his chest.
The wind stopped swirling.
It screamed.
The very air shrieked as arcs of lightning—bright, unnatural purple lightning—began dancing across Klaus's shredded flesh.
The Execrants froze mid-charge.
"What the hell—?" gasped Vale.
"Lightning—?Draal barked.
And then—
BOOOOM
The storm exploded.
KRAKKA-BOOOOOOOM!
The battlefield detonated.
A pillar of violet lightning shot into the sky, shredding clouds, sending ripples across the atmosphere. The earth around Klaus fractured like glass beneath a titan's boot. Columns were obliterated. Towers melted. The estate's obsidian gates were vaporized in an instant. Trees turned to ash. Bodies disintegrated.
Even the ash stopped falling for a heartbeat.
In that stillness…
Klaus moved.
He didn't run.
He didn't leap.
He vanished—a streak of violet tearing through the battlefield like a wrathful god's finger.
CRACK!
He appeared behind Vale—shattered her spine with a single palm strike.
FLASH!
He zipped through Rendix—slicing clean through his torso in a blur of wind and thunder. Blood splashed the crater walls like rainfall.
SLASH!
He tore through Draal's final armor plates—shoving a lightning-coated fist into his chest and blowing the magma core inside into a volcanic burst.
The sky went purple.
The ruins were unrecognizable—lava rivers now carved directly through noble towers. Firefall cascaded from broken bridges. The crater in the courtyard had widened to a chasm—jagged, bottomless.
Klaus appeared midair above them all—electricity writhing around him like serpents. His muscles glowed beneath torn skin. His bare chest heaved, steaming from raw power. Purple lightning traced across his shoulders, down his scarred arms, dancing across his fingertips like the claws of the storm itself.
And his thoughts, cold and razor-sharp, whispered in his mind:
"I don't know how much of this power will remain…
I gotta end these shitbags here and now."
He dropped like a thunderbolt.
And when he hit the ground—
EVERYTHING died.
The ground caved in completely, collapsing a chunk of the estate into a thirty-foot abyss. Flames were blown out by the shockwave. Statues reduced to powder. The main tower split in half. Ash and debris rained upward, sucked into a rising column of storm.
And at the bottom of that crater, amid twitching, broken bodies—
Klaus stood.
Violet lightning still crawling across his chest, his eyes dead cold.
---
Onlookers gasped.
Kael staggered backward, voice trembling:
"What… what is that power…?"
Lady Sera fell to her knees, eyes wide with horror:
"No mortal should wield that."
The quiet, oppressive stillness of destruction hung in the air—a silence so profound that even the cracks in the ground seemed to hold their breath.
And then—
BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
A sound shattered the air like the wail of a dying beast—sharp, brutal, and relentless.
It wasn't a regular evacuation alarm. It wasn't the typical siren one would hear in times of disaster.
This was different. It was deafening.
A monstrous, mechanical howl that seemed to seep into every fiber of the earth itself. The kind of sound that made the skin crawl and the heart drop into your stomach. It echoed through the ruin of House Ignar's estate and beyond, carrying for miles.
The sound was jagged. Disjointed.
KRAAAAAAAAK—KRRRRK—KREEEEEEE!
And then… it hit.
The unmistakable message that none of the living could ignore.
"ATTENTION: HUMANITY'S SEVEN MONARCHS INBOUND. EVACUATION PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN VOIDED. ALL UNITS REPORT TO DEFENSIVE POSITIONS."
The ground vibrated with the weight of the message—its deep, penetrating force resonating with the very bones of those who heard it. Those who had felt invincible, those who had watched as Klaus wiped the Pyreborn Execrants from existence—now felt the cold hands of dread grip their hearts.
For those who knew, it was the sound of finality.
It wasn't the arrival of another alien faction. It wasn't an alert about reinforcements.
It was a call that only meant one thing—the arrival of the Monarchs.
The Seven Monarchs were humanity's last line of defense against a far more ancient and dangerous power. They were not gods, not yet—but they were the closest things to it. The seven individuals who held the power to shape reality itself, chosen from across the last remnants of mankind's most revered bloodlines.
And their arrival was the death knell.
For House Ignar. For the Execrants. For Klaus.
The very air felt thick—charged with a terrible electricity.
The remaining Monarchs were coming.
There were no evacuations, no retreats.
The gates of the city, the ones meant to protect humanity from the outside, were not designed to withstand the Monarchs.
The world was about to know what true apocalypse meant.
---
Klaus lay still—his body broken, limbs twisted, breaths shallow—but something stirred in him. Deep within his core, a burning hatred flickered. A primal desire to stand once more and tear apart everything in his path.
His body spasmed—jerking violently—but his eyes remained closed, a cold smile playing on his lips.
A silent monument of defiance.
Lady Sera Ignar sobbed uncontrollably on the distant ridge.
Kael Ignar, the Fire Heir, fell back against a shattered wall, eyes wide in horror.
"I-It can't be…" he whispered. "They are sending the remaining Monarchs…"
Elsewhere on the edge of the ruin
Varion Ignar stood, blood running down his temple, armor cracked and dimming with each breath. His flames were gone. His divine radiance snuffed out. He barely had the strength to stand.
His wife, Lady Sera, clutched his trembling arm. Kael stood beside them, expression pale, eyes wide and unblinking.
Sera – barely a whisper: "Varion… what… what have we done…?"
Kael – his voice breaking: "This isn't a battlefield. It's… it's hell."
Varion said nothing.
His gaze swept across the estate—no, the wound in reality. There was no more House Ignar. Only ruins, flame, and death. He saw what remained of the Execrants—his personal gods of war—sprawled like discarded corpses. He saw towers melted into slag. Blood sprayed across runes older than kingdoms.
A silence grew in Varion's mind, deafening.. His knees buckled slightly.
Varion's thoughts:
> "The alarm… it rang… and the source… wasn't a war. It wasn't a weapon."
> "It was him."
> "Just one man."
He turned his gaze skyward. The runes in the atmosphere were pulsing—millions of magical inscriptions, etched into the world's defense grid generations ago by the Monarchs. An omniscient detection system that sensed cataclysms, invasion-level threats… beings too powerful to be left unchecked.
They had scanned the battlefield.
They had scanned him.
And still—they rang the alarm for Klaus. Klaus alone.
> "The detection runes measure ambient pressure, elemental disruption, soul harmonics. They shouldn't be able to misfire…"
> "But they rang. They screamed."
> "He didn't just match us."
> "He shattered the scale."
Varion stared into the smoke—toward that lone figure, wind and lightning writhing around his body like chained gods.
His voice cracked, but it was reverent. Awed.
Varion softly whispered: "He's not a warrior. Not even a weapon."
"He's an anomaly."