The ruins of Stonebridge and Marrowport boiled with heat and silence. Smoke curled in the air, black against the red glow bleeding from the seams in the Lord of Destruction's armor. Each breath he took made the molten cracks flare and hiss, as if the world itself was being smelted around him.
Inigo braced behind the tilted husk of the JLTV, chest heaving, his last magazine running dry. Lyra crouched on the broken ribs of a granary wall, one arrow left in her quiver, its tip glowing faint with the shimmer of her skill. Both were cut, dusted with ash, and running on the thin edge of exhaustion.
The Lord raised his hammer high, the weight of it dragging the air into silence. His molten eyes fixed on them as though they were nothing but embers left to be stamped out.
"Fall," he intoned, the word carrying like a bell tolling for graves.
The hammer descended.
