[Horia Vermosta.]
The battle in Anstalionah was shaking this world and many others.
I could taste the bloodlust in the air, sharp as iron on the tongue.
I could smell the smoke of burnt fields and hear the desperate rhythm of mortal hearts clashing against the roars of terrible beasts.
It was chaos, pure and consuming, and yet, even I could admit, it was glorious.
As much as death may allow glory, it was still a spectacle of power, courage, and ruin.
The giant knights marched forward, their armor alive with radiant runes that burned like stars against the smoke.
Each swing of their blades carved through the land itself, cleaving mountains and unraveling sky.
I will admit, it was enjoyable to watch, even for me.
Before me, the lesser armies of Fertical and Dangu charged toward one another in fury.
They swung their swords, loosed their arrows, and fired cannons that split the air with deafening precision.
Screams and cries echoed over the plains as waves of steel and magic collided.
The exchange was relentless, light and fire flashing across the face of the planet like the pulse of a dying god.
In Giah, a tradition was kept.
Once every year, they would lay down their weapons and pray to the heavens above.
They would feast and drink in peace. That day was today, or so I believed.
I wondered if they would still sing their prayers, or if their voices would rise only in screams.
Yet that thought slipped away when the sword in my hand began to glow.
Its light burned bright yellow, matching the scar across my eye.
The blade was round, sharp on both sides, and its guard gleamed faintly in the heat of battle.
Still, even as it pulsed with power, I felt a strange inclination to lower it. It was not hesitation.
It was something closer to reverence.
Before me stood a man who devoured spirits and consumed souls.
I remembered when Midir introduced me to Yuta, the young boy whose strength nearly rivaled my own, and Rika, who never left his side.
They were among the most powerful I had ever met, besides Mirabel and Ruari. But then came Noctis.
The moment I saw him, I knew he belonged among them.
He wielded a curved blade forged from the remnants of Giah.
His hair was tied back neatly, and his eyes glowed with the light of the moon.
"Horia! Can you smell that?" he called out. "The smell of death? It is wonderful, is it not?"
I raised my blade as another scream rang out behind me, another soul lost to the slaughter. "Yes."
He grinned wide and charged.
The air tore apart around him as he moved, his blade rushing like a tide, his aura heavy with fury.
When we clashed, the impact rippled through my bones.
He was strong. Very strong.
Stella, that meticulous and vile woman, had chosen her partner well.
"Horia," he said with mocking delight, "I heard many things about you. But don't tell me you are weaker than Madikai."
Madikai. I could faintly sense his presence in this world once more.
Perhaps he had returned as a Great Spirit.
It would suit him, to finish something he had long delayed, to grant that girl her power.
I sighed. "No. Madikai was my student, or rather, my rival."
Noctis lunged again, his strike aimed for my throat.
I bent backward, the blade slicing air above me, and kicked upward, sending his weapon spinning into the sky.
Using the momentum, I launched both feet into his chest, pushing off and landing upright.
He staggered back, but his blade came down into his arm as he steadied himself.
He glared at me with a grim smile. "You're evil."
Another scream erupted, not from the battlefield but from within me. It tore through the sky like thunder.
The sound was beautiful and horrifying, and even the stars seemed to cry out at its echo.
It was my own voice.
In that instant, my blade pierced through Noctis's chest. His eyes widened.
"Wind up," I whispered, twisting the sword free before kicking him backward.
My left fist came down across his face, carving a deep wound from brow to jaw.
He reeled and unleashed torrents of water that crashed into me with immense force.
Walls of ocean rose, towers of liquid crashing, but I did not fall.
I screamed again, and as my voice struck him, time itself seemed to fracture. The heavens quieted.
For a moment, I felt peace.
Then pain. My right arm flew from my body. Noctis had attacked, unknowing of the silence that bound us.
"Oh, how terrible it is," I said softly, "the cry of a man who is about to die."
Reality folded. In the blink of an eye, I was behind him, my blade at his neck.
He flinched, but it was already too late. His head fell to the ground as I stepped past it.
And yet, his voice still followed me.
When I turned, he stood once more, smiling faintly, a small moon resting in his palm.
"In all worlds," he said, "as long as any moon exists, I exist. As long as there is water, I exist. As long as the sea endures, as long as the sky breathes, as long as I exist, I exist."
He flicked the moon toward me.
It moved with impossible grace, collapsing space itself as it pierced through my chest.
"I am Noctis, the Eternal Night."
The light dimmed. Then, through the dust and ruin, I felt a familiar presence.
Uhana stumbled forward, cheeks flushed, a wine bottle in hand. Of course.
We were near the capital. I had known she would come eventually, I just hadn't expected it now.
She smacked me lightly on the head and, with a lazy wave, healed my wounds.
Then she took another sip and said, with a voice calm and cold, "All of you, die."
After that, staying alive became nearly impossible.
With her control over both life and death, every being on the battlefield perished in an instant.
Every soul was torn away, except for her, Noctis, and me.
Noctis fell to his knees, blood spilling down his chest. Uhana turned to me, her eyes weary and distant.
She placed a trembling hand on my shoulder.
"I'm tired, Horia. Be a good boy and kill that disgusting man. Then kill Stella."
She turned and walked away, her words falling into the chaos like a small, indifferent bell. "It was so noisy."
She vanished from sight before my eyes, slipping into shadow as if she had never been there.
Her leaving made the wound she had just healed feel like a fresh bruise.
I stood more damaged than before she arrived, not just in body but in some deeper place that did not mend so easily.
Living had begun to pile up into something unbearable. Every breath felt like a ledger I could not balance.
Yet beneath that exhaustion, stubborn and foolish, a wish remained. I wanted her to be happy.
For herself. For her heir. For the kingdom she carried on shoulders I had no right to judge.
When I turned back to Noctis, his smile had lost any pretense of mercy.
It was the grin of someone who had already decided a shape for the world.
In that instant I understood what his triumph would mean.
Happiness for any of us would be impossible without peace, and his version of peace was ruin.
Uhana watched with the quiet cruelty of someone who had already made her choice.
She was a woman tired of salvation. I was a man who still kept calm as policy. He was a man untethered from compassion.
All around us the sky changed. Small moons blinked into being, each one a stolen promise of night.
Noctis drew on the sea itself and the battlefield answered.
Tsunamis rose like living walls, swallowing the plains and the screams of those who stood upon them.
Fertical was drowned under a roof of water. Rivers broke their banks and the land stank of salt and power.
Noctis turned and ran, choosing the easier cruelty.
He fled toward Stella, a cruel strategist who would welcome his favor and use it well.
It was a foolish choice on his part. She would be a more dangerous foe than I, and yet he preferred her danger to facing me.
I did not chase him. As a king I made a decision born of duty and of the odd, stubborn courtesy of leadership.
I threw myself into the sea he had summoned, letting the surge take me.
I absorbed the brunt of its force, letting the water break against me and fold around my bones.
The planet shifted under the strain, the tide tugging at its seams.
For a moment I feared the world might not hold.
Beneath that flood I lingered like a living anchor, eyes open to the crushed light, lungs burning against the salt.
I floated and watched the ruin I had helped contain roll outward.
In the cold blue of the deep I let my mind turn to the war and how it might end.
How do you finish a war when the actors keep becoming gods and devils?
How do you strike the line between mercy and necessity?
A bell rang then, distant and crystalline, a note that did not belong to the sea.
It cut through the water and through thought.
In that single clear tone I felt a final motion begin. Purtunah had started her last act.
The death of Mirabel Anstalionah was no longer a possibility.
It was set in motion. I tasted the inevitability in my mouth, metallic and sharp.
I wondered how Nicholas would stand in the hour when everything settled into its appointed end.
I wondered how everyone would receive the news, how faces I loved and loathed alike would change when that one impossible fact arrived.
Such a moment is not merely an event. It is a hinge. It turns the world.