Hovering in the air, Aquila was now utterly consumed by excruciating pain and towering rage. Its core eye spun madly, stirring the wrath of the entire sky!
*BOOM—!!!!!*
Deafening thunderclaps seemed to tear at everyone's eardrums! Countless terrifying lightning bolts, thick as dragons and serpents, wove together into a destructive electric web that slammed down upon the sole floating platform on which everyone stood!
Horrible cracking sounds rang out in succession! Vast sections of marble and structure at the platform's edges turned to dust under the lightning. The entire platform tilted violently, fractured, and began an irreparable plummet downward!
A powerful sensation of weightlessness abruptly seized everyone! Howling winds whipped past their ears as the sea of clouds below and the faintly visible, lethally shimmering Golden Pool rapidly approached!
But the next moment, a steady, profoundly heavy force, born of the earth itself, gently caught the rapidly falling platform.
Phaethon had invoked the Authority of 'Earth'!
The platform's descent visibly slowed, as if sinking into an invisible, viscous mire, yet it continued to fall downward with grim determination.
"Everyone, hold on!" Phaethon's voice came through the gale, carrying undeniable gravity. "The platform is falling. While I've used the Earth's Authority, we are still ten thousand meters high, far too distant from the ground! I can only minimize its falling speed, but I cannot stop it before it hits the Golden Pool... Cyrene, can you manage it?" Phaethon looked toward Cyrene.
"I can!" Cyrene answered without hesitation. She quickly steadied herself. The ritual sword in her hand emitted a soft glow, resonating with her incantation. "But I need a complete and uninterrupted period for the chant!"
At that very moment, the Sky Titan Aquila, driven utterly mad by fury, trailed its shattered form spilling golden divine blood. Like a falling, burning star, it launched a suicidal dive directly toward the descending platform! It intended to smash these blasphemers and their last foothold into oblivion together!
"Watch out! Steady your footing!" Phainon roared. The Dawnmaker greatsword in his hand carved a perfect silver arc, precisely batting away a massive chunk of platform debris hurtling toward them. "The descent is still long! Cyrene, focus entirely on your chant! We will finish off this maddened Titan long before we plunge into that damned pool!"
"Understood!" The flames on Phaethon's Judgment of Shamash reignited. He pointed the blade's tip at the diving Aquila, his voice cold and filled with resolve. "There's still a world waiting to be saved. We... have no intention of perishing here alongside a mindless beast!"
The battle resumed with fierce intensity upon the rapidly descending platform!
Phainon and Phaethon, like two streaks of light charging against a meteor, took the initiative to intercept! Dawnmaker and Judgment of Shamash once again plunged deep into Aquila's colossal form as it dove, attempting to arrest its devastating momentum!
"ROOOAAARR—!!!"
Aquila let out an even more piercing, agonized bellow. Golden light exploded from its wounds. The immense impact force even caused the platform's descent to shudder and briefly stall! Leveraging the collision, it struggled to rise again, trying to create distance.
Then, adjusting its posture mid-air, it kept its target deadlocked on Phainon and Phaethon on the platform. With even greater speed, it dove again with maddened fury! Carrying a desperate resolve for mutual annihilation!
"Now!" Phainon's eyes were sharp as an eagle's. He calculated the trajectory and angle of Aquila's dive. He did not evade but instead positioned the Dawnmaker greatsword before him, preparing to merge his entire strength with the opponent's kinetic energy from the fall!
At the instant Aquila was about to crash into the platform, Phainon moved! Like a warrior dancing with a dragon, his Dawnmaker followed the path of Aquila's dive, sweeping upward from below with tremendous force! The blade carved a path from Aquila's twisted head down to its chest, leaving an extremely deep and gruesomely long wound!
At almost the same moment!
Phaethon's figure appeared like a phantom at Aquila's side and rear—his Judgment of Shamash greatsword was not swung, but...
*"Blade of a fury—!"*
In the next instant, a gigantic blade tens of meters wide and hundreds of meters long materialized in that space!
It radiated annihilating energy and, with unparalleled speed and precision, violently pierced through Aquila's back! It aligned perfectly with the massive wound Phainon had inflicted on the front!
Light and darkness, silver and red, two opposing peak forces converged and erupted at the core of Aquila's body—that shattered central eye!
*CRUNCH—BOOM!!!*
Accompanied by a dreadful sound of crushing glass and bone, the giant eyeball at the center of Aquila's form was utterly sliced apart and obliterated by these terrifying forces from the front and rear!
The colossal kinetic energy of the Blade of Fury was not spent. After utterly destroying the core, it continued pushing Aquila's massive, lifeless remains forcefully into the airspace lateral to and below the platform, preventing it from crashing down and causing a secondary catastrophe.
With its core critically ruined and will completely extinguished, Aquila, powerless and impaled by the gigantic Blade of Fury, fell like a kite with its string cut, plummeting limply into the deepest part of the Eye of Twilight—that rolling, boiling Golden Pool.
*SPLOOSH!*
A tremendous splash echoed. Golden magma sent towering waves splashing high, then gradually settled, completely swallowing and melting the Sky Titan, the former tyrant.
It seemed like cruel cycle: in the past, it had cast its subjects into this pool; today, it found its final resting place here.
Just as Aquila was engulfed by the Golden Pool, Cyrene's long and ancient incantation finally reached its final syllable!
*"Time Stagnation!"*
Her ritual sword struck the platform with emphasis! A massive, azure-blue magic circle instantly expanded from her, covering the entire falling platform!
A powerful and stable energy field forcibly negated the last of the falling momentum, stabilizing the platform completely and firmly in mid-air, not descending a fraction further.
The clamor of battle abruptly ceased, leaving only the sound of wind and the gurgling of the rolling golden pool below.
At that moment, a point of deep blue light slowly rose from where Aquila had sunk, breaking free of all restraints, floating gently yet steadfastly toward the platform.
"Look! That is..." Cyrene pointed at the beautifully crystalline object gracefully descending, her voice weary yet stirred with emotion. "Aquila's Coreflame!"
Hyacine gazed at the Coreflame, then at the gradually settling pool below. Her expression was complex, carrying a kind of relieved sigh of lament:
"So... is this truly the end? Seliose condemned mortals, sentencing them to fall into the golden pool... In the end, the Titan she fused with met its end by being devoured by this same magma. Does this count as a kind of... end of the cycle?"