Kreydan zarathos
"About time, I dance the truth out of you... Brother", kreydan said. His voice reed thin.
"There is no truth or anything that you imagine", Aldros grunted. "It's a matter of loyalty and dedication. I would have given it to zarathos, if he had acknowledged me".
Kreydan shaked his head. "You were never like that brother. You never cared for this... This acknowledgement you speak of. You wanted to live in peace".
Aldros smirked. "Well it's about time... We both start to think about ourselves".
"Remember when—"
"I remember everything! No need for you to go soft on me, kreydan. Do what you are here for".
Kreydan hesitated, for a minute, he wanted to talk... Not to eldros's loyal servant but to his brother. Brother who taught him everything, from fastening his helm to reading complex scrolls.
Kreydan lifted moths flame and nodded. "Very well. I won't stop until you break".
Aldros lifted his sword as well, runes on its length, blue and dark.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Boots scraped stone. Wind tugged through their cloaks, flapping like banners.
Aldros nodded once. Steel lifted. Hammer lowered.
The duel began.
Aldros took the first step. His boots grated against gravel scattered across the square. The sound was small but sharp in the silence.
He attacked without warning. The sword came forward in a fast, direct thrust. Kreydan twisted aside and felt the edge scrape across the plates on his shoulder, metal dragging against metal with a harsh rasp that vibrated through his bones.
Kreydan answered with a heavy swing. The hammer cut through the air with a deep rushing sound, the kind that made instinct scream to move. Aldros slipped inside the arc, his blade snapping up to strike along the haft. Steel struck iron with a dull ringing impact that carried across the square and echoed against the walls.
They closed. Aldros pressed forward with quick, precise cuts. Each strike met Kreydan's hammer with short, brutal collisions that sent shocks up his arms. The impact of metal against metal sounded thick and grounded, more like tools striking an anvil than weapons singing. Dust jumped at their feet with every step and every clash.
Kreydan shifted his stance and drove a downward blow toward Aldros's head. Aldros rolled away just before the hammer landed. Stone fractured under the impact with a heavy crack, chips and powder jumping into the air.
Aldros came out of the roll low and fast. His blade bit across Kreydan's ribs. The cut was shallow but the sensation was sharp and hot, cloth tearing, skin parting. Kreydan felt his breath hitch as he drove forward with his shoulder.
Their bodies collided with a dense thud. Aldros staggered back two steps, boots sliding against grit. Kreydan followed with a sideways strike. Aldros caught it with the flat of his sword. The force of the blow drove him down onto one knee, stone crunching beneath him.
For a heartbeat they remained locked. Their weapons pressed together, muscles straining, breath loud between them.
"You have improved", Aldros said.
Kreydan smiled.
Aldros broke the bind with a sudden twist and kicked Kreydan in the chest. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. Kreydan stumbled back, boots dragging through dust, hammer lowering as he forced himself to breathe again.
Aldros lifted his sword. Kreydan raised his hammer. They moved at the same time.
Steel met iron again and again, each collision heavy and real, the sounds swallowed and thrown back by the empty square. Their footwork carved lines through the dust. Sweat ran into their eyes. Muscles trembled with strain.
Aldros dodged several blows that came directly towards his face, kreydan kept on striking, each strike deliberately getting more faster.
Aldros blinked.
The hesitation lasted less than a heartbeat, but Kreydan saw it. Saw the decision settle behind his brother's eyes. The sword came forward in a sudden brutal arc, faster than anything Aldros had used before. Steel flashed, and for an instant faint light gathered along the edge.
The strike landed square against Kreydan's chest.
Impact slammed through armor and bone like a falling wall. Air burst from his lungs. His feet left the ground before his mind could catch up. He flew backward across the square, body spinning, hammer ripped from his grip.
Stone rushed toward him.
He tore through the first building in a storm of shattered brick and splintered beams. Wood snapped against his shoulders. Dust filled his mouth. He smashed through a second wall without slowing, fragments exploding outward in a violent spray. The world blurred into broken shapes and roaring wind.
He hit the ground hard enough to crack the street beneath him. Momentum carried him onward, tumbling through rubble, sliding through wreckage until he finally slammed against the remains of a collapsed archway.
Silence followed.
Then the howl of wind rushing through the ruined streets caught up with him, tearing at his cloak and stinging his face. He lay there gasping, chest burning where the strike had landed, every breath a sharp reminder that Aldros had not been holding back.
Wind rune, he thought, forcing his eyes open.
The air still moved strangely around him, currents curling and tugging at loose debris. Dust spiraled upward instead of settling. Broken tiles rattled and skittered across the ground.
Kreydan pushed himself upright. Pain rippled through his ribs. His hammer lay half buried nearby, its iron head cracked with fresh lines from the impact. He reached for it and felt the familiar weight settle into his hands.
Across the shattered landscape, Aldros approached slowly. Sword held low. Shoulders rising and falling with controlled breaths. No triumph in his face. Only resolve.
Kreydan watched him come.
He had wanted answers. Words. Some fragment of the brother he remembered beneath the warrior standing before him.
But Aldros had drawn on something more.
And Kreydan understood what came next.
He closed his eyes for a moment and reached inward, toward the place he had refused to touch since entering Eldhaven. Deep within him the power given by Zarathos stirred like a buried furnace. Cold at first. Then restless. Then awake.
Very well, he thought.
Heat spread through his veins. The weight of the hammer seemed to grow lighter as strength returned to his arms. Dust trembled at his feet. Small stones lifted and settled again as his presence pressed outward.
He opened his eyes.
Aldros stopped a few paces away. The wind around him curled and tightened, tugging at his hair and cloak. His sword rose slowly, the point angled toward Kreydan's throat.
Kreydan lifted his hammer.
The brothers faced each other again across a field of broken stone and fallen walls. The air between them grew heavy with old memories and new power. No words passed between them this time.
Only the quiet understanding that the fight had changed.
Kreydan stepped forward.
The ground cracked beneath his boots.
And the duel began anew.
Kreydan planted his feet and lifted the hammer high.
The power he had tried to ignore surged through him at last. He drove the weapon down into the broken street. Stone split beneath the blow, cracks racing outward like lightning trapped in rock. The ground shuddered, then heaved upward behind him.
Two shapes forced their way from the earth.
Giants of fractured stone and packed soil, as tall as the surrounding buildings. Dust cascaded from their shoulders. Their eyes burned with a dull ancient glow. When they rose to full height the air filled with the deep grinding sound of rock shifting against rock. Their roar rolled across Eldhaven like distant thunder, shaking loose debris from shattered rooftops.
Aldros watched them rise. He smiled.
"Not bad", he said, voice calm despite the trembling ground.
He stepped forward and lifted his sword in a slow deliberate arc. The blade cut through the air, and heat followed. At first it was only a shimmer, then a ripple, then a rush of flame that curled along the steel like living breath. Fire coiled outward, spreading into a wide burning halo that painted the ruins in harsh orange light.
Kreydan drove his hammer forward.
The giants moved.
Each step crushed stone beneath their weight. The ground caved where their feet landed. Walls collapsed as they advanced, arms raised to strike.
Aldros turned once on his heel and brought the sword down through empty air.
The flames surged outward in a sudden violent wave. Heat struck like a physical force, bending the air and swallowing sound. Fire wrapped around the giants before they could reach him. Their massive arms came down anyway, smashing into the ground where Aldros had stood only moments before. Stone shattered and dust exploded upward.
But the flames did not break.
They climbed the giants' bodies, filling every crack and hollow. The roar of burning rock drowned out everything else. The glow inside their eyes flickered as their forms blackened and split apart. Chunks of stone fell away in glowing fragments that turned to gray powder before touching the ground.
Within seconds, nothing remained but drifting ash.
The broken square fell quiet again.
Aldros lowered his sword slowly. Heat rippled from him in waves that made the air shimmer. Ash from the fallen giants drifted down around both brothers, settling on their shoulders like gray snow.
Kreydan watched the last fragments crumble and scatter across the broken street. Fire rune.
He tightened his grip on the hammer.
Across from him, Aldros's smile faded into something harder, something familiar and distant all at once.
The fire around the sword dimmed but did not vanish.
And the space between them felt smaller than ever.
Kreydan smashed his hammer into the air once more. This time, thousands of spectral hammers burst into existence, hanging above the battlefield before spiraling outward, a roaring tornado of iron and fury.
Aldros only smiled.
One by one the hammers shot toward him, screaming through the air. He stepped aside with effortless grace, weaving through the storm as if dancing. The smile never left his face.
"You know the northern gates of Eldhaven open to the sea", Aldros said calmly. "Yet you still dare challenge me?"
Kreydan's stomach dropped. No… I forgot…
Aldros closed his eyes and raised his sword toward the sky. Its blade blazed...brighter than before, blinding, merciless. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then came the sound.
Gentle at first... waves against stone. Then louder. Louder still.
Kreydan turned as the sea rose behind Eldhaven. Towering walls of water surged forward, tidal waves crashing into the city. Buildings splintered like toys, streets vanished beneath churning foam.
"Aldros!"Kreydan roared over the thunder of the ocean. "What's wrong with you? The people... the common folk live here!"
Aldros's smile deepened. "Eldros does not care. So neither do I".
The waves swallowed everything. The storm of hammers shattered instantly beneath the crushing flood. Towers collapsed, homes were torn from their foundations , only the keep endured, standing like a stubborn scar against the sea. And then the tide took them both.
The tidal wave vanished as if it had never existed.
No water remained. No roaring sea. Only silence and ruin. Eldhaven lay shattered, reduced to broken stone and drifting dust. Kreydan knew what he had seen. The ocean had been real. The destruction proved it.
He and Aldros lay slumped on the ground, too drained to rise. Then Kreydan felt it.
Someone was watching him. He forced his eyes open. A figure stood among the ruins, glowing in deep red. Its smile was thin and knowing. Then it laughed, a hollow sound that echoed inside his skull.
"Become the pawn of Eldros".
The figure spread its arms wide. Blinding light burst outward and swallowed everything. Kreydan tried to move. His fingers twitched toward his hammer but the light wrapped around him like chains.
His body refused to obey. The light closed in tighter and tighter until nothing else remained. Kreydan was trapped within it.
World of sumaka through eyes of amberia —
It was at this point when kreydan was trapped. He tried to fight but that was of no use. Eldros was too strong for him. He tried to contact jorath or maekan but he didn't know how? How can he get out of that?
I'll make sure my brother survives. Aldros is clearly lost in his way, I have to show both my brothers that they shouldn't fight with each other. Instead they should fight someone, or something.
Zarathos, my father, still wants more power.
I will make sure that doesn't happen.
A catastrophic event will occur at Aravan island. Everything or everyone is connected. Directly or indirectly.