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At the edge of broken skies, the end began.
Lightning sliced the heavens. Fragments of marble tore loose from temples, crashing like dead gods' bones. Market stalls shattered. People flew upward, swallowed by a savage sky.
So ended Vaelrix, Lord of Storms, last of the Thunderborn, soul-bound to Seresthos.
Below, in the city's, life clung to ignorance. A child chased a kite, laughter drowned by rising roars. Vendors hawked bruised oranges. Lovers whispered under the Whispering Bridge, blind to their doom.
The ground lurched violently. Banners snapped like wounded birds. Tens of thousands froze, mouths forming useless prayers. Towers cracked. Sacred stones hammered down.
In the High Spire, priests threw relic-weapons skyward, prayers shredding into panic. Blades fell back, useless. No gods answered.
Vaelrix roared.
The sound shattered marble, crushed lungs. The storm writhed, alive with agony. Even he could not stop it.
Atop the Spire, Saint Cerys knelt at an altar built from dead saints' bones. Rain bit her skin. Her shaking hands gripped the Spear of Celestial Judgment, not a weapon of worship but treason. Forged to sever.
She braced her legs and heaved, the spear heavy and unwieldy in her hands. Blood filled her mouth from biting her tongue. Around her, priests shouted and stumbled, clawing at their robes in blind panic.
"Forgive me, Vaelrix" she mouthed.
Her arm locked. To strike meant betrayal, betrayal of the last thing they had left.
Vaelrix's scream shredded the heavens. Raw grief collapsed her. She retched onto sacred stones.
"We made you god. Now we remind you... there's no place for dragons in this world."
She wiped her face with a muddy sleeve and pushed herself upright. The spear felt wrong in her hands, heavy and twitching like a live wire.
With a scream tearing her raw, she hurled the spear skyward.
The spear tore from her hands and rose through the rain-heavy air, slow at first, like the world itself was holding its breath. Cerys watched, frozen, as it climbed higher... higher... then drove straight into Vaelrix's chest with a sound like a mountain breaking.
Bindings tethering Seresthos snapped.
Gravity returned. The floating city lurched. Cracks ripped through the foundation stones. Whole districts tore free and collapsed, dragged down by their own weight.
Streets split open. Towers sheared apart. Vaelrix's final roar shattered bedrock.
Cerys collapsed, whispering her last prayer:
"Forgive us. Forgive us."
Vaelrix's wings folded. Lightning bled from his chest, molten starlight rivers.
He fell.
The weight of Vaelrix pinned the broken city to the ground, dragging Seresthos from the sky into a shattered grave.
The Shadowed Chapel shattered beneath him, temples exploding to dust. Stone screamed. Sanctuaries crumbled. Marble, fire, bone rained down.
Streets ruptured like torn skin. Families vanished between snapping towers and molten stone.
Seresthos... City of the sky... Folded inward and died.
Among ruins scattered with saints' bones and sinners' screams lay the broken Thunderborn.
Vaelrix, Lord of Storms, was no more.
Seresthos, torn from the sky and crushed under its own ruin, was gone with him.
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