The temptation to climb the city walls became impossible to resist. Remaining hidden would only delay answers. He moved swiftly through side streets until he reached a stone staircase leading upward.
No guards stopped him. Everyone seemed too occupied with the unfolding disaster. Moments later, he reached the outer battlements. The sight before him stole his breath.
Beyond the city stretched an endless plain, or rather... What had once been a plain. Now it resembled the end of the world. Entire mountains floated hundreds of meters above the earth. Others had been turned upside down.
Rivers no longer followed their natural paths, instead flowing upward into the sky before vanishing among the clouds. Forests burned with blue fire that consumed neither wood nor leaves.
Space itself folded repeatedly across the battlefield. Some regions appeared impossibly distant despite standing only a few kilometers away.
Others seemed close enough to touch despite lying beyond the horizon. Reality obeyed no rules.
And within that impossible landscape... Millions of armies fought. Endless ranks of soldiers stretched across the broken world: elves, humans, dwarves, beastmen and even races Atheline had never seen before.
Winged warriors streaked through the sky. Towering giants hurled entire cliffs across the battlefield. Dragons circled overhead, breathing rivers of elemental destruction.
Everywhere he looked... War consumed the land. Yet despite those unimaginable armies, everyone’s attention remained fixed upon something else.
The sky.
Atheline followed their gaze. His pupils contracted. There, far above the battlefield... Figures stood suspended in empty air.
Only seven of them. Against armies numbering in the millions. Yet each movement they made altered the world itself.
One raised a hand and an entire mountain dissolved into glittering dust. Another swung what appeared to be an ordinary sword. The resulting slash split the clouds for hundreds of kilometers. Lightning cascaded endlessly from the opening.
One figure wrapped in darkness extended both arms. Shadows spread across the battlefield like an ocean before swallowing countless Corrupted creatures whole.
Another answered with flames brighter than the sun itself. The sheer scale surpassed comprehension.
Then, he saw them.
The Corrupted.
Not the mindless beasts known in the modern era. These had once been people. Their bodies twisted into grotesque forms while fragments of armor still clung to their flesh. Some retained weapons while others possessed far too many limbs.
Their eyes glowed with an unnatural pale light. Instead of charging mindlessly, they fought with terrifying coordination, as though directed by a single will. Wave after wave assaulted the allied armies. Every fallen defender rose again moments later, joining the enemy.
Atheline finally understood why the ancient stories spoke with such horror. This wasn’t merely an army; it grew stronger with every death.
Suddenly, the entire battlefield fell silent. Not because the fighting stopped but because something else appeared.
A ripple spread through space. Every Sovereign immediately turned toward the same location. The allied armies hesitated; even the Corrupted paused.
Atheline instinctively held his breath. Someone was coming. The ripple widened, and darkness emerged. This was not ordinary shadow but absolute darkness. It swallowed light itself.
The air became unbearably heavy. Countless soldiers collapsed to one knee despite standing kilometers away.
The commanders atop the walls immediately shouted.
"Defensive formations! Now!"
Brilliant barriers rose around the city, even so... The pressure continued increasing. Atheline struggled to breathe. His Wind Aether instinctively circulated to protect him.
Still... Every instinct screamed danger because something fundamentally wrong had entered the world.
Within the darkness, a silhouette slowly became visible. It was tall and motionless; its features remained impossible to distinguish. Only two pale eyes shone clearly through the void surrounding it.
The battlefield remained utterly silent, finally... Someone whispered, yet the words somehow reached everyone.
"The Sovereign of Death..."
Fear spread through the armies faster than any command. Veteran soldiers who had survived countless battles suddenly looked like frightened children.
Some quietly wept, others gripped their weapons with trembling hands. Even the Sovereigns waiting in the heavens visibly tensed.
Atheline stared at the distant figure. He couldn’t sense its power, estimate its strength, or even fully perceive its existence. Looking directly at it felt like staring into an endless abyss.
The Sovereign of Death slowly raised one hand. For a heartbeat, nothing happened, then... the battlefield changed. Thousands upon thousands of corpses lying motionless across the plains suddenly stood.
Every fallen soldier, slain beast, dragon, giant, and every race. They all rose together, their eyes glowed with the same pale light.
The allied armies recoiled in horror. The Corrupted ranks doubled in an instant. One simple gesture had transformed the entire battlefield.
Atheline’s blood ran cold.
"So..." He whispered to himself. "This... is how the Cataclysm began."
Before anyone could react further... One of the figures standing among the Sovereigns stepped forward. Golden light erupted around them, illuminating the heavens with brilliance rivaling the sun.
The overwhelming radiance pushed back the encroaching darkness. The battle between the greatest beings in history...Was about to begin.
And Atheline realized he had not merely witnessed the past; somehow, he had become a spectator to the very moment that changed the fate of the entire world.
Atheline remained rooted to the battlements. Below him, the war continued to rage across the shattered plains, but his attention had long since left the countless armies.
Millions of soldiers clashed beneath the heavens. Dragons soared through storms of flame and lightning. Giants wrestled creatures that dwarfed mountains.
Entire legions vanished beneath waves of Corrupted before fresh ranks surged forward to replace them, yet none of it seemed to matter.
Every eye on the battlefield was fixed upon the sky. That was where the fate of the world was being decided.
The Sovereigns begun to move. There was no declaration, command or an exchange of words that reached the armies below.
One moment they remained suspended in the heavens, the next... the world erupted.
Atheline never actually saw the Supreme Sovereign move; instead, reality seemed to skip. The figure wrapped in brilliant radiance simply ceased to exist in one place and appeared before the Sovereign of Death in the next.