The eastern border of Solaris was unrecognizable. It used to be a lush, green valley dotted with merchant outposts and stone watchtowers and was now a dead wasteland. The grass had not just died; it had turned to gray ash. The stone towers were pulverized into gravel. The sky above was a suffocating, unnatural shade of bruised purple, blocking out the warmth of the morning sun.

Velanor Banner stood on the edge of the broken boundary line. The young earth mage wore his tough leather armor, his boots stomped firmly in the dead ground. He had survived the mountain pass. He had crushed a swarm of Aberrations by dropping the cliff on them. But as he looked out at the eastern horizon, his callused hands began to shake on their own. This was not a swarm of mindless beasts.

A massive wall of thick, toxic black mist stretched infinitely across the plains. It was easily a hundred feet high, slowly rolling toward the capital like a tidal wave of nightmare. The mist hissed vehemently as it touched the ground, prolly rotting the dirt and turning the earth into dead ash.

"It is silent," Catherine Sylphyros said quietly, stepping up beside Velanor.

The Princess of the Forest Kingdom wore her sleek white armor. Her breath puffed out in small, white clouds in the freezing air. She held her bare hands at her sides, tiny, razor sharp crystals of ice coating her fingers, ready to be thrown at a notice of enemy.

She was right. The silence was the most terrifying part. When the Aberrations attacked the Great Dam, they shrieked and roared. They were loud, chaotic monsters. But this massive wall of black mist made no noise. There were no battle cries. There were no thudding footsteps. It was a disciplined, silent march of death.

"They are waiting for the perfect moment to break the line," Catherine analyzed, her silver blue eyes sharp. "The Fallen Monarch is not sending feral dogs today. He is sending a structured military."

"Then we build a bigger, stronger wall," Velanor grunted.

He ignored the cold sweat running down his neck. He slammed his bare hands against the ruined grounds. He didn’t use a small patch of earth. He pushed his internal core to its limit, drawing on the bedrock buried fifty feet below the surface. "Earth Shift: The Iron Ridge!"

RUMBLEE!!

The ground tempestuously shook. A massive wall of solid, dark granite erupted from the ground. It stretched for half a mile across the eastern plain, rising forty feet into the air. It was dense, reinforced entirely by Velanor’s sheer willpower.

"That will buy us maybe ten minutes," a lazy, echoing voice stated from behind them.

Velanor and Catherine turned around. Luna Zephyros walked slowly up the hill, ignoring the cold wind. His dark uniform jacket flapped slightly around his knees. His stark white hair was a bright beacon in the gloomy light.

As Luna walked, the air around him warped. He wasn’t casting a spell. His hands were shoved into his pockets. But the loose gravel, the gray ash, and the small rocks simply lifted off the ground, hovering a few inches in the air as he passed by. The passive gravity radiating from his body rejected the earth’s natural pull.

Soltheia walked a few steps behind him. She carried a leather satchel filled with medical supplies. She looked exhausted, but her ocean-blue eyes were hardened. She had spent a week crying in the infirmary. She was done crying now. Luna stopped next to Velanor. He looked at the massive granite wall, then looked up at the raging wave of black mist slowly approaching them. His right eye was a normal, lazy gray. But his left eye burned with a swirling, elegant silver cosmic light.

"The black mist is not just fog, boy," Luna explained softly, his voice carrying that strange dual resonance. "It is pure, heavy dark magic. It eats physical matter. Your granite wall is strong, but the shadows will rot the stone in minutes."

"I have to try something," Velanor argued, crossing his arms. "If we just stand here, the mist will roll right over us and hit the capital gates. Kairos and the others are marching south to fight the demons. They cannot fight a two front war. We have to hold the east."

"We will hold the east," Luna said smoothly. "But we are not going to fight the mist. We are going to fight the ones controlling it."

Luna took his right hand out of his pocket. He simply pointed his pale finger at the rolling wall of dark fog.

He just looked at it with his cosmic eye. "Disperse."

BOOM!!

A massive, invisible shockwave of gravity erupted from his finger. It shot across the plains like a cannonball made of pure force. The invisible gravity slammed into the wave of black mist.

The impact was deafening. The toxic dark fog was expeditiously ripped apart. The sheer, crushing weight of Luna’s natural gravity forced the corrupted mist to instantly collapse, pinning the smoke flat against the gray dirt. A massive, half mile hole was torn straight through the center of the shadow army’s cover.

Velanor’s eyes widened in shock. Luna hadn’t even broken a sweat. The boy who used to complain about lifting a training sword had just parted an ocean of dark magic with a single finger.

But as the black mist cleared, the relief vanished. Standing in the center of the clearing mist, unharmed by the gravity blast, was the true horror of the Dawn Era.

There were thousands of Black Mist Knights standing in perfect military formation. They wore their rusted ancient armor. They held their jagged greatswords with both hands. They were a silent army of executioners. But the Knights were not the real threat.

Standing fifty yards in front of the army were three solitary figures. They did not wear bulky, rusted armor. They did not look like mindless Aberrations. They were elegant, terrifying, and shrouded in an aura of pure despair.

They were the three supreme Commanders of the Black Mist. The King, the Queen, and the Jack.

The figure standing in the center was tall. He wore sleek, dark armor that looked like it was forged from compressed midnight. A long, tattered cape of shadows dragged on the ash behind him. Resting on his head was a jagged, cruel crown made of black iron. He carried a massive, double-edged broadsword effortlessly in one hand.

To his right stood the second figure. She was slender, hovering a few inches off the ground. She wore a beautiful, flowing dress woven from living, moving black mist. Her face was hidden behind a smooth, porcelain-white mask that lacked any eyes or mouth. She held a long, thin dark staff topped with a shimmering purple crystal.

To the King’s left was the third figure. He was hunched over, his body twitching with erratic, lethal energy. He wore jagged dark leather armor. In his hands, he held two wickedly curved, serrated daggers that dripped with toxic black poison. He looked like a viper ready to strike.

Velanor Banner stared at the three silhouettes. Suddenly, the tall figure in the center, the ’King’ of the Black Mist took a single, slow step forward.

The Commander didn’t swing his sword. He just looked at the four teenagers standing behind the granite wall with an army of soldiers

An aura of pure, crushing despair hit the Vanguard Generals. It was a mental and spiritual crushing weight. It felt like the sky had suddenly turned to lead and dropped onto their shoulders. It carried the weight of thousands of years of ancient murderous intent. It was the presence of a being that existed solely to eradicate life.

Velanor gasped loudly. All the air was forced out of his lungs. His knees buckled. The earth mage, who had stood tall against a swarm of thirty monsters collapsed, his knees hitting the hard dirt. His hands pressed against the ash, trembling. A thick stream of red blood started pouring from his nose.

Catherine groaned in pure pain. She didn’t fall to her knees, but she stumbled backward. The razor sharp ice crystals coating her fingers instantly shattered into snow. She clutched her head, her silver blue eyes wide with primal terror.

Soltheia let out a quiet sob, dropping her medical bag and falling to the ground, curling inward to protect herself from the crushing dread.

The aura was impossible. It was the exact same crushing pressure Librarian Jovian had used in the basement, but it was fueled by raw hatred.

Velanor tried to push himself up. He gritted his teeth, his muscles bulging, but he couldn’t move an inch. The King of the Black Mist hadn’t even drawn his sword, and the Vanguard Generals were already defeated by his mere presence.

"Get up, dirt boy," a calm, unaffected voice ordered.

Velanor forced his head up. Luna Zephyros was standing perfectly straight. He hadn’t fallen to his knees. He hadn’t stumbled backward. His hands were still casually shoved deep into the pockets of his dark jacket.

Luna took a slow step forward, moving in front of his friends. He looked at the three terrifying silhouettes standing on the plains. His white hair lingered wildly in the cold wind. His shining silver cosmic eye flared with a brilliant intensity.

CLASH!!

Luna used his own passive, cosmic weight. He simply projected the tiny drop of infinite, primordial mana burning inside his mind outward. He met the crushing, despairing aura of the dark commanders with the terrifying weight of the infinite universe.

The two invisible auras clashed in the empty air between them. The collision did not make a sound, but the gray dirt vaporized, turning into a massive crater between the human line and the shadow army.

The crushing pressure pushing Velanor into the ground instantly vanished. Velanor gasped, dragging gulps of freezing air into his burning lungs. He pushed himself off the ground, wiping the thick blood from his nose and chin. He stood up, his legs shaking, but he locked his knees in place.

Catherine stopped clutching her head. She took a shuddering breath. She stepped forward, standing to Luna’s left. Her bare hands re-froze, covered in thick, jagged gauntlets of sharp ice.

Velanor stepped up to Luna’s right. He slammed his fists together, coating his forearms in dense, unbreakable granite.

Soltheia stood up behind them, her hands glowing with intense, golden green healing water.

Luna kept his eyes perfectly on the tall King of the Black Mist. The dark Commander tilted his crowned head slightly, finally skimming the silver haired mortal as a genuine threat.

"They are perfectly equal to us," Catherine whispered, her voice cold and stripped of fear. "The tall one is pure physical domination. The floating woman is magic. The hunched one is raw speed."

"I know," Luna replied, a faint smirk touching the corner of his lips. "It is unfair."

Velanor grinned, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the gray ash. "Unfair for us, or unfair for them?"

"They brought thousands of foot soldiers," Luna noted, his cosmic eye locking onto the three dark silhouettes, "and they still don’t stand a chance. I am not letting them take a single step past this wall."

The King of the Black Mist slowly raised his double-edged broadsword, pointing it at the Vanguard Generals. The Queen raised her dark crystal staff. The Jack spasmed, crossing his jagged, poisoned daggers.

The Eastern Front was set. There were no mindless beasts here. There were only elite commanders. Luna took his hands out of his pockets.

"Come on then," the Night Emperor challenged the dark, his voice carrying the weight of a collapsed star. "Show me what the void can do. Generals!! And Soldiers!! Be Ready to destroy darkness!"