A massive shape tore through the clouds from above and hit the descending behemoth before it could complete its dive.

The impact was enormous. The sound of the collision reached the ground a half second after the visual did and it rolled across Frostveil like a shockwave, deep and heavy and physical enough that people felt it in their chests rather than just hearing it with their ears.

The behemoth that had been dropping toward the town with its full weight was caught mid-descent, gripped by something larger and stronger than itself, and driven downward with a force that had nothing gentle in it. It hit the ground outside the outer wall and the earth cracked and buckled under the impact, sending a spray of soil and rock outward in all directions.

Everything stopped.

The monsters that had been pressing against the defensive line froze in place as if something had cut the strings controlling them all at once. The knights and garrison units that had been fighting for the last stretch of time froze as well and every single person and creature on that battlefield turned their attention upward at the same moment.

What they saw there made most of them go very quiet.

A wingspan spread across the sky above Frostveil.

It stretched from one end of the town’s horizon to the other with room to spare and the shadow it cast darkened the ground below completely.

The creature attached to those wings was a Wyvern and it was enormous in a way that made the behemoth it had just thrown into the ground look like a manageable problem by comparison. The sheer scale of it was enough to make even the bravest person present swallow hard and reconsider their general feelings about being outside.

Leo stared upward with his mouth slightly open.

"Is this Uncle Rathlos?" he asked, his voice coming out in a tone that suggested he was hoping someone would tell him he was wrong.

Wales looked up at the sky and did not look away for a long moment. "Yes. It’s him," he said.

"How the hell is he so huge," Leo said.

It was a fair question. Rathlos had gone through a considerable transformation after his growth in strength and his original body had pushed well beyond anything that could be described as normal. What was up in the sky right now was the result of that and it was genuinely monstrous in scale.

Rathlos moved and opened his mouth and roared.

The sound that came out hit the battlefield like a wall. The monsters that had been frozen in place completed their processing of the situation and immediately turned to run in whatever direction was away from the source of that sound.

Rathlos looked down at them and his voice came out low and carrying across the entire area without effort.

"Since you came here, then you can stay."

His claws swept through the nearest cluster of fleeing monsters and slammed them into the ground with a force that reduced them to nothing worth describing.

A flame blast followed immediately after, shooting outward across the field in a wide arc that hit the retreating mass of creatures and shook the entire war zone with the force of the detonation. The ground burned where it landed and the shockwave from it knocked several of the closer monsters completely off their feet.

The battlefield did not recover its previous energy after that. Whatever momentum the monster wave had carried into Frostvele was gone and it was not coming back. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

.......

Far behind the battlefield, beyond the broken ridges and frozen slopes, a figure stood hidden in the shadow of a mountain.

He remained completely still with his presence suppressed to its absolute limit, pulled inward and flattened until there was almost nothing there to detect.

A demon, watching everything from a distance with his eyes fixed on Frostvele and his body unmoving against the cold dark rock behind him. Even from this far back he could feel the terrifying pressure spreading outward from the battlefield and it had been growing steadily worse for the last several minutes.

Then the massive wyvern appeared and his expression changed instantly.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, his voice low and tight. "I didn’t expect there would be another monster like this."

His gaze locked onto Rathlos and did not move. The way it moved across the battlefield and the way it crushed everything in its path without slowing down or adjusting was not something that belonged in the category of ordinary threats. It was operating on a different level entirely and watching it made that fact impossible to ignore.

"Just what the hell is this thing," he whispered as his brows pulled together hard. "Why are the Blanks so lucky." His fists clenched slightly at his sides as the question sat in his chest without a good answer. "Where did they even get something like this."

The demon swallowed hard.

He himself was at Mythic rank and under normal circumstances that meant there was not much he needed to fear in a straightforward encounter.

A cold feeling crept up his spine slowly and deliberately, the kind that does not come from temperature.

"This is not normal," he said quietly.

His instincts were not giving him a gentle suggestion. They were screaming at him with the kind of clarity that only comes when the danger is real and immediate and not open to interpretation.

"My mission was just to observe," he muttered quickly and his breathing had become uneven without him noticing when it started. "Since it failed, I should run."

He did not hesitate after that. He turned around and stepped back and then pushed into full speed, his body slipping into the shadows and moving away from the battlefield as fast as he could manage while keeping his presence suppressed. He did not dare look back and did not allow himself the distraction of doing so.

instinctive than that.

Then a voice echoed out from somewhere around him, easy and unhurried, as if the speaker had nowhere else to be and nothing pressing on their time.

"Yo, where are you going?"

The demon’s body froze mid-step.His eyes went wide and he stood there for a fraction of a second that felt considerably longer than it was. Then slowly he turned his head and looked behind him.

There was nothing there. Just empty space and frozen ground and the quiet of the mountain.

"Who," he started and then before the word finished leaving his mouth a crushing force slammed down onto him from above with a weight that had no warning attached to it.

BOOOOM!

His body was driven straight into the ground and the frozen surface beneath him shattered on impact.

Cracks spread outward in every direction like a web racing away from the center and dust and snow burst up into the air around him in a thick cloud.

"Ugh!"

The sound that came out of him was involuntary and blood rose in his throat as his body hit the earth and stayed there, pinned down by a pressure that covered him completely and left no part of him free from it.

He could not move. His mind went blank for a full second as the fear settled in and pushed everything else aside to make room for itself.

"What is this," he said and his voice came out trembling in a way he had no control over.

Then he heard footsteps. Slow and calm and completely unhurried, moving toward him across the frozen ground with the steady rhythm of someone who had already decided how this was going to end and felt no need to rush toward it.

Each step was louder than the one before it. Each one closer.

The demon tried to lift his head and the pressure pushed it straight back down against the cracked frozen earth.

"No," he said quietly and then again with less composure.

For the first time in a long time, genuine fear filled his eyes completely. He had not even seen the enemy yet and he had not exchanged a single blow yet he was already crushed.

The pressure did not last long.

CRACK!

The ground shattered as the demon forced himself upward through it, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and falling onto the broken frozen earth below him. His body trembled for a moment as he straightened but then his aura surged outward with a violence that had nothing controlled about it. His eyes turned dark and the expression on his face shifted into something low and unstable.

"You think you can crush me like that?" he growled, his voice coming out rough and tight from somewhere in his chest.

The air around him twisted visibly. A deep red energy began leaking out from his body in slow spreading tendrils, moving outward like mist rolling off heated ground and thickening as it went.

"Mythic or not, I am not dying here," he said.

BOOM!

His aura exploded outward in a single violent release and the ground beneath his feet collapsed under the force of it. Veins bulged across his arms and his presence became heavier and darker and considerably more suffocating than it had been a moment before.

"Bloodline release," he muttered.

The red aura wrapped around him completely and his strength increased several times over in a sharp and sudden climb. The pressure radiating off him cracked the nearby rocks outright and the air around him distorted at the edges like heat rising off stone in summer.

Above him Rathlos hovered in the sky with his massive form casting a shadow over the entire mountain range below. His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the change happen.

"So you still have tricks," he said calmly.

The demon looked up with his expression twisted and ugly. "I’ll tear you down."