Arlott looked down at Veth.

His eyes glowed; flame curling lazily off his blade as he took slow deliberate steps toward the crater where Veth lay.

He pressed the sword tip to Veth’s throat.

"Any last words," he said.

Veth looked up at him.

Then laughed.

"Fool."

Arlott’s instincts screamed.

He moved.

Too late.

BOOM.

The blood that had splattered on his clothes detonated simultaneously; every droplet, every stain, every trace of Veth’s blood that had landed on him throughout the entire fight going off at once.

The shockwave threw him backwards, his mana barrier shattering on impact, the force of it hitting him like a wall he hadn’t seen coming.

He landed hard.

Skidded.

Came to a stop on one knee, clothes in tatters, breathing ragged.

He looked up.

Veth was pulling himself out of the crater; battered, regenerating slowly, his usual grin nowhere on his face for once.

He looked at Arlott with something that hadn’t been there before.

Despair.

’He’s still standing,’ Veth thought; the disbelief sitting heavy in his chest. ’After all of that. After everything. He’s still—’

Arlott stood.

Sword up. One arm. Clothes destroyed. Blood running freely from more wounds than he could count.

Still standing.

Veth’s jaw tightened.

Arlott took a step forward.

Then he felt it.

Something cold. Sharp. Wrong.

His body stopped responding before his mind caught up.

He looked down.

A spike of earth protruded from his chest; clean, precise, driven through from behind at the exact moment his guard had dropped completely.

He gasped.

Blood filled his mouth.

He clutched the wound, his legs giving way slowly, the sword slipping from his fingers.

He turned his head.

Coryn stood behind him; cold expression, one hand still extended magic dissipating from his fingers.

He hadn’t said a word the entire fight.

He hadn’t needed to.

He’d simply waited for the right moment.

And found it.

Veth looked at Arlott crumpling to the ground and the grin came back; slower this time, something exhausted underneath it.

"As expected of a Silford, they truly do live up to their reputation, at least this one," he said quietly.

Arlott hit the ground.

His hand pressed over the wound, blood seeping through his fingers, his vision narrowing at the edges.

’Not yet,’ he thought.

But his body had already made a different decision.

Coryn stood behind him.

With his always neutral expression, that flat unreadable calm, hand still extended, fingers curled like he was still holding something invisible in place.

"You should’ve watched your back," Coryn said.

Veth’s grin widened from the ground, delighted in a way that had nothing decent left in it.

Arlott’s knees buckled.

He went down slow, the spike still lodged through him, blood pooling beneath his knees, spreading dark and fast across the churned earth. His sword arm dropped. His grip on it barely held.

He was still conscious. That was the only thing left working properly.

Coryn raised both hands.

The ground around them stirred, low and grinding, gathering itself the way it does right before something much bigger than a spike.

...

Deep in space, amongst the cluster of asteroids, a few moved, moving at high speeds straight towards Novaria.

This was Coryns unique ability, while Veth possessed the ability to control blood, he was still the brains among the duo, he on the other hand was the brawn, and he did the heavy lifting, while possessing the ability to manipulate asteroids, these ones he was controlling in particular were taking over 80% of his energy.

Only seconds had passed but the asteroids were already closing on, heading straight to Novaria.

With this, the destruction of Everett was complete.

....

Coryn’s arms trembled with the strain of it, veins bulging along his forearms, sweat dripping despite the cold void separating him from the battlefield below. Eighty percent. He’d never pushed this technique this far before.

The asteroids screamed through the atmosphere, friction tearing the sky open in long orange gashes, three of them, each easily the size of a small mountain, trailing fire and debris as they closed the last few kilometers.

On the ground, someone finally looked up.

A guard on the outer wall, half his squad already dead, blood on his hands from a fight he was already losing, tilted his head toward the sky for reasons he couldn’t explain later, some old animal instinct screaming at him before his conscious mind caught up.

He saw the fire first.

Then he saw what was making it.

"...Sound the retreat," he said, quiet, then louder, then screaming it, "SOUND THE RETREAT, EVERYONE GET BACK—"

Nobody had time to listen.

The first asteroid hit the eastern district.

The impact wasn’t a sound so much as it was the absence of every other sound, all at once, a silence so total and so violent it felt louder than anything that came before it. Buildings that had stood for three hundred years simply weren’t there anymore. The ground didn’t crater. It vanished, replaced by a churning wall of dust and fire rolling outward in every direction at a speed nothing on two legs could outrun.

The second one hit the guild district and it went the way sand goes when the tide comes in. Just gone. Absorbed into the expanding cloud of debris and fire consuming the skyline.

The shockwave reached the battlefield outside the gates seconds later.

It hit everything at once, S ranks, devils, monsters, knights, none of it discriminating, all of it thrown flat by a wind that carried the heat of something that had no business existing this close to a living city.

Arlott, still bleeding, still on one knee, felt the ground buck beneath him and looked up.

What used to be Everett’s skyline was gone.

In its place was a column of fire and smoke climbing high enough to blot out what remained of the afternoon sun, spreading slow and thick across the horizon like something had reached up and torn a hole straight through the sky.

He didn’t move for a long moment.

Couldn’t.

Somewhere behind him, high above, Coryn’s arms finally gave out and he dropped out of the sky, catching himself on a jagged outcrop of floating rock, breathing hard, sweat soaking through his cloak.

He looked down at what he’d done.

Then with the last bit of power he had, he pulled even more.

They were already coming, and if they ever land, the destruction of the capital will be complete.