The battlefield at the gates seemed frozen in a breathless instant—devils and humans alike halted mid-motion, their weapons raised but unmoving. Then, without warning, the world screamed.
A sound unlike thunder tore through the sky—deep, crushing, endless. The light fractured. The clouds split apart as if the heavens themselves had been struck. From the center of the capital, an enormous ripple of energy erupted outward, invisible but overwhelming, flattening towers and hurling soldiers from both sides into the air.
Kaelion barely managed to brace himself with a wall of mana before the wave hit. The ground beneath him caved in, turning stone to dust. "Hold the barrier!" he shouted, though his own voice was drowned beneath the roaring wind.
