The silence in the lair was a physical weight, heavier than the stone ceiling above. The metallic tang of blood was so thick it coated the back of Harold's throat.
He looked at Kael, whose hands were still dripping, then down at the headless ruin of the man who had nearly brought the Sixteen Kingdoms to their knees.
There was no triumph here. Only the hollow, ringing aftermath of a massacre.
"Secure the perimeter," Harold commanded, his voice barely a whisper. The ten commanders, seasoned killers themselves, moved with uncharacteristic hesitation, stepping over the piles of corpses like they were walking through a nightmare.
Kael didn't move. He stood over the body, the Emperor State crown flickering out, leaving him in the dim, flickering torchlight of the hideout. The "Freedom" he had fought for felt like a shroud.
While the A.N.Ts began the grim work of clearing the lair, the magical communication crystals in Harold's gauntlet began to pulse with a violent, frantic red light. It wasn't just one nation. It was all of them.
Harold stepped away from the carnage, pressing his thumb to the crystal. A holographic projection shimmered into the air, revealing Neith. Her face, usually a mask of stoic intellect, was deathly pale.
"Harold," she said, her voice trembling.
"The war has changed. It isn't about Noelle anymore."
"We have him," Harold said, glancing back at the gore-stained throne. "He's dead. Kael... he finished it."
"It doesn't matter," Neith interrupted, her image flickering. "Reports are coming in from the southern coast. Galadrielle is gone, Harold. Not conquered. Not occupied. Gone. The entire kingdom has been wiped from the map. Witnesses from the neighboring territories describe a serpent the size of a mountain range rising from the Great Divide."
The news hit the room like a physical blow. The commanders stopped their work. Kael finally turned his head, his brown eyes widening.
"Abyssior," Harold breathed, the blood draining from his face. "The Protector of the Seas... he's crossed the boundary."
Across the remaining nine nations of Tellus, the reaction was a mixture of paralysis and primal terror.
In the Kingdom of the West: The bells of the Great Cathedral tolled a funeral march for a sister nation they couldn't even mourn properly. The vice commander ordered the sea-walls reinforced, though everyone knew stone meant nothing to a god-serpent.
In the Forgemire: The industrial forges went silent. The craftsmen, who feared nothing beneath the earth, looked toward the northen horizon and wept for the trade fleets that would never return.
In the east: The high mages began a desperate ritual to lift their lands even higher, hoping to escape the reach of the rising tides.
The "Freedom Call" was not a celebration of Noelle's death; it was a desperate, panicked cry for survival. The death of one monster had been immediately overshadowed by the awakening of a myth.
Back in the lair, Harold walked over to Kael. He reached out a hand, hesitating before placing it on the boy's blood-soaked shoulder.
"You did what had to be done, Kael," Harold said, though he looked at the vaporized remains of Noelle's head with a deep, unsettling chill. "But the world just got a lot bigger, and a lot darker. Noelle was a man. Abyssior is a force of nature. And the nations are looking at us to stop him."
Kael looked at his hands. The blood was starting to dry, turning a dark, crusty brown. He thought of Mikaela, who couldn't bear to look at him. He thought of Ammit, the "demon" who was just a girl in a tube.
"I didn't do this for the nations," Kael said, his voice cold and devoid of the boyishness he once had. "I did it because he wouldn't stop. If this serpent won't stop either... then I'll do the same to him."
Harold looked at the boy—the "Diamond in the Ruins"—and realized that while they had rescued Kael from the tube, they had lost the child he used to be. The war for Mumit had truly begun, and its greatest weapon was covered in the blood of five hundred men.