Four hours after Kale's slaughter began, the sky itself declared war.
A pressure descended first—brutal, absolute, the kind that crushed ribs and forced blood from ears.
Then the horizon tore open with a sound like a continent screaming in its death throes.
One hundred thousand A-ranks rose into the air in perfect, suffocating synchrony: every single one a living storm, lightning crawling over armor, wind screaming from wings of condensed mana, and more...
They filled the heavens until the sun vanished behind a wall of white-blue death, until the very sky was erased and replaced by an ocean of crackling annihilation.
Below, on shattered sky-islands and floating continents of broken stone, nine hundred thousand lesser Stormrend troops beat war-drums that shook the earth's bones, but none could ascend.
Only A-rank and above could defy gravity here.
