The battlefield did not erupt immediately.
For a brief, fragile span of time, it simply froze.
Saleos was the first to stop.
He hovered above the shattered second layer, flames still burning along his arms and shoulders, the laws of fire humming instinctively around him as if waiting for his next command. His attack had already been released, his will already committed but his eyes were no longer on the enemy.
They were locked upward.
Toward me.
For the first time since I had met him, Saleos forgot to hide his face. The commander’s mask cracked, just enough for the truth beneath to show. Shock struck first, sharp and sudden. Then disbelief, his eyes narrowing as if the battlefield itself had lied to him.
Then his breathing changed.
Slow. Heavy.
Hope surfaced, uninvited and dangerous.
It lingered for less than a heartbeat before discipline crushed it back down. Saleos had survived too long to indulge in miracles. He clenched his fist once, hard, grounding himself as the fire around him steadied.
But the pause had already spread.
The demon army felt it next. Ragnar’s charge slowed as the Phantoms ahead of him faltered. Abominations stuttered in their advance, massive bodies shuddering as if the will driving them had slipped. Weapons hesitated. Domains flickered. The battlefield, which had moments ago been a roaring engine of destruction, lost its rhythm as the presence that the Eternal was just moments ago vanished from the battlefield.
Millions of gazes shifted.
Veterans who had seen entire legions wiped out. Captains who had buried their commanders. Soldiers who had learned to move without thinking, because thinking meant fear.
Their eyes turned upward.
They followed the thinning deathmist, the broken space, the unnatural quiet, until they found me suspended above the second layer, blood and debris drifting slowly away from my body.
Then Ragnar laughed.
It was not a controlled sound. It was wild and raw, tearing through the silence like a blade.
He crushed a Phantom mid-charge, his massive fist punching straight through its chest as if it were made of fog. The creature barely had time to register pain before Ragnar ripped his arm free, tossing the corpse aside like refuse.
"That’s who my boss is!" he roared, silver aura exploding outward as his club slammed down, pulverizing another wave of abominations. "Bring him more Eternals!"
The spell shattered.
The demon army answered.
At first, it was shock. Then it twisted into something sharper. Pain surfaced, names shouted into the void, memories of commanders who never returned, families lost to the rift. Grief followed close behind, heavy and choking.
Then rage took over.
A roar tore through the void, louder than any charge before it, layered with decades of loss and hatred finally given direction.
Saleos did not let it spiral.
His voice followed Ragnar’s, burning with authority and tempered by control, echoing across the battlefield without drowning it.
"Do not falter now," he commanded. "The rift is still open."
The words struck home.
This war was not finished. One Eternal dead did not close the wound. The enemy still stood, still poured through the breach, still threatened everything behind them.
The army moved again.
Harder. Faster.
I did not stay to watch the next collision.
Space folded, and I vanished.
I reappeared closer to the second layer, hovering just high enough to see the full scope of the damage. Entire sections of the structure were fractured, glowing cracks spreading like veins through dead metal and stone. Firestorms raged where Saleos had struck. Abominations poured in from the core layer, guided by panicked Phantoms trying to reassert control.
Deathmist surged everywhere.
It was thicker here than before, alive and hungry, rolling outward like a tide meant to drown anything that resisted. Even now, it pressed against my Essence, probing, testing.
I raised my hand.
This time, I did not hesitate.
The Star of Origin answered immediately.
With my Psynapse burning brighter than ever, I reached deeper, not pulling at the deathmist, not fighting it, but commanding the space beneath it. Reality bent, and a devouring portal opened below me, wide and stable, its edges absolute and black.
The deathmist reacted as if it had found an abyss.
It rushed downward.
At first in thin streams, then in roaring torrents, entire waves collapsing inward as the portal swallowed them whole. Corruption peeled away from the layer, stripped clean and dragged into the Dawn Core where it was devoured and streamed directly into the Star of Origin.
Structures groaned as pressure vanished. Abominations staggered as the mist sustaining them thinned. Demon soldiers below felt it instantly, the air clearing, their Essence flowing smoother, their movements sharpening.
The Star trembled.
Eagerly.
I held the portal open, maintaining the pull until nearly eighty percent of the deathmist was gone, leaving behind only unstable remnants that could no longer blanket the battlefield. When I closed it, the silence that followed was different.
I turned toward the core layer.
As I moved, I felt the change inside me. The Star of Origin no longer felt dormant. A faint black sheen threaded through its glow, subtle but undeniable, like a shadow learning how to shine without consuming the light. It was about to awaken.
I did not slow.
Knight, Lyrate, Steve, North, and Primus were already inside the enemy’s territory. Their path would decide what happened within the tower’s reach.
Mine was simpler.
If the Eternal believed losing one of its kind would make me cautious, it was wrong.
I surged forward, Essence churning, intent sharpened.
Behind me, the demon army poured onto the second layer under Saleos’s command, seizing ground that had never been held before. Ahead of me, the core layer loomed.
As my perception spread across the core layer, I froze.
What I saw made my chest tighten.
Portals.
Hundreds of them.
They were embedded all across the core layer, suspended in the void, anchored to structures, floating between weapon platforms and towers. For now, they were dormant. Empty. Nothing was stepping through them yet.
But their placement told me everything.
This was the reinforcement the Eternal had spoken about.
Not a single army waiting to arrive, but a floodgate. The moment these portals activated, the battlefield would drown in enemies faster than even Saleos could react.
I did not hesitate.
I repeated what I had done on the second layer.
Space bent beneath me as I opened another devouring pull, wider this time, deeper. Deathmist reacted instantly, rushing toward it as if answering a call it could not refuse. Thick waves of it collapsed inward, stripped from the core layer and dragged straight into my Dawn Core.
This time, I was not just clearing the battlefield.
I had a goal.
I focused inward, guiding the flow deliberately, forcing the deathmist directly toward the Star of Origin. I wanted it awake. Fully awake. Not dormant. Not half-asleep.
The Star trembled harder than before.
Its glow deepened, threads of black began to spread on its dead surface. I could feel something shifting inside me, a pressure building, restrained but growing.
The core layer became more visible as the mist thinned and I began locking onto those portals ready to destroy them.