The corrupted chamber trembled, cracks zigzagging across obsidian walls as the air grew impossibly still.
Then came the roar—not human, not beast. Something ancient. Divine.
Ryle floated a few feet above the shattered ground, body limp, head lowered. His right side glowed with molten black-gold light, and the golden eye pulsing on his chest narrowed like a serpent's.
Ignilth's presence flooded the world.
Gorvash staggered back, the corrupted Twinlight in his hand trembling.
"No…" he whispered. "That's not possible. You're dead."
Ryle's head tilted up—but it wasn't Ryle's voice that spoke.
"Even in death, I watch over my son."
His hand raised, curling like a claw.
"You challenged a child of dragons."
Boom.
Ignilth-controlled Ryle vanished—then appeared behind Gorvash in the same breath. A shockwave tore across the battlefield, flattening spires, crumpling towers like paper.
Gorvash grunted as his ribs cracked from a single punch.
He twisted, trying to retaliate—sending black spears of energy in every direction—but they dissolved mid-air as they neared Ryle's aura.
"Magic? Corruption? Divine slayer runes? Meaningless," Ignilth's voice boomed.
Ryle's body moved again—fluid, inhuman.
Gorvash swung the corrupted Twinlight. The blade howled, trying to consume Ignilth with its void.
Ignilth caught it. Barehanded.
The blade screamed—then began to glow. Purified light rippled down its length.
Ignilth grinned through Ryle's face. "You stole this."
A surge of raw Primordial Dragon power cascaded through the blade. Its blackness peeled away, burned into ash.
The weapon, once corrupted, now gleamed with divine silver and sunlit gold.
Twinlight reborn.
Ryle/Ignilth slashed the blade in an arc—and stabbed it through Gorvash's chest.
The Demon General gasped.
Eyes on his arms burst one by one in wet pops.
His body began to fade into ash and smoke.
But Gorvash—bleeding, ruined—laughed.
"Do you think this ends me?" he whispered. "He'll wake soon."
"What?"
Gorvash's voice became static.
"The one who sleeps in Valemourn. The true King of Nightmares. My death was the offering."
A pulse of crimson and shadow erupted from his broken chest—
—and the world went white.
BOOM.
A thunderous roar split the air.
Ryle gasped awake.
Stone ceilings. Silk sheets. The scent of herbs.
He jolted upright, eyes wide.
The capital.
He looked down. His body ached, bandaged in patches, but his wings were healed. Bones intact.
The room shook.
A groan came from the side—Thea, sitting up with a wince, clutching her head.
"…We're alive?" she whispered.
Ryle didn't answer. His mind swirled.
He remembered the fight, the voice of Ignilth… the power coursing through him.
But now?
He looked at his hands.
Something was different.
He could feel it.
A thrum. A heartbeat not his own echoing deep inside his chest.
"I'm in control again…" he muttered, then paused. "But not alone."
Thea stood, limping toward the window.
She went pale.
"…Ryle."
He joined her.
In the sky above Velbrath—a beam of pure darkness tore across the clouds. Like a blade, it carved a path from the ruins they'd left behind all the way to the distant east.
It struck Valemourn. The cursed land of the dead.
The moment it hit, a storm of red light erupted from the ground.
The clouds bled. Thunder howled like screaming souls.
And then—they awoke.
Bodies twisted.
Bones cracked.
And from the ashes, vampires rose. Turns into a Demon
Their eyes empty.
Their fangs dripping.
Their screams not of hunger—but of madness.
Ryle fell to his knees, clutching his head.
He could feel them—hundreds, no, thousands—rising at once.
"The war… just started."