Her blades passed through the back of his neck.

Armor parted as if it had never been there. Steel rings, padding, flesh. All of it gave way under the combined power of Quinlan's throw and her angle of entry. The cut was clean. His head tipped forward before the rest of him understood he was dead.

Scar landed with her knees bending to absorb what little momentum remained. The body folded at her feet.

Around them, shouts of shock erupted.

Quinlan felt the notification before he saw it.

[Your Elite Soul, Scar, has slain an enemy! You have gained 60,000 XP!]

Another followed almost immediately.

[Your Elite Soul, Eve, has slain an enemy! You have gained 38,500 XP!]

Then—

[Your Elite Soul, Veyrin, has slain an enemy! You have gained 41,200 XP!]

And—

[Your Elite Soul, Ito, has slain an enemy! You have gained 26,900 XP!]

Quinlan exhaled slowly. The fruits of his soldiers' efforts had been rolling in constantly while he conducted his experiment with mana regeneration and then had the exchange with Scar.

Quinlan did not descend, instead electing to hover above the streets.

Human soldiers mounted a desperate struggle against the undead, who now had Scar cause mayhem in their ranks. With her presence and the elimination of the human captain, the tides shifted instantly.

As he watched the massacre from above, Vayne's words surfaced in his mind.

The traitor of humanity.

Watching the scene now, with him allying himself with elves, dwarves, and even the dead against humanity, Quinlan found no reason to revise that judgment.

While he said it can't be true as he never was on humanity's side to begin with, that statement could be brought into question.

After all, he'd been born a human to two ordinary, loving parents. A small apartment. A life measured in deadlines and fatigue.

There was no pull toward that memory now. No pressure behind the eyes. No tightening in the chest.

That man was gone.

"The dejected office drone Quinlan…" he murmured, voice barely carried by the wind, "… is dead. Has been for a long time."

He closed his eyes.

There was no surge of emotions waiting for him. No heat. No thrill. No regret or guilt. Just stillness. Empty space where such thoughts used to form.

His arms spread slowly to either side.

Water answered his call.

Moisture peeled itself from the air, from shattered pipes, from blood-soaked stone, and from his very core itself, materializing from thin air.

It gathered in precise points, dozens at first, then hundreds, each compressed tighter and tighter until they trembled in place. Small. Dense. Perfectly shaped.

He opened his eyes.

There was no hesitation in them.

"I am Quinlan Elysiar, the Harbinger of Ruin," he declared with his voice carrying cleanly over the streets now, cutting through steel and screams alike.

"And I am here to overrule the Goddess's rightful claim over your existence."

Heads snapped upward across the streets.

They saw him.

A single figure, suspended high in the skies. Black armor caught the light in fragments, shining a mesmerizing obsidian sheen. There were no wings, no spell circle. Nothing visible held him there.

Just eerie stillness.

The blue points behind stayed locked in place, evenly spaced, still just like their master.

A veteran sergeant felt his throat tighten. He had fought mages before. They chanted. They gestured.

This man did none of that.

"Loose!" someone screamed.

A handful of crossbows fired. Bolts streaked upward, wobbling as they climbed.

Quinlan did not move. The bolts either missed him or were consumed by the red flames of his armor before they could ever hope to harm him.

That did it.

Panic spread like wildfire.

Some soldiers raised shields overhead, crouching as if expecting rain. Others turned and ran with their boots slipping on blood and broken masonry.

One man dropped his spear and fumbled for a charm at his neck and began loudly begging for the Goddess's mercy.

Quinlan saw all of them.

Not as a mass of targets, but as individuals.

His primordial brain was working overtime to take it all in with precision no mortal could hope to achieve.

He saw a runner favoring his left leg. A woman was about to trip over a corpse she hadn't noticed yet. A crossbowman inhaling too sharply, shoulders locking before his next shot. He tracked trajectories before they existed, calculating dozens of paths in the same instant.

His arms came forward.

The blue points vanished.

To the soldiers below, there was no arc. No flash. No warning.

A man mid-stride stiffened as something punched through the back of his helm and exited his eye socket. He fell without finishing the step.

Another's shield shattered inward, fragments driven into his chest before he understood he'd been hit. A third opened his mouth to scream, yet he never managed to close it due to his body folding at the waist as if strings had been cut.

Armor did not slow the projectiles. It guided them.

Lines broke apart. Men collided as they tried to change direction too late. Some fell over the dead. Some fell on top of them.

A few made it several steps before realizing their legs no longer answered.

Silence fractured instead of settling.

It broke in sharp, ugly sounds. Steel slipping from numb fingers. Knees striking stone. Breath leaving bodies that no longer needed it.

Quinlan did not descend, electing to remain high in the skies. His attention slid onward, past the bodies still falling, past the ones already still.

Below, those left alive reacted in ways that no drill had prepared them for.

Some flattened themselves against walls, faces turned away, as if stone might hide them. Others froze where they stood, muscles locked, eyes fixed upward until tears streaked down dust-caked cheeks. A few dropped to their knees so hard bone cracked against pavement, and their hands clasped tight before their chests.

They prayed.

Not quietly. Not one bit.

They shouted her name. They begged. They promised.

They swore devotion, penance, futures they would never live long enough to keep.

Each plea rose clean and sharp, stripped of pride and training, carried straight to the one place it had always been meant to go.

Goddess Lilyanna heard every single one.

They arrived without order. Voices stacked over one another until they blurred into a single, suffocating pressure inside her mind.

Soldiers. Squires. Boys who had shaved for the first time that morning. Veterans who had survived wars and thought that meant something.

They asked for shields. For miracles. For time.

Her hands trembled as she pressed them together before her lips. Her throne felt cold beneath her, the light of her realm dimmed by what she was forced to oversee.

A woman on her knees, helmet discarded, lips moving so fast they bled. A man scrambling over a fallen comrade with fingers slipping in blood as he tried to stand. Another raised a crossbow with shaking arms, but the bolt rattled loose before he could aim.

Above them all, the creature of sheer terror remained in the sky.

Water gathered behind him again.

"How cruel…" Lilyanna whispered, the sound lost in the flood of voices tearing through her thoughts.

Lilyanna's breath caught.

The prayers did not arrive as words alone. They came as pressure. As weight. Each plea slid into her awareness with the shape of the one who spoke it.

A broken voice carried the taste of iron. A child's prayer shook so badly she felt the rhythm of his teeth knocking together. A veteran did not ask for survival. He asked that the pain end quickly.

She had heard prayers like these before.

Trillions of them.

As the goddess of Thalorind, she had watched wars grind nations into dust. She had seen cities starve behind their own walls. She had felt the echo of cruelty born from fear and greed.

More than once, she had turned away with wet lashes, knowing that intervention would unravel balances older than kingdoms and bring the end of her.

She told herself this was no different.

Yet her fingers dug into one another, knuckles paling.

The difference was not the blood. It was the helplessness.

This was not mortals clashing with mortals. This was a being who stood far beyond the scale they understood, erasing them without effort.

No bargain could reach him. No vow could slow him. The rules that bound her did not bind him at all.

For millions of years, the Primordials had been sealed away. Locked beyond the mortal world's reach.

Their violence had become history, then myth, then abstraction. Lilyanna had ruled in an age where such things no longer walked the land.

Quinlan Elysiar shattered that comfort, that blissful state of ignorance.

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