The Herald did not answer with words; it answered with extinction.
The entity brought its fractured sceptre down upon the titan-altar. The sound was like a mountain splitting in half—a concussive, gravity-defying shockwave of dark matter that ripped the frost-bitten earth to shredded ribbons. Megaliths weighing fifty tons were hurled into the air like dried twigs, pulverized into a hail of razor-sharp shrapnel that rained upon the valley floor.
"Form ranks!" Lady Vespera screamed, her voice cracking over the din. "Brace for impact!"
The front line of the Vanguard vanished beneath the tempest of debris, shields buckling, iron tearing.
Aurelia did not brace. She moved.
Channeling the First and Fourth Shards, a blinding gale of astral frost erupted beneath her boots, propelling her forward with inhuman speed. She cut through the rain of stone like a beam of pure luminescence, dodging the descending boulders with surgical grace. The ancestral blade in her hand hummed at a pitch so high it scorched the air, trailing a white-hot ribbon of silver fire.
The Herald descended from the altar in a single gliding blur, its speed mocking the laws of nature.
Its sceptre swung in a vicious, horizontal arc, trailing blades of condensed vacuum that whispered of total erasure. Aurelia dropped low, sliding across the blood-soaked gravel, the edge of the void-weapon grazing so close it sheared the silver hair from her temple and blistered the skin of her neck.
Coming up from the slide, she struck with the full, unfettered fury of the Five Shards.
Her silver-forged blade bit into the Herald’s side.
Sparks of dead starlight detonated across the impact point. The entity’s armor, spun from the void itself, cracked with the shriek of sundering iron. A spray of black, smoking ichor splashed across Aurelia’s cheek, burning like lye. The Herald reeled back, its faceless bone visage tilting in what seemed like genuine astonishment.
Mortal insolence, the voice detonated inside her skull, clawing at her sanity.
Before the entity could bring the sceptre around to impale her, a roar of primal, unadulterated fury tore through the ash-choked air.
Malakor struck like a meteor.
He dropped from an airborne leap, his massive great sword descending with the crushing force of a collapsing fortress. Black flame billowed from the jagged blade as it smashed directly into the Herald’s raised guard. The collision drove the creature down to one knee, cracking the titan-stone beneath its greaves into a web of glowing fissures.
"Keep your dead hands off my empress!" Malakor snarled, his scarred face twisted in a feral grimace.
He didn't give the creature space to recover. With brutal, relentless efficiency, Malakor pressed the assault—a relentless barrage of sweeping cleaves, bone-shattering shoulder checks, and concussive bursts of shadow-fire that forced the celestial abomination backward, step by bloody step.
The Herald hissed, its sceptre flaring with violent violet lightning that lashed across Malakor’s chest plate. The dark iron crumpled, scorching the leather beneath and biting into the muscle of his pectoral, filling the air with the sharp scent of burned flesh.
Malakor didn't even flinch. The pain only seemed to feed the dark abyss dwelling in his chest.
"Aurelia, now!" he bellowed, parrying a lethal thrust of the void-blade with his cross guard, locking their weapons in a shower of sparks that illuminated his sweat-sheened face. "Shatter the sceptre!"
Aurelia didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the opening, drawing upon the Third and Fifth Shards until blood trickled from both her nostrils. The agony was blinding, an internal inferno threatening to burn away her humanity, but she focused every ounce of her will into the tip of her ancestral sword.
She struck not at the Herald's heart, but at the glowing joint where the fractured sceptre was bound together by ancient void-spells.
The blade connected with catastrophic resonance.
A blinding flash of white and violet engulfed them all. The sceptre shattered into a thousand jagged splinters, releasing a shockwave that threw Aurelia and Malakor backward into the mud.
The Herald let out a sound that transcended speech—a wailing, discordant screech of agony that echoed across the heavens. Its physical form began to destabilize, the dark armor fracturing into bleeding smoke as the severed energy of the sceptre turned inward, consuming the titan from within.
"It's collapsing!" Aurelia shouted, pushing herself up through the spinning darkness of her vision, her hand pressing hard against her breastbone where the five Shards thrashed in wild triumph.
Malakor was beside her in an instant, dragging her up by the arm, pulling her against his battered chest as the Herald’s collapsing core ignited like a dying star.
"Brace yourself!" Malakor roared, throwing his massive frame over hers to shield her from the celestial blast.