The landing upon the skull of the sleeping titan shattered the chanting of the cultists like a glass bell dropped on iron.
Aurelia hit the petrified basalt with the concussive force of an astral meteor, channeling the Fourth and Fifth Shards through her boots. The shockwave of silver gravity rippled through the titan’s bone scales, tossing forty crimson-cloaked guardsmen into the yawning magma vents flanking the brow. Her ancestral blade cleaved the air in a blinding sweep, severing the chains of three iron cages before the executioners could plunge their daggers into the prisoners' throats.
"Run for the landing!" Aurelia’s voice rang across the skull, vibrant with imperial authority. "Climb the vertebrae and do not look back!"
The terrified captives scrambled through the steam, clawing their way toward the spiral stairs as the cultists screamed in shrill, fanatic fury.
"Kill the vessel!" Grand Chancellor Sean shrieked from the base of the central sky-iron obelisk, his ornate plate spattered with sacrificial gore. "The blood is almost enough! Feed the sleeper her marrow!"
Fifty fanatical cultists, their flesh carved with the weeping glyphs of the Broken Ouroboros, lunged toward Aurelia with serrated ritual scythes.
They never reached her.
Malakor descended like the wrath of an angry god.
He landed two paces ahead of Aurelia, the impact of his heavy plate cracking the petrified basalt beneath his greaves. His two-handed great sword roared in a vicious, horizontal arc, parting six cultists at the waist in a single, devastating cleave. The spray of dark blood had barely touched the stone before Malakor surged forward, a whirlwind of black iron, bone-splintering kicks, and suffocating shadow-fire.
"Treason smells the same in every court!" Malakor roared, catching a charging guard captain by the throat, driving the man's skull down onto the jagged edge of his spiked knee-cop with sickening force. "You thought you could scurry beneath the dirt like worms, Sean? I will feed your entrails to the serpent before this day ends!"
Aurelia advanced in tandem with her warlord, a symphony of starlight and shadow tearing through the crimson ranks.
Her ancestral blade was a streak of relentless radiance. Every thrust found the gap in plate; every slash severed the tainted ley-threads binding the cultists to the waking titan. When three halberdiers attempted to flank Malakor’s blind side, Aurelia raised her left palm. A vortex of astral frost detonated from the First Shard, flash-freezing the men into brittle statues of pale ice, which Malakor shattered with a single, sweeping backhand of his buckler.
They fought back-to-back, moving with the terrifying, instinctive synchronicity of lovers forged in the crucible of a hundred battles. Her light illuminated his targets; his darkness absorbed the concussive spells hurled by the desperate cultist priests.
Within moments, the circle around the central obelisk was cleared of living threats.
Only Grand Chancellor Sean remained, backing away until his spine hit the ancient sky-iron pillar. The ceremonial dagger slipped from his trembling, blood-slicked fingers, clattering into a fissure that bubbled with golden magma.
"Aurelia... listen to reason," Sean whimpered, clutching the gilded breastplate over his chest as Malakor stalked toward him, step by heavy, bloody step. "The surface empire is doomed! The Shards cannot be contained in mortal flesh forever! It was the only way to appease the Leviathan—to let it devour the rot of the old kingdoms so we could rule the dawn—"
"You don't rule the dawn by slaughtering innocents in the dark, Sean," Aurelia said, stepping up beside Malakor. Her silver hair was damp with sweat, her eyes burning with terrible, regal majesty. "You are just a frightened coward who traded his spine for an ancient lie."
"Sentence him, empress," Malakor growled, his great sword raised, resting the flat against the chancellor's trembling collarbone. The blade's shadow-fire hissed against the gilded plate, scorching the metal black.
"Take his head," Aurelia commanded without a flicker of hesitation.
"With pleasure," Malakor rasped.
With a swift, ruthless strike, Malakor severed the traitor's head from his shoulders. The corpse tumbled into the nearest fissure, swallowed instantly by the boiling magma below.
Before the blood had even pooled upon the stone, the entire subterranean cavern violently shuddered.
A deafening, continental groan tore through the bedrock.
Atop the skull, the central sky-iron obelisk shattered into jagged fragments of dark iron. The last vestige of the ancient seal was broken.
Far below their boots, deep within the boiling mantle of the world, two colossal, lidless eyes of liquid gold slowly opened.
The Leviathan had awakened.