The opening salvo from the Black Leviathan did not fall as cannonballs; it fell as shattered fragments of falling stars.
Three colossal mortars on the flagship's forward citadel detonated with a sound that ruptured the night sky. Plumes of green, superheated magma arced three hundred yards through the freezing air, hissing violently as they descended like meteors upon the advancing Vanguard.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Lady Vespera’s scream echoed across the water through an amplified brass speaking-trumpet. "Hard to port! Break the line!"
The lead galley to their left took a direct hit.
The twenty-ton projectile of molten adamantine sheared through the mainmast and punched clean through the keel, turning the wooden ship into a blazing, disintegrating pyre in the space of a single heartbeat. The freezing sea rushed into the shattered hull, creating an enormous geyser of steam that threw the surrounding water into violent turmoil.
A second magma shell screamed directly toward the quarterdeck of the Scion of Cinders.
Aurelia did not dive for cover.
She vaulted onto the carved wooden balustrade of the dreadnought’s bow, her boots balancing on the narrow rim of bone and iron. She drew upon the Third and Fourth Shards—molten starlight and the gravitational tides of the deep.
She thrust her open palms toward the heavens.
A swirling vortex of silver-blue astral gravity erupted from her hands, expanding into a colossal barrier fifty yards wide directly above the ship. The descending magma shell struck the shimmering shield with an ear-splitting shriek of opposing elements.
The heat was blinding, searing the loose strands of hair around Aurelia's face, but she held the perimeter with unyielding fury. With a violent twist of her wrists, she redirected the kinetic momentum, deflecting the fifty-ton molten mass into the empty sea sixty yards to starboard, where it exploded into an immense wave of boiling froth.
Beneath her, the Scion of Cinders groaned as it surged forward, driven by the captive magma bellows below decks.
"Brace for impact!" Malakor bellowed, his heavy arm wrapping securely around Aurelia’s waist, hauling her off the balustrade and pulling her against the unyielding wall of his chest as the dreadnought reached ramming speed.
The petrified bone prow of the Scion slammed directly into the port flank of the Black Leviathan.
The collision was catastrophic.
Dragon-iron sheared against dragon-iron with a deafening screech that drowned out the thunder of the mortars. The colossal bulk of the Black Leviathan shuddered, its outer armor plates buckling inward, while the Scion's bow embedded twenty feet deep into the flagship's secondary gun-deck, locking the two leviathans together in an unbreakable, grinding knot of twisted metal and shattered bone.
"Forward, butchers!" Malakor roared, releasing Aurelia only to vault the shattered gunwale, his great sword already spinning in a lethal, decapitating arc.
They hit the gun-deck of the flagship amid clouds of boiling sulfur and pulverized timber.
The interior of the Black Leviathan was a nightmare of ancient, decadent brutality. The vaulted ceilings were ribbed with the petrified vertebrae of ancient sea-drakes, dripping with glowing oil from hanging bronze braziers. Hundreds of imperial guardsmen clad in the gilded crimson plate of the Val-Kharis Sovereign Guard surged from the shattered corridors, their curved obsidian glaives whistling through the gloom.
Malakor met them with pure, concentrated slaughter.
He fought like a titan unchained. His great sword sheared through two guards at once, cleaving through bone-reinforced armor as if it were wet parchment. When a third lunged with a barbed pike, Malakor caught the shaft with his bare, calloused hand, wrenched the weapon away, and drove the butt-end through the guard's visor with a sickening crunch. He was an engine of butcher’s precision, black shadow-flame billowing from his armor, leaving a trail of dismembered corpses in his wake.
Beside him, Aurelia moved like a dancer of death.
Her ancestral blade trailed ribbons of pure, incandescent starlight. She did not waste energy on wide swings; every thrust was surgical, guided by the Six Shards to pierce the vital ley-nodes in the guards' armor. When ten halberdiers attempted to surround them in the narrow corridor, Aurelia thrust her left hand forward, releasing a concussive pulse of void-gravity that threw them crashing into the bulkhead with enough force to cave in their helmets.
Together, they carved a bloody path through three decks of the floating citadel, ascending toward the High Sanctum at the vessel’s stern.
As they kicked open the gilded double doors of the sanctum, the scent of blood was replaced by the heady, suffocating fragrance of burning ambergris and raw aether.
At the far end of the vast, circular hall, seated upon a throne carved from a single skull of an abyssal kraken, sat Emperor Typhon Val-Kharis.
He was not an old man; his skin was smooth, pale, and mapped with glowing, golden dragon-scales along his cheekbones and throat. His long hair was like spun copper, his slit-pupiled eyes burning with terrifying, ageless intelligence. Across his lap rested a massive broadsword forged from glowing black star metal, pulsing with the same ancient energy that had forged the world.
And hovering above his head was the Seventh Shard—the long-lost Keystone of the First Throne.
"So," Typhon’s voice echoed through the chamber, melodic, ancient, and chillingly calm. "The little mongrel brings the rest of my crown directly to my feet."