The tremors radiating from the collapsed rockslide grew more violent with every passing heartbeat.
Green, necrotic lightning hissed across the shattered boulders, turning the fresh snow to boiling, foul-smelling vapor. The immense pile of basalt rubble began to heave upward like the chest of a waking behemoth.
Seraphina helped Kaelen to his feet, her arm wrapped firmly around his waist to support his weight. The High Sovereign’s breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, his cracked armor groaning under the strain as his eighty-foot shadow-wings fluttered weakly against the cold wind.
"Your ribs are broken," Seraphina said, her paramedic instincts flaring as her glowing palm rested against his dented breastplate, sending soothing waves of celestial warmth into his bruised torso. "And your etheric core is depleted from that repulsor blast."
"I have enough breath left to take his head," Kaelen growled, leaning heavily on Gloom-Weaver as he planted the broadsword’s tip into the snow, his molten silver eyes fixed on the heaving boulders with unrelenting, lethal focus.
A deafening explosion of rock and corrupted thunder ripped through the canyon.
Tons of shattered stone were hurled into the air as Warlord Azgorath erupted from the depths of the rockslide.
The titan was horribly maimed, but terrifyingly alive.
The plasma blast from Seraphina's hands had fused the spiked colossus-plate directly into the flesh of his back, leaving a smoking, charred crater across his spine. One of his four arms dangled uselessly, shattered at the elbow, and the horns of his iron helm had been sheared away to reveal a face covered in dripping, blackened scales and four burning emerald slit-eyes brimming with unhinged madness.
In his remaining three hands, he held a jagged shard of fractured basalt, his sole remaining executioner's blade, and a small, pulsing orb of blackened obsidian: an Abyssal Teleportation Anchor.
"You cannot kill that which is claimed by the Void-Mother!" Azgorath roared, spitting a glob of black bile onto the snow. He took a heavy, limping step forward, the ground groaning beneath his weight. "You burned my flesh, Sun-Brat. But while you played hero in the clouds, the seventh rift in the mortal pen has completely destabilized!"
He raised the obsidian anchor high above his head, crushing it within his massive, clawed fist.
A vertical fissure of pure, oily void-matter tore through reality behind him, howling like a legion of starving souls. Through the swirling black vortex, Seraphina’s breath caught in her throat.
Reflected in the rift's swirling depths was a horrifying, unmistakable skyline: the burning skyscrapers of downtown Chicago.
Massive tentacles of shadowy void-matter were coiling around the Willis Tower, black lightning crackling across the frozen surface of Lake Michigan as sirens wailed in frantic, apocalyptic terror. Mortals were screaming, running through streets choked with purple fog and raining embers.
"Look upon your home, little queen!" Azgorath cackled, his voice a hideous, rattling screech of triumph. "The Ninth Sphere awakens beneath their feet! The harvest has begun!"
"No!" Seraphina cried out, taking a step toward the rift, her sunstone bow rising instinctively to her hand.
"I will see you in the ashes of the mortal world, Vance!" Azgorath bellowed, turning his scarred, burning visage toward Kaelen with a final, mocking sneer. "Bring your corpse-bride to the slaughter!"
With a backwards leap, the wounded warlord plunged into the swirling vortex.
"Stop him!" Kaelen roared, attempting to summon a gravitational tether to collapse the portal, but his depleted magic sparked weakly and died in his palm.
Seraphina loosed a frantic plasma arrow into the fissure, but the blinding bolt struck empty air. With a sickening, imploding crack that knocked them both flat into the snowdrifts, the rift collapsed in on itself, leaving behind only the scorched smell of sulfur and the whistling mountain wind.
Silence returned to the gorge, cold and absolute.
Seraphina knelt in the snow, staring at the empty space where the rift had been, her hands trembling around the grip of her bow. Her chest heaved, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Chicago..." she whispered, her voice breaking as the terrifying images of her burning city flashed behind her eyes. "The rift is fully open, Kaelen. The Veil has shattered right over the Loop."
Kaelen dropped to his knees beside her in the snow. He pulled her against his chest, his strong, scarred hands cradling her face, forcing her to look into the fierce, unwavering intensity of his silver gaze.
"Then we end this war where it began," Kaelen vowed, his deep baritone cutting through her panic with absolute certainty. "We rally the Vanguard, we cross the threshold, and we defend your home with the full might of the Night Court."
Seraphina looked into his eyes, feeling the fierce heat of his mate-bond wrapping around her like an unbreakable shield. The fear in her heart evaporated, replaced by cold, regal fury.
"Let's go home," she whispered.