The ring of slate dust became an abattoir in three heartbeats.
Malric moved with the explosive, crushing violence of a mountain collapsing down a shale cliff. He did not fence or test the distance; he brought the six-foot Sovereign Cleaver of Ouros down in a devastating two-handed overhead chop aimed straight through Gideon’s skull. The sheer air-displacement of the meteoric steel whistled like an incoming ballista bolt, carrying the full kinetic weight of his massive frame.
Gideon met the blow head-on.
Instead of dodging, the northern warlord crossed his twin star-iron claymores in an upward iron wedge.
CLANG.
The collision was deafening. The concussive shockwave of meteoric iron striking celestial star-iron sent a visible ripple across the ring, shattering the slate tiles beneath their boots into flying grit and sending cracks racing ten paces outward toward the watching iron-guard.
Malric didn't give an inch. Veins bulged like thick hemp ropes along the old warlord’s weathered neck as he bore his entire weight down upon the crossed blades, his cold gray eyes inches from Gideon’s burning amber slits.
"You've got northern bone, boy," Malric growled through gritted teeth, spitting red tobacco into the dust. "Let's see if your marrow holds."
Gideon didn't answer with words.
He dropped his center of gravity two inches, twisted his wrists outward, and sheared both of his blades along the edge of the cleaver in a shower of brilliant white sparks. With a savage, snapping thrust of his left shoulder, he slammed his armored body into Malric’s sternum.
The impact tore through Malric’s center balance, forcing the southern titan three heavy, stumbling paces back.
Before the old warlord could reset his footing, Gideon was upon him like a winter wolf.
His right claymore whipped through a blinding horizontal slash that sheared clean through the gilded lion-crest on Malric’s left shoulder-guard, peeling the blackened iron plate away like tin. Malric grunted, parrying Gideon’s follow-up thrust with the heavy pommel of his broadsword, then threw a brutal, barehanded left hook that caught Gideon squarely on the jaw.
Gideon’s head snapped sideways.
Blood sprayed from his split lip, staining the slate dust crimson.
The northern warlord didn't stumble. He simply turned his face back, wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his gauntlet, and let out a low, terrifying chuckle that made the surrounding two thousand guards stiffen behind their shields.
"My uncle hits harder than you, old man," Gideon rumbled, his voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that signaled the end of patience. "And he's been chained to a rock for four winters."
Malric’s gray eyes narrowed, his broadsword shifting to a low, two-handed guard. "Then let's see how you handle the ancestral weight, pup."
Malric stamped his iron boot onto the center of the ring.
He didn't draw upon the Abyssal Mother’s corrupt magic, nor the Black Coven’s necrotic threads.
He invoked the ancient, unbroken oath-covenant of House Malric—the bloodline pact forged with the bedrock of Ouros before the First Age.
A dull, reddish-copper light flared along the blade of the Sovereign Cleaver. The petrified dragon bones forming the concentric walls of the Dread-Barrow groaned in sympathetic resonance, channeling the crushing, tectonic gravity of the southern plateau directly into Malric’s limbs.
The air inside the ring grew ten times heavier.
The dust stopped drifting on the wind, falling straight to the stone like lead pellets. Even twenty paces back, Lyra felt the suffocating downward pull of the earth-ward trying to drag her knees to the stone.
She didn't intervene. She stood proud and tall, her hazel-grey and celestial-violet eyes steady, trusting the mountain that stood in the center of the storm.
Malric lunged.
Augmented by the weight of the plateau, his strikes became sledgehammer blows that tore the slate floor to pieces. Each swing of his broadsword carved trenches into the rock, forcing Gideon back one step, two steps, three steps toward the edge of the dust ring.
Gideon parried each blow, but the sheer, crushing mass behind Malric’s steel began to tell. The leather straps of Gideon’s brigandine strained, his muscles burning as he absorbed blows that would have sheared an iron gate from its hinges.
"KNEEL TO THE SOUTH!" Malric roared, swinging his cleaver in a wide, decapitating arc.
Gideon didn't kneel.
He dropped his left claymore entirely.
The five-foot star-iron blade clattered onto the stone. As Malric’s massive broadsword swept toward his neck, Gideon leaned backward just enough for the meteoric steel to whistle a fraction of an inch above his brow, then drove his bare left hand forward with blinding speed.
His gauntleted fingers clamped like an immovable vise around the blade of the Sovereign Cleaver itself.
The razor-sharp meteoric steel bit deep through the heavy bull-hide and steel scales of his glove, slicing into the flesh of his palm. Hot, crimson Alpha blood flowed freely, hissing as it dripped onto the coppery runes carved into the blade.
Malric froze, his eyes widening in shock as his two-handed weapon was stopped dead in mid-air by a single, bleeding hand.
"You talk too much about stone, Malric," Gideon whispered, his face inches from the old warlord's, his amber eyes burning with pure, unadulterated primal fire.
"The stone doesn't own the wolf."
Through his bleeding palm, Gideon poured the volcanic fury of the Drake lineage directly into the ancient blade.
The true-mate bond flared in his chest—a radiant, molten current connecting his soul to Lyra’s that burned away the heavy, suffocating gravity of the plateau in a single heartbeat.
The copper runes on Malric’s sword turned blinding white.
The meteoric iron screamed under the sudden, thermonuclear heat.
With a savage, twisting jerk of his bare hand, Gideon shattered the legendary Sovereign Cleaver of Ouros in two.
Malric stumbled forward, off-balance, holding only the severed hilt of his broken sword.
Gideon didn't give him time to draw a secondary blade.
With his right hand, the northern warlord drove the pommel of his remaining claymore straight into Malric’s sternum. The impact pulverized the heavy black plate, lifting the seven-foot titan clean off his feet and throwing him ten paces across the ring to crash heavily against the petrified ribs of the outer barrow wall.
Malric hit the bone with a dull, wet thud, collapsing onto his hands and knees in the dust, coughing up dark, clotted blood.
The two thousand iron-guard stood in stunned, horrified paralysis.
The invincible Warlord of Ouros—the unbroken iron of the South—had been disarmed, shattered, and brought to his knees with bare hands.
Gideon walked slowly across the ring, his boots crunching in the pulverized slate. He did not raise his claymore. He stood over the kneeling warlord, his breathing heavy but steady, his bleeding left hand dripping a steady cadence of crimson onto Malric’s bowed head.
"The covenant is broken, Malric," Gideon said, his low bass rolling across the silent plateau. "Yield the barrow."
Malric drew a ragged, trembling breath, lifting his head.
His gray eyes were dim, blood trickling from his nose and lips, his chest caved inward from the pommel strike. He looked down at the severed hilt in his hand, then up at the towering, blood-splattered warlord standing before him.
A bitter, dry laugh wheezed from his broken chest.
"The... the deep... has no honor, boy," Malric rasped, his voice fading. "You... you fight like men of the First Age. But the Empress... she is waiting... beneath the High Altar..."
Malric dropped the broken hilt into the dust.
He brought his fist weakly to his shattered breastplate, offering the ancient, formal surrender of the Southern High Packs.
"House Malric... yields to the Drake," the old warlord whispered.
He slumped forward, his forehead touching the slate at Gideon’s boots, his breath finally stilling as his long war came to an end.
Across the courtyard, the two thousand iron-guard did not raise their poleaxes.
In terrifying, synchronized unison, two thousand heavy shields were lowered to the stone, and two thousand southern warriors dropped to one knee before the King of the North.
Lyra walked across the silent ring, her daggers sheathed, stopping beside Gideon.
She reached out, gently taking his bleeding left hand in hers. Her celestial starlight flared around their interlaced fingers, immediately sealing the deep cut across his palm, turning the blood into clean, white ash.
Gideon looked down at her, his amber eyes softening as he pulled her against his side, his arm locking around her waist with quiet, unshakeable possessiveness.
"The barrow is ours, little bird," Gideon rumbled against her hair.
Lyra turned her gaze toward the gaping maw of the primary dragon skull at the center of the tumulus, where a deep, subterranean stairwell descended into the lightless bedrock of the mountain.
From the dark throat of the skull, a familiar, sickening stench drifted upward on the cold draft:
The scent of crushed nightshade, rotten brine, and ancient, unburied silk.
"The barrow is ours," Lyra whispered.
"Now let's go bury the Empress."