CHAPTER 465: THE LAST DAWN 5

But Monument One was far from finished. As it flew through the desert air with impossible grace, its four arms began to work in terrifying harmony. The lightning sword crackled as it carved through the fabric of space itself, leaving wounds in reality that bled darkness. The temporal ankh spun, and suddenly every god on the battlefield found themselves moving through time at different speeds—some accelerated to hummingbird quickness, others slowed to the pace of stone.

The khopesh in its lower left hand didn’t cut through air—it cut through the concept of distance itself. When it swung, the blade appeared instantly beside its targets, regardless of how far away they stood. Osiris raised his crook to block what seemed like an attack from Monument One’s distant position, only to find the curved blade already pressed against his throat, having crossed the intervening space through dimensional folding.

"How?" the god of death demanded, his mummified features showing the first crack of uncertainty. "I can see the construct attacking from there, but its blade is here. Which is the illusion?"

Thoth’s infinite wisdom provided the terrible answer: "Neither. It’s attacking from both positions simultaneously. That weapon exists in multiple dimensions, striking from angles that shouldn’t be possible."

But even as the gods struggled against Monument One’s reality-warping assault, they began to press their attack. Isis wove spells of unmaking that should have reduced any mortal construct to component atoms. Her magic lashed out like invisible whips, seeking to unravel the bonds that held the colossus together.

The spells struck Monument One’s surface and simply vanished.

Not reflected, not absorbed—they ceased to exist entirely, as if they had never been cast at all. Around the flying monument, a barrier shimmered into visibility—the same unbreakable defense that protected Monument Three, but infinitely more sophisticated.

"The barrier technology from Monument Three," Luna breathed from her position behind the broken pillar. "But this is different. Stronger."

She was right. Where Monument Three’s barrier had been a simple defensive matrix, Monument One bore the perfected version—every spell, every divine fury, every expression of cosmic power simply failed to exist when it encountered the field surrounding Ozymandias’s ultimate creation.

Horus dove from above, his talons extended and blazing with sky-fire, seeking to rake across the monument’s back where its solar collectors spread like mechanical wings. But as he drew near, those very wings began to glow with accumulated power.

Monument One spun in mid-air with the grace of a dancer, its four arms creating a deadly net of destruction around its rotating form. The lightning sword met Horus’s dive with a thunderclap that shattered windows in cities hundreds of kilometers away. Divine feathers, each one worth a mortal’s lifetime, scattered like ash as the god of the sky was forced back by raw electrical fury.

"This is impossible!" Horus cried, his perfect form singed by energies that should not have been able to touch divine flesh. "No mortal weapon should be able to harm the gods!"

But Ozymandias’s laughter echoed across the battlefield, filled with the cold satisfaction of vindicated genius. "Mortal?" he called from his position atop the ancient walls. "My Monument One is the fusion of three ultimate constructs, each one refined across millennia, now united into something that transcends the very limitations of individual existence! Behold the culmination of mortal ingenuity—four monuments become one, drinking from the blood of battle to heal what time has weathered, evolving beyond the boundaries of their original design!"

As if responding to its creator’s words, Monument One’s chest began to open, revealing a core that blazed with the fury of a captive star. Solar energy, collected from Ra’s own radiance and concentrated to levels that made fusion seem gentle, began to build toward a crescendo that would rewrite the very meaning of destruction.

The sun disk on its staff pulsed in rhythm with the core, creating a feedback loop that drew power not just from Ra’s flames, but from every source of light in the sky—stars, reflected moonlight, even the divine radiance emanating from the gods themselves.

"It’s feeding on our own power," Anubis observed, his jackal head tilted in a mixture of admiration and growing alarm. "Every attack we make, every display of divine might, only makes it stronger."

Apep’s coils shifted uneasily in the sand as the ancient serpent recognised something in Monument One that resonated with his own primordial nature. "This is not mere mortal craft," he hissed, his voice carrying the weight of pre-creation darkness. "This construct has tasted the void between realities. It has been forged in spaces where order and chaos are merely suggestions."

The World-Serpent was correct. Ozymandias had built Monument One not just in the physical realm, but as the fusion of four constructs designed across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Its four arms, each inheriting the specialised knowledge of its component monuments, existed in separate layers of reality while drawing power from the endless stream of battle-blood that flowed through its form like crimson life. This allowed it to attack from angles that had no names, using physics that followed rules written in languages that predated speech itself, all while continuously healing and evolving through the essence of conflict.

Ra gathered his remaining strength, his solar disk flaring with desperate intensity as he prepared to unleash everything he had in one final, overwhelming assault. "I am the sun!" he declared, his voice shaking the pillars of heaven itself. "I am the light that drives back darkness! I am order incarnate!"

His power erupted like a solar flare, a pillar of pure stellar fire that should have reduced anything in its path to less than atoms. The beam struck Monument One directly, and for a moment that stretched like eternity, the two forces—divine and constructed—met in perfect opposition.

Then Monument One’s chest core pulsed, and something impossible happened.

The colossus began to absorb Ra’s attack.

Solar energy flowed into the construct like water into a vessel designed specifically to contain it. The core blazed brighter and brighter, accumulating power that should have destroyed any mortal creation. But Monument One had been built for exactly this purpose—to drink deeply from the sun itself and transform that consumed light into something far more devastating.

"No," Ra whispered, his falcon eyes wide with growing terror as he felt his own power being turned against him. "This cannot be..."

Monument One’s four arms raised in perfect synchronisation, each weapon now blazing with absorbed solar energy. The lightning sword crackled with electrical fury that had been fed by stellar fire. The temporal ankh spun with time-distorting power that could age gods to dust. The dimensional khopesh hummed with energies that could cut through the very foundations of reality. And the sun-staff... the sun-staff blazed with light that made Ra’s own radiance seem dim and pale.

When Monument One attacked, it did so with the accumulated might of the sun god himself, refined and focused through mortal engineering into something that transcended both divine and mortal limitations.

The assault that followed would be remembered in whatever histories survived the end of this age—the moment when mortal craft, perfected through impossible dedication, proved that even gods could be surpassed by those bold enough to reach beyond the boundaries of their birth.

In that moment, as Monument One prepared to demonstrate why Ozymandias had called it the sun that would rise above the sun, every being on the battlefield—god and demon alike—understood that they were witnessing the dawn of a new age.

An age where the King of Kings would bow to no power, celestial or otherwise.

The final battle was about to begin.