CHAPTER 164: A SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION

In the forge, Serian felt a sudden, shocking coldness spread through her chest. It was not a hostile cold, but a familiar, silent emptiness.

A perfect, three-foot sphere of absolute, light-devouring blackness materialized in the air beside her.

Her own personal hole in the universe.

The constructs that were about to overwhelm her froze, their programming unable to process the sudden appearance of the void-sphere.

Hephaestus himself took a step back, his eyes widening in shock. "What... what is that power?"

Serian just smiled, a fierce, triumphant light in her eyes. "That," she said, "is my backup."

She didn’t hesitate. She poured her own golden, divine light not at the constructs, but directly into the sphere of void.

Light and darkness met.

And the forge exploded.

---

The explosion was not a sound; it was a silent, violent conversion of energy. Serian’s pure, holy light, a force of creation and order, slammed into Nox’s sphere of absolute void, a force of consumption and unmaking. The two opposite, absolute forces did not cancel each other out. They annihilated each other.

A wave of pure, colorless, reality-warping energy erupted from the point of their union. It was not fire or force; it was a wave of pure ’un-ness’. The forge-constructs caught in the blast didn’t just break; they were erased from existence, their divine metal unwritten from the laws of reality.

The wave washed over the entire forge. The half-finished weapons, the enchanted tools, the very stones of the chamber—they all flickered, their physical forms wavering as the symphony of destruction washed over them.

Hephaestus roared, not in anger, but in a desperate effort of creation. He slammed his hands on his anvil, and a wave of his own divine power, the power of making, of binding, of giving form, radiated out, a desperate attempt to hold his workshop together against the tide of unmaking.

The two forces met, and the temple shook to its very foundations.

---

Outside, Nox felt the backlash through his psychic link with the void-sphere. It was like being hit by a metaphysical freight train. His vision went white, and the world dissolved into a storm of pure, meaningless static.

He was thrown backward, his concentration shattered, his Monarch’s armor flickering as he crashed into the churning sea.

The cold water was a shock that brought him back to his senses. He surfaced, sputtering, his mind reeling.

’What the hell was that?’ he thought. ’That was... more than I expected.’

Talos and the wolf-automatons were also thrown into chaos by the tremor. The colossus stumbled, its single eye sparking wildly. The wolves yelped, their metallic bodies skittering on the shaking causeway.

The distraction had been absolute.

---

In the foundations, Elisa and Mela were thrown from their feet as the entire temple lurched.

"What in the seven hells was that?!" Elisa yelled, pushing a chunk of fallen ceiling off of her.

"I think," Mela said, her eyes wide with a horrified awe, "that was the princess."

The two iron-and-brass constructs that had been attacking them were frozen, their internal power sources short-circuited by the wave of pure energy.

"Well," Elisa said, getting to her feet and hefting her warhammer. "Looks like they’re out of batteries."

She charged, her warhammer a blur as she began to dismantle the frozen automatons with a brutal, joyous efficiency.

---

Back in the forge, the wave of unmaking subsided, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. The room was a wreck. The army of constructs was gone, reduced to faint, shimmering dust motes. Hephaestus was on one knee, his massive body trembling with effort, his face pale. He had held his forge together, but only just.

Serian stood in the center of the devastation, her golden aura flickering, her own energy almost completely spent.

But she was standing. And the path to the elemental was clear.

She didn’t waste the opening. She stumbled toward the anvil, her sword held ready. The captured fire elemental, which had been cowering during the explosion, now looked at her, its fiery eyes full of a dawning hope.

"You came," it whispered, its voice the sound of crackling flames.

Hephaestus tried to rise, to stop her. "Child, no... you will doom us all..."

But he was too weak, too drained from holding reality together.

Serian ignored him. She raised her sword high and brought it down on the glowing, celestial bronze chains that bound the elemental.

Her blade, infused with the last of her holy light, struck the divine metal.

The chains shattered.

The elemental roared, a sound of pure, unrestrained joy and freedom. It was no longer a small, contained flame. It exploded outward, a sun of pure, divine fire that filled the entire forge.

"Freedom!" it bellowed. "Freedom at last!"

It did not attack them. It just rose, a pillar of living flame, and shot up through the ceiling of the forge, blasting a massive, molten hole through the top of the temple. It hung in the sky for a moment, a new, angry star, then it was gone, streaking away toward the horizon.

The forge was plunged into a sudden, deep darkness, the only light coming from the new, gaping hole in the roof.

Hephaestus just knelt there, amidst the ruins of his workshop, and watched it go.

"What have you done?" he whispered, his voice full of a deep, profound sorrow. "What have you unleashed?"

The alarms of the temple were silent. The guardians were destroyed. The power source was gone.

The heist was a success.

Serian stood in the dark, silent forge, her body aching, her mana completely gone. But she was smiling.

Then, the floor began to tremble. Not with the echo of a magical explosion, but with the deep, grinding groan of a structure whose foundations had been broken.

The Sunken Temple, its power source gone, its integrity shattered, was beginning to collapse into the sea.

’Oh,’ she thought. ’We may have overdone it.’

Outside, Nox pulled himself out of the water and back onto the beach. He saw the new, gaping hole in the top of the temple, and he saw the cracks that were now spreading across its entire structure.

Talos, its power source severed by the release of the elemental, just stood there for a moment, then its red eye went dark, and it collapsed into the sea with a massive splash.

"Well," Nox said to the empty beach. "That’s a problem."

He had to get them out of there. All of them. And he had about two minutes before the entire island went under.

---

The Sunken Temple was dying. Massive chunks of the black ziggurat were now breaking away, crashing into the churning sea. The causeway was gone, swallowed by the waves.

Nox stood on the beach, his mind racing. ’Okay, Vexia’s group is safe in the sea cave. But Serian, Elisa, and Mela are still inside that collapsing deathtrap. I have to get them out. Now.’

He didn’t have the energy for a massive void-forging. He couldn’t create a bridge. He needed something fast, something direct.

He looked up at the gaping, molten hole in the top of the temple. ’That’s the only way out.’

He took a deep breath, focusing the last dregs of his power. His void wings erupted from his back, and he shot into the air, a dark comet against the gray, stormy sky.

---

Inside the collapsing forge, Serian was trying to find a way out, but the main door was blocked by a mountain of fallen rock.

"This was, perhaps, not our most well-thought-out plan," she muttered to herself.

Suddenly, a voice echoed down from the hole in the ceiling. "Need a ride, princess?"

She looked up to see Nox hovering there, his black wings beating against the dust-filled air.

"Nox! How did you...?"

"Less talking, more flying!" he yelled down. He swooped into the forge, the wind from his wings scattering the dust. He grabbed her around the waist, and with a powerful beat of his wings, he lifted them out of the collapsing chamber.

They burst out into the open air just as the entire roof of the forge caved in with a deafening roar.

"Where are Elisa and Mela?!" he shouted over the sound of the collapsing temple.

"The foundations!" she yelled back. "They were supposed to take out the main pillar!"

"Of course they were," he grumbled. He banked sharply, flying down toward the base of the ziggurat. He found the new, unauthorized entrance they had made, just as a torrent of seawater began to pour into it.

"Elisa! Mela! Get out of there!"

Two figures burst out of the tunnel, just ahead of the flood. Elisa was carrying Mela over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Took you long enough!" Elisa roared, a wide, manic grin on her face despite the fact that they were on a tiny ledge with a collapsing god-temple behind them and a raging sea in front of them. "We were just having fun!"

Mela, who was soaked and covered in mud, did not look like she was having fun. "He tried to bring the whole ceiling down on my head!"

"There’s no time for this!" Nox yelled. He landed on the ledge beside them. "Grab on!"

He wrapped one arm around Elisa’s waist (and by extension, Mela’s), and with a grunt of effort, he beat his wings, lifting all three of them into the air just as the ledge they had been standing on crumbled into the sea.

He was now carrying three people, and his own energy was almost completely spent. His wings were straining, his altitude dropping.

"I can’t... hold all of us," he gasped out.

"Don’t worry, boss," Elisa said cheerfully. "I’ve got an idea."

She looked down at the churning water, then back up at him. "On three. One... two..."

Before she could get to three, she just let go, taking Mela with her.

"ELISA!" Serian screamed.

The two elves plunged toward the sea. Just before they hit, Elisa shifted her grip on her warhammer and swung it in a wide, powerful arc. She didn’t hit the water. She hit the shockwave of her own swing.

The force of the blow created a massive, compressed burst of air that acted like a temporary platform, launching them sideways, skipping across the surface of the water like a stone. They hit the water, skipped again, and then a third time, finally crashing onto the beach in a heap of tangled limbs and elven curses.

Nox and Serian just stared from the air.

"Did she just... skip herself across the ocean?" Serian asked, her voice full of a stunned disbelief.

"Yeah," Nox said, a slow, tired grin spreading across his face. "She did."

He finally made it to the beach and collapsed onto the sand, his wings dissolving into black smoke. The four of them just lay there, panting, watching as the last, magnificent spire of the Sunken Temple of Hephaestus slid beneath the waves and was gone.

The heist was over. They had robbed a god, freed a primal force of nature, and destroyed a divine stronghold.

And all they had to show for it was a few bruises and a collection of half-melted, god-forged weapons that Elisa had managed to stuff into a sack.

Vexia and the rest of the army emerged from the sea cave, their faces a mixture of relief and absolute shock at the devastation.

"The mission," Vexia stated, looking at the empty sea where the temple had been, "was a success?"

"Yeah," Nox said, pushing himself to a sitting position. "We got what we came for."

"We got a bunch of scrap metal and almost drowned!" Mela snapped, wringing seawater out of her hair.

"But we did it," Elisa said, clapping a wet, sandy hand on Mela’s back. "And it was glorious!"

Serian just looked at Nox, a soft, proud smile on her face. "Yes," she said. "It was."

They had not just won a battle. They had proven that the gods were not invincible. They could be beaten. They could be broken.

And as Nox looked at his companions, at the exhausted, bickering, and completely insane family he had somehow assembled, he felt something he hadn’t felt before.

It wasn’t just power, or ambition, or the cold satisfaction of victory.

It was a feeling of belonging.

He was the Void Monarch. The Silent King. The Butcher of Portentia.

But he was also just Nox. And for the first time, that felt like enough.

A sleek black window appeared in his vision, a private message from a very amused Administrator.

[Congratulations on your successful ’heist’. You continue to be a most... disruptive variable. Your actions have significantly altered the power dynamics of the Olympian faction. Zeus is, to put it mildly, displeased.]

[As a reward for this entertaining performance, a piece of information: A third Royal Flag has appeared. It is not held by a player, but by a creature of the old world. A dragon. It makes its lair in the volcanic peaks to the east. Do with that information what you will.]

Nox just looked at the message, a slow, tired grin spreading across his face.

’A dragon, huh?’ he thought.

The game was just getting more and more interesting.