The fight narrowed to muscle and will.
Jorghan’s fingers found Hawkin’s armor seam and tore. Metal screamed, leather cracked, and the proud veneer of the duke’s champion fell away like a mask.
For a beat the world watched—faces drawn, mouths open—then reality tilted into something harder.
Caden and his mother watched helpless, anchored by fear; the castle grounds were chaos, the Bloodhound still hovering over them. Caden hadn’t acted as his mother clutched onto him, fear-struck. She couldn’t move, and he didn’t want to leave her alone.
Her eyes never left Hawkin, but she was more concerned about her son.
Scarlett, who was nearby the broken platform, was taken by Jamie, her father.
Caden watched with a confused and startled expression as Jamie was moving out of the area. And the hound wasn’t moving an inch from the spot it stood.
He could see the ship descending downwards; they were leaving amidst the chaos. He couldn’t believe it.
Right then, something happened that brought everyone’s focus.
A scream cut sharper than any sword.
It was the sound of something human meeting a final, awful force.
They saw Jorghan kneeling on top of Hawkin, his chest bare with blood. And Jorghan’s hands were on Hawkin’s chest, pressing deeper.
Jorghan’s giant wings pointed towards the sky, glowing with red and white light with a crimson shade on them. He was going to kill Hawkin, and the means to do so wasn’t something that they expected.
Jorghan did not hesitate.
He drove both hands into Hawkin’s chest with a motion that was more animal than man, wrenching as if tearing the man from himself.
The action was brutal in its finality; people flinched, some retched, and others could not look away.
He pushed his hands deeper and tore Hawkin in half, the sound of ripping flesh echoing through the air. The crimson glow on Jorghan’s wings intensified as he let out a primal roar, his eyes filled with a fierce determination.
Hawkin went still, a broken shape in the echoing silence.
AHHHHHH!!!
He let out an earsplitting roar that made the very ground tremble as he held the two parts in both his hands, drenched in blood.
It was a bloody mess, a sight straight from the horror that the people of the duchy never thought of. After waiting for almost eighteen years, he finally was able to take his revenge and killed the man who had taken everything from him. And there was one more left to deal with.
He lowered his gaze and then moved.
Jorghan hauled the body forward and threw it at Caden’s feet like a warning thrown in the dust.
He stood before them, Gorva by his side.
He watched both Caden and his mother.
"I feel no pity for you or your house," he said, his voice a blade.
"Your father is a coward who murdered innocents. I have ended him. Now my father will rest in peace, and so will my mother.
Now, I will destroy the city which he ruled."
Caden didn’t respond, as he was in shock; he was staring at his father’s lifeless body in two parts.
His mother wailed, holding onto him, never daring to go near her husband.
He spread his wings and rose, each beat shrugging aside the dying light. He rose above the ground and was now visible to everyone around the battlefield who was watching from afar.
"Those who value their lives—flee."
It was not counsel.
It was a sentence.
And it was simple.
All the people around the castle looked confused, but a few were clever enough to catch on and started running away from the city.
Seeing them, others also started running.
He only waited a couple of breaths.
Around him, red motes of mana coalesced, orbiting like tiny suns.
The negative energy and raw grief pooled in the alleys and ruined halls—fed into him, a dark river poured into a furnace. Jorghan drank it in and turned that poison into a storm.
-
He hovered above the chaos, his Alaera Excidii—Wings of Destruction—spread wide, each blade-feather dripping molten red, leaving trails of shimmering heat through the night. His expression was calm.
Too calm.
The dozen red orbs he had summoned now hung suspended in the air around him like miniature suns, pulsing with unstable energy. They throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat, and with every pulse, the mana inside them grew denser, darker—alive with his wrath.
Below, the panic was absolute.
Men, women, and children—nobles, soldiers, and servants—all ran in blind terror.
The once-proud city of Harrington Duchy was now a collapsing inferno.
Caden, frozen in grief only moments ago, snapped into action when he realized what was about to happen. His instincts—the same that had kept him alive on countless battlefields—screamed at him to move.
"Mother—!" he gasped, grabbing the trembling woman beside him. She was barely able to stand, her face pale, tears cutting lines through the soot on her cheeks.
She just saw her husband getting ripped in half like he was nothing more than a piece of paper.
Caden’s eyes flicked toward his father’s remains—the bloodied corpse of Hawkin, split in two, still steaming where Jorghan’s hand had torn through him.
The memory burned into Caden’s mind, hatred blooming like a black rose in his heart. He swore silently that one day, somehow, he would return that pain to the monster in the sky.
"Forgive me, Father," he whispered, voice breaking.
Then, clutching his mother and dragging what was left of Hawkin’s armor, he ran—the ground trembling beneath his feet.
Above them, the first orb began to descend.
Slowly.
Majestically.
Terrifyingly.
The red light grew blinding, painting the city in shades of apocalypse.
Jorghan didn’t move.
His face was blank, eyes hollow, watching the inevitable.
He wanted to destroy everything that man touched and burn the castle he built for himself.
The orb touched the ground.
A moment of silence—then BOOM.
The explosion ripped through the city, tearing through stone, steel, and flesh alike. The shockwave blasted outward, throwing debris into the air and sending entire buildings crashing down in clouds of ash and dust.
And then came another.
And another.