The capital city of Velkyn sprawled across the central plains of Ul'varh'mir like a monument to imperial ambition. From the air—if one possessed the flight capabilities of high-level mages or rare flying beasts—the city resembled a seven-pointed star, each point representing one of the sacred chakras, the design so precise it could only have been achieved through magical terraforming.
White stone dominated everything. Not painted white, but constructed from Vel'kora marble quarried from the northern mountains—a material that naturally gleamed like fresh snow under Ulth'rk's light. The city walls stood forty feet high and twenty feet thick, reinforced with chakra-infused mortar that had hardened to near-indestructible density over the centuries. Seven main gates punctuated the walls, each topped with guard towers that housed rotating shifts of elite soldiers.
Within the walls, the city housed nearly three million souls. The outer districts were functional if not beautiful—residential blocks, merchant quarters, crafting districts, and the sprawling military barracks that had recently swollen with mobilization. But the inner districts, closer to the palace complex, transformed into something approaching artistic achievement. Wide boulevards lined with Tra'lith trees whose white bark matched the marble. Fountains powered by water-chakra that created elaborate displays. Gardens maintained by earth-chakra specialists whose abilities could make flowers bloom in patterns too perfect for natural growth.
And at the very center, the Royal Palace rose like a crystalline mountain.
The palace complex covered twelve square kilometers. Seven towers—one for each chakra—spiraled skyward, their tops disappearing into the clouds on particularly humid days. The towers connected through elevated walkways that formed geometric patterns when viewed from above, another representation of the seven-pointed star. The entire structure glowed faintly at night, the white marble somehow luminescent, as if the building itself had been blessed by celestial forces.
The throne room occupied the central tower's base—a chamber so vast that sound echoed for three full seconds before fading. The ceiling stretched eighty feet overhead, supported by pillars carved from single pieces of Vel'kora marble, each pillar etched with scenes from the kingdom's thousand-year history. The floor was polished mirror-smooth, inlaid with veins of gold and mythril that formed the seven-pointed chakra star pattern.
And upon the throne—a masterwork of precious metals and gemstones that had taken master craftsmen twenty years to complete—sat King Ashtherion'vaur.
He was not a physically imposing man. Six-foot-five, which was average for Vulcanites of noble blood. Lean rather than muscular. His face showed forty years of age despite being nearly seventy—the benefits of chakra cultivation and access to the kingdom's finest healers. Silver threaded through his black hair, carefully styled to suggest wisdom rather than age. His eyes were pale grey, the color of winter storms, and they held the kind of cold calculation that came from decades of political maneuvering.
Today, he wore his administrative robes rather than ceremonial dress—deep purple trimmed with gold, the colors of royal authority. A crown sat on his head, deceptively simple in design but forged from pure mythril, the rarest metal in the known world.
Three advisors stood before the throne, reporting on the purge's progress.
"The eastern provinces report seventy-three percent completion," the first advisor said, consulting his ledger. "Forty-seven villages cleansed. Estimated two hundred thousand mana users eliminated, plus associated populations. Resistance has been minimal."
"The western provinces are at sixty-one percent," the second advisor continued. "Some delays due to terrain difficulties and scattered guerrilla actions, but overall progression remains on schedule."
"Southern provinces sixty-eight percent," the third advisor concluded. "East City was successfully processed two days ago. Total population eliminated as ordered."
King Ashtherion'vaur nodded, his expression showing neither pleasure nor distress. "Acceptable progress. What of the central provinces?"
"Sir, we've encountered some—"
The throne room's massive bronze doors crashed open with a sound like thunder. A messenger sprinted down the central aisle, his boots slapping against polished marble, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He wore the red sash of urgent dispatches—the kind of message that overrode all protocol and demanded immediate royal attention.
The three advisors stepped aside, affronted by the interruption but recognizing its legitimacy.
The messenger collapsed to his knees before the throne, gasping. "Your Majesty! Critical intelligence! From the southern front!"
"Compose yourself," the king said, his voice carrying effortless authority. "Report clearly."
The messenger swallowed, gathered his breath. "The Second Regiment. Two thousand men. They were marching toward village pacification targets in the southern lowlands. Near M'lod." He paused, and something in his expression suggested what came next would be difficult to believe. "They're dead. All of them. Killed in less than five minutes. Impaled on stone spikes that erupted from the earth."
Silence in the throne room. The advisors exchanged confused glances.
"Impaled," the king repeated flatly. "Two thousand trained soldiers. In five minutes."
"Yes, Your Majesty. The spell signature..." The messenger's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "The surviving scouts identified it as Storm Tongue magic. Advanced blood-casting. The specific pattern matches historical records from fifty years ago."
King Ashtherion'vaur's face remained perfectly composed, but his fingers tightened slightly on the throne's armrests. "What are you suggesting?"
"Your Majesty..." The messenger's voice cracked. "Varaken has returned. The Storm-Tongue lives. The reports confirm it. Multiple witnesses. The spell signature is unmistakable. He's alive, and he's declared for the rebels."
"Lies." The word came out sharp and cold. "Varaken died fifty years ago. I saw the body myself. Verified the death personally."
"The mages' council has analyzed the spell residue, Your Majesty. The complexity, the power output, the specific harmonic frequencies—only one person in recorded history could cast that spell. Varaken the Storm-Tongue. The Archon of the Seventh Circle. The World's Strongest Mage." The messenger's hands shook as he produced a sealed scroll. "Their formal assessment, Your Majesty. Signed by all seven council members. They stake their reputations on this conclusion."
The king took the scroll, broke the seal, read quickly. His pale grey eyes moved back and forth across the text with mechanical precision. When he finished, he rolled the scroll closed very carefully.
"Dismissed," he said quietly. "All of you. I require privacy."
The advisors and messenger fled with unseemly haste, recognizing the tone that preceded royal fury.
When the throne room doors closed, leaving King Ashtherion'vaur alone in the vast white chamber, he allowed himself a single moment of visible emotion.
His hand crushed the scroll into a compressed ball of parchment.
"Varaken," he whispered to the empty room. "You magnificent, self-righteous fool. You should have stayed dead."
In M'lod, far from marble halls and political calculation, Misaki sat with Shy'yao in the chief's dwelling, seeking understanding of what he'd witnessed.
"Storm Tongue," Misaki said. "Eldrion mentioned it was the ancient language. But he was casting magic, not just speaking words."
Shy'yao poured two cups of Ur'geriw ale, the bitter local drink that helped settle nerves after traumatic events. "Storm Tongue is not merely a language. It's a fusion methodology. A way of combining three distinct power sources into a unified system."
"Three sources?"
"Dark magic—the manipulation of entropy and decay. Regular magic—standard mana channeling and elemental manipulation. And chakra—internal spiritual energy cultivation." Shy'yao took a long drink. "Individually, each system has limitations. Dark magic corrupts the caster. Regular magic drains external resources. Chakra requires years of spiritual development. But Storm Tongue combines them, using each system to compensate for the others' weaknesses."
Misaki's engineering mind immediately grasped the concept. "It's like a hybrid engine. Multiple power sources working in harmony to achieve output impossible for any single system."
"Precisely. But the cost..." Shy'yao gestured vaguely. "Learning Storm Tongue requires mastery of all three power sources first. Then learning the actual language—words that predate modern civilization, sounds that human vocal cords aren't naturally designed to produce. Then years of practice to synchronize the three power flows without destroying yourself in the process." He met Misaki's eyes. "If Eldrion truly is Varaken, then he's the only living person who's achieved this mastery. The knowledge died with the previous generation. No one else has replicated it in fifty years."
"Why not?"
"Because the last three people who tried either went insane from dark magic corruption, burned themselves out from mana exhaustion, or suffered catastrophic chakra implosion that killed them instantly." Shy'yao's expression was grim. "Storm Tongue isn't just difficult. It's effectively suicidal for anyone without perfect balance across all three systems."
Misaki remembered the field of impaled corpses. Two thousand men killed in minutes. That kind of power would change everything. Shift the entire balance of the coming conflict.
But it also meant Eldrion—Varaken—had painted a target on M'lod that nothing could erase.
Outside, in M'lod's central square, a very different scene was unfolding.
Riyeak sat cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by a dozen children ranging from ages four to twelve. The massive shield-bearer had transformed from combat monster to gentle giant in the span of an afternoon, his booming laugh echoing across the square as children climbed on him like a living jungle gym.
"Again! Again!" a small boy shouted, perched on Riyeak's shoulders.
"Alright, but this is the last time, or your parents will have my head." Riyeak stood carefully, lifting the boy high into the air, then began spinning in slow circles while the child shrieked with delight.
The refugee girl—the one Misaki had found on the road—sat nearby with the infant she'd been carrying. Someone had cleaned them both, provided fresh clothes, given them food. The girl's vacant stare had started to fade, replaced by tentative curiosity as she watched the other children play.
Riyeak noticed her watching and gently set down his small passenger. "Hey there," he said softly, crouching to her level. "What's your name?"
The girl didn't respond immediately. Then, barely audible: "Sera."
"Sera. That's a beautiful name. This little one yours?" He gestured to the infant.
"My brother. Kyn."
"Well, Sera, how would you and Kyn like to play a game? Something quiet, since Kyn's sleeping. We could build a tower out of these blocks, see how high we can make it before it falls."
For the first time since arriving, Sera smiled. Just a tiny expression, fragile as glass, but real.
Riyeak's heart broke and healed simultaneously.
Five kilometers south of M'lod, the advance scouts of the Third Regiment crested a ridge and stopped dead in their tracks.
Before them, stretching across the lowland approach road, stood a forest of stone spikes. Each spike three meters tall. Each spike bearing a body—sometimes multiple bodies—impaled and displayed like grotesque flags.
Two thousand corpses. The entire Second Regiment. Suspended in death, their blood dried to black crust, their faces frozen in expressions of terminal agony.
One scout vomited into the bushes. Another turned and ran, abandoning his post entirely.
The third scout, a veteran of twenty years' service, simply stared at the nightmare landscape with the understanding that war had fundamentally changed.
This wasn't battlefield casualties. This was a message written in blood and stone:
M'lod has a weapon. And that weapon is death incarnate.