Accompanied by Felipe's fervent cries, Kazul merged with the five-colored phantom high in the sky, the two terrifying silhouettes gradually coalescing into one.
A dignity belonging exclusively to a true god radiated from the great wyrm red dragon's ferocious, colossal body. A magnificent five-colored crown seemed to condense atop his head, and the phantom of Tiamat loomed behind him.
"Roar—!"
Kazul raised his head, opened his bloody maw, and unleashed an earth-shattering roar. The sound radiated outward with him at the epicenter, stirring up ripples of dust and smoke.
In an instant, the dragon cultists and priests within Sunset City dropped to their knees, their eyes hollow as they prayed, chanting ancient Draconic verses:
"When sky-spanning wings sunder dusk and dawn, the primordial tyrant bursts from his cage!
"The surging river of magma in his throat shall burn the crowns of the gods to ash!
"A pulse echoes from the depths of the scorched earth—a new era quickens within the ashes!"
Kazul beat his wings. The cloud of ash above him expanded at an unimaginable speed, swallowing hundreds of li in just a few breaths like a world-ending beast devouring reality itself.
...
Terrible disasters struck far beyond the battlefield, ravaging the entire region of Seleucia across thousands of li.
"Gods..."
"The end of the world is truly upon us..."
In this despairing darkness, the cries, wails, and appeals of mortals sounded utterly feeble.
The earth groaned, roared, and shattered.
Violent tremors tore bottomless chasms across the ground. Crimson magma surged furiously from these gargantuan wounds, radiating an all-consuming heat as it flowed unchecked across the land.
Wherever the lava wound its way, houses melted like wax, stone towers toppled like withered grass, and living beings were instantly reduced to blackened silhouettes before being swallowed by the incandescent torrent—leaving not even a scream behind.
In the cities of Seleucia hundreds of li away, the earth was finally torn open. Scalding magma gushed out, swallowing cities like raging rivers. Under the licking touch of the molten rock, high towers twisted and collapsed like melting wax.
Ash draped across the sky like an endless burial shroud, snuffing out the daylight in an instant and leaving behind only an ink-thick darkness.
In the next moment, the sky tore open as countless burning meteors plummeted downward. Tearing through the air, they crashed into the mortal world with deafening roars, gouging titanic craters into the ground. Flames erupted instantly, and billowing smoke unfurled into the sky.
The dark red light, nothing more than clotted blood oozing from the earth's wounds, illuminated the harrowing scene of devouring devastation.
"Divine retribution! It's divine retribution!"
"The prophecies of doom are true! We have angered the gods! The old era is coming to an end!"
"Kneel, quickly! Only by worshipping the great Chromatic Dragon Queen can we survive this apocalypse!"
The once-magnificent cathedral plaza had turned into a vortex of despair.
Crowds fled blindly through the streets, shoving and trampling one another amidst the poisonous sulfurous fumes and swirling ash, desperate to escape this living inferno.
The air was scalding. Every breath felt like swallowing red-hot blades, searing pain slicing from the throat straight down into the depths of their lungs.
Hoarse weeping and dying wails mingled with the thunderous collapse of buildings, intertwining into a frantic symphony of the end of days.
In the chaotic crowd, a mother clutched her child tightly. Scalding volcanic ash fell onto the child's face, making the little one shriek in agony while the mother brushed at it in vain.
In a corner of the city, an old priest in rags, Patrick, slumped on his knees among the rubble and debris, letting out a hoarse whimper.
His once-pristine vestments were now stained and soiled with ash.
Patrick gripped the holy solar emblem hanging at his chest with both hands and raised it futilely toward the sky completely choked with smoke and ash. His voice was utterly broken: "Why? Why must this happen?
"Have the gods... truly abandoned us? O great Lord of Eternal Radiance, we were your devoted flock! Please answer me, even if it is only a single glint of light..."
His only answer was another flame of divine retribution screaming across the sky before crashing into the distance with a deafening blast. It obliterated a soaring bell tower completely, leaving behind only surging infernos and even denser black smoke.
The last glimmer of light in his eyes faded. His hands fell limp, and the holy emblem dropped into the thick ash, instantly buried—just as the deity he had worshipped his entire life had completely abandoned him.
The luxurious carriages carrying nobles, adorned with family crests, were now like clumsy iron coffins, unable to move an inch amidst the chaotic mob.
A fat noble lord was shoved off his carriage, tumbling into the filthy mud and ash.
His gold-embroidered tunic was torn, and his huge gem-set ring was nowhere to be found. He flailed his hands in vain, shrieking like a slaughtered beast in a manner entirely unfitting his status:
"Commoners! Get away! Do you know who I am? I am the son of a duke—"
"Get away!"
Yet in this cataclysm, order had completely collapsed. No one paid the slightest heed to the nobleman. Faces smeared with ash and contorted by suffocation and terror pushed past him in numbness, fleeing forward.
The insignia that had once symbolized his power was trampled beneath a mud-caked foot, sinking deep into the muck and ash.
Beneath a crumbling ruined wall at the edge of the plaza, Anna curled up her body.
She shielded her young daughter, Leah, tightly in her embrace, using her own body as a fragile bulwark against falling stones and scorching winds.
"We'll survive..."
She muttered meaningless words of comfort over and over, her voice trembling slightly, as if trying to deceive herself.
Leah's pale little face was buried deep in her mother's tattered clothes. Every strained, shallow breath drew in the smell of ash.
Anna could feel the little body in her arms breathing more and more faintly. Lowering her head, she tried in vain to wipe the thick layer of ash from her daughter's face with her ragged sleeve.
"Don't be afraid, Leah, Mama is here..."
Anna's voice was as faint as a sigh. "Look, dawn is coming..."
She looked up toward the sky forever shrouded in ash, yearning for a miracle that did not exist.
Ash fell, silent and pervasive.
The small life in Anna's arms, once the source of boundless warmth, was growing cold and stiff.
Only the rustling ash continued to fall, landing on the child's face—peaceful as if asleep, yet devoid of life—and on the mother's trembling arms as she wept in soundless anguish.
In the distance, crowds were similarly buried by the ash. Ashen corpses piled up haphazardly in heaps; the entire city seemed swallowed by these pitch-black embers.
...
On the battlefield, the officers and soldiers of the coalition army had similarly plunged into deep despair.
Sky battleships were struck down by meteors one after another, trailing thick smoke as they plummeted from the heavens and crashed into the earth, their explosions throwing up towering pillars of fire.
Men futilely loosed arrows and cast spells toward the sky, but nothing could even approach Kazul, who was a thousand meters in the air surrounded by fiery clouds. This mighty great wyrm red dragon was like a living natural disaster, impossible to resist and impossible to defeat.
Hundreds of rocket projectiles soared up from the ground, bombarding the great wyrm red dragon like a dense curtain of rain, only to be shredded by fierce firestorms hundreds of meters away, unable to draw near in the slightest.
The empire's magitech legions and Dragon-Pact Sorcerers unleashed several massive ninth-tier spells. Crisscrossing beams of light, colossal meteors, and frigid ice spikes converged upon the great wyrm red dragon in succession, only to be effortlessly extinguished by the divine radiance encircling him.
No matter how hard these spellcasters tried, it was nothing more than mortal futility; they could not harm an entity approaching godhood and on the verge of transcending the Material Plane.
Inside Sunset City, Felipe watched the apocalyptic scene, weeping and laughing at the same time: "Foolish mortals... abandon your pointless struggle... The coming of the end is sealed! Your world is headed for ruin!"
At this moment, the two souls within him were utterly torn apart. The soul of the King of Seleucia wept in grief over this apocalyptic arrival, while the soul reconstructed by Tiamat—the Dragon Pope—cheered in wild elation at the dawn of the new era.
"Amaunator above..."
"Gods, how could mere mortals like us ever match an entity capable of ending an era?"
"Give up. All we can do is witness... the coming of the end with our own eyes."
The voices of the coalition soldiers were subdued, drenched in despair and sorrow, but the imperial elites were still trying to mount a counterattack.
In midair, several sky battleships gathered together, forming an impenetrable defensive formation. Their overlapping force fields deflected the descending meteors while the muzzles of their heavy elemental cannons swiveled in unison toward the great wyrm red dragon high above.
"Fire!"
"Shoot him down!"
"Boom—!"
With a roar that shook the heavens, over a hundred heavy elemental cannons fired thick beams of light, yet they still failed to penetrate the divine glow enveloping Kazul.
Kazul looked down at the sky battleships below, undisguised contempt shining in his slitted pupils.
With a flick of his talons, an intensely blistering pillar of flame descended from the heavens with colossal momentum, crashing toward the fleet amid exploding air like divine punishment itself.
Under this fire infused with divine destructive power, the fleet's force field shields shattered instantly, and the dozen or so sky battleships exploded one after another, plummeting toward the earth.
"Cassius above!"
Looking up at the sky battleships crashing one after another, the imperial officers and soldiers were frozen in utter disbelief.
Those were sky battleships constructed by the empire at staggering expense, each costing at least tens of thousands of gold coins, yet they were swatted out of the sky so effortlessly. It was simply appalling!
Deep in the heavens, the stars seemed shattered by some incomprehensible power, turning into countless burning meteors trailing dazzling, lethal tails that ripped through the heavy night and rained upon the dying earth, engulfing the crowded coalition forces below.
Every impact triggered a roar that shook the world's axis. Ash from the incinerated entrails of the earth drifted down without end, blanketing every remnant of the world like an endless, grand, and sorrowful funeral.
Just then, riding a blistering wave of heat, a meteor as massive as a hill hurtled toward the coalition headquarters.
"Watch out—!"
Misha's expression shifted drastically. Snapping her dragon wings open, she thrust out a hand. Vast energy surged forth as a crimson magic circle coalesced in midair, intercepting the plummeting meteor.
Ripples violently distorted the magic circle as the gargantuan meteor detonated in midair, breaking into countless burning fragments that rained back down on the ground, still killing hundreds of coalition soldiers caught off guard.
Wails and screams filled the battlefield. Powerless to intervene, the mortals could only watch as this monstrous catastrophe claimed life after life, plunging them into deep despair over their grim fate, like convicts upon the gallows.
This was the so-called "Day of Judgment."
"Cassius above..."
"O great Cinder Emperor! Grant us your protection!"
In this helpless predicament, the imperial soldiers fell to their knees in prayer, saluted toward the north in homage, or clasped their hands, placing their hope of victory entirely upon their supreme and exalted sovereign, the Cinder Emperor—Cassius.
Countless motes of light symbolizing faith drifted from their bodies, coalescing into a sacred river that flowed toward the distant horizon.
And far away where that faith converged, a streak of crimson light suddenly breached the pitch-black canopy of the sky, resembling a wound pierced by a sharp lance.
Immediately after, that "wound" widened rapidly, turning into a towering conflagration that surged like ocean waves. It tore through the black canopy, revealing a dazzling, incandescent fireball high in the distant sky that cast down countless beams of light, bringing dawn to a world smothered in ash.
All across the battlefield, people instinctively lifted their heads, their expressions filled with excitement and pleasant shock, like drowning souls grasping for a final lifeline.
"Is that... the sun?"
"Could it be Lord Amaunator? It's real! The gods haven't abandoned us after all!"
"Praise the Lord of Eternal Radiance!"
The worshippers of Amaunator in the coalition immediately cheered and prayed, as though having laid eyes upon their savior.
Yet Adrian, as the Chosen of the Sun, lifted his head with deep, brooding eyes reflecting the firelight. He spoke with poignant meaning: "No... that is likely the Cinder Emperor."
"How could that be? Such a warm, bright sun, such familiar divine power..." a solar bishop beside him hastily protested, only to be cut off by another sound.
"Roar—!"
An earth-shaking draconic roar echoed from the sky. The sonic shockwave blew up the ash from the ground, instilling an urge deep within the hearts and souls of millions on the battlefield to drop to their knees in submission.
Was that... a deity?
Could it be an envoy from Mount Celestia? Or had the Lord of Eternal Radiance descended in person?
People continued to gaze upward. The blazing "sun" swelled larger and larger as the firelight completely shredded the pitch-black sky. Before that colossal burning fireball, an imposing silhouette was outlined.
That, too, was a dragon. His posture was far more divine than that of Kazul, the God of Destruction, and radiated a similarly magnificent, boundless majesty—it was none other than the Cinder Emperor, Cassius!
Chapter 850