Screams tore through the park as the orb of blood continued its ascent—now large enough to cover the sun.
It hung in the sky like an open wound, pulsing with a slow, monstrous rhythm. Its grotesque surface writhed like a beast barely caged—thick veins bulging and crawling across it as if alive.
And within that churning red...
Faces.
Thousands of them.
Twisting. Screaming. Trapped.
Mouths frozen mid-scream. Eyes bulging. Cheeks torn back in horror. Some faded quickly. Others lingered—recognizable for just a second before they were swallowed by the mass. Children. Elders. Civilians. All snatched too early, their images carved into the blood.
The orb wailed.
Not a single voice, but a chorus of agony. The screams of the dead echoed from deep within the core of the crimson sun, layered over each other like a symphony of torment. It rose and fell in pulses, screeching across the sky like some mourning god had been flayed open.
Thump.
The air thickened.
Thump.
The grass curled and browned beneath its shadow.
Thump.
All warmth fled from the day.
An aura of dread spread out from the orb like a stormfront. It silenced songbirds. Stilled breath. Froze thought. Mothers screamed. Fathers cursed. People bolted in every direction, but nowhere felt far enough.
Children cried as their drones fell from the air. Popcorn vendors abandoned carts. A guitarist staggered back and dropped his instrument as red light drowned the strings.
People ran.
Not from a person. Not from an army. From the sky itself.
But escape was a lie.
First came the blood.
Those injured in the chaos—scraped knees, gashed foreheads, split lips—felt it first. Their wounds bled… and the blood didn't fall.
It rose.
Thin, trembling streams of crimson lifted into the air, drawn upward like they'd been summoned. Slowly at first. Then faster. Then violently.
A teenager tripped over a bicycle and screamed. Before he could sit up, the blood from his knee siphoned out in a painful jet, leaving him limp and cold.
A woman shielding her baby cried out as a sharp elbow hit her cheek. The small split under her eye flared—and then emptied. Her knees buckled.
It wasn't just blood. It was life being pulled from them.
And once it started, there was no stopping it.
Within moments, bodies were collapsing in the hundreds. Pale. Hollow. Dead.
Their blood spiraled upward into the sky—toward the orb—where it was consumed. Devoured. Added to the crimson storm now stretching above District 6.
"We need to get out of here, Rhesa!" Simon shouted, clutching his youngest by the wrist. His voice was ragged, desperate. "We have to get the kids to safety—now!"
But Rhesa didn't move. She turned to him slowly, her hands still pressed together as if in prayer.
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
"We can't, Simon. We can't."
She glanced down at Ren and Anya—her eyes full of grief.
"Don't worry. I'll protect you."
Simon blinked. The way she said it chilled him.
'What the hell is happening?'
Nothing made sense anymore. Why wasn't she panicking? Why did her voice sound so calm—almost practiced—while the sky screamed and people were collapsing all around them?
Then came the shift.
The orb in the sky flattened and spread, unfurling like a massive curtain of blood. A veil of roiling crimson now covered the sky across the entire district.
People screamed at the heavens as blood rained down in thin, hissing needles. The liquid struck not to kill but to injure—cuts and bruises bloomed across backs, arms, scalps. More blood was spilled. And every drop that fell was stolen, yanked upward in crimson streams.
The wounded screamed as their injuries became sentences.
And as the orb fed, Rhesa began to move.
A deep crack rang out. A car's windshield shattered.
Then, slowly, it rose off the ground.
Another followed. Then dozens. Every vehicle in the area began lifting—as if gravity had been ignored.
They hung for a beat…
And then crumpled violently, imploding into compact steel blocks.
People were still inside.
Men. Women. Children. Caught mid-drive or mid-flight. Some screamed. Some didn't even have time. Their bodies were crushed within the collapsing frames—then silenced.
And their blood, too, was taken—drawn upward through shattered glass to join Anele's red domain.
It wasn't just the cars.
Every metallic object nearby groaned and twisted.
Screws yanked from doorframes.
Streetlights snapped backward like broken spears.
Scaffolding peeled off buildings like molted skin.
Buildings trembled.
Then they collapsed—one after another. The earth shook. Concrete split. Reinforcement rods screamed as they were torn from their housings. Rooftops plunged downward like guillotines.
Entire families were buried. People ran—only to fall, be crushed, or cut by flying shrapnel. And the blood of the fallen spiraled upward.
It was Rhesa's doing.
She had called the metal.
All of it.
Her domain was awakening.
Behind her, an iron vortex spiraled like a storm of razors. The twisted wreckage began to form a shield—snapping into orbit, bending and fusing as it wrapped around Simon, Ren, and Anya.
Thick. Heavy. Curved.
An armored shell constructed from the city's steel bones.
"Warden's Carapace," she whispered.
The dome sealed shut—layered and unyielding.
She took a trembling breath. Her hands finally fell from their prayer.
"Throne of the Iron Gospel."
The air fractured.
The rest of the metal—every scrap of it across a fifteen-mile radius—rose, screamed, and came to her. It spiraled overhead, waiting for her command. A million fragments. Nails, pipes, beams, rails, screws, bolts. All hers.
It was a throne built from war and sacrifice.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
A throne carved from the infrastructure of a city.
She had never used this Resonant Art before—not once.
This was her dominion technique. And all dominion techniques were high-tier by nature—catastrophes by design. Apocalyptic answers to questions their wielders prayed they'd never have to ask.
But now, she had no other choice.
Anele had already unleashed his: Throne of the Bleeding Sky—a dominion forged from agony, suspended in clouds that wept blood.
It fed on suffering. It grew with every heartbeat. A sky-wide veil of carnage, draped across the heavens like the skin of a slain god—dripping red, seething with malice.
To face that kind of darkness… she would have to summon her own.
Her catastrophe. Her reckoning.
Born not from ambition—but from the desperation to survive.
The swirling metal condensed into three distinct whirlwinds, each one shrieking with rotational force. Sparks sprayed as rusted axles collided with fresh alloy, as old rail joints fused seamlessly with cabling and carbonized plating.
Then they took form.
The first: a colossalknight, fifty feet tall, its armor a jagged patchwork of rail steel and train hulls. Its lance—forged from sharpened girders and anchored with coiled wire—let out a high-pitched shriek as it slashed the air, the sound alone enough to rattle windows.
Beside it, a shieldbearer rose. Thirty feet tall, squat and broad. Its torso was plated with welded train doors, and its left arm supported a massive tower shield—its surface engraved with pulsing runes etched in glowing alloy. As it shifted, magnetic pulses hummed beneath its joints, sending flickers of blue light across its frame.
Behind them, a toweringarcher unfolded from a tangle of cables and scaffold rods. Its bow was strung with taut, sparking wire; its arrow—composed of fused copper rail and neon filament—glowed with a crackling magnetic charge. The construct stood still, aiming toward the horizon, as if already anticipating a threat not yet visible.
Above them, more metal hovered—rails, cars, wiring, plates—caught in the swirling field. They orbited slowly, rotating with precision, forming concentric rings in the sky. Not debris. Not chaos.
A second wave.
Rhesa staggered. Her head pounded. Blood trickled from her nose.
Her vessel was burning out.
This technique… this was the one that had earned her the title of Kyrios.
But it demanded a lot of Vira to maintain. A dangerous amount.
But she stood firm.
Across the ruined park, Anele tilted his head, eyes wide with something disturbingly close to reverence.
"The Throne of the Iron Gospel," he murmured, almost in awe.
"I've heard it's devastating. I've always wanted to see what it could do."
He grinned. A wicked thing.
"Today's going to be fun."
Above him, the Blood Sky convulsed.
Three massive drops detached from its mass and fell toward him, streaking down like meteors. They struck him and burst.
Two of them spread behind him, forming jagged, asymmetrical wings made of writhing blood.
The third twisted in his grip, shaping itself into a massive, double-curved scythe that hissed with vaporized vitae.
He exhaled slowly.
"This is the end for you, Rhesa," he snarled, breathless with pleasure. "I've never liked you. Not your voice. Not your face. Not your damn throne."
He laughed.
"And today, oh today, I'm going to tear your dominion apart. Limb by limb. Plate by plate. Until there's nothing left of you but the echo."
He launched into the sky, wings flaring wide.
Blood trailed behind him like ink spilled in water.
Then he roared:
"Hands of Divine Judgment!"
And the sky broke open.