The moon's pallid glow was snuffed out by a seething mass of churning, oppressive clouds—as if the very heavens had abandoned this cursed land. In that gloom, soldiers, Karban, Erika, and Ralf stood rigid in their battle stances. Their faces, etched with grim determination, mirrored the dying light of hope. Opposite them, Veythor loomed—a battered silhouette cloaked in darkness, his eyes glinting with a secret, malevolent calculation.
For Veythor, escape could only come by a brutal, cunning stratagem. His wounds bled profusely; every muscle screamed in protest. Yet his movements were deliberate, a predator's dance in a world that had long forgotten mercy. Ralf's mind churned with suspicion. Had Veythor hidden something beneath that cold, indifferent mask? The memory of ordering Karban to keep constant vigil against him had not been in vain. But the look in Veythor's eyes whispered of danger yet unresolved—a warning that any delay would cost them dearly.
"Enough talk!" Ralf roared, his voice slicing through the oppressive silence. "Fall in! Soldiers, warriors, tribe—surround him! Princess Erika, Chief Karban—attack with everything you've got. Weak mages, stick to healing and support magic. We have no time to waste!"
There was no hesitation. Like a swarm of grim locusts, the forces surged forward. Ralf led the charge—a living embodiment of relentless purpose—sprinting the short span of ten to fifteen meters that separated him from Veythor. Erika and her battalion pressed in, their armor clanging in a macabre symphony of war. From the tribe, only four warriors advanced, including Karban, their expressions a mix of resolute determination and a flicker of fear.
At the forefront, Ralf raised his hand to channel his lumen element. With a voice raw and commanding, he bellowed:
**"Divine Light!"**
A searing brilliance exploded from his palm—a flash that rivaled the noonday sun, intended to blind and disorient. But Veythor reacted in an instant; he leapt backward as though the burst were a mere annoyance, his body moving with the precision of a man who had seen countless battles. In that split second, the very air around them trembled with anticipation.
Then, chaos descended like a storm unchained. Almost simultaneously, a giant—a hulking mass forged of earth and menace—emerged from the ranks, and Erika summoned her aqua magic with fierce resolve. In one fluid, lethal motion, Erika's hands coalesced into shards of razor-thin ice. She hurled these deadly spears at Veythor with the cold precision of a practiced executioner.
The giant man roared—his voice rumbling like a collapsing mountain—and bellowed:
**"Storm of Rocks!"**
A sickly yellow glow radiated from his outstretched hand as enormous, jagged boulders tore free from the earth. They hurtled toward Veythor like the vengeful fists of a broken god. Ice and stone converged upon him—a dual tempest of death closing in on the solitary figure.
Veythor's eyes narrowed. In the blink of an eye, he intercepted the deadly shards mid-air. His bare hands crushed them with a force that belied his battered frame, reducing ice to dust. Pivoting sharply, he unleashed his counterattack in a voice low and dripping with malignant energy:
**"Wrath of Sun!"**
In that moment, the air around him ignited. Flames erupted with unbridled fury, searing the incoming rocks until they crumbled into ash. Fire met ice, earth, and a hint of encroaching darkness—a collision of elemental fury that transformed the battlefield into a churning maelstrom of raw power and cold strategy. Overhead, the dark clouds rumbled as if bearing witness to fate being rewritten in a language of pain and defiance.
Veythor's defiant sneer spoke volumes: he thrived on chaos. In a world where miracles were forged in blood, he was the living embodiment of violence incarnate—an average man driven by a relentless need for revenge against fate and a cruel, indifferent world. For him, pride was a burden; survival and revenge were the only rewards worth earning.
Ralf, undeterred by the elemental cataclysm, surged forward again. Despite Veythor's battered state—his body low on mana and aching from each brutal impact—Ralf's mocking tone cut through the chaos.
"What happened, Veythor? Why are you retreating? Don't tell me you're scared!"
Veythor merely smiled, unmoved. In his heart, he knew that provoking him was futile. Beneath the mask, he was no prideful lion—just a man, scarred by fate, whose only ambition was to exact revenge on a world that had wronged him. To live was to plan; to die was to surrender his hard-won grudges to oblivion.
Now, Ralf had reached him. With arms raised, Ralf unleashed a powerful strike aimed at cleaving Veythor in two. In an instant, Veythor dodged—barely, his injured body a testament to countless scars. He countered with a swift kick aimed at Ralf's mouth. But Ralf blocked it with his calloused hands, and the force sent him crashing westward, his body colliding violently with a massive tree. The impact silenced him for a moment—one or two agonizing minutes—but no respite came. The tribe's resolve was unyielding.
A woman from the ranks stepped forward. With practiced precision, she invoked her wind magic, enchanting her sword. In a flash, she hurled it toward Veythor. In that split second, Veythor made a fateful choice. Sacrificing his left palm, he thrust out his injured arm to intercept the deadly weapon—his palm a fragile shield against death. The enchanted sword cut through, slicing deep into his flesh. Blood spilled freely, mingling with the scars of old wounds as they reopened, a vivid reminder that every spell and every strike exacted a cost.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Veythor rose swiftly. In a surge of raw willpower and defiance, he wrenched the sword from his grasp and, without a hint of enchantment, hurled it with a speed that defied his injuries. It streaked through the gloom, its arc perfect, and pierced the woman's forehead. Her head exploded in a spray of crimson and viscera—an instantaneous, brutal end. The ground became bathed in blood; a gory testament to the price of crossing Veythor.
Erika's scream tore through the tumult.
**"You animal, monster!"**
The soldiers recoiled in horror, while a man from Karban's group erupted in anguished fury:
**"You motherfucker—how dare you kill my little sister Yalda? She was everything to me!"**
His cries, a mixture of rage and despair, reverberated across the blood-soaked field.
Amid the chaos, a desperate man hurled a glowing green glass bottle—a vial of acid—at Veythor. The acid sizzled through the air, but Veythor, driven by sheer will, dodged its deadly arc. Not even his battered body would yield now. The man charged with a spear, his war cry echoing like the screams of the damned. Veythor seized his hands as the attacker lunged, twisting them painfully behind his back and shattering the man's grasp. The victim's scream—a prolonged, tortured "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"—filled the air.
It was excruciating, yet Veythor's cruelty knew no bounds. Channeling his fire element through his broken, bleeding hands, he struck at the man's heart. His hand drove through flesh, shattering ribs, until he gripped the quivering heart in his grasp. In a final, savage act, he pulled it out and crushed it underfoot. The man's life ebbed away, leaving behind only a stained, desolate reminder of violence.
For a moment, as Erika and her soldiers beheld the scene, after seeing veythor's brutality those war veterans understood this veythor is not a man they should mess with so they fled without any hesitation the battlefield fell silent. Erika screamed, **"You traitors!"** Her words, laced with grief and fury, echoed against the distant rumble of dark clouds. Yet Veythor offered no solace—no blame. In his eyes, death was but the natural order, a relentless truth of this brutal existence.
And so it was—a savage ballet of elemental fury and cold strategy, a place where the waning light of the moon bore witness to the darkest facets of human ambition. In this moment of unyielding violence, each heartbeat promised that nothing would ever be the same when the dust finally settled.