Chapter 98: The Age of As
The void split the heavens.
It was more than darkness, it was the absence of everything. Light fled. Sound dissolved. Even the air trembled as the God Engine descended, a being forged in the birth of time and death of stars. It had no face, no eyes, only shifting shadows and a core of blinding energy that beat like a dying star.
Cambria gasped as the wind was ripped from her lungs. Her vision blurred. Around her, the battlefield collapsed into chaos. Both her allies and enemies dropped to their knees, choking, unable to breathe under the crushing weight of the entity’s presence.
Seraphine stood alone beneath the void, arms raised, smiling like a goddess returned to her throne.
"I am not your queen," she whispered. "I am your extinction."
The God Engine responded in silence but its power sang. Waves of annihilation pulsed outward, turning steel into ash, stone into sand, and man into memory. One blast wiped out an entire battalion in a blink, with no screamsaand nd no time to run. Just nothing.
Evelyn clutched Lucien’s arm deep in the vaults as tremors cracked the walls.
"What have we done?"
Lucien’s eyes were haunted. "She unleashed something even the stars sealed away. We weren’t supposed to ever wake it."
Above, the Sentinel Queen Cambria’s protector stood against the impossible.
And struck first.