"Heal her! She's dying!" Arakash struggled to stand, to move, his instincts screaming that every moment here was a moment closer to death. He shifted back to his demonic state, no longer able to maintain the fleshcrafted illusion that was his human form.

"Understood." Even in this situation, the noctrel's words felt like a lie, but Celeste could see the evidence before her. She pulled the gauntlet off her hand, knelt, and touched the princess' forehead. Daeva healing abilities were famed as much for their secondary benefits as their primary, and Celeste had more experience working with the oddities of Isylan biology than most.

First, she infused the elements of Creation into her patient, along with her supernatural senses, and a soft white glow as a side effect. A complete map of Ada's heart rate, blood flow, even the subtle energies that allowed the brain to function and the access to her magic opened in Celeste's mind. Long held suspicions, now confirmed to undeniable certainty, but those would wait. For now, she had identified the problem: Ada's magic was being siphoned, so much so that it was depleting her life force. As of this moment, the only thing keeping the girl alive was that she was siphoning Arakash's power.

Lacking options, Celeste went for a long shot. "Shiara! I need your help!"

"How!" Shiara rushed over, kneeling before the pair. "My magic's destructive, I don't have any healing powers!"

"Don't worry, I'll handle the healing." Celeste began preparing for what came next. "I need you to provide the fire. Anything you've got that can infuse itself directly into an object will do."

Shiara might have been able to do all sorts of fascinating things to steel, but that was because steel could withstand heat that would reduce flesh to ash. To cast such a spell on a person, especially Ada, caused her to hesitate. "Are you sure that will-"

"LISTEN TO HER!!!" Arakash tilted his head just enough to glare at the fire elemental.

"I..." Shiara closed her eyes. "Right. Promise me I won't hurt her."

"I promise, if she dies, it won't be your fault." Celeste focused on the flickering mana of Shiara's power; the daeva still had trouble comprehending the sheer potential of this girl's magic, but so long as she had cooperation, she could shape this fragment of it. "Be gentle, follow my lead."

Contrary to Shiara's opinion, fire did not create or destroy- those were privileges possessed by other magics- all it did was consume and transform. A process which could be channeled and, to the outside observer, reversed. She linked the aspect of flame, changed it so that it drew upon Creation as an element, rather than simple chemical bonds. She then twisted the output, changing heat to raw mana.

"Is... is it working?" Shiara stared at the flickering blue flames which consumed nothing, and restored everything.

"It's working." Celeste brushed her hand over Ada's cheek. "But it won't be enough on its own. I need to concentrate."

Desperate for power, Arakash gripped the crystal he had taken from the basilisk a month prior. Green energies roiled around the stone and then sank into his flesh, but that wasn't enough. He hated wasting such a valuable shard, but survival took priority over all else, so he kept draining the gem of its magic. The green glow dimmed, the crystal turned dull, cracks spread and fragments fell.

Fragments of reality collapsed in on themselves, ripped and pulled open by a power which had claimed the lives of gods. Smoke roiled off its claws as carbon dioxide made contact with sun-granted warmth for the first time in over fifteen hundred years. It made contact with the line between realities and, instead of being severed as should have been the fate of anything touching the edges of a two-dimensional plane, they found purchase.

The rift bulged open as black lightning lanced outward, killing the fabric of the universe itself. The world cried out to six beings which had the power to hear it, but no longer the power to save it.

Three slept through the chaos. Two stirred from their long slumber, awakened by memories of the being which had long ago proven even gods could die. One closed her eyes and wept for the death of three of her closest friends and the garden world they built together. The Deathbringer returns.

A head emerged from the rift. Its long, reptilian jaw devoid of flesh revealed it to be a dragon to any with even the most vague knowledge of monsters, and the few remaining chunks of skin which clung to its face carried ink-black scales, each large enough to serve as a shield for a man. One frozen red eye stared into nowhere, while the empty socket seemed to possess sight by which to survey a world it had forgotten.

It had forgotten its reason, its memories, even its name, but it had not forgotten its frustration, its shame, its hate. It had but one motivation remaining: a Final Death for the world it had once helped shape.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It pulled itself out of the rift with muscle long-rotted and frozen solid in the empty cold of a layer of reality that had never been host to gravity, fission, or a single interaction between particles before it was banished there. Magic matched only twice in the history of its long life and longer death drove it forward, into the walls of Karana.

The finest magical shielding ever crafted by any empire in history held against the thing's power. If all other defenses failed, the walls of Karana were built to withstand any conceivable siege for decades. While the people of the city had no way to know, their fortification could have survived a supernova, and kept those inside alive for years before the power finally failed.

Their protections held for three full seconds against this thing before its reality-breaking claws reached the walls proper. Long-forgotten sensations of contact with matter and life returned to the Deathbringer's mind, followed by the collapse of the physical representation of Karana's impregnable defenses.

Within the city, the people stared in disbelief at the thing which had appeared in their sky and now towered over their walls. Some watched in awe, others ran in terror, and some brave few rushed out to meet the beast in open combat.

Pegasus Knights took to the skies on their mounts, unleashing punishing wind and lightning spells, while ground forces supplied streams of flame, supersonic projectiles of crafted stone, and archers released arrows enchanted with a thousand separate effects, and every combination of specialist sent off all the esoteric attacks at their command. The healers noted the thing was obviously undead, and so opened up with a spectrum of wide-area healing magic. Some few enterprising necromancers even banded together in an attempt to enslave the creature's mind.

There was no attempt to plan, coordinate, or take stock of their resources. They expended in minutes the amount of resources which a wise commander would have metered out to last months in the theater of war. There would be no second battle, no attempt to retreat for these people who fought to save their homes.

Their foe reared back, and for a moment the defenders hoped their assault was working. Then, it opened its rotted jaws and breathed out a stream of black mist into the defenders. It spread out as if a liquid, splashing out across the streets and leaving behind a dense solid-black fog which denied the very idea of light, of life.

Moments after, the fog settled and only corpses remained where Karana's populace once was. Infrastructure crumbled, aged thousands of years in mere moments and leaving only the most resilient of structures standing. The storm of energy unleashed in the aftermath was sufficient to kill most of the flying defenders.

Some few among the strongest and best prepared weathered the storm and remained standing after. For a moment, they stared out in horror at the skeletal remains of what were moments ago their allies and comrades.

The dead climbed to their feet and turned upon what few survivors remained. As exhausted as those who withstood the first attack were, the undead empowered by the closest thing to a god of undeath which had existed in Midara had little trouble carving through their defenses.

The Deathbringer stalked into the ruins it had created, making his way to the most impressive of the surviving magical structures. Those survivors, the ruling families born with power that prompted lesser beings to call them gods, required its specific attention. Then it would rest and recover from its long ordeal. As an afterthought, it gave a command without words or thoughts to its army.

Consume. As simple as it was absolute, the imperative would be followed with the same mindless devotion as a wildfire. They would not cease until they were destroyed or every living animal in the world joined them in undeath.

Too far away to hear the screams of those unlucky few, Celeste watched the death of her home. "No." She tried to speak, her lips made the proper shapes, but no sound escaped her throat. "It's not possible."

Arakash pulled himself to his knees; the drain had stopped, though it would be some time before he could recover from his ordeal. "Shadowblight. Deathbringer. The Corrupted God. The First Traitor. Worldslayer. The Black Pillar. It has more titles than there are languages to speak them in, and every one spoken in whispers after checking to make certain no children are in earshot. It does not care what you think is possible. We have to run."

Shiara couldn't tear her eyes away from Karana, either. "Run? Where? How?"

"Anywhere." He struggled to his feet. Unlike the others, he could sense the absolute, rapacious will behind the horror they had witnessed. There was no room for any emotion in his mind but the fear of what would happen when it turned its attention on them. "It can feel us, and it is going to come for us." It was coming for the entire world, but that wasn't Arakash's priority.

As if to illustrate his point, the undead began to pour from the city by land and sky. They set upon the nearest farms and hamlets first, and with every being slaughtered, a new soldier was added to the relentless tide of death.

"He's right," Celeste said. "Karana is lost. We must warn the world before it's too late."

Arakash grunted as he limped over to Ada. "I'll take the princess. Even if I was at full strength, I'm worthless against the undead. This way, neither of us slow you down." He didn't care what the excuse was, so long as it resulted in survival. Some part of him did find it amusing that the daeva lied, if only to herself. He knew that there was no need to warn the world; power like the Black Pillar just unleashed did not stay hidden for long. And it was already too late.

Celeste looked out at the fields and ever-expanding waves of the dead. "They're pushing to the east, first." She closed her eyes, knowing full well that hundreds more people she had spoken to would die in minutes, and there was nothing she could do about it. "It... is where the larger towns and portals are to be found. But there is one portal nearby that we can use. It will take us to Isylan territory."

Personal demons be damned, the world was at stake.