The city of Militia in Ledatic Siliportem was dying.
It started with the streets, the buildings and then the people.
The military city that had once looked so disciplined was now being torn apart by power that did not care about walls, armor or modern weapon systems. The city's advanced technology—rail guns, barrier turrets, drone cannons, laser-linked artillery platforms, all of it—was nothing to Elyonari now. Some exploded from the strain of trying to track her. Some simply bent apart under the pressure of her Divinity. Some never got the chance to fire at all.
The soldiers died brutally.
Vines sprouted through the streets and tore through armored platoons from below, ripping them inside out as roots forced their way through chest plates and stomachs and throats. Men and women in tactical exosuits screamed as their bodies were dragged apart by wood. Some were pinned to walls by thick stems that shoved through their backs and out through their ribs. Others were swallowed by trees that had no business existing inside a city.
Flames turned barricades to slag and burned squads alive inside their own defensive rings. People ran into smoke only to vanish inside it. Others collapsed screaming as heat warped the air so violently their lungs gave out before the fire even touched them.
Massive gusts of wind came roaring down the central avenues and slamming into towers, windows, armored transports and each other. Helmets cracked. Bones shattered. Bodies were shredded against concrete and steel at speeds no human body should survive. Some were flung so high they disappeared into the smoke above the city and never came back down in one piece.
And at the center of it all was Elyonari. Her Fifth Enlightenment form was terrifying. She was screaming while she fought and was killing tens of thousands per minute.
Vines lashed out and crushed armored vehicles into flat wrecks. Roots burst through streets and devoured whole squads before they could regroup. Fire swallowed entire blocks. Wind stripped the roofs off buildings and hurled debris through the streets like artillery. Water, when it came, drowned fire only long enough to turn the air into scalding steam that burned the people running beneath it. Nature in Elyonari's hands looked like natural disasters.
She felt him gone.
The missing presence in her soul had become impossible to ignore. The Sapphire Bond was absent. The pull that used to live there was gone. She had felt it the moment she saw the hologram.
[Vastarael Richinaria is dead.]
She had not disabled it either.
Every time it floated in front of her, the message felt like a knife being twisted slowly behind her ribs. He had been there last night and now he was not. The place where his existence used to sit inside her chest was empty and no matter how much power she had, no matter how much she tore through the city, that empty space did not close.
That was supposed to be the plan they made together.
She and Veneri were supposed to be the decoy. They were meant to draw the pressure, pull attention, keep the city alive long enough for Greshina and Veylonar to save Celadille. She had accepted that role because he was there. If he was with her, then the cruelty of it at least had a purpose.
Now he was dead and she was doing it alone. That was the part she could not forgive.
Every scream she let out had become a storm. Every tear that fell from her eyes vanished in the heat of her Divinity or was swept away by the wind before it could land. She could feel the city suffering around her. The city was being hollowed out by nature's wrath and Elyonari was too hurt to care whether that made her a monster.
And somewhere inside all that devastation, Phaenora was gone too.
She had seen the same message. She had seen that Vastarael was dead and that she was dead and vanished. She had vanished from the realm entirely.
Greshina saw the damage from farther back and looked away because she was trying not to break. Jack and Luciana were gone as well.
In front of her loomed the palace. She was there with Veylonar. Phaenora was nowhere to be seen anymore. Gone. Ever since she saw the message that Vastarael was dead and that she was free from him, she died. So she hid her own grief very well, the same way she always did when someone else might need her to be functional.
She did not cry. She just got quieter.
Veylonar, however, was already tense enough to snap. He looked at Greshina, waiting for them to go closer but before they could walk any closer to the military palace, Edarea Avinaris appeared.
She was holding Celadille in her arms.
Celadille looked like she might collapse any second if someone even breathed near her. Her face was pale. Her body was thin to the point of cruelty and the way Edarea carried her was almost insulting in how casual it looked. Like she was carrying a prize instead of a living person.
Veylonar went still the moment he saw his wife in that state. He stepped forward without thinking but Edarea laughed.
"The elf Priestess isn't holding back—huh?"
In an instant, Veylonar felt Celadille in his arms.
One second she was in Edarea's grip and the next she was gone from it and pressed into Veylonar's hold. Greshina had moved so fast it had looked like nothing at all and yet there she was, Celadille saved before Edarea could even react.
Edarea went speechless. For once, she had no words. Greshina's voice was sharp and flat at the same time.
"Get out of here."
Veylonar looked at her for half a second, still stunned, still clutching Celadille like his entire life depended on not letting go.
"Now!"
He obeyed and ran away with Celadille in his arms, disappearing into the ruins and smoke before Edarea could recover enough to stop him. Edarea did recover, though. She lunged to follow, but Greshina lifted one hand and waved it almost lazily.
The entire palace disintegrated.
Stone, metal, support structures, upper floors, grand columns, interior walls, the whole thing just broke apart at once as if the concept of "standing" had been revoked. The ground beneath Edarea caved in with it, dropping her partway into a collapsing pit of rubble and dust. Shock flashed across her face.
Greshina stood there amid the falling debris and the widening hole where the palace used to be.
"I didn't expect my transmigrated self to be part of the Overlord Ravagers."
Edarea stared at her and laughed. It was not the same mocking laugh from before.
"It's finally a pleasure to meet the real Edarea Avinaris."
Greshina's expression did not change.
"I'll be taking over from now. And thank goodness you're an Overlord Krepsuna. Don't disappoint me."
She had lost Vastarael. She had lost the shape of her life with him. Now she only had anger left.