Ash drifted like snow upon this world that’s slipping into its final breath, a soft, sorrowful bnket for a nd on the edge of oblivion.

  The firmament above was a tapestry torn, stars unraveled from their sacred positions, their trails burning bck against the once-heavenly blue. Fire rained as judgment, not miracle. The air itself moaned, den with smoke, ruin, and thick with the scent of godblood.

  While Knem, one of the mighty gods of the Northern sky pressed on in battle. Unyielding, his fierce roar echoed through the shattered heavens.

  His cws forged from a blend of fme and steel. Shredded through the hollow husks of twisted, unrecognizable remnants of the anomaly's spawn who were once living, breathing beings. One such abomination with spire-like limbs and shattered eyes like a broken moon lunged at him, but with a single, swift strike, Knem severed its head; the body disintegrated into motes of light before it even touched the ground.

  The ground quaked beneath his feet, but he did not linger.

  The sacred stones of Celestia, carved in harmony with the stars, split with a sound like the weeping of mountains. Roots groaned. Rivers boiled backward.

  The anomaly was devouring, warping the very fabric of existence.

  "Form ranks! Under the seventh ring!" Knem cried, his voice the roar of a lion, the toll of war-bells.

  No soul answered.

  He gazed upon the ruin. The battlefield stretched wide, broken and forsaken. Where the Celestial Orders had once stood, gods garbed in fire, rain, wind, and bone, there was naught but a heavy silence. Their names would echo no more.

  And yet he moved.

  He bore wounds. Burnt flesh seethed beneath golden armor. His mane, once brilliant with starlight, hung heavy with blood. But, the fme in his chest had not dimmed.

  He reached one of the few remaining high ridges; from there, he saw light.

  Astra.

  The goddess’s bare feet rooted within the scorched earth, robes torn by wind and grief as she stood alone amid a circle of binding light, ancient and holy. Light bled from her hands, not soft, but fierce, holding the rift at bay. The anomaly snarled and surged behind her, a great chasm of void where order broke. It devoured all it touched.

  Formless, endless, a wound in creation.

  Knem's breath caught. "Astra!" he cried, stepping forward.

  She did not turn.

  But her voice came to him, not upon the air, but in the marrow of his bones.

  "You were always the first to rise, Knem." she said. Softly. Lovingly.

  "Then let me stand with you," he answered.

  Still, she did not face him.

  "I must go where you cannot follow."

  The words struck like a bde to his heart. "Do not speak as though the end has already come. There is still time, there is still strength in me, in us—"

  She turned at st, slow as moonrise. Her eyes are as deep as the old seas, vast and unending yet within their quiet storm arrays mercy and the sorrowful grace of farewell.

  "This is the only way."

  With those words, the circle colpsed.

  Light burst upward like a pilr into the heavens, casting shadows across the shattered nd. The anomaly shrieked, rearing back. Wind howled. Magic screamed. The very w of stars began to twist.

  Astra raised her arms.

  Soon after,

  Everything broke.

  A sound, ancient and terrible, echoed across the celestial sphere. The heavens splintered. The mountains cried out. Rivers turned to ash. Her body became light. Her light became fme. Her fme became a memory.

  Still, Knem ran.

  He ran with the very st breath of his soul.

  But he did not reach her in time.

  Light devoured all.

  It was not golden.It was not divine.This was the final gleam that speaks in hush and leaves only ruin in its wake.

  It did not burn.

  It fell upon stone and sky alike, unweaving what had once been made.

  And when it was gone,

  Only ashes remained.

  Only silence ushered.

  Then a whisper, faint as breath upon frost came.

  Blessed thy children of the SunHear the call of the heavenCataclysm will emergeGloom dread to purge

  He stirred, half-buried in cinder. His hands, once aglow with divine fme, trembled in the dust. His wounds burned anew.

  But he breathed.

  Descended from the skyArrows of fireAshes will rainBurn, for it is you wish

  The voice did not belong to Astra.

  It belonged to the sky. To prophecy. To fate, written before fire had a name.

  Howbeit, light will emanateDivine cast you with brightnessRecim the loss you grieveBow, for the sun will rise again

  Knem rose.

  Not quickly. Not as a warrior, but as a relic returned from the dead. His mane trailed smoke. His breath came sharp and cold.

  He looked at the sky.

  The consteltions were missing. Dimmed. Shattered. A few still burned, faintly, flickering as though clinging to the edge of the void.

  He turned from the hollow where Astra fell.The sacred pce where the stars once bent to her will, was now a pce marked by nothing but dust.

  His cloak stirred behind him, ruined and grimed with soot.

  Still, he walked forward.

  The world had fallen.

  But so long as he lived, the war was not yet lost.

  When the sun rises again, he would be its wrath.