The Dark Ages did not begin with the coming of night, but with the coming of Ignis. He no longer hid. He was in a fury. When he learned that humans had not only survived but had also defeated Mortis, he decided there was only one way left to save himself and his archangel pride—to erase the world.

  His army was horrific: demons without will. These were not cunning creatures, but pure, directed rage—magma monsters, beasts of ash, and Fallen Angels whom Ignis had bent with his power.

  He struck fast. He burned cities, butchered tribes, leaving nothing but ash and melted stone. All surviving beings—who remembered Zariil’s kindness and my green fields—poured north.

  At last, Ignis’s host reached the Ice Walls. His army was vast. But ours was no smaller. Elven archers were there, dwarven warriors, and ranks of humans armed with Ice Blades that Zariil had forged for them.

  The battle for survival began.

  I was at the heart of the fight. My power, multiplied by skill honed over three centuries, was immense. I cut down all I could. My Ice Blade sang, weaving Light into cold, and every strike turned demons into ice statues.

  They struck me. They pierced me. One magma beast drove its claw into me, punching through my chest. I should have died—but my furious regeneration saved me. The wound closed in seconds, but the pain did not leave. The pain from every cut, every puncture, every betrayal stayed with me. This was Father’s curse: to suffer forever, yet find no rest in death.

  We began to win. The unity of the races, multiplied by eternity, proved stronger than rage.

  And then Ignis himself arrived.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He appeared in the center of the field like a pillar of blue fire. He looked at me, and there was nothing in his eyes but contempt.

  One blow. A pure, concentrated wave of blue flame slammed into my chest. I was thrown a hundred meters and crashed into the ice wall, barely keeping consciousness.

  “Coward,” Ignis thundered, looking at Zariil as he stepped forward to take my place. “So you finally crawled out from behind your little bugs.”

  The war we had been fighting was child’s play compared to what began next.

  Zariil and Ignis. Deadly Cold against Terrible Fire. They did not fence. They fought with elements. The roar was unbearable. The earth trembled. Ignis’s volcanoes erupted, and Zariil froze lava in midair, turning it into ice mountains. Each collision raised clouds of steam that smothered the battlefield.

  Two days. Two days we armies were miserable spectators. We could only hide and wait while our gods tried to kill each other.

  At the end of the second day, when both brothers stood exhausted in the middle of a field of boiling mud and ice, he appeared.

  Out of nowhere—out of the air—not from the heavens and not from beneath the earth.

  Darkness.

  His arrival was quiet, but powerful. A wave of emptiness threw the brothers apart. Darkness looked even worse than the last time. His mantle was torn, his face worn by thousands of years of watching over Hell. He was the embodiment of fatigue.

  “Look at yourselves,” his voice rang out. It held none of Death’s former playfulness—only weight, like granite. “What are you doing?”

  He gestured toward the battlefield, where the bodies of mortals and demons lay.

  “You are becoming the same as these mortals. You wage war over a scrap of mud. You kill each other out of pride. Where is your divine essence? Where is your Light?”

  I no longer recognized in Uncle Darkness the one I remembered. His smile of happiness, his joy, his jokes—there was nothing left. Only Darkness—pure, bitter, exhausted.

  Ignis stared at him with hatred, but did not dare challenge him. Zariil lowered his head.

  Darkness did not ask them to stop. He simply showed them their own pain.

  “Go back to your toys,” Darkness said, and his voice was a sentence. “When the time comes, I will come for you.”

  Ignis turned in silence and left into the clouds of blue fire. His army, stripped of its leader, fell apart. Zariil left as well, head bowed. He did not speak to me. He was broken by what he had become.

  The war ended. A dreadful, unstable truce began.