The sound persisted.
THUMP… THUMP…
It wasn't just a heartbeat. It was a command. An impersonal pulse that filled the air with an artificial cadence, as if the very heart of the moon had been replaced by something monstrous. The walls trembled with each beat. The ground vibrated. It was an impossible echo, born not from a living being… but from a machine simulating one.
Elizabeth looked at Dren, still kneeling before the cell that had been his hell.
She knew she didn't fully understand what she was seeing or what he had suffered… but she did understand something else: that Dren's past was connected to the world's present. And if she didn't help him get up, the entire future would crumble with him.
With slow, almost reverent steps, she approached him from behind.
Without a word, she knelt to his level, wrapped her arms around him, and rested her forehead on his head. It was a simple, unpretentious gesture, yet filled with a tenderness that broke through the darkness surrounding them.
"Dren…" she whispered, her voice trembling like the first ray of light at dawn. "I don't know what you lived through here. But I do know who you are now. You are not an experiment. You are not a mistake or a monster. You are a warrior. You are stern, yes. Strong. Loyal. Noble. You have made mistakes, we all have… but today you are here. And I trust you. I trust that you will get back on your feet… and help me stop this."
The silence that followed was abyssal.
Dren did not answer immediately.
For years, guilt and rage had been his only compass. He had told himself he pursued the throne for power, for justice, for redemption… but now, before this absurd, fragile, and reckless princess, he understood that he had never had a purpose. Only a cage larger than his cell.
Now he had something new: a decision.
He stood up.
Not slowly, not with drama. He stood up with the firmness of someone who had just been born again. His eyes, still red from the past, shone with a clarity he had never had before.
"You're right," he said in a deep voice, as the echo of his decision settled in the chamber. "I'm sorry you had to see this. But we are going to stop that damn army. I swear it on everything I have left."
Elizabeth looked at him and couldn't help but feel the weight of the world lighten just by seeing him rise. Dren's strength wasn't in his magic, nor in his muscles. It was in his decision to fight with a broken soul… and to keep moving forward.
They followed the heartbeat.
THUMP… THUMP…
They arrived in an impossible chamber. A circular hall at least a hundred meters in diameter, with a vaulted ceiling that was lost in the darkness. The walls were covered with conduits, pulsating crystals, and mechanical structures that seemed to grow from the stone like metallic parasites.
And in the center… the source of the sound.
Elizabeth didn't know how to describe it.
It was a structure both living and dead, like a colossal insect embedded in a mechanical flower. It was beating, yes, but what it pumped was not blood. It was essence.
A man—or what was left of one—floated suspended in a translucent cocoon, connected by dozens of tubes to the creature-machine. Each beat drew from him a fine golden thread: his life force, his soul, his history, his existence. It was extracted without violence… but without cease.
"It's an anima extractor…" Mayron murmured, horrified. "A machine that… feeds on the human soul as if it were fuel."
Elizabeth felt nauseous. "What can do something like this…?" she asked, not expecting an answer.
But the answer came.
Not with words.
But with a pressure in the air. A crushing weight, as if gravity itself had decided to turn cruel. The atmosphere grew dark, unbreathable. It wasn't like the power of the enemy army. This… this was something else.
A shadow fell over them.
A figure descended from the vault, as if emerging from a dimensional veil.
It was another black knight… but different.
Its armor did not shine: it absorbed the light. On its chest, an ancient symbol: an incomplete spiral, crossed out by a broken spear. Its eyes were two red lines that did not blink. And its mere presence distorted the chamber, causing the walls to groan with melting metal.
It did not say a word.
But they all understood instantly.
It was not a soldier. It was not a monster. It was a General. The fourth one.
And it was coming for them.
Meanwhile, on the battlefield, time had stretched to an extreme. For those who fought, every second was an eternity of steel, blood, and screams. They had lost all track of it, except for survival. A notion that returned abruptly when the power of Zanjara ended.
It happened in an instant, all along the front. The swords, which a second before had shone with a ghostly glow and cut through the black metal, turned back into simple mortal steel. A soldier who was about to deliver a fatal blow saw his weapon shatter against his enemy's armor. The mystical power was gone.
Losing Zanjara's power was an abrupt and brutal blow. Anubis's army of the dead was still fighting, but the advantage had evaporated. And to make matters worse, the three generals, who until now had stood motionless like statues of a coming calamity, seemed to smile in unison. The end of that external aid made their intervention, for them, completely unnecessary… for now.
"Anubis…" said Vincent, his voice a grunt of effort. Using his extraordinary magical power, he lifted one of the silicon soldiers into the air. He clenched his own hand into a fist, and the black knight compressed in on itself, becoming a twisted ball of metal that Vincent threw with devastating power at another soldier, sending it flying. "Zanjara's power has abandoned us. Can you imbue the soldiers' weapons with your power as well?"
"HAHAHAHAHAHA" the deity laughed mockingly. "My power is not like that of Zanjara of the Thousand Hands, little necromancer. He is the lord of probabilities and reincarnation. I am the lord of judgment and punishment. Perhaps you don't understand, but I cannot alter the probabilities of those weapons so they can harm their enemies. And even if I could, you are already channeling all the power your mortal body can withstand. And your body knows it. You won't last many more minutes. And when you fall, my army will go with you."
"Help me, please!" Vincent pleaded. "Give me more time! I can't fail now!"
"What part of 'I cannot alter probabilities' do you not understand?" Anubis said, his tone now tinged with annoyance. However, one thing was true: he didn't want to withdraw from such an entertaining battle just because his fragile avatar succumbed to exhaustion. He added with a conspiratorial hiss: "However… I am a god who controls life and death. If you give me a large enough source of magical energy, I can not only delay your death… I could return you to the peak power you had in your youth."
"How much Bloodstell do you need?" Vincent asked. While it was true they had used almost all they had, perhaps there was a chance…
"A lot… more than you possess."
There was no time. What Vincent was preparing to do could be the most dangerous and risky move of his life… but it was also the only chance they had.
Just as he was about to invoke a forbidden spell, one that only he could use, the sky tore open.
A gigantic portal opened in the sky. Not one, but many, like cracks in the firmament. And from them, as if fallen from divine judgment itself, descended dozens of Sky-Breaker Beams, which struck the silicon knights with surgical precision. The battlefield lit up with golden lightning that drew cries of hope.
And then they arrived.
Dragons.
Dozens. Of all colors and sizes. The imposing royal dragons of Vhalmir at the front. Behind them, the black war dragons of Aurél, smaller, but more numerous and aggressive. Their roars shook the very soul of the planet.
But they did not come alone.
War golems, titans of steel and enchanted stone, walked through the portals, their footsteps shaking the ground. Siege spiders, magical abominations fueled by Bloodstell cores, scuttled out, firing beams that dissolved knights in seconds. Flying war chariots, soldiers imbuing weapons with blessings, sorcerers, elemental creatures, and mythical beasts emerged in waves.
It was a roar.
A roar of the Human Kingdoms in unison.
And those warriors who still resisted, exhausted, wounded, broken… they roared too. They roared with hope, with fury, with life.
"AURÉL!" "VHALMIR!" "FOR THE PRINCESS!" "FOR HUMANITY!"
But Vincent did not roar. His face was pale. Not from emotion… but from fear. Something was wrong.
He knew it just as one of the Generals vanished in a black streak. An instant later, it appeared above a dragon. Its whip, made of pure darkness, wrapped around the colossus's neck and brought it down without effort. With another movement, the same whip decapitated the dragon.
The cheers of jubilation froze.
On the ground, dozens of soldiers threw themselves at the General. The second, who had already begun to advance, brandished a one-handed sword as large as a tree. A single swing was enough to cut more than thirty men in two.
And the third… used no weapons. His mere presence absorbed the magic from the environment, weakening shields, breaking enchantments, withering the air. Soldiers crumbled in his wake, as if a vacuum were sucking out their existence.
"Gods…" Vincent whispered. "This wasn't a counter-attack. It was a bait. They waited until we had spent our last resources. And now… they are hunting."
The ground trembled. The new armies regrouped. The battlefield was full… but hope was dwindling again. And as the human troops prepared for the impact, the Generals of Silicon advanced like harbingers of the apocalypse.