[AUG 12 - 0 AG] - The Cataclysm at Uzdrel
“Clara! We need support, now!” roared Brannor — a towering, broad-shouldered warrior in full plate, his white hair bristling under the helmet rim. The seven-foot tank planted his massive shield against the wall of attackers, claymore at the ready.
Clara, barely nineteen and not even five feet tall, trembled against the stonework behind him. Her long blond hair spilled over a tattered blue mage robe, her slim frame visibly shaking from exhaustion.
“Brannor… I’m out of mana. No potions left…” she whispered, voice thin as paper.
“Damn it, they just keep coming! Where’s our backup?!” shouted Jax — the lean, black-haired polearm fighter with easy charm and quick footwork, his lighter armor flashing as he struck.
“If you’ve got any better ideas, use them,” Alfion snapped. The blond-haired elven archer’s green eyes were hard, her skirted battle gear allowing her to dart and fire without pause. Arrow after arrow flew from her bow, each shot keeping the tide at bay.
Clara sniffled behind them, feeling useless as her team fought for their lives.
“Clara, pull yourself together!” Alfion barked. Clara’s breath caught in her throat.
“We’re not dead yet,” Alfion added more firmly. “Don’t you dare give up.”
“Well,” Jax muttered darkly, “this isn’t how I imagined dying, but at least it’s honorable.”
“Jax!” Alfion snapped.
Before she could scold him further, Brannor froze. In fact, the entire battlefield froze. Screams, steel, even the air itself went silent.
The three turned to Brannor — then followed his gaze.
A wall of shimmering gold was expanding outward, ethereal yet terrifyingly solid, forming a vast circle across the horizon. Everything it touched simply vanished. Already it spanned at least one-hundred kilometers and was growing larger by the second.
Brannor didn’t hesitate. He scooped all three of them up and bolted in the opposite direction.
“Clara, what is that?!” Jax’s voice cracked with fear.
“I—I don’t know!” she gasped. “Magic on that scale shouldn’t exist! You’d need thousands of twelfth-circle mages — there hasn’t been one in centuries!”
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Brannor growled. “It’s erasing everything, and we’re next!”
“It’s almost on top of us!” Alfion cried.
The golden wave rushed closer with impossible speed. Clara buried her face against Brannor’s neck, refusing to watch their deaths approach—
—but the wall stopped.
It halted just shy of where they stood, then flickered out of existence as suddenly as it had come. A shred of Clara’s already ruined robe fluttered away into the void where the wall had passed, the only proof it had been real at all.
The four of them stood frozen, trying to comprehend what had just happened. That colossal wall of magic—where had it come from? Who could have conjured such a thing? It made no sense. Both armies had to have been obliterated; no kingdom on earth could field power like that.
Clara was the first to break the silence, sobbing softly into her hands. None of the others spoke. Their faces were pale, eyes hollow. They all knew nearby towns had almost certainly been caught inside that expanding circle, and everyone within it was simply… gone.
Brannor shifted Clara higher in his arms, unclipping his gauntlets and hooking them to his belt so he could rub her shoulder with a bare hand — a quiet, steady motion meant to anchor her as she trembled.
“Come on. We need to get to the capital,” he said at last. His voice, normally ironclad, sounded strained and tired.
Jax trailed behind, spinning his polearm once as if to reassure himself it was still there before lowering it. His eyes flicked over the empty battlefield, jaw tight, muscles tense under his light armor. Beside him, Alfion paused now and then to scan the horizon, green eyes narrowing, her bow half-raised in case something moved.
The four of them walked in silence, boots crunching over the scorched ground, each step heavy with the knowledge of what they’d just survived — and what had been lost.