In the dead of night, the Carnivores' true nightmare began.
From the edges of the forest, a tide of horns and hooves surged forward in a blind, brutal charge. The mountain's herbivores, infused with the restored mana of the Mother Tree, did not strike like frightened prey—but like living battering rams. Stags crowned with crystal antlers and beasts of burden the size of houses tore through the palisades as if they were paper. The Carnivores, long accustomed to being hunters, found themselves trapped between the crackling fire of the sky and the unstoppable weight of a nature that no longer feared them.
In darkness and mud, the invaders' formation dissolved into chaos. Predators were trampled beneath those they had once considered food—sealing the camp's fate before Lusian even struck his first blow.
The moment of truth came with a thunderous roar that shook the mountain to its core.
As Lusian contained the collapsing energy within Valerius, Elizabeth rose above the battlefield, mounted on Thunder—her white steed wreathed in crackling arcs of electricity that made the air itself tremble.
She raised her hands to the sky. Deep within her core, the spark of demonic mana awakened—the residue of her lineage, the connection she despised.
"Fall!" she commanded—and the air obeyed.
The sky, once a flawless golden dome, darkened into a deep violet, charged with unnatural electricity. The lightning did not descend like arrows—it fell as black and violet spears, tearing through the air. Each strike of Thunder amplified the discharge, turning demonic mana into a lethal conductor that ignored the defenses of divine artifacts with effortless precision.
The three Crystal Pillars could not process the impurity of the attack. Their runic circuits sparked and screamed before shattering into a thousand fragments. The golden light flickered, faltered—
—and died.
The camp was plunged into the mountain's natural darkness—cold, merciless.
As the sky burned violet under Elizabeth's command, the ground itself turned treacherous. Without the Lithaar to hold it together, the mountain roared.
Adela moved like a streak of steel beside her ice tiger—a creature as imposing as it was merciless. Water magic burst from her hands in razor streams, freezing any human soldier or Carnivore who dared approach the pillars. Her tiger, roaring with a force that cracked the forming frost beneath its paws, tore apart those who had not already been claimed by ice.
Their coordination was flawless.
Where Adela struck, her beast secured.
Together, they forged an unbreakable perimeter around Elizabeth, who stood upon Thunder amidst storms of lightning.
With the artifacts destroyed, the camp was trapped.
Without the protective dome, the mountain's cold descended upon the invaders like a crushing hammer, while arrows from the dark elves rained from above—precise and merciless. Every breath became a struggle. Every movement, a risk. The mountain itself seemed to pass judgment, transforming the battlefield into a ruthless and living executioner.
In the absence of light, in the heart of night—
Lusian smiled.
Before Kaelen and Selene, who now staggered in uncertainty, he vanished into shadow. What followed was not a battle.
It was an execution.
"The light that shielded you from me is gone," Lusian said, his voice echoing through the silence left in the wake of Elizabeth's storm. "Now there is only you… your sins… and me."
"The sentence is death."
Kaelen, the Pyre of Sin, tried to raise her hands—but her white flames turned black, devoured by the darkness radiating from Lusian. Her power shattered before it could even touch the air.
"What are you going to do to us, Douglas?" Selene hissed, her threads of prayer unraveling between her fingers like burned silk. "Will the gods punish you for this?"
Lusian did not answer.
There was only silence.
When dawn came, the corpses lay piled like mute witnesses—too many to count. The scent of ash and defeat soaked into the mountain air.
From the summit, the Mother Tree stretched its branches, drinking in the final breath of the fallen. The camp, once a golden wound carved into the slopes of Zarhama, was now nothing more than a stain of white ash and frost.
Lusian walked among the remains, his cloak billowing like the banner of an endless night.
The message to the Empire was written in red across the snow:
The mountain no longer merely endured…
The mountain had learned to hunt.