High above, the shadow dome violently exploded outward. Akua emerged, his dark red eyes burning with primordial malice. He launched a barrage of spiked black tendrils as a distraction, using the cover to charge directly at Hadrian. The dark god raised his twin, mist-dripping sickles for a decapitating strike.
Hadrian did not retreat. A gleaming broadsword materialized instantly in his empty hand.
Steel clashed against divine bronze. The impact sent a shockwave through the atmosphere, parting the clouds in a perfect ring. Akua fought with the relentless fury of a cornered beast, his sickles a blur of necrotic arcs. Hadrian met every blow with cold, calculated efficiency. The Imperator parried a vicious downward chop with his broadsword, ducked beneath a sweeping sickle, and fired a concussive blasting curse from his hand directly into Akua's chest, knocking the twelve-foot deity back.
Akua retaliated, whipping his tendrils like spiked lashes from every blind angle. Hadrian danced through the deadly snare, severing the creeping shadows with his blade while casting rapid, non-verbal shields to deflect the heavy sickle strikes. It was a breathtaking, terrifying dance of martial supremacy and explosive magic, illuminating the ruined city in violent flashes of emerald and black.
Pivoting away from a lethal thrust, Hadrian cast his gaze downward. The streets were finally empty. The red sea of the Roman vanguard and the surviving populace had cleared the great gates.
Hadrian channelled his magic, propelling himself backward to create a vast expanse of open air between himself and the dark god. He lowered his sword, his emerald eyes burning with a terrifying, finalized resolve.
"Protego Vitam. Protego Credentis."
The chant rolled through the sky like thunder. Instantly, the atmospheric pressure plummeted, making the air thick and difficult to breathe. The outer walls of Qohor suddenly ignited, glowing with an intense, blinding luminosity that cast the ruined city in the eerie light of a second green moon. The ambient magic coalesced, forming an impossibly large, solid concentric circle of emerald light resting directly above the city walls. A second, identical ring manifested directly around Hadrian's hovering form.
Akua ceased his advance, his dark red eyes narrowing at the glowing boundaries. "What malignant sorcery is this, Destroyer? You were not capable of such power before."
The inner concentric disk surrounding Hadrian began to emit a low, thrumming hum. It flared brilliantly, spinning as it slowly began to expand outward like a horizontal halo.
"Fifty years I have waited," Hadrian answered, his voice devoid of mercy. "Fifty years I have suffered the wrath of you false gods as I buried myself in my home. Now my suffering ends. And yours begins."
At that deathly declaration, the spinning edge of the expanding disk touched the closest of Akua's writhing tendrils. The thick, dark appendages did not burn or sever; they simply vanished, erased entirely into the emerald light.
Akua flinched, genuine panic finally fracturing his divine arrogance. He whipped his strongest, thickest tendrils directly into the advancing disk, hoping to shatter the magic, but they too were instantly reduced to nothingness.
Roaring in fury and fear, the Black Goat turned and flew outward, desperately trying to put distance between himself and the expanding ring of erasure. But as he reached the perimeter of the city, he slammed violently into an invisible barrier. The outer concentric circle resting on the city walls had formed an impenetrable dome. Akua hacked relentlessly at the barrier with his sickles, unleashing torrents of dark magic, but the emerald shield merely absorbed the catastrophic damage, rippling the force of the attacks harmlessly down into the bedrock of Qohor.
Trapped between the unyielding wall and the slowly expanding disk of annihilation, Akua felt his demise nearing. He spun to face the Emperor.
"I will leave you be!" the dark god bellowed, his voice laced with desperation. "I will withdraw! I can give you information about the others! The secrets of the pantheons!"
Hadrian merely watched him, his expression carved from stone. He did not speak.
Akua snarled, cursing the stubborn mortal. "I will not die, Destroyer! Even if this vessel perishes, I will live!"
Closing his eyes, Akua attempted to abandon the ruined flesh of the High Priest Trahar, intending to cast his divine essence back into the void. A moment later, his eyes snapped open, wide with unadulterated terror. He was anchored. He could not leave.
"What did you do to this vessel, Destroyer?!" Akua shrieked, his composure completely shattering.
"You are bound to it," Hadrian stated coldly, hovering at the epicentre of the expanding disk. "Your divine essence was called forth in the ritual, Akua. My daughter made certain the ceremony remained incomplete, trapping you halfway between realms, while I bound your tether directly to this flesh. Your pride and carelessness are now your undoing."
The spinning, emerald disk finally closed the distance.
It touched Akua's boots, and the dark god screamed. The disk spun through his mortal coil, erasing the bronze skin and demonic muscle into nothingness. Thick, foul black-red ichor rained down upon the ruined city as the deity was systematically dismantled.
As the flesh disintegrated, a pulsing, erratic mass of darkened energy—the raw divine essence of the Black Goat—was left exposed in the air. Hadrian spun his free hand in a complex, twisting motion. The air around the essence folded inward, manifesting a dense, opaque black sphere that snapped shut, encasing the soul of the god entirely.
From within the muffled confines of the sphere, Akua's terrified, raging voice echoed into the night. "Do not do this, Destroyer! Killing me will have consequences! The others... they will not let this go! You will die!"
Hadrian allowed a thin, chilling smile to grace his lips. "If they wish to avoid your fate, they will not interfere anymore."
"NOOOO!"
The expanding disk finished its path, obliterating the last remnants of the mortal vessel. The resulting destabilization of the godly magic triggered a catastrophic implosion. A blinding flash eradicated the night, followed instantly by an earth-shattering explosion. The sheer force of the blast tore through the city, creating an abyssal crater that swallowed nearly half the southern sector and completely obliterated the ancient Qohorik walls.
A suffocating silence fell over the wasteland.
As the thick smoke slowly cleared, the retreating legions and the surviving populace turned their eyes upward. Hovering flawlessly above the devastated, smoking crater was Aeternus. Floating obediently at his side was a smooth, flawless black sphere.
A sharp, deafening CRACK ripped through the air, startling the thousands of onlookers. Space itself seemed to violently fold inward around the Emperor, twisting the light for a fraction of a second, before completely consuming him. When the air settled, the sky above Qohor was empty.