Balthazar stands still as stone. The Sanctum hums with quiet power, yet his focus shifts—an echo rippling through creation, faint yet undeniable. His head tilts slightly.

“A son…” His voice is low, the words barely formed, almost reverent—then they sharpen like a blade.

“And she hides him from me.”

He turns slowly, wings unfurling. Every white feather catches the light as they stretch to full span, scraping the Sanctum walls. Wind erupts through the halls, tearing loose shards of stone as the sky outside clouds over.

Balthazar’s eyes blaze white as his voice bellows, not loud but vast: “Sanarm.”

The sound echoes into the heavens. For a breath, all is silence. Then comes the roar—low at first, then rising until it shakes the sanctum pillars. Dust rains from the ceiling as something vast hurtles from the clouds above. The dragon lands with the force of an earthquake, talons gouging the stone floor. Its wings blot out the sky, its breath a furnace of silver flame.

Balthazar strides forward, eyes blazing, rainless sky framed behind him. His voice is a verdict cast in iron:

“Take me to them.”

Far from the mountain, the sea churns under a gray sky. Rain falls in thin silver threads, soft and steady. A lone ship flees across black water, its deck groaning under the waves.

Below the tattered sails, Damanti cradles her newborn against her chest, whispering through sobs:

“You will live. You will be free.”

The wind howls as the rain thickens, driving needles of water into the black sea. Waves heave like mountains, smashing wood to splinters. Thunder rolls low and endless, a voice from the deep stirring in wrath.

Then the sky shatters. A jagged vein of lightning tears the clouds, spearing the horizon in blinding white. Another follows. Then another. Bolts crash into the sea like falling swords, each strike boiling the water into pillars of steam. The storm becomes a cathedral of light and ruin, the air burning with ozone and fury.

And in one flash—brighter than all the rest—the silhouette appears. Vast wings unfurl against the heavens. Scales gleam like molten silver, jaws spilling torrents of light. For a heartbeat, the storm is frozen in pure brilliance, and every soul aboard sees the truth:

Balthazar is coming.

A roar splits the sky, primal and infinite, and the thunder itself falls silent before it.

Sanarm hits the boat with the weight of a falling continent. The deck shatters. The hull screams and breaks, its spine snapping like brittle bone as men vanish into the abyss without a cry. The sea surges up in walls of black water, thrown back by the force of a god’s wrath.

And then—silence.

Balthazar descends, wreathed in light torn from the storm. Lightning crowns him, fire races along the span of his wings—wings so vast they blot out the shattered sky. Each slow beat drives walls of wind across the ruin below, ripping planks from what remains of the deck.

He lands like a verdict cast in stone. The timbers scream, then break beneath his feet. Thunder answers the strike, rolling over the sea like the hymn of the world’s ending. For a breath, even the storm holds its voice.

Rain lashes his face but cannot dim the wrath burning there—a storm greater than the sea’s own fury. His eyes blaze through the downpour, twin suns drowning the night, light that scours shadow and sears the soul. Behind him, wings draw inward like closing gates, their span casting shadows across the ruin. Water streams from their edges in silver torrents, every feather a blade honed in eternity, each one whispering the promise of judgment.

Damanti reels, clutching the child as if mortal hands could cage what heaven has claimed. Balthazar’s voice does not rise; it simply is, vast and inescapable:

“You bore my child… and thought to keep him from me?”

Her breath shatters into the wind. “Please… he’s innoc–”

“Silence.” The word falls heavier than thunder. Her words are stripped from her throat.

“You would take what is mine. You would run from me. Did you think I would not come?”

Her tears vanish in the rain as she spits the words like poison:

“He was never yours!”

Balthazar raises his hand. The motion is calm, deliberate. Light flares in his palm, bright enough to blind, burning hot enough to peel the air. His voice is low, controlled, each word hammered in steel:

“You don’t get to decide that.”

He lowers his arm and presses his palm against her forehead. Her breath catches—just once—before the pain starts.

Light burns through his hand, sinking into her skin like molten metal. She jerks violently, a strangled cry tearing from her throat as her knees buckle. Steam curls from her hair as the first threads of smoke coil up her cheeks.

Then the fire comes. White and merciless, it crawls under her flesh, bursting from her veins in rivers of light. Her screams rip across the storm, raw and breaking, swallowed and thrown back by the howling wind. Her eyes ignite first—white fire gushing from their sockets, then her mouth as if her soul itself is aflame.

Balthazar does not flinch. His hand pins her in place as her body convulses, bones cracking like kindling under the pressure. Rain hisses into steam against her burning flesh, each droplet vanishing with a whisper. Feathers drip water onto her writhing body, the hiss almost tender against the violence.

When the fire finally consumes her, there is nothing left but ruin. Her blackened skull splits apart, crumbling into dust that drifts into the boiling sea.

Balthazar lowers his hand, smoke curling from his palm, the storm raging like a witness sworn to silence.

The child wails. Balthazar kneels, wings arching like a canopy. Rain runs down his pale face as his gaze meets his sons. His fingers brush the edge of the swaddling cloth. The storm falters. Thunder slips into silence.

“All creation hears me,” he says softly, and thunder answers. “You belong where I command.”

Behind them, the broken vessel slides beneath the waves. Sanarm spreads wings vast enough to eclipse the ruin of the world, and angel and child rise into the clouds as lightning fades to darkness. Only the sound of waves remains, lapping gently against the bones of the dead.