"Galaris!"

  "Galaris!!"

  "Melei?"

  "Galaris, wake up!"

  "Where are you?"

  "You can't see me, but I'll always be with you. Now wake up, Galaris!"

  With a sharp intake of breath, Galaris' eyes snapped wide open. He grunted, squeezing his eyes back shut in response to the streak of blinding light that assaulted him. His second try proved a lot better, and with a slow, gradual squint, his eyes were finally able to withstand the light.

  That was when the pain on the rest of his body finally registered, and he let out a deeper, long, drawn-out groan.

  His head hurt, and his brain felt like a hammer had been taken to it multiple times. His entire body wasn't much different, with pains stabbing into him from all over.

  Instinctively, he tried to move and immediately choked back a scream at the sharp pain that bloomed from both his left elbow and right ankle. With blurry eyes and multiple bouts of sharp breath intakes, he managed to turn his eyes down on the assaulted areas.

  His elbow, being the closer one, was first. Galaris grunted at the macabre sight of his forearm. The only thing lucky about it was that it hadn't been torn off, simply twisted in a different position than his upper arm. Though it still hurt like hell.

  His ankle was the same, and given the reinforced metallic box that had crashed onto it, Galaris was once again lucky it hadn't been entirely crushed. But given that he was a Monarch realm wielder, a crushed foot and a twisted arm were probably the most he could get from those.

  With a slowly building realization, Galaris soon recognized that the abandoned wreckage he was half submerged in was his house, and with a great amount of pain and a greater will egging him on, he slowly pushed himself up.

  "Melei!" He called while he shifted off a brick off of his lap.

  "Melei!!" Galaris called again, getting no answer. And while he feared, he still pushed on. After all, Melei was stronger than him— A peak-tier Monarch on the cusp of stepping into Spirit lord. If he could come out of this with nothing more than a broken ankle and a twisted elbow, then so could she.

  "Melei!!!" He called for the third time, voice quivering. With a grunt, he grabbed a long wooden stick—a shattered piece of a whole— and used it to push himself fully off the ground, dislodging a couple more bricks and wood that had collapsed on top of him.

  "MELEI!" Galaris screamed, this time with a full-blown panic. That was when he noticed the smoke and red tint in the air.

  He raised his face to the sky, finally taking in his surroundings fully for the first time.

  The world was a deep, bloody crimson, a contrast to the previously blue-white hue. Galaris choked out a cough at the cloud of ash that flowed into his mouth. Quickly, he snapped his mouth back shut, unwilling to swallow any more ash.

  It wasn't hard to figure out where they came from, seeing as the atmosphere was choked filled with them. The previously white clouds were nowhere to be found and had been replaced with a sea of grey ash that blotted out the sky beyond.

  Galaris stumbled his way through the wreckage of what had once been his home, grunting and groaning at the agony of it all. He would have preferred to use his will to at least try and move a little bit of the wreckages away, but he knew how drained he was. How he was even still standing was a surprise to him.

  Still, he wasn't going to find Melei if he didn't try, and that was even discounting his daughter, Eria. Galaris muscled through the pain, both mental and physical, and then he spread out his Monarch realm senses.

  It didn't take long before he began feeling an active pain brewing in his mind, but luckily, what he'd already covered was enough.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Now came the hard part. Galaris firmed his mind, dug into the chaos surrounding him, and began filtering out the wreckage.

  Normally, this would have been an effortless task, but given that about ninety percent of his will was devoted to keeping him standing and conscious, he had to at least make do with the little he had left.

  While he worked, his mind tried to piece out what had happened. What had turned the world this way: an utter, quiet wasteland filled with crimson and death. He wasn't exaggerating. Aside from the feeling of destruction that still pervaded the atmosphere, it was also choked full with the essence of death, so much so that all other essences, barring that of destruction, were all but gone, suffocated under the weight of a great element.

  Slowly, his mind began tracing back the lines, and like a dam whose last hinges had just been pried apart, everything rushed in.

  Unadulterated horror overwhelmed his mind just as a flood of memories poured in.

  The six beings that had appeared had been tiny, given the distance, yet they'd been filled with so much power that every being, regardless of whether they had been awakened or not, had witnessed their birdlike visages millions of miles apart.

  Their wings had been a thing of awe and terror; as bright as the sun, and yet all they inspired had been terror. Their auras had not been much different, so utterly crushing that thousands had died before Galaris' eyes, unable to withstand the pressure from a million miles away. He had no doubt that they were tiny fraction compared to the casualties worldwide.

  Their voices had been the stuff of nightmares, so thick and heavy that mountains had collapsed and uncountables had gone deaf just from the sounds alone. Galaris remembered that the only reason he and Melei had survived those calamities had been because of the active protection of thousands of Spirit lords as well as both their Kings.

  And then the World Spirit had responded. All over the world, people had felt it as massive presences awoke, just as powerful as the king and their invaders. Their auras had not been hostile, at least to those on the planet, but it had been crushing nonetheless.

  A battle had ensued in the heavens, with techniques that had shrouded the skies in an aurora of powers. The world had quaked from the short battle and the World barrier itself had lit up blindingly to contain the effects.

  Galaris remembered the nightmare that had consumed the world when the world sentinels—creatures large enough to cover vast regions of a single continent —began crashing onto the earth, causing death in such magnitude that it had instantly dwarfed that of their invaders.

  Continents were consumed by titanic waves, resulting in the deaths of billions all over the world. Volcanoes erupted, spewing smoke and lava into the air, which soon saw the clouds wiped out by a sea of encroaching ash.

  But still, their world spirit had held. Despite the deaths of its sentinels. Despite the deaths of the two Kings that had sworn to protect it. It had still held.

  And then their invaders had turned their full attention on the planet itself, and the transparent barrier protecting it.

  Galaris choked back a scream as the memories of their attacks rushed into his mind like a flood. The utter destruction that had followed as their attackers turned their full might on the world itself.

  Hundreds of millions had collapsed, their brains exploding, just from the reverberating shockwaves as the world barrier fought to hold back the techniques.

  He remembered the heavens crashing down just as the barrier broke, and the desolation that overcame what had once been his home.

  Dimly, Galaris felt himself crash down on his knees. He didn't even mind the pain; it was nothing compared to the feeling of agony that had pierced through his mind as the world was desolated, reduced to nothing but a bare piece of itself that was soon consumed by the crimson mark of destruction.

  Galaris's fingers dug into the earth, tears pouring down his eyes, and his lips twisted into a painful grimace. When he opened it, he turned his eyes down to find his hands clutching a handful of gray ash. And with a dawning realization, Galaris dug his hands back into the cracks from whence it came, pried apart the layers of woods, sand, and metal to reveal— with a spine-drenched shiver—a half-destroyed skull situated in a small mound of ash.

  A mournful howl echoed out from his lungs just as his fingers pried out a piece of bone from the mound. His vision shook and with another dreadful shiver, his fingers dug more into the ash, prying out another skull, this one smaller than the previous.

  With both skulls in his hands, Galaris roared in painful agony to the sky, praying for all possibility that this was not true. That this was some sort of illusion played on him by the World Spirit or the twin Kings. But alas, nothing happened. His vision wasn't warped nor did his wife appear suddenly out of nowhere with that mischievous smirk of hers.

  With dread and tears-filled eyes, Galaris looked down on both skulls in his hands. He didn't know what to think, what to do. All his mind could piece out was the eager shake that had woken him up that morning, of Eria and her inexhaustible amount of energy, as she'd requested and pleaded for him to come play outside.

  He remembered Melei's smile as she'd gladly thrown him out to the wolves, eager for them both to be out of the house so that she could clean.

  Galaris's heart broke, shattered so utterly he knew there was no chance of it ever recovering.

  "Yes," a voice said to him then, creeping and deathly. Galaris didn't bother looking. "Remember this moment well, Galaris. Master it, soak it in. For when next we meet, our enemies shall feel the same."