Extra's POV: I am the Sixteenth Son

Wind and metal howled like wild beasts fighting for their lives.

The two Domains crashed against each other like angry gods having the world's worst argument, reality twisting around them as if the world couldn't decide which master to serve. Every breath Elowen took felt like swallowing fire, every heartbeat pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her sky, cracked and bleeding. Roch's crucible, shaking like a leaf in a storm. The very air between them split open and bled golden light.

Roch had stopped smiling ages ago. His face was twisted tight, sweat beading on his forehead as he poured more power into keeping his Domain alive. Metal shards spun around him like angry wasps, buzzing with deadly speed, while his boots scraped against floating chunks of earth that shook under his feet like scared animals.

Elowen floated down from the higher winds, battered and bloody, but her eyes still burned with fight. Her hair was sticky with blood, her bow was long gone, and her hands were empty now. But wind wrapped around her arms like living armor, sharp and ready to bite.

"You're still standing," Roch growled, spitting blood. "Should I clap or something?"

Elowen breathed hard through gritted teeth. "You came here to shut us up because we found out the truth."

Roch tilted his head like a curious cat. "I was hoping you'd figure it out sooner rather than later."

She stared at him with eyes that could cut glass. "You went after my people."

A moment passed. Roch's silence was louder than any confession.

Elowen spat blood into the twisted air. "You're not just some killer for hire. You're one of them. The Ouroboros Accord. That's why this can't end with us shaking hands and walking away."

Roch's power flared like a bonfire. "And that's why none of you are leaving this place breathing."

Without warning, Elowen threw her hand to the side, fingers slicing through the air like a blade. One last bird construct, a massive falcon made of stormwind and hardened air, formed in the blink of an eye, pulled from the very bottom of her power well.

Far away, outside the Domain's reach, Erik had scrambled to a distant ridge. He stopped, gasping like a fish out of water, then turned, just in time to see the wind-bird appear beside him, screeching with deadly purpose.

"No... NO!" he shouted as it grabbed his arms with talons that felt real enough to hurt and yanked him into the sky.

He kicked and screamed, trying to break free, but it was like fighting a hurricane. The construct belonged to Elowen. A Grandmaster's will. He had about as much chance of breaking it as a mouse had of arm-wrestling a bear.

"COMMANDER!" he roared, tears streaming down his face as the battlefield became a tiny dot below him.

Back in the Domain, Elowen stumbled, her skin scorched by the heat of magnetized metal, but her eyes burned brighter than stars.

"I won't let you kill him," she said, her voice steady as stone.

Roch raised his hand, metal whipped into a solid spike behind her back. Elowen turned her head just slightly, like she had eyes in the back of her skull.

"Erik... run far and fast."

Then the spike punched through her back like a knife through paper.

The Domain screamed like a wounded animal.

Her body jerked forward, lifted off the ground for a heartbeat. Steam hissed from her lips in a single breath of pain, and her breathing came in short, rattling gasps. Still, she stood there, impaled but unbowed, glaring into Roch's face like she was memorizing it for later.

"You're just... another coward," she rasped, her voice barely a whisper now. "Hiding behind secrets and lies. You think... killing me... will keep the truth buried six feet under?"

Blood poured from her mouth like a red waterfall. She leaned in closer, her face calm despite the pain eating her alive, the final act of a warrior who knew death wouldn't erase what she'd fought for.

Elowen was never this cold before. Being from a branch family meant she only knew a life of struggle and scraping by, but that all changed when she got into the Panther Order. It was like going from sleeping in a barn to living in a palace.

She had faced plenty of dirty looks and whispered insults from the pure-bloods, but that all changed when she met Shona le Eisenklinge.

Shona was the one person Elowen called a true friend. She had her back when others turned away and stood up for her even though she was a pure-blood. Elowen was second only to Shona, who claimed the title of strongest in the Order of the Panther. She was also the first among the master-ranked fighters to step into the realm of Grandmaster.

But life has a way of kicking you when you're up. Shona died shortly after becoming commander of the order. She died while digging into the truth about her husband's death, the father of her baby girl.

That loss broke something in Elowen, but it also pushed her into the Grandmaster ranks. She could still remember Shona's last moments, lying on her deathbed, pressing her baby into Elowen's arms and saying, "Take care of her. Promise me." Elowen's heart had shattered that day, but the baby gave her something to fight for.

Hope that she had made Shona a promise worth keeping. Hope that she could one day pay back whoever killed her friend. Hope that the tight feeling in her chest would finally go away.

"Little Feather..." Elowen called out as the air left her lungs, thinking of Shona's daughter. She had stayed with the child for five years and had only left after the girl joined the Cradle a year ago.

"I'm sorry you won't get to see your aunty again!" Tears rolled down her cheeks like summer rain. This was a side of Elowen that no one except the child, Maelia le Eisenklinge, had ever seen.

"You've already lost," she whispered, her last breath forming a small cloud in the air.

Then her eyes went dim, and the wind around her fell silent as a grave.

Roch pulled his weapon free with a wet sound. Her body started to fall forward, but just then, something went very, very wrong.

The cocoon cracked like an eggshell.

Inside the Domain, two godlike wills could no longer share the same space. Reality itself,stretched between Skyborne Dominion and Polarity Crucible like a rope about to snap, finally shattered into a million pieces.

And the world ate itself.

---

It started with a single pulse. A ripple across the broken cocoon, like a stone dropped in still water.

Then—

BOOM.

A brilliant light erupted from the sky, swallowing the battlefield in dead silence. Space bent inward like a crushed tin can. Trees, earth, even the magic in the air, twisted into the center of the clash before exploding outward in a wave that could have made the gods themselves duck for cover.

It wasn't fire. It wasn't light. It wasn't sound.

It was pure nothing-left-behind destruction.

Where wind and metal had once danced their deadly dance, now only a hole in the world remained.

From miles away, towers along the border of the Empire's sixth wall shook like dice in a cup. Watchmen saw the glow and blew their horns like the world was ending. Birds fled the sky like it was on fire. The world itself seemed to weep at what it had just witnessed.

---

The stormwind construct flew until its wings gave out. As Erik screamed and clawed at its feet like a cat in a bathtub, it reached the end of its flight path, then stopped dead in the air.

The wind around it began to loosen like a knot coming undone. Its form trembled like a leaf in a breeze.

Then, like sand scattered by the wind, it dissolved into nothing, the magic dying with its maker.

Erik dropped like a stone.

He hit the earth hard, rolling through brush and mud like a rag doll, groaning from the impact. But his heart was still beating. His lungs were still working.

He sat up, blood on his lip, staring back at the direction of the explosion that now only left a burning scar on the sky.

"Commander..."

His voice cracked like a teenage boy's.

She was gone. The others, too. All of them.

But the truth lived on in him, burning like a coal in his chest.

And he had to get to the sixth wall. To Eisenhart. To warn the Empire before it was too late.

The Ouroboros Accord would come hunting for him next, no doubt about it.

But Elowen's sacrifice wouldn't be for nothing. Not if he had anything to say about it.

He wiped the blood from his mouth, stood up on shaky legs, and started walking toward the distant lights of the Empire.

The truth would spread like wildfire.

And someone would pay for what happened here.