Poppy grabbed Chase by the arm as the tunnel around them began to shake with so much violence that even Jackal and Justin nearly fell to their knees.
'Chase! You need to get out of there, like now! Something really strong has just torn the entire Coliseum up from the ground! Oh my gods...'
Chase heard Luna's terrified voice and turned to a low growl...
"What is it!?" Poppy panicked, gripping her spear tightly in her right hand as the walls around them began to dismantle into giant shards...
When Chase looked up and seen that there had no longer been a ceiling in the first place... His heart dropped...
Around them... A massive crater the size of Equus itself...
Chase's eyes flashed black, the memories of Rider and his reign forcing their way back into his head.
His knees collapsed.
"Chase!" Poppy gasped, grabbing him and yelling as his breath grew ragged... His Catalyst trembling with weakness...
As his eyes slowly rose... His breath stopped, the sight of a colossal fragmented island of purified metal hovering in the sky above Seh Jenah: Causing Chase's vision to begin to fade and return over and over again, submitting him to the source of this inhuman power...
"We need to go..." Jackal growled, Callahan's booming laughter echoing throughout the giant crater...
...
Natalia stood petrified, her legs shaking at the sight of Callahan's true power...
'This means...'
"I'm not going to fight any longer..." Her quiet voice escaped during the destruction, causing Rayan to simply freeze.
"Why?" He asked, almost disappointed with the ending of their duel...
Natalia seemed almost stunned at Rayan's unphased expression.
She sighed, as he was soon to be overtaken by the madness...
"Can't you tell? It will only be for naught when Veximus shows his face... It was all a ploy... Its why I had no choice but to fight alongside them..." She choked, slowly backing away from Rayan.
"You are a symbol of swordsmanship... What the hell do you mean you're done?! I looked up to you... People told me I was no good for a sword... And now I get the chance to fight the reason I picked up a blade... But you don't want to fight anymore because you fear someone else?" He grit his rotten teeth, causing Natalia to feel an immense amount of emptiness at the sight.
In truth...
This would probably be the last twenty or so minutes of Rayan being in his own state of mind...
Natalia fought back a sob...
Rayan sighed, turning his body towards Callahan's powerful silhouette countless feet above where the battle had once began...
"With my help... Jack can defeat him..."
He grinned, launching himself into the air with a terrible shockwave in his wake.
Natalia's knees collapsed...
They couldn't defeat Callahan... Not even the entirety of Unity... Not even Leander himself could defeat Callahan...
Suddenly... the Sword of Seh Jenah had returned to her childish figure... Holding her knees tightly as her clan was slaughtered around her...
The bloody rags over her body trembling as she could only cry as everything she had over loved was destroyed around her...
"Why are you crying...?" A deep voice asked, lowering his giant figure with shocked crimson eyes...
"You... I'll... I'LL KILL YOU!" The girl screamed, summoning a chaotic blade of indigo energy point blank at the man...
"Such potential..." He chuckled, ripping the energy from his flesh...
It was then...
That moment when Natalia had realized the true power of the figures who stood comfortably in charge of these ancient lands...
And had for as long as the Gods themselves had given up their reign...
She could only sob at her knees as Callahan let his thousands of metallic blades fall from the sky...
...
"Although the courage to fight a being such as me in their own domain... Is quite admirable... Unlike the former heads of your clan... I do respect you Jack of House Ember... But the last person to raise a blade to me has their head on a spike outside of the city!" Callahan's horrifying voice boomed throughout the crater, causing Jack to only grit his teeth and fight through the radiating energy that multiplied the gravity around them...
His body quaked... Yet, he persisted... Pushing forward with every bit of willpower he had left...
...
Jack chuckled, unlocking the front door of his family's mansion.
He had done it, he had survived the war...
Pure pride was filling his chest for the first time since he had been sent off to Phoenix Academy... Just as his family had taught him.
Although he found it quite strange that they hadn't written to him in nearly a year, but he figured it just because they didn't worry about him, especially when the last letter he had written was one of his accomplishments throughout the years...
He ascended the mansion's ivory stairs... But he felt a weird hollowness at the bottom of his heart.
'Perhaps its because its so quiet...' He pondered, happily heading towards the grand living room at the center of the second floor...
He noticed the terrible smell, grabbing his nose and frowning as he pushed open the grand double doors.
"What?" He asked, his eyes unblinking as bodies filled the living room...
Chairs and desks lay unturned with cobwebs and flies shrouding them.
Jack felt that it was simply a nightmare and began to pinch himself, slowly stepping through the remnants of the servants and even his own cousins on the floor...
"Mom?" He asked, tilting his head in confusion as a sword lie through her chest as her decrepit body hung over the piano in front of the stained window...
He turned his head...
His father's body was at its knees... Charred by what had once been the familiar flames of the Ember clan...
"It's a dream..." He laughed, grabbing his face and twisting it violently by his own hand.
"IT'S A DREAM!" He screamed, flames firing from his hand at his own face, launching him into the wall...
"IT'S A DREAM! IT'S A DREAM!" He screamed, burning himself alive in the corner of the room as he soon realized that it was not in fact a dream...
...
His voice turned to a low growl...
"I... Cannot... Be... Defeated here..."
Flames shot from his body as spectators began to watch from around the arena's edge.
Blood shot from his pores... A deafening crack resonating from the sternum of his body...
Callahan frowned from far above as his crimson gaze lowered... The many metal shards above beginning to grow closer in his sight...
He smiled...
His flames beginning to flare up in slow motion...
"I see..."
His smile softened, the mask on his face burning away as he drew his final card...
Potential is a strange thing... Hence why the idea of families had grown to such a large pedestal in Vallmora's largest kingdoms...
But when time takes its toll... The concept of a lineage grows stronger through those multitudes of centuries...
Jack could feel the burden of time crash upon him... The evolution of countless unique affinities running through his blood like a river...
He dashed towards the sky... A singular flaming wing appearing behind his arm...