The first sound was not the siren itself, but the trembling of the glass in Darla's bedroom window. It was a faint rattle at first, almost like the wind worrying the frame, but then the note of it sharpened, deepened, became a sustained tremor that set her teeth on edge.
The sirens came a moment later, a single, rising wail that stretched over the rooftops and burrowed itself into every narrow street and stone alley of Grenswick.
It was not the sound for fire or flood or even a war. Every citizen of the nation, no matter the age, knew its meaning. The Armageddon alarm was a thing that everyone knew, for children some stories of it being sounded in the past would be passed around in the schoolyard, a signal that didn't invite questions.
It just meant that somewhere very close, the earth was shifting under the weight of threats of monsters, and that it was no longer a place for ordinary lives. Instead, those that were ordinary had to find their safety deep below in bunkers built for their safety.
Her mother's voice came sharp and quick from the doorway, "Darla, coat, shoes, now!" and there was no hesitation in it. Darla's father was already pulling open a small chest by the wall, the one where he had kept an emergency bag that he made sure to update once a month. It was an annoying habit that her mother believed was unnecessary.
Darla obeyed, though her fingers lingered just a moment longer for a small wooden box atop her dresser. She opened it, and there it was, her necklace, a silver star no bigger than her thumbnail, polished to a soft glow.
It had been a gift from her grandfather when she was seven, and he had told her to wear it whenever she wanted to be brave. She slipped it over her head, the loose black thread she used was a replacement for the silver chain that she didn't like to wear.
Only after it was wrapped around her, she ran to her parents.
The streets were already swelling with people, the pale winter light catching in their eyes, turning them into glints of worry and confusion. Boots slapped against pavement and cement.
A child somewhere was crying ahead, muffled in the press of bodies. The sirens wailed without pause, their voices chasing the citizens of Grenswick toward the open mouths of the bunkers. Darla's small hands were locked inside her mother's grip, her father clearing a path ahead with broad shoulders and urgent mutters of "Make way, make way". Nobody spoke openly of the threat, nobody knew which one it was.
'Which one' because the only armageddon threats that anyone knew that was strong enough to open up the bunkers were The First Children.
Phantom that could swallow entire continents.
The air in the bunker was strange, a close mix of damp concrete, old metal, and the breath of too many people packed into too small of space. There was a high likelihood that this place hadn't been refurbished in a long time.
Darla found herself standing between her parents in the central chamber, where benches lined the walls and the ceiling had splits that opened for electrical lighting that came on as they all walked in.
The voices here were low, tight, threaded with the kind of fear that prefers whispers to shouts. Somewhere to her left, a man was explaining to no one in particular that this was the first Armageddon alarm he had experienced in fifty years.
Darla's fingers had found her necklace again, the small star turning between them. "There's nothing to worry about," she said, and her voice, though soft, carried just enough for the people nearest to hear. "The Paladin will protect us," Her mother glanced down at her, and for a moment the mask of control she wore slipped into something warmer, almost pained.
She crouched to Darla's height, her hands were gentle on her shoulders. "We know, sweetheart. We know." Her father's hand came to rest on her back in a silent echo of the same thought.
It was then that a figure in a clean and light uniform with a bronze star on the back of it had turned her head, having caught the words. The woman's face was sharp with fatigue, but when she crouched to meet Darla's gaze, the smile she gave was real.
"You're right," the Paladin said, her voice steady despite the heavy quiet around them. "We have the strongest Paladin on our side."
"Dario Kosta!" Darla answered immediately, her eyes bright despite the fear in the air. She straightened, drawing in a breath before repeating it louder, so that it carried through the tense chamber.
"Dario Kosta will save us all. He's the strongest, and as long as he's near, everything will be fine." The words were like a spark in the gloom, few heads turned, and while not everyone shared her certainty, the sound of such unshaken belief was something rare enough to hold onto.
The moment held for only a breath before the world above them seemed to answer in its own force. The floor shuddered, the walls flexing ever so slightly with the deep, rolling concussion of an explosion. It was not the clean crack of a lightning strike.
It was a layered, dragging sound, as if the very air had been ripped open and forced itself back together. Dust trembled down from the seams in the ceiling. A gasp ran through the crowd, some clutched at each other, others froze with surprise thinking that the threat was in their small town.
Darla did not fret, she did not gasp. She only tightened her fingers around her star and smiled, the expression small but unshaken. "See?" she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "He's already fighting for us. Humanity's Strongest Star is going to win."
Around her, some still trembled. Why would they believe in the thoughts of a kid? But then again, they didn't need to put their belief in this kid. They believed in their Warlord. He was the strongest man in the world.
The bunker shook as the distant star erupted.
***
The city below was already dead.
It erupted beneath Dario as he blurred past the Reaper's ribcage in a streak of gold-white light. Stardust detonations bloomed in his wake, each one precise, each one measured to fracture what even death itself could not claim.
Fragments of bone the size of buildings tore free and fell like meteors, pulverizing more of the scorched black stone and turning it to dust.
The Reaper's head turned with slow inevitability, but its body moved with blinding speed of a predator. The scythe arced in a perfect, unbroken sweep, the air warping under the force. Dario pivoted midair, explosions kicking from his palms, his laughter was bright in the face of its monstrous swing.
"You're fast for a bag of sticks!" He said, twisting away so close the flat of the blade brushed his sleeve.
There was no pain from the contact, not in flesh. The pain bloomed in his mind and bones, a white-hot, soul-deep agony that felt like it reached past the body into the architecture of the self. He grinned through it. "Soul damage, huh? That could be bad."
They traded space in bursts, Dario's detonations snapping him from angle to angle, the Reaper's stride bending distance like a nightmare given form. Its cloak never stopped moving, a roll of shadow that made every direction dangerous. Dario read the rhythm and broke it, his Stardust blooming along the length of its spine in rapid, surgical bursts.
"You know…" he started as he vaulted over its shoulder, planting a star-sized blast into the curve of bone between neck and skull, "killing one of you First Children? That's the kind of thing they name eras after."
For the first time, the Reaper seemed to hesitate, not in fear, but in the fractional recalculation of a predator whose prey refused to break. Dario felt the opportunity open. He didn't take it. Not yet. His Stardust was a weapon of calibration, every explosion could be turned to the perfect measure of force needed to kill a foe. But this wasn't a foe he could dispatch instantly. Not while it was still at full strength and he had been fighting the entire day. That was a Promise.
He pushed harder. His detonations doubled, then tripled in speed until his motion blurred past light itself. The city became a sphere of fire and bone fragments suspended in the lens of his momentum.
Explosions patterned the Reaper's form like constellations, each one aimed to weaken, to fracture, to prepare.
Then he made the decision.
He spun once, twice, then blurred forward, planting both feet on the flat black of the Reaper's scythe. The soul-sickness hit him instantly, an alien pressure squeezing the breath from his lungs, a whisper in his head that wasn't a voice but a promise of death.
And then it was the floating, glowing green flames, orbs.
Its eyes. Dario stared straight into the beast's eyes.
As soon as he looked he was trapped in a vision. His vision, his final vision. The light in his eyes went cold. A splash of blood leaking from his body and the look of shock and worry from the faces of an older looking Ruben and Corbin.
Dario didn't know what he was seeing, it all felt so real, he felt as though that spear was in his chest. Piercing his heart.
Many men would have fallen at a vision like that. But Dario Kosta. He smiled, he bared his teeth, "Nice try," he said.
He detonated. The blast hurled him upward in a vertical arc, and before the Reaper could adjust, he dropped both feet into its skull, a two-footed strike so forceful it snapped its head back to glare at the dead heavens. The gourd on its back shifted.
Dario's eyes narrowed. The obsidian surface was flexing, opening. He could hear the sound before he saw the light, a noise like a billion insects congregating in the hollow between worlds. He was already moving, already bringing both palms down in a simultaneous blast that slammed the gourd shut. "Not today," he murmured.
And then he went for it.
He rose above the Reaper in an unbroken climb, explosions blooming under his feet, his arms stretching high over his head. A sphere of erupting flame began to swell between his palms, growing and growing until it wasn't a sphere anymore but a newborn star, the width of skyscrapers, the light of it turning the clouds into molten gold.
Far below, The Reaper's green eyes widened.
"Take this," Dario called down, laughter spilling through his voice. "And see if you can still seek death in my eyes after!!!"
He vanished in a puff of fire and reappeared above the star, riding its crown as it descended. The moment it touched the Reaper's form, the world ended in fire.
The explosion was the largest of the day. Heat rolled out in crushing waves, light so pure and blinding it seemed to have erased the very concept of shadows and darkness. Steel and stone melted into rivers. The air buckled in concentric ripples that shattered windows miles away
And then, glass broke. Not real glass, but the sound of glass fracturing reached his ears. The smoke peeled back slowly, and Dario saw the truth. The Reaper had shielded itself. The barrier had drunk the worst of the explosion, but not all. Bone blackened. The cloak had finally been frayed, tattered. The Reaper's Cart had been weakened.
And due to this weakness, it could now feel Dario's blaring intent to kill like the burning heat of the sun on a bright and hot summer's day.
The skeleton shivered.
It was at that moment that a blur appeared.
Nika Laurent moved through the battlefield like she was not bound to the same rule as them. Her eyes, a violet impossible to mistake, caught images as naturally as breathing. She did not merely look, she captured.
Each blink was a frame, each frame a different world. To Nika, reality itself was just a big photo album, and she could step into any page she had chosen. In three seconds or less, the background of a captured moment became a door, and she was already walking through.
Her most terrible gift was not the instant escape, but the archive. Every stored image was not just a memory, it was access to a world she could revisit. Another chance to be re-lived.
And there had been one photograph in her possession that had never been for her.
Alfred Stein had given it to her himself. The image was nothing special to anyone else, a street, a patch of sky, a sliver of light across Dario Kosta's shoulder. But it had been taken at the exact moment his guard was down, his eyes not reading the battlefield, his senses ignoring the danger.
Alfred Stein's plan had been simple, in theory. The strongest man in the world could not be beaten in battle, so he would have to be sealed.
Nika Laurent was his ace.
She moved now. Faster than the eye could see. One second she was a flicker in the corner of Dario's Revelation. The next, she was beside him, the photograph in her hand. Her eyes fixed on his profile, the strongest star humanity had ever wished upon, and for the first time that day, his expression had changed.
Surprise.
The photo kissed the space at his side.
"DON'T–"
And Dario Kosta was gone.
A second later. The detonation had hit the Reaper.
But as it hit, The Reaper hung back and threw its gourd high into the air where the weapon disappeared into a different space..
Then the explosions hit, and once they started they did not stop.
Concussive bursts rolled in endless succession, each wave battering the ruins into ash. The ground liquified under the heat. The air became fire. For five minutes, the blast continued, a mushroom cloud crawling up into the sky until it eclipsed the sun itself.
The Reaper's Cart was crumbling under the heat and force of the explosions. Its already shattered shield couldn't do a thing to save it.
And in the first time in the one hundred and fifty years of its existence… one of The First Children had been killed. And it was by the strongest man in history.
Nika Laurent was already gone, wrenched to safety by the sudden pull of Joanne's spectral hand, the world snapping sideways as the portal closed behind them. In the distance, the city was a single burning star against the earth.
And in the heart of it, nothing had survived.