Mordecai stepped out onto the terrace, and the sheer weight of the atmosphere hit him like a physical wall. The air was thick, cloying with the metallic tang of blood and the ozone of spent magic.
In the middle of the courtyard, Rex remained standing, a menacing silhouette. He was drenched.
The dark fabric of his clothes was no longer black but a deep, glistening crimson, soaked through with the lifeblood of the city's defenders. It dripped from his fingertips, pooling in the cracks of the cobblestone, a visceral testament to the carnage he had just orchestrated.
The three massive elemental constructs stood behind him, silent and hulking, their glowing cores pulsing in time with the city's dying light.
The two hundred thousand souls—the survivors, the broken, the witnesses—stood at the periphery, a vast, silent sea of eyes fixed on the center of the world.
