Chapter 15

The battlefield was no longer a war zone—it was a slaughterhouse. A cursed land where death was not the end, but a lingering, torturous whisper that refused to fade.

Velmor's soldiers, battered and exhausted just moments ago, now fought like rabid beasts set free from their chains. Their blades did not simply cut; they tore through flesh, ripped through bone. They did not feel the weight of their armor, the ache of past wounds—only an insatiable need to kill.

They should have been dead. They knew they should have been dead. But they were not. Instead, they were reborn in a way that defied reason. Their wounds had vanished, their lungs burned not with fatigue, but fury—a primal, relentless rage that turned the once-struggling warriors into something else.

Daelus, his sword slick with gore, barely recognized his own men. They did not hesitate. They did not flinch. They struck down the enemy with unnatural precision, unholy strength. One of his soldiers, a boy no older than eighteen, gutted a Xandrian warrior and stared at the crimson-stained steel in his hands—not with horror, but with grim understanding. Another, his breath heavy with adrenaline, drove his blade into a fallen enemy and only then seemed to realize he was still moving before his mind could even process it. Something inside them had changed.

And the worst part?

They did not resist it.

The Xandrians—the proud, undefeated Xandrians—were breaking. They had come to Velmor expecting another glorious conquest, another kingdom to be razed beneath their boots.

Instead, they had walked into a nightmare that would not let them wake.

Screams filled the air—not the cries of men in battle, but the wailing of dying animals. Some Xandrians tried to run, but the ground was slick with blood, with the torn-apart remnants of their fallen. They slipped, crawling on hands and knees, leaving streaks of red behind them. Begging. Pleading. Praying. But the gods would not answer. The gods could not save them now.

The Xandrian general—the warlord who had conquered over fifty kingdoms—stood frozen. His hands trembled, his lips parted, but no words came.

This is not happening.

It cannot be happening.

His army, his unstoppable army, was not just losing—it was being erased. It was a feeling so alien, so incomprehensible, that his mind refused to accept it. Had the gods abandoned him? Or worse—had they never truly been on his side at all?

He tried to speak, to command his soldiers to regroup, to hold the line—but when he turned to them, he saw only broken men. Warriors who had once stood unshaken against the greatest of foes, now whispering prayers not for victory—but for their lives.

Then, the warlord saw her.

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A vision. A nightmare. A queen.

Medusa.

Her gaze alone was enough to send entire battalions into disarray. His heart pounded, his chest tightened. How?

A moment ago, they had won.

And now—

They were the ones being butchered.

The soldiers around him, men who had once stood unshaken against the greatest of warriors, were crying. Some dropped their weapons, falling to their knees in surrender, in desperation, in prayer. Others simply stood there, numb, watching as their brothers-in-arms were ripped apart, their deaths nothing more than fleeting moments in a massacre.

The warlord clenched his fists. He wanted to scream at them, to command them to fight, but the words never came.

Because he knew.

They were fighting against the will of a Queen.

One known and feared across realms.

Victory was no longer a question.

Only the number of bodies it would take to end this war.

And Xandria’s army was running out of bodies.

Back in Velmor, within the grand halls of the castle, King Eldors—who had once been skeptical, who had once feared the unknown power of the gods—now sat frozen upon his throne. His fingers dug into the armrests, his breath shallow. He had just witnessed the impossible.

"This is..." he whispered, barely able to form the words. His voice was hollow, lost in the enormity of what had unfolded.

Across the hall, Ares remained standing, arms crossed, golden eyes locked onto nothing in particular. The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken truths. Then—

Ares tilted his head slightly, a cruel smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "Fools."

The word was not loud, but it cut through the room like a blade.

He exhaled, shaking his head. "They should have known. They should have understood the moment those soldiers rose again with Medusa’s mark burning into their flesh." His gaze darkened. "That was the time to kneel. To beg. To plead for mercy. But instead, they chose to fight."

A sharp smirk followed. "They deserve everything that’s coming to them."

The soldiers of Velmor still stood in stunned silence, hands flexing, tracing the glowing marks on their skin—not in fear, but in awe. They did not recoil from them. They did not seek to rid themselves of them. The power running through their veins, the newfound strength—the intoxicating rush of being chosen—it was real. Permanent.

Some of them trembled, uncertain. Others grinned, eyes alight with something almost feral. Something had changed within them.

But Ares knew what it meant to fight in Medusa’s name.

King Eldors swallowed, his throat dry. He understood. He just couldn’t say it aloud.

Because Velmor was no longer just a small, fragile kingdom caught in the tides of war.

It was now under the direct protection of one of the most feared beings in existence.

And that meant one thing.

Victory was no longer a possibility.

It was a certainty.

Ares let out a slow breath, his smirk fading just slightly. His gaze flickered toward the battlefield, toward the dying wails of Xandria’s once-proud warriors, and then back to Medusa’s mark upon the Velmorian soldiers.

"I have waged wars across eternity," he muttered, voice lower than before. "But this? This was not war."

His fists clenched. His eyes gleamed with something unreadable.

"This was judgment."