Chapter 16

The battlefield was silent.

Not the silence of peace. Not the silence of retreat.

But the silence of absolute inevitability.

The war had already ended. It had ended the moment she arrived.

Medusa and Raezel stood at the edge of the massacre, watching without emotion. She did not move. She did not command. She did not need to.

Her will alone had decided the outcome.

Then—she tilted her head ever so slightly, her golden eyes gleaming like molten fire.

"My son wishes to protect these mortals."

Her voice was soft. Almost contemplative.

Then, a smile—a slow, deliberate thing that carried with it the weight of doom itself.

"Then let them be protected."

The moment she spoke, the battlefield reacted.

The snake marks carved into the flesh of Velmor’s soldiers ignited, burning with golden energy. Their breath hitched. Their vision sharpened. The pain of war, the weight of exhaustion—all of it vanished.

And then—

They moved.

Faster. Stronger. Merciless.

The Xandrian soldiers still standing… they were no longer warriors. They were victims.

Some of them turned to flee—only to slip on the entrails of their fallen comrades. Others dropped their weapons, falling to their knees, sobbing. Their curses had long since faded into whimpers. Their defiance had been torn from them like flesh from bone.

But the war was not yet over.

Because Velmor’s soldiers had learned something valuable that day.

Death was a gift.

And gifts were not meant to be handed out so easily.

The Ace Warriors. Xandria’s finest.

These were not mere soldiers. They were legends—

Handpicked from birth. Honed through decades of war. Trained to be the last, unstoppable force of conquest.

They did not fight battles.

They ended them.

When their armies faltered, they charged. When the enemy thought they had won, the Ace Warriors arrived to rip victory from their hands and carve Xandria’s name into history.

But today—

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Today, they were not the conquerors.

Today, they were the ones staring into the abyss.

They did not stand as victors.

They stood in horror.

Watching as their men were **skinned alive—**left screaming, their exposed flesh raw beneath the open air.

Watching as warriors who once crushed empires collapsed, sobbing, clutching at their own faces, unable to comprehend the nightmare unfolding before them.

Watching as death became a mercy.

They had never known fear.

But now—

Their hands shook. Their weapons felt heavier. Their instincts, once sharpened to kill without hesitation, failed them.

One of them—one of the finest warriors Xandria had ever produced—stepped forward.

His grip tightened around his sword, his breath came in short, shallow bursts. No. This wasn’t over. He had trained for this. He had ended wars.

He charged.

Then—

He was on the ground.

He didn’t know how. He didn’t know when.

He was just there.

Looking up into the eyes of a Velmorian soldier who should have been dead—

And seeing nothing human left inside them.

The Ace Warriors had never understood despair.

Now, they were living it.

One by one, they fell.

One by one, they were reduced to sobbing, broken husks.

One by one, they learned what it meant to truly suffer.

The last to fall was Xandria’s commander.

A man who had led fifty wars. A man who had never tasted defeat.

He did not fight.

He did not command.

He ran.

He ran through the blood-soaked fields of his fallen empire. He did not look back. He could not.

Because he knew.

The gods had abandoned him.

Or worse—

They had never been on his side to begin with.

The silence in the throne room was deafening.

Medusa stood motionless, bathed in the flickering sunlight, her expression unreadable.

Raezel, by her side, turned to her, his golden eyes filled with something unreadable.

“I have never seen you fight, Mother.”

The air stopped moving.

Somewhere in the shadows, Nyx smiled.

Nythren chuckled, stepping forward, his dark presence spreading like ink in water. “Oh, brother,” he mused, tilting his head. “Do you truly wish to witness such a thing?”

Then—

A shout.

“STOP IT!”

Ares moved first.

He did not hesitate. His body lunged forward, arms outstretched, his once-mighty frame now reduced to something frantic.

His voice cracked. Not the voice of a war god—

But the voice of a man on the brink of madness.

The hall turned toward him in shock.

Ares’ breath came in ragged gasps. His body trembled, his eyes quivered. He shook his head violently, his fingers digging into the stone floor beneath him.

“We’re doomed,” he whispered.

Silence.

And then—

A smirk.

Medusa’s.

Ares’ golden eyes locked onto hers, and in that moment—

His soul shattered.

He fell to his knees. His entire body collapsed under the weight of what he saw—not Medusa the woman, not Medusa the warrior—

But Medusa the inevitability.

A force so beyond war, beyond gods, that resistance was not even a question.

Ares had waged wars across eternity.

He had conquered. He had slaughtered. He had ruined.

But this?

This was not war.

This was judgment.

And Medusa?

She simply watched.

Amused.