Fifty feet of boiling crimson steel screamed through the shattered rafters.
The gale tore roof tiles from their iron pegs, hurling clay shards across the open chasm.
Down in the lower balconies, disciples covered their bleeding ears as the sheer sound of the descending strike vibrated through the stone foundations.
The heavy copper lanterns hanging along the perimeter lines shattered one after another, plunging the high roof into shadows illuminated only by the glaring blood-light.
Patriarch Morvane fell like a dying star, his face contorted in vicious, bloodthirsty triumph.
Behind him, Vanguard Captain Varo’s twin hooked blades glowed with sickly white wind-Qi, driving the broadsword downward with catastrophic momentum.
As an elite officer of the Imperial Vanguard, Varo knew the horrific lethality of this strike.
They had tested the Heaven-Sunder Blade against the reinforced iron portcullises of rebel border forts.
