The rubble of the outer palace boulevard lay completely still beneath the silver glow of the tempest domain.
High Commander Drakon struggled to his knees, his broken dragon-scale armor clattering against the loose masonry.
He spat a mouthful of dark blood into the dirt. His gauntleted hands fumbled at his belt, drawing a heavy broadsword forged from dragon-bone steel. The five-foot blade gleamed with jagged scarlet runes.
“You think breaking a bronze shaft makes you a master?” Drakon snarled, his voice a hoarse, ragged wheeze. “You are still an Early-stage ant! My domain has fifty years of slaughter behind it!”
Sera Thorne did not answer with words.
She raised her left hand, curling her fingers in a slow, precise gesture.
The five-kilometer radius of her Tempest-Pike Law Domain began to move.
It did not expand outward to crush the surrounding pavilions. Instead, Sera reversed the pressure, compressing the entire five-kilometer expanse into a narrow corridor fifty yards wide and two hundred paces long.
