The whistling roar of falling steel ripped through the thin cloud layer ten thousand paces above the sea.
Four colossal crimson streaks plunged down from the sky-tether ramparts.
They were the Four Great War-Lords of the Ashen Sun Sanctuary, ancient butchers known as the Four Crimson Calamities. Each man was a battle-hardened Saint Vessel Late warlord who had survived two centuries of continental warfare, his flesh hardened by volcanic ash and his blade steeped in the blood of ten thousand captives.
Clad in heavy serrated blood-iron armor, they channeled their life essences directly into their curved executioner sabers.
Fifty-foot plumes of dark combustion flame trailed behind them as they fell at terminal velocity.
Their target was the flying granite dome tethered behind the alliance flagship.
“Smash the chamber!” the lead war-lord roared, his voice echoing across the stratosphere like thunder. “Crush the boy inside his stone shell! Scatter his bones into the ocean!”
Below them, the fifty-mile Twin-Sanctuary Sky-Fire Wall roared with apocalyptic fury. Blistering curtains of solar-fire and void-poison barred the alliance armada from advancing, scorching the bowsprits of the forward galleons and blistering their hull plating.
