The final note of the centaur’s song hangs in the air, a beautiful, hopeful promise that captures the spirit of the festival.
The crowd roars its approval. A single wave of sound and joy washing over the plaza.
And then the music stops.
It isn’t a gradual fade, not the natural end of a song.
An abrupt jarring silence.
The final note from the guitar is cut off mid chord. The steady beat of the drum ceases. The entire plaza, a sea of joyous noise just a second before, is plunged into a deep echoing silence.
A confused murmur ripples through the crowd.
“What happened?”
“Did their equipment fail?”
“Why did they stop?”
Everyone turns to the stage.
The faun drummer and the minotaur guitarist have collapsed. Lying in a tangled unnatural heap on the floor, their instruments clatter beside them.
Their bodies are limp, like puppets with their strings cut.
Panicked screams spread through the crowd as they realize what happened.
The joyous atmosphere shatters, replaced by confusion and terror.
But Carter is not looking at the fallen musicians.
He’s looking at the one still standing.
The centaur lead singer.
Standing in the center of the stage, microphone still clutched in his hand.
But the vibrant life is gone from his face. His strong body is rigid, his head tilted back at a slight, unnatural angle.
His expression, full of joy just moments before, is now a blank mask.
His warm, brown eyes are now pools of pure bottomless black.
Carter thinks. His eyes… He looks like the Safeguard…
As the city watches in horrified silence, a single, thick trickle of blood wells up in the corner of his left eye. It traces a slow, dark path down his pale, unmoving cheek.
Then, another drop appears in the corner of his right eye, following the same silent path.
Before anyone can react, before anyone can process the horrifying scene, the centaur lets out a scream.
It’s not a sound of pain or terror.
It is a sound of pure, ancient power. A deafening, multi-layered shriek that seems to tear at the fabric of reality. The sound of a dozen voices, male and female, young and old, all screaming the same terrifying note at once.
The sound washes over the plaza, a physical wave that forces everyone to their knees. Hands clamped over their ears, their minds reeling from the violence of the assault.
The scream stops as abruptly as it began, leaving a ringing silence in its wake.
The centaur’s head lowers, its movements slow and jerky.
It begins to scan the crowd, its black, bleeding eyes moving with a slow, deliberate purpose.
And then, it speaks. The voice is the same horrifying chorus as the scream, a dozen layered voices speaking in perfect, chilling unison.
“Gabriel…”
the voice says, a low sound that sends a wave of pure terror through the crowd.
“Where are you?”
The centaur’s head continues to scan the crowd, its black eyes a terrifying sight in the sudden, horrified silence.
“Ahh… there you are,”
the voice says. Its gaze locks onto the viewing platform, onto the still, silent form of the Director.
“It has been quite some time, has it not? Almost six thousand years.”
For the first time since Carter met him, Gabriel looks startled.
His calm confidence is gone, replaced by a look of deep, disbelieving shock.
The centaur speaks again. A single, deep word in a language that no one in the plaza can understand.
A language of pure power, feeling older than the stone beneath their feet.
But one person understands.
“Ah, I see,” Gabriel says, his voice a low, grim whisper heard by everyone in the silent plaza.
“Nimrod… that’s you, isn’t it?”
The name drops everything into the silence.
The one name that every mage in the Library is taught to fear.
The architect of The Unity. The leader of the Order of Babel.
The ancient god king the Library was CREATED to destroy.
He is here…
The name hangs in the air, a chilling presence that steals the breath from a thousand lungs.
Nimrod Zaldur… “The Unifier.”
The crowd is frozen, a sea of pale terrified faces. Their earlier joy is now a distant memory.
The trained mages all summoning their grimoires. As they stand in a tight, defensive group. Their hands gripping the grimoires they have only just received.
Their minds struggling to understand the impossible situation.
The boogeyman from their history lessons, the mythical villain of their new world, is standing right in front of them.
Wearing the skin of a dead magical creature.
The leaders on the viewing platform are no longer spectators.
They are warriors.
Gendric stands with his feet planted, his massive frame a solid wall.
Wulan’s hand rests on the powerful staff of his grimoire, his expression a mask of demonic fury.
Agamor’s kind, scholarly eyes are now hard and sharp.
He looks less like a scholar, and more like the crusader knight he was a long time ago.
The twisted smile on the centaur’s face widens.
“Yes, Gabriel…”
Nimrod’s layered voice replies, a sound of ancient malice.
“It is me.”
No one speaks.
They can’t believe what they are witnessing.
They are in the heart of the Library of Solomon, the safest, most well defended place in the world, and their greatest enemy has just walked through the front door.
Gabriel is the first to recover, his initial shock replaced by a cold fury.
Stepping to the front of the viewing platform, his golden eyes blaze with a holy light.
“Why have you killed my men, Nimrod?”
he asks, his voice a low growl. The word men for the fallen magical creatures is a clear rebuke.
The centaur’s smile twists into a sneer of pure contempt.
“These… things?”
Nimrod replies, gesturing to the dead musicians on the stage.
“Disgusting abominations magical creatures are. Flaws in the grand design.”
“I tried to inhabit their forms first, to use them as my vessel…”
“But their fragile, chaotic minds shattered under the sheer weight of my consciousness.”
“They were too weak.”
He pauses, his black, bleeding eyes scanning the crowd with a strange, hungry intensity.
“This is why I require a true vessel. A human one…”
“One without the flawed, troublesome Gate that complicates such matters.”
“But for now… this beast will have to do.”
He looks back at Gabriel, his sneer returning.
“It was a flaw. I merely… corrected it.”
“Why are you here?” Gabriel demands, his voice a sharp command. “What do you want?”
“I am here to deliver a message.”
Nimrod says. His voice is a low purr, more terrifying than any shout.
“A formal declaration of war. The age of your pathetic, chaotic little resistance is over.”
“The Library of Solomon will be destroyed.”
Taking a step forward, the centaur’s legs move with a strange, unnatural grace.
“Solomon… that sentimental, short sighted fool…”
“Even in death, his flawed, childish philosophy tests my patience.”
“Your father was the beign of my existence…”
“But no matter. Your little haven in the sky…
“This gilded cage you have built…”
“Its protection will not last forever…”
He raises a hand, gesturing to the city around them, to the thousands of terrified faces watching him.
“Soon, a great cleansing will take place on this planet…”
“On my Earth. All shall be unified under my will.”
“Magic’s chaotic desire for novelty will fail. And all who support it… shall fail with it.”
“Are you so sure of your victory?”
Gabriel’s voice is not a shout, but a cold, clear challenge that cuts through the fear Nimrod has cast over the plaza.
Standing at the edge of the viewing platform, his form radiates a pure, divine light. An angel against the darkness.
“You have made the same mistake you made six thousand years ago, Unifier.”
“You see humanity as a flawed variable to be controlled.”
“You see Magic as a wild beast to be caged.”
“You are a fool. You underestimate them both.”
The twisted smile on the centaur’s face falters, replaced by a look of cold, ancient fury.
“You’re wrong,” Gabriel continues, his voice rising with a righteous passion.
“You shouldn’t underestimate humanity.”
“They are not the flawed, broken things you believe them to be.”
“Their capacity for novelty, for creation, for change… that is not a sin.”
“It is their greatest strength.”
“AH HA HA HA HA…”
“And Magic… Magic is a force of creation, a power of life itself.”
“A cosmic will far greater than your own petty ambition. It will not be caged.”
He raises a hand, his golden eyes blazing with a holy avenging light.
“My father Solomon, left me a single task. To finish what he started. To end you for good.”
“The lives you have taken, the futures you have destroyed, the billions of souls you have trapped in your silent, colorless hell… you have not created peace.”
“You have created a world of embers, smoldering in the ashes of your wake.”
He takes a step forward.
His divine white wings unfurl behind him, a breathtaking display of pure celestial power.
“And those embers,” he declares, his voice a triumphant, prophetic roar that echoes through the plaza, “are now a raging fire. A fire that will burn you and your twisted, sterile philosophy to ash. If it is war you seek, Nimrod, then you shall have it!”
The centaur’s twisted smile returns.
More a predatory sneer than genuine amusement.
It raises its hand, with its index finger points directly at Gabriel.
A gesture both childish and terrifyingly menacing.
A small, brilliant, impossibly dense point of pure destructive energy begins to form at its fingertip.
Like a miniature dying star humming with terrifying power.
Wulan moves to protect Gabriel, a blur of motion.
His hand is already on his grimoire ready to parry the attack, to defend his Commander.
But Gabriel simply raises a hand. A silent absolute command stops the General.
Gabriel stands fearless, his gaze locked on Nimrod. His body radiates calm quiet unshakeable divine power.
He is ready.
The miniature dying star at the centaur’s fingertip glows with malevolent pulsating light.
The air crackles with raw untamed power. Space itself seems to warp and bend under the strain.
The crowd is frozen. A sea of pale terrified faces. Their minds cannot comprehend the sheer scale of the power about to be unleashed.
But the attack never comes.
The centaur’s hand shifts. The movements are slow, deliberate, almost casual. It moves its finger. The point of destructive, magical energy follows its path.
Away from Gabriel.
Across the plaza.
Until it aims directly at the small, terrified cluster of new recruits.
Directly at Carter’s group…
Nimrod’s layered, horrifying voice echoes across the silent plaza again. A sound of pure, chilling, dismissive contempt. “I see,” it says. The twisted smile returns to the centaur’s face.
“Then I shall extinguish those flames before they can spread.”
“Starting now.”
Time slows to a crawl. The world narrows to a single, unbearable point of focus.
Carter sees the point of light. He feels the immense crushing weight of Nimrod’s will.
With absolute unshakeable certainty that he is about to die.
“GET DOWN!!!”
The roaring command from Miguel, Monk, and Killian is simultaneous. A physical blast of sound.
But it is too late.
The laser of pure, destructive energy fires. Not a ray of light. A ray of pure void.
A sliver of anti reality screaming across the plaza. Faster than thought, faster than light, faster than life itself.
But…. It will not hit its target.
In a flash of divine light and white feathers, Gabriel is there. He is no longer on the viewing platform, he stands in front of the recruits.
A living breathing shield of celestial power. In his hand is his grimoire, Sammiel.
A magnificent glowing white sword, that looked as if it was forged from a single piece of starlight.
He does not block the attack. He does not absorb it. He parries it.
With a single, fluid, impossibly graceful swing of his sword, he meets the lance of pure, destructive energy.
The sound is not a clash of power. It is a single perfect harmonic chime. It seems to re tune reality itself, as the void beam is deflected.
Its path altered, harmlessly up into the endless, night time clouds of the Sky Dimension.
Before Nimrod can fire again, before anyone can even process the miracle they just witnessed, Wulan Yi is moving.
“SUMMON! JINGU BANG!”
Wulan’s grimoire, the ancient iron banded staff, materializes in his hand.
He is not a Manzee anymore. He is a force of nature, a living embodiment of his ancestor the Monkey King, Sun Wukong.
A blur of brown fur and righteous fury. He leaps from the viewing platform, in a single, impossible arc of motion.
Then lands on the stage. In a final, brutal, efficient motion. He swings his staff.
The centaur’s head is taken clean from its shoulders.
The possessed body stands for a fraction of a second.
A grotesque, headless statue. Then it collapses to the stage floor.
A limp, lifeless heap, ending the chaos as the sound of its body hits the floor.
The silence that follows is a deep heavy moment. Filled with the thoughts of what just happened.
Gabriel teleports to the stage. His face is a mask of grim, divine sorrow.
He looks down at the fallen musician, with Wulan standing beside him, his chest heaves.
His eyes are a storm of controlled, furious energy.
“I am sorry Commander,” Wulan says.
“He could not be saved.”
“I know,” Gabriel replies. His voice is a quiet heavy whisper.
“You did what you had to do.”
Carter and the other recruits stare at the scene, their minds are numb.
Bodies tremble from the battle’s aftershocks. This way beyond anything training could prepare for.
The nearly died by the hands of god.
The sheer cosmic scale of the power they just witnessed. The enemy’s casual, almost bored cruelty.
The fight’s swift, brutal finality… It is a lesson more profound, and more terrifying than anything Gendric or Damien could teach.
Gabriel turns to the distraught inhabitants of the Marble City, and his mages.
He faces the thousands of stunned terrified citizens in the plaza. His voice booms across the silent city.
“I apologize, everyone,” he says.
His voice is filled with profound, somewhat paternal sadness.
“But the festival is over. Please, return to your quarters.”
The joyous hopeful celebration has become the first day of a new, terrifying war.