CHAPTER 209: CHAPTER 210: IT’S OVER

He had said it simply.

’...I can destroy hydrogen. But... helium—helium is a stable element. It cannot be destroyed....’

He paused, feeling it press against the inside of his skull, that truth shaped not in words but in laws. The kind that governed stars. The kind that no empire, no crown, no lineage could rewrite.

"So I can only use.... Boron," he whispered, "to stabilize it."

And so, like a god dressing in mortal skin, he moved.

The sulphuric aura thickened, sizzling against his skin. It wasn’t warmth—it was corrosion, like his very nerves were being eaten by the breath of something ancient and wrong. His eyes stung, not from pain, but from the memory of it. That time in the past...during the dragon attack . The hours—no, seconds—that stretched eternal in Aurora’s realm, watching her link nerve to nerve, soul to tongue, thought to utterance.

She had done it to start her rein on the dragons.

He did it now to end.

He inhaled, though there was nothing to inhale but poison and pressure. The mana burned like molten lead through his throat, stung like acid across his tongue. The words were not just sounds. They were bindings—chains forged in forbidden science, whispered by those who walked above the veil of mortality.

Mortals weren’t meant to speak the language of absolute power.

To link mana from the book to one’s mind—and then to one’s tongue—was like asking a heart to sing calculus, or asking bones to dance across time. It was not magic. It was precision. And the world had rules.

Rules that said: only one in a billion could attempt it and survive.

Atlas did not survive. He became.

He spoke.

His tongue, bruised by sulphur and char, moved against reason. The syllable clung to the air, not as sound but as vibration, a hum that echoed across layers of matter:

{Boron}

The world shuddered.

In that infinitesimal second, as the destabilized hydrogen sought to implode the battlefield into white silence, Boron crystallized mid-blast—stabilizing the radioactive chaos. A second? No. It was less. A blink stretched into a divine decision.

But in that one millisecond, a gap had opened.

And Atlas—he didn’t waste it.

He redirected the energy.

His body howled in silence. Veins spasmed. Skin threatened to peel. But he hauled the residue. Not with arms. With skill and will. He gave it direction. Purpose. A command, written in agony and intention.

He aimed it at the hill.

The far-away hill.

The Empire’s camp.

His heartbeat slowed. Not from exhaustion. From decision.

"...This war..."

He opened his fingers. Released.

The energy flared like a thousand suns compressed into a single filament. A laser of unspeakable brightness. Sound came second, but light—light—came first. It roared across the valley, faster than the brain could process grief.

And just like that—

They ceased.

Not burned. Not blasted. Not even killed.

Disintegrated.

The word couldn’t even describe it. They did not have the time to prey, to think of their loved ones, or bond in some way at their final breath. The light came, the light took, that was it. There was no ash. No bones. Not even shadow. A gaping absence, like reality itself had flinched away from the bodies that once stood there.

"...is over," Atlas said.

It wasn’t a declaration. It was a sentence.

Aurora—meters away—felt it first. Her defensive barrier, layered in spells older than kingdoms, hiccupped. Not broke. Just—glitched. Something new had entered the equation. A particle she hadn’t accounted for. Something beyond sulfur, beyond mass, beyond her understanding.

Her head turned.

Slowly.

Eyes wide.

Atlas stood, not as a man, not as a prince.

But as answer.

"...What the actual... fuck... what did you do?" she asked.

There was fear in her voice. Real fear. From a goddess who had not feared in millennia.

Atlas didn’t look at her. Not yet. His gaze was on the sky, and then down, to the place where the war had stopped. A battlefield frozen in reverent terror. The dark night, now replaced with the pale echo of artificial day.

He could feel their stares. Their breathing halts. Their minds—broken.

He saw her.

Elizabeth.

On her knees.

Her silver armor now dimmed in reflected ash-light. Her eyes empty. Not of tears. But of knowing. That no matter how many Primes she commanded, no matter how divine her right...

She had lost.

Utterly.

Atlas exhaled.

A steam of mana curled from his lips.

He looked at his palms. The nerves flickering like circuitry. The blood beneath the skin no longer red, but pulsing—luminous. Mana fed into him, through him, from him.

He was not human.

He had left that boundary behind.

He remembered once—he had feared death.

Now he had replaced it.

A breeze curled around his ankles, but it wasn’t wind. It was vacuum—the air trying to rush back into a place where existence had been peeled.

Then came Merlin.

Floating. Gliding. Not with grace—but awe.

He moved toward Atlas, arms slack, face trembling.

Aurora lifted her hand instinctively. Ready to strike.

But Merlin didn’t flinch.

He only looked at Atlas.

The Book of the Damned now hovered behind Atlas, pages turning slowly as if acknowledging its true master.

"...you spoke the language," Merlin said.

A whisper.

A confession.

"...You spoke the language of science, didn’t you?"

Aurora stepped forward. "....I can end him now."

"No need, my disciple," Merlin murmured. "He said it himself. The war is over."

Atlas chuckled.

A low, tired sound. Like thunder that had finally wept.

"Smart man. Who was about to do something VERY stupid."

Merlin nodded. Voice cracking.

"...Yes. But maybe you—you—can enlighten me. No. ...Please. ..Please enlighten me. Please—"

He dropped.

Merlin, the man who had hovered above kings and councils, dropped to his knees like a child.

"I beg you. .....Atlas Von Roxweld. Please..... Make me your disciple."

The silence that followed could have shattered mirrors.

Atlas looked at Aurora.

His eyes—those fractured, glowing eyes—held a simple question.

’This is your master?’

He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

Aurora looked away.

Atlas exhaled once more. The smell of burnt ozone followed. Like stars being born in his breath.

He raised a hand—not to Merlin. Not to Aurora.

But to Eli.

She had not moved.

She had not blinked.

But her body rose. Slowly. Limbs hanging. Hair drifting.

Her face—

It had no defiance left.

"...Sorry, Eli," Atlas whispered. Voice soft. Choked, even. "....You’ll die tonight." He voiced as her neck came to atlas’s hand.

But his next words roared like judgment:

"YOUR EMPRESS HAS FAILED YOU!!"

The silence shattered.

Every soldier still standing—friend or foe—flinched.

"SO THAT CAN ONLY MEAN ONE THING..."

He raised one hand, the one which he held Eli.

Mana spiraled like stormclouds around his wrists. The taste of Boron and Sulfur still lingered in his mouth, bitter and righteous.

"THIS WAR!!!..."

A breath.

One final breath.

"...IS NOW OVER!!!"