Farnaz drew her greatsword, stepping up to the perimeter. Beyond the trees sat a small mud hut. Golden light leaked from its chimney, bending the horizon into a dizzying dome of quiet, domestic force. Danesh pointed a trembling finger at the hut. “Vice-Guildmaster… the aura… it’s… holy.” “Holy?” Farnaz whispered, the word tasting like ash. The bronze crest on her blade pulsed with a faint, resentful heat. “No, Danesh. This is a perversion.” Before she could command a retreat, a thunderous crack split the sky. A golden streak, a spear of pure light, descended from the cerulean expanse, impacting the emerald canopy with the force of a meteor. Sand and pulverized rock rained down for a full minute, coating the mutated flora in a fine, gritty dust. From the epicenter strode the Citadel's Commander, his obsidian armor gleaming, raw power radiating from his every step. Two dozen S-Rank champions marched in his wake, expressions carved from cold brass. His jade eyes swept over the crater where the skirmisher had vanished, then to the glowing mud hut. He flicked a dismissive gauntlet toward the crater. “Farnaz. I expected progress. A single skirmisher bested by weeds? Caution breeds weakness.” Farnaz stiffened. “Commander, the anomaly defies reason. The desert has turned to lush timber, the ambient mana spikes off the scale, and the aura around that hut is unlike anything we’ve mapped. This is not a stray fiend. It could be… a god.” The Commander scoffed, a dry rattle from his helm. “Gods don’t hide in mud huts, Farnaz. Gods don’t leave trails of melted patrol badges. This is a territorial beast encroaching on our claim. We rule this realm. We dictate divinity.” He turned to his retinue. “Prime the Sky-Cleaving Maelstrom. Sterilize this blight from orbit.” “Commander, wait!” Farnaz said. “We have no telemetry on its defense!” “Silence!” his voice boomed across the greenery. “Your sentimentality blinds you. The beast merely wears your fallen favorite's skin. Annihilate it. Fire the maelstrom!” The champions moved in unison. They formed a vast semicircle, their hands rising in unison. A low hum began, a resonant thrum that vibrated through the earth itself. The sky, which moments before had been a vibrant desert blue, began to darken, not with clouds, but with an impossible gathering of sand. It gathered high above into a spiraling funnel of glittering, razor-sharp quartz that blotted out the sun. Lightning arced through the storm, each bolt thick as a pillar. The air tasted of sulfur and crushed stone. “The Orbital Sand-Strike,” whispered Danesh, his voice barely audible above the rising magical storm. “It will scour this place to bedrock.” The mud hut, bathed in its soft, golden light, remained oblivious, a beacon of improbable calm amidst the brewing cataclysm. Inside, Pishak, the once-apocalyptic dragon Virog, was curled tight beneath a rickety wooden table, every fur on his body bristling. Green pupils dilated as he stared out the window. The gloom outside was no afternoon shower; it was a targeted siege engine aimed at the very lunatic who could flatten an ancient wyrm with a spade. The cat purred in sheer, vibrating dread. Jalil stepped out the low doorway, a chipped ceramic sprinkler in hand. He stretched and let out a long yawn. “Another scorcher,” he muttered, tilting back his straw hat. He squinted up at the churning funnel of dust and lightning bearing down on his plot. “And now we get hail? Completely unseasonal. The radishes will never sprout at this rate.” He walked over to a newly tilled patch, where tiny green shoots bravely poked through the rich, dark soil. He dipped the pot into a spring bubbling by the porch, then lifted it toward the green sprouts. Overhead, the funnel shrieked. A pillar of superheated, dense grit lashed with amber lightning plunged straight toward the garden beds. “Honestly,” Jalil grumbled, barely glancing up, “these squalls have no respect for irrigation.” He flicked his wrist. The stream arced upward from the spout, a thin, perfect ribbon. It met the plummeting cataclysm not with moisture, but with an absolute, hollow absence. The entire descending pillar slammed into that empty seam and snapped inward like pinched crystal. The implosion cracked the air, detonating the storm into silent vacuum. Feedback lashed back along the spell-lines. The elite ranks dropped, armor plates buckling and staves splintering into kindling as kinetic shock flung them across the clearing. The Commander, caught mid-cast, skidded fifty feet into a petrified trunk, crimson trickling from his split visor. The sky snapped back to a pristine blue, save for a few stray motes of sparkling sand drifting harmlessly downwards. The clearing fell silent, broken only by wounded moans and a gardener's quiet scoff. Jalil inspected the spout. “Well, that was rude. Spout’s half-empty. Must have evaporated in that draft.” He shook the tin, flicking droplets over the soil. “Still, crops are damp. Can’t let gravel ruin the seedlings.” Pushing up from the dirt, the Commander swayed, his shattered visor exposing raw panic. Jade eyes darted toward the porch, fixed on the figure gently soaking the dirt. The strike had simply ceased to exist. In a cracked wheeze, he rasped to his lieutenants, “Summon the Citadel Colossus. Bring every division to the Wastes. Move.” Farnaz gripped her cracked scabbard, staring across the churned dirt. The vacuum gap—the clean deletion of mass—hit her like an icy plunge. Jalil used to curse that very flaw in his old novice spells, whining that his earth-shaping didn't compact soil, it just left gaps where dirt ought to sit. It was the same hollow strike. The entity tending the garden wasn't mimicking a fallen man's spells; it was dismissing their strongest war-spell like a summer fly. She stared at the straw hat tilted over the hummed tune, the sheer absurdity turning her veins to ice. This was not an invading beast. This was Jalil, casually breaking the world to grow root vegetables.