Stormwind Wizard God
Chapter 691: Lirath

Chapter 691: Lirath

If Anasterian’s withered eyes could still perceive light, then at this moment, the murderous gleam would have seared through his very essence.

No mortal soul could endure such an assault that defied the very laws of existence. Even the legendary Antonidas would find his mind shattered before he could weave his protective enchantments.

This silent, devastating strike was Sylvanas’s most lethal creation.

Yet fate mocked her efforts...

Anasterian had transcended mortality’s frail bonds.

The Fallen Sun King now stood among the most terrifying entities that ruled over the damned legions of the undying.

Unlike Antonidas, whose magical conduits had been savagely torn away before his final breath—reducing his power to mere archmage levels—Anasterian had "embraced" undeath willingly. When Frostmourne’s corrupted essence flooded his being, his greatest weakness—the curse of aging—was obliterated forever.

With mortality’s chains broken, Anasterian’s power had erupted beyond mortal comprehension, reaching heights that would make gods tremble.

The lightning-wreathed arrow spun with devastating fury before the Sun King’s hollow sockets, rotating at speeds that would pulverize stone and bone alike. Even fortress walls would crumble before Sylvanas’s relentless assault.

But Anasterian commanded forces that transcended mere physical barriers!

In that heartbeat of eternity, ten thousand high elves felt words carved into their very souls:

DARK FLAME AEGIS!

The command didn’t echo through air—it branded itself upon every consciousness with soul-scorching intensity.

Malevolent darkness erupted around the Sun King, transforming him into a blazing star of pure malice and hatred.

Infernal heat!

Bone-melting temperatures!

An aura of such overwhelming dread that reality itself recoiled!

No living being could witness such horror and retain their sanity.

Sylvanas’s blood turned to ice. Through her superhuman vision, she watched in horror as an obsidian membrane materialized before the Sun King’s right eye socket.

Gossamer-thin, fragile as morning mist.

It appeared ready to shatter at the slightest touch.

Yet this deceptively frail barrier, compressed to impossible density, deflected Sylvanas’s perfect assassination attempt with contemptuous ease.

Had Sylvanas possessed arcane sight, she would have witnessed those black flames restructured at the molecular level into patterns harder than enchanted adamantine...

"Damn!" Sylvanas snarled, her magnificent form vanishing from existence.

In that same instant, where she had stood, a colossal pillar of black fire—tall as ancient oaks and wide as castle towers—erupted with apocalyptic fury.

"AHHHHH—"

The surrounding elves shrieked in terror, stumbling over themselves in their desperate flight.

Their target had already escaped annihilation.

Sylvanas materialized thirty paces away, her form crackling with lethal grace.

Bow drawn! Arrow nocked!

The Ranger General’s figure became a blur of deadly motion, appearing and vanishing across the royal court’s marble steps.

Each manifestation lasted mere heartbeats.

Then razor-sharp projectiles would scream through the void, seeking the Sun King’s destruction.

Against any other foe, Sylvanas’s barrage would have transformed them into a pin-cushion of agony and death.

But this was the Corrupted Archmage of Quel’Thalas!

Sylvanas unleashed seven different arrow types—each designed for maximum carnage—yet none could penetrate his flickering shield of liquid shadow.

Anasterian’s infernal magic pursued the ranger with predatory patience, each attack faster and more vicious than the last, allowing her no respite from the hunt.

Yes! Like a sadistic predator toying with wounded prey, granting false hope before delivering crushing despair, trapping her in an endless cycle of terror and fleeting salvation.

Initially, thousands of elves prayed for Sylvanas to unleash her legendary power and destroy their fallen monarch, for they could not even approach through the wall of consuming flames.

Soon, crushing dread settled upon their hearts.

The Sun King’s mockery slithered through their minds: "Though it pains me to speak such truth, today marks the extinction of the high elven race and our ancient legacy! Absolute death has descended upon this realm—a force beyond mortal resistance..."

Sylvanas’s rage-filled curse split the air: "So you abandoned the throne passed down through millennia, choosing instead to grovel like a mangy cur at Arthas’s feet!?"

"Fury without strength breeds only meaningless suffering." The Sun King’s voice dripped with disdain: "You dare speak with such defiance only because you have never witnessed the Lich King’s absolute dominion and the soul-crushing despair of his infinite power..."

"Despair? You are unworthy of that word!" Sylvanas’s contemptuous laughter echoed across the heavens: "If any name in this world truly brings me despair, it would be Edmund Duke—never you, Anasterian! His plans transcend time and space itself—concepts far beyond your pathetic comprehension!"

At Duke’s mention, not only Kael’thas—still cowering upon the stairs—but even Anasterian convulsed with violent tremors.

Sylvanas had found the Sunstriders’ deepest wound and tore at it with vicious precision: "HAHAHA! Truth strikes deep! Even your master Arthas lost his hand to Duke’s blade! And your master’s master, Ner’zhul, fell before Duke’s might! What are you compared to them, Anasterian!? Nothing but a cowardly wretch masquerading fear of death as noble sacrifice!"

When spinning tales of power, evidence matters little!

Though Duke at his archmage peak could never match Great Mage Antonidas in direct combat, the masses craved such glorious narratives!

If I can destroy your superior, and obliterate your superior’s master, then your destruction is inevitable!

Perfect logic!

Ten thousand elves roared their approval in thunderous unison!

The Sun King’s visage darkened beyond mortal comprehension!

His already pallid features became black as the deepest abyss, corruption writhing beneath his flesh.

Through clenched teeth, the Sun King hissed: "I offered you the chance to embrace supreme dark power, yet you spurned my generosity. The consequences are yours to bear! You—Ranger General Sylvanas Windrunner—shall be displayed before all as a warning of what befalls those who resist the inevitable."

His words barely faded before his assault transformed completely.

Reality began fracturing.

Not through the Sun King’s power over space itself, but through walls of flame that no ranger could breach, carving the battlefield into ever-smaller segments.

The vast cube of battle—five hundred meters in every dimension—collapsed inward with relentless hunger, crushing Sylvanas’s fighting space into nothingness.

Rangers lack the mystical fortitude of spellcasters or the divine resilience of paladins. Where a paladin might charge through with blessed invulnerability, rangers possessed only speed and skill.

From the moment her arrows failed and she refused retreat, Sylvanas’s fate was sealed in blood and shadow.

Like a magnificent bird trapped in a shrinking cage, no matter how desperately she fought, freedom grew ever more distant. Her world contracted with each passing second!

"Receive my ultimate strike—fallen king who would devour his own people and realm. Anar’alah-belore, for the eternal sun."

This was Sylvanas’s most devastating arrow!

It might shatter lesser beings.

But ultimate power demanded perfect stillness to channel—a fatal vulnerability against a master of defense, control, and counter-assault!

Her earlier surprise attacks had been far more dangerous.

Sylvanas had saved this technique for the final moment of desperation.

Lightning coursed through her body as hurricane winds scattered the encroaching flames. In this moment, Sylvanas channeled every fragment of elemental fury within her reach.

Witnessing this display, Anasterian’s grey lips twisted into a grotesque smile. "If this arrow must fly to shatter your hope and bind you to eternal servitude... then let it be as you desire, my dear Ranger General."

"Who would serve a putrid skeleton like you?!" Her golden hair whipped wildly in the supernatural gale as Sylvanas drew her longbow to its absolute limit.

The atmosphere screamed.

The heavens resonated with otherworldly harmonics.

This arrow’s power could annihilate unprotected castle gates in a single impact.

"CRACK——"

The bowstring’s release sounded like breaking bones as her nearly severed fingers opened. The arrow transformed into liquid lightning, then a falling star of pure destruction, hurtling toward the Sun King with world-ending force.

Yet this magnificent projectile merely penetrated three layers of the black flame barriers before dissolving into nothingness...

Vanished completely, as if it had never existed in any reality.

"End me quickly!" Sylvanas spat through gritted teeth.

A cruel smirk twisted the Sun King’s features: "How amusing."

Without even raising his staff, he merely gestured with one skeletal finger. A phantasmal black skull roared forth with the fury of a thousand tortured souls.

Sylvanas released a strangled sob—not from fear or regret, but from pure rage and righteous fury at her inability to stop this corrupted tyrant.

Despite sacrificing everything—her honor, her life, her very soul—she could not prevent his evil.

She suddenly remembered Ilucia’s desperate pleas before her departure.

"Wait for Duke! Duke will find a solution. If you cannot see the greater pattern, then you must await Duke’s guidance."

The realization struck like a physical blow!

Sisters Alleria and Vereesa, have I made a terrible mistake?

In agony and despair, she faced the howling skull of darkness. Her magical protections might delay the inevitable, but they shattered like glass upon contact with the spectral horror.

Lesser magics were powerless against such overwhelming dark sorcery.

The black skull struck her with the force of a collapsing mountain.

The cold was absolute—a glacial lance piercing her heart and soul simultaneously.

At that moment, Sylvanas caught Kael’thas’s gaze. Their eyes met as color drained from her face and consciousness began to fade.

Was it her dying imagination? Prince Kael’thas’s noble features seemed twisted with genuine remorse.

Sylvanas Windrunner felt herself plummeting into the abyss.

Not physically, but metaphysically. Her soul fell like a ship without anchor in an infinite storm.

How did I arrive here?

Memory fled from her grasp.

Did Arthas destroy me, or was it the accursed Sun King?

Time became meaningless. Her existence was not a sequence of events but a single eternal moment suspended in infinite void.

Only darkness surrounded her.

Then she felt herself truly falling—experiencing it for the first time in eons. She recoiled in absolute terror.

When she arrived in this place, she felt her soul being flayed apart, experiencing only pure agony.

Did heroically resisting evil and defending one’s homeland earn only endless torment?

Bitter cold.

Soul-crushing despair.

Primal terror.

Countless horrors writhed in the endless darkness.

Friends and family rose as mindless undead, stumbling around her with vacant stares. Witnessing their fate shattered her heart into fragments.

The purple-black death mark carved through Silvermoon City, splitting it asunder. Citizens with shattered skulls and trailing organs staggered toward the death-king Anasterian, finally prostrating themselves before the despair that would rule them eternally.

Rage consumed her, yet she was powerless to act—suppressed by terrors that existed beyond the living world’s comprehension.

Claws of shadow erupted from every direction, tearing at her essence. She tried to scream, but no sound emerged.

Malevolent eyes watched her from behind, yet she could not turn to face them.

She saw the Sun King’s rotting mouth stretched in a hideous grin, his face radiating mockery at the one he had so easily dominated.

Her soul desperately charged toward him, then somehow lost all courage to fight under this crushing dread.

She found herself transformed back into that terrified blonde child lost in dark woods, bearing the consequences of her catastrophic choices alone.

Indeed, my sisters...

Was your wisdom the only truth?

I should never have been so rebellious. I should have heeded Duke’s counsel from the beginning...

In the physical realm, every elf watched in horror as the ranger’s body convulsed while her screams pierced the air.

That was Sylvanas’s soul being systematically tortured and violated. Every elf felt profound pity for her suffering, and paralyzing fear of the Sun King’s power.

Death Coil!

Such a simple spell had destroyed Sylvanas, their greatest hope.

Their courage evaporated, their will crumbled, their knees buckled as their bodies prepared to kneel in submission.

Then, at the moment of total defeat, an arrow pierced the Sun King’s form.

He released the most agonized shriek of his undead existence.

The arrow came from a girl who materialized at the stairway’s base—a girl whose face mirrored Sylvanas’s own!

Lirath Windrunner had arrived!

"Impossible!" the Sun King’s voice cracked with terror!

"My arrows alone would fail, but what of arrows blessed by Alexstrasza herself?" The youngest Windrunner smiled with deadly serenity.