Once Hazkar had finally broken Garin's resistance, the massive elemental form collapsed. The torrential waters rapidly receded, cascading away to leave the plaza drenched and broken. Hazkar's towering avatar condensed, steaming as he shrank back down into his maimed, humanoid guise. He stood panting heavily over the deep crater, his singular, weathered hand gripping the Shrouded Lord's throat in a vice-like hold.
Suddenly, the oppressive atmosphere violently shifted.
Thick arcs of chaotic, pitch-black lightning streaked out from the distant ruins of the Grand Temple, tearing through the mist. Hazkar paused. Even as a god, he felt the suffocating presence of a primordial power—a force most divinities prayed they would never encounter. A profound chill shot down his spine, and shivers ran through him as the hair on his arms stood on end.
The Shrouded Lord felt it too. The feral malice in his empty gaze was entirely replaced by genuine terror. "Mana i Zahken sina? Man i cormar i nwalca turë sina?" Garin hissed, his voice trembling as he questioned who could possibly wield such deathly power. (What is this Zahken? Who wields such deathly power?)
Hazkar did not look down at his prisoner. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the temple, his eyes softening with wistful sorrow and profound relief. "Mother... you are free."
Seizing the river god's momentary distraction, the Shrouded Lord drove his corrupted hand upward like a spear, impaling Hazkar straight through the stomach.
Hazkar grunted, but he did not fall. He merely looked down at the dark, stitched hand protruding from his gut. With a bloody, defiant smile, he clamped his lone hand down onto Garin's arm, his grip like a vice of solid iron. The Shrouded Lord shrieked, struggling frantically to withdraw his arm, but he was hopelessly trapped.
Golden blood leaked profusely from Hazkar's mouth as he leaned down, speaking softly in ancient Rhoynish. "Quale ná néna." (Death is nigh.)
A blinding, incandescent light began to radiate from deep within Hazkar's chest. The Shrouded Lord, finally understanding the god's suicidal intent, began to violently agitate. He threw his head back and screamed for his horde, "Súlo hérelya! Súlo hérelya!" (Help)
But the frantic call was to no avail. In the distance, a colossal dome of purifying white light erupted from the temple. The vanguard of the Stone Men horde, thousands strong, immediately broke their charge. A wave of mindless panic rippled through the petrified ranks as they turned, stampeding over one another in a desperate bid to reach their master.
The white dome expanded at a terrifying speed. As the radiant shockwave overtook the fleeing horde, the Stone Men shrieked—a deafening chorus of agony that was abruptly silenced. The purifying light did not just burn them; it obliterated them entirely, leaving not even a trace of grey ash in its wake.
Hazkar's physical form began to dissolve into pure, volatile divine energy. He levitated into the air, forcefully dragging the impaled Shrouded Lord up with him. The pressure in the courtyard built to an astronomical, suffocating peak.
Then, the two forces met.
The expanding dome of Hermione and Hadrian's runic magic crashed into Hazkar's catastrophic divine detonation. The resulting explosion was a blinding, world-shaking flash of absolute radiance. Caught in the epicentre of the divine blast and the purifying shockwave, the Shrouded Lord was shredded at a subatomic level, his millennium of torment and corruption erased in a microsecond. Even in that moment the taint began churning.
The immense dome continued to spread outward at an unstoppable pace. The violent, suffocating mist of the Taint was swept away the moment it made contact with the blinding light. The shockwave washed over the ancient, petrified trees, cascaded across the mountainsides, and purified the dark, churning waters of the River Rhoyne, chasing the corruption to the very edge of its domain.
Miles away, in distant settlements untouched by the ruins, villagers were violently awoken. They rushed to their windows to see the night sky turned completely into day by a blinding flash on the horizon. Even from so far away, they fell to their knees as a wave of pure, unrestrained holy power washed over them, an undeniable testament that the darkness had finally been broken.
Where Hazkar had detonated himself, the world was simply gone. In place of the ancient plaza, a catastrophic crater remained—a jagged, smoking abyss fifty feet deep and nearly half a mile wide. The sheer, unfathomable force of the river god's suicide had obliterated everything within its radius, turning ancient stone and corrupted earth into smooth, burning glass. Now, the dark, churning waters of the Rhoyne roared as they cascaded over the broken edges, gushing violently into the massive void to form a newborn lake.
Floating limply amidst the steaming debris and churning foam were the tattered, ruined remains of the Shrouded Lord.
Suddenly, Garin gasped. The sound was a wet, ragged wheeze that barely broke the roar of the rushing water. He bobbed to the surface, coughing violently as he drifted in the center of the devastation. The divine detonation had been merciless; the entire lower half of his body, from the waist down, had been completely vaporized. Jagged, charred edges of necrotic flesh and bone ended abruptly in the dark water. Only the unnatural, stubborn resilience of the Taint, clinging fiercely to his remaining organs, had managed to keep him alive.
Weakly, Garin tilted his head back. The suffocating, endless mist that had blanketed Chroyane for centuries was entirely gone, scoured from the atmosphere by the holy blast.
For the first time in a millennium, Garin looked upon the unobstructed night sky. Millions of stars burned in the vast, dark expanse, their pristine light reflecting flawlessly in his wide, ruined eyes. Thick, black blood leaked down his chin and stained his lips, but as he stared up at the heavens, the mutilated prince smiled.
The taint continued to patch his body forming a being not seen in the world for millennia. The Shrouded Lord would not die a meaningless death in the ruins of Chroyane.