Just then, a deafening roar rang out. The burning Rat King smashed through the blazing houses in his path, seized a flaming roof beam, and hurled it into the sky.
The burning log spun upward against the Firefall, climbed hundreds of meters, scraped a Reconnaissance Airship, and punctured its gas-filled Hot-Air Balloon.
"We're falling!"
"Hold on! Hold on!"
The Reconnaissance Airship plunged toward the ground at an angle and landed amid the Rat Tide outside town. Seconds later, a larger explosion lit up the sky.
The Reconnaissance Airships that had descended too low climbed higher. The remaining Fire Oil began falling indiscriminately on every corner of Old Val Town and every Ratfolk within it.
Fire was everywhere. Nothing living remained in the town. Only the Rat Tide outside kept pouring in, trying to smother the flames with their bodies.
The Rat King finally reached the wailing Rat Mother. Her lower half, trapped in the inferno, had already turned to charcoal. As he lifted one side of her, sparks and burning chunks of flesh scattered.
The flames consumed more than the surface. Their terrifying heat penetrated deep into the hollowed-out ground.
Baked brittle by the fire, the ground could no longer bear their weight when the Rat King arrived. It groaned under the strain.
Cracks appeared, spreading rapidly like a Web. Then, with an earth-shaking crash, the ground gave way beneath the Rat King, the Rat Mother, every building in Old Val Town, and the Rat Tide at its edges. It was as though a giant fist of flame had punched the entire town into the Abyss, where the gaping collapse swallowed it whole.
Boom—
The towering burst of fire from Old Val Town's plunge into the Abyss nearly engulfed the fleet before it could react.
The sky burned. A terrifying