The deathly silence continued, only to be replaced by a deeper, more immense sound.
It was the roar of an impossibly vast being slowly descending, stirring the clouds and air, as though the world itself were groaning.
In the sky, the already low-hanging, lead-gray clouds began to spin wildly, churned by an invisible giant hand. They collapsed inward, forming a dark vortex that covered the entire battlefield, so vast it inspired despair.
At the heart of the vortex lay an ultimate darkness that devoured all light.
Then six points of molten-gold light, like six cold suns from the age of myth, slowly kindled in the deepest reaches of that dark vortex.
An instant later, the clouds were brutally torn apart and thrust aside.
A pale-gold shadow as majestic as a mountain descended from the vortex's heart, graceful and slow, bearing an absolute pressure that demanded all heaven and earth bow before it.
Its flowing contours were sheathed in cold scales unlike any metal of the mortal world. Three heads crowned with savage crests of bone hung slightly lowered, their six molten-gold slit pupils like the eyes of a deity wielding dominion over destruction and creation.
Indifferent, precise, utterly devoid of emotion, they surveyed the sea below, where a mortal tragedy had just unfolded, now as insignificant as dust.
Its name needed no proclamation.
When its entire form emerged, blotting out what little daylight remained and shrouding the battlefield in its immense pale-gold shadow, its very existence became the only law, the only truth, the only... final sentence.
An overwhelming dragon aura crashed down like the heavens made solid.
The Fury shuddered violently. Almost everyone still standing on deck... soldiers, sailors, officers alike, crumpled to their knees or fainted outright at the same instant, as though struck by an invisible sledgehammer.