test.txt

As the second fleet descended to finish their grim work, their elemental drives droning with a sinister, bone-deep hum, Melodia trembled beneath their shadow. The planet, its crust already fractured from prior assaults, quaked as if pleading for mercy. The resonance of the ships’ engines swelled, merging with the damaged earth to awaken the Soul’s Breath in a cataclysmic roar. The sky erupted in a blinding flare—far greater than any before—its flames licking the heavens as the ground split open in violent rebellion.

In Versara, Coryn Eluthar staggered as he guided elders from a burrow. The earth ruptured with a wet, tearing sound, a fissures racing toward him like a beast unleashed. He dove aside, but the burrow vanished—swallowed whole with a chorus of screams. His sister’s voice, calling his name, cut off abruptly as the ground closed over her. Coryn clawed at the sizzling earth, his nails splitting, his poet’s soul shattered. “I should’ve been faster,” he sobbed, surrounded by the wreckage of homes reduced to ash and twisted vine. Across the village, bodies lay half-buried—limbs charred, faces frozen in terror—hundreds gone in moments.

In Pigmenta, Phaedra Myrtil stood paralyzed as the great mural hall collapsed, its walls of light and color dissolving into a choking haze. The air reeked of burnt pigment and molten crystal, the ground quaking as fissures devoured streets, galleries, lives. A young apprentice staggered toward her, his arm severed by falling debris, blood pooling in the dust before he collapsed. Phaedra’s brush fell from her hand as she sank to her knees, whispering, “Our soul… gone,” her voice drowned by the shrieks of the dying. The sacred grove nearby—where Melodians sang to the stars—slid into a glowing chasm, its trees snapping like bones.

The sky blazed, the Soul’s Breath twisted into a weapon of annihilation. In Lyrica, Talvara Aerith shielded her face as waves of heat scorched her skin, the air thick with ash and the copper tang of blood. The planet’s agony pulsed through her—a low, mournful groan that rattled her teeth. Around her, Melodians crumpled, their skin blistered, their songs silenced by smoke. A mother clutched her child’s lifeless body, her wails piercing the din as the ground trembled anew. “It’s turned against us,” Talvara rasped, her faith in her world unraveling as the horizon burned.

The fleet paid dearly for its hubris. Ships burst apart midair, their crews incinerated in fiery blooms. The Ember’s Wrath disintegrated, General Ryxthar’s final roar lost in the chaos as molten shards rained down, igniting fires below. Only a few vessels, including Azelith Ventra’s, escaped, their hulls blackened, systems failing. Azelith wept in her command chair, her tears streaking soot-stained cheeks. “What have we done?” she whispered, picturing the Melodian faces she’d glimpsed—now ashes on the wind.

For the Melodians, the horror deepened. Survivors emerged to a landscape of nightmares: chasms yawned where villages stood, their depths aglow with molten light. Sacred rivers boiled away, leaving cracked beds of steam and silt. In Pigmenta, Phaedra wandered through ruins, stepping over corpses—some burned beyond recognition, others crushed beneath crystal spires. “This isn’t home,” she croaked, her voice raw. “It’s a slaughterhouse.” In Versara, Liora Sapphyn searched for survivors, finding only fragments—a child’s sandal, a singed hand reaching from rubble. “We’re cursed,” she muttered, her healer’s resolve breaking as guilt gnawed at her: I couldn’t save them.

The cataclysm fractured more than the earth—it sundered the Melodian spirit. Families were torn apart, some blaming each other for trusting the Vectarians. In Lyrica, Talin Veridos played a dirge on his warped lute, its strings snapping under the weight of his grief. Nearby, neighbors argued, their voices sharp with fear: “You welcomed them!” “You didn’t fight!” The unity that defined them dissolved into suspicion. Phaedra’s new murals—dark, jagged scenes of loss—adorned cave walls, while children hid from the fissures, whispering that the Soul’s Breath hated them now.

The planet wept through its wounds, its glowing fissures a constant reminder of betrayal. The Melodians’ connection to their world, once sacred, became a source of dread—every tremor a threat, every glow a warning. In the weeks that followed, survivors grew gaunt, plagued by nightmares of falling earth and burning skies. Liora flinched at shadows, Coryn stopped speaking, his poems replaced by silence. The death toll climbed into the thousands, entire regions erased, their names lost to the wind.

This trauma birthed a grim resolve. The Soul’s Breath, once their muse, was now a monster they feared to provoke. The Melodians, hollowed by loss and distrust, chose survival over stars—sealing their sky to shield a broken world, their culture forever scarred by the day Melodia turned against them.