Page 120 of Property of Scar

Not all at once.

It builds. Low at first, a deep vibration that crawls up through the soles of my boots and into my bones, rattling through my spine like it’s trying to knock everything out of alignment. The air ripples with it, distorting, compressing, the lights overhead flickering hard as the frequency climbs, and then it breaks.

The roar tears through the room.

Layered, massive, and alive.

Hellfire and Holy Light don’t just collide this time, they fuse, twisting together into something violent and controlled, a burning, blinding force that wraps around the sound and feeds it.

The roar isn’t just noise anymore.

It’s a weapon.

And Rhett is holding it, controlling it, and driving it forward.

The first line of rogues takes the hit directly. There’s no impact, the way there should be, no bodies thrown, no stagger, no chance to react. The sound hits them and they simply… break apart. Their forms distort under the pressure, edges breaking down, bodies unraveling into ash, heat, and vapor as the roar passes through them, as if they were never solid to begin with.

Gone.

The wave keeps moving.

Rhett steps forward into it, and with Bennett’s Holy Light guiding him, the roar follows him, bending around him like it’s tied to his spine, sweeping across the room in controlled arcs. Everywhere it touches, rogues disintegrate, their movements cutting off mid-strike as they’re caught in it, their bodies unable to hold together under the force of something that hits both flesh and whatever animates it.

The sound is everywhere.

It pounds through the floor, the walls, the air, rattling equipment hard enough to send it crashing down around us. Glass explodes outward in sharp bursts, metal groans under stress, the entire lab vibrating like it’s about to come apart at the seams.

I try to stand, but I physically can’t. My knees hit the floor hard as the force of it drives through me, not targeting or meant for me, but too massive to ignore. It drags at my balance, shoves at my body, my hands slamming down against the concrete to keep myself upright as the roar tears through everything around us.

“Rhett—” Raze calls, but the name barely makes it out, swallowed by the sound.

Even Mordain tries to move, and for the first time, it isn’t smooth, that controlled precision slipping under the weight of it.

The force crashes into him hard enough to shove him back a step. Mordain catches himself quickly, but not quickly enough to hide it. His expression tightens. The arrogance is still there, and so is the confidence, but something else slips in alongside it.

Doubt.

This is something he didn’t fully account for.

The roar builds higher.

Stronger.

The fusion of fire and light burns brighter at its core, feeding it, amplifying it, turning it into something that doesn’t just fill the space, it owns it.

And Rhett keeps walking.

Every step is deliberate.

Every movement dragging that destruction with him, smiting anything in his path with brutal, controlled precision, until the battlefield isn’t a battlefield anymore…

It’s a clearing.

A line drawn in ash and silence where nothing is left standing.

And the sound… it still hasn’t finished.

The roar starts to collapse under its own weight. The pressure that had been crushing the room peels back in violent waves, dragged inward as whatever had broken loose is forced back behind skin and bone.