The situation was dramatic.

Never before had Katolis run such a great danger: one last attack by the pure brothers would have sufficed to bring down the imperial army like a house of cards. And yet, that attack did not arrive. The followers of Hikma Ulug had stopped, and were watching the sky with increasing fear: the sun, the glorious star that until then had guided and protected them, was disappearing, covered by a disk of shadow, and within a minute it had completely vanished. The entire battlefield fell into darkness, illuminated only by the light of the fires.

This caused a moment of panic among the pure brothers. Someone began to shout: "the gods have forsaken us!" further increasing the confusion. Before Hikma Ulug could regain control of his elves, General Gren ordered the counterattack: the Imperial soldiers were exhausted, but when the Emperor launched himself against the enemy lines, making light with the faithful Bait, they regained courage and charged. Even Callum was dragged by the assault into the melee:

"I no longer understood anything. Everything was dark, the air resonated with shouts and the metalling sound of weapons, and I could only perceive the sour smell of blood. I cast my spells blindly, hoping they would have striken our enemies and not our men."

More than the imperial soldiers, even more than the Elves, the sudden eclipse frightened Sol Regem, since he drew from the sun both his magic and his power. We know for sure, thanks to the testimonies of the Sunfire mages who had accompanied the imperial army, that the disappearance of the sun momentarily blocked their Arcanum, preventing them from casting spells. We can assume in all probability that Sol Regem's Arcanum was similarly blocked.

The Archdragon tried to spit fire, but he couldn't. He tried to fly, but his wings no longer supported him. Roaring with rage and terror, he began to run blindly through the battlefield, trampling his own followers.

"It was our chance," Taleq tells us. "I gathered the dark magicians still able to cast spells, and together we performed the Gordius rite."

The Gordius Rite, also known as the "Black Spear", is one of the most powerful and complicated anti-dragon spells in the history of dark magic. Using the tail of a leviathan, a phoenix beak and four Sunbird, the ritual evokes a magical dart capable of piercing the armor of dragons. Taleq and his magicians had already tried to use this ritual against the Archdragon, but the black spear had failed to penetrate his thick scales. Taking advantage of Sol Regem's moment of weakness, the dark mages tried again, this time targeting the most vulnerable points of their gigantic enemy.

As soon as the great dragon opened his mouth to try once again to throw his flames - in vain - Taleq cast the spell. The black spear flew with lethal precision, covering in a few moments the distance separating the magicians from the Archdragon, and entered the still open jaws of Sol Regem, where his armor could not protect him, smashing his skull.

Sol Regem fell to the ground, and the earth shook with the impact of his colossal body.

Then, as quickly as had appeared, the shadow that covered the sun disappeared, and the light returned to shine on the battlefield, illuminating the lifeless corpse of the first king of dragons.

At that point, the pure brothers abandoned their arms and fled, and many were killed by the soldiers of Katolis, before King Ezran ordered to stop the pursuit and help the wounded.

The battle had been won, albeit at a terrible price.

Almost three thousand Imperial soldiers had died, and twice as many had been wounded. Howewer, it was the Imperial Guard, hit in full by the fury of Sol Regem, to have had the greatest losses: of its five hundred men, only one hundred and fifty three survived. Exarch Soren himself had been seriously wounded: Sol Regem's claws had ripped off his right arm, and had it not been for Ezran, who ordered his personal physician Nirion to heal Soren's wounds before his own, Viren's son would not have seen the dawn of the next day.

Even Empress Aanya suffered severe burns, and only Rayla's heroic intervention saved her from death at the hands of the Archdragon.

But the pure brothers paid the highest price that day: sixteen dragons and thirty four thousand elves had perished, so many that it was impossible to bury all of them. Their bones covered the ground for years to come, so much so that the land around Akragas still bears the macabre name of "Cemetery Plain". Another ten thousand were taken prisoner in the following days.

Empress Aanya wanted to behead them all, to avenge the sack of Voches, but King Ezran prevented it: there had already been enough deaths. The Emperor's clemency did not save Hikma Ulug and the other leaders of the expedition, all of whom were hanged: thanks to Ezran, howewer, most of the pure brothers could return to Xadia unharmed.

The army remained in Akragas for a few more days to bury at least the fallen Katoleans.

After that, the Imperial army resumed the southern road, returning to the Rock of Katolis. The Neolandians in turn departed for Shafiz: nearly half of them had died in the battle, including two councillors. Taleq had survived, but he was tried in body and spirit: dark magic, in fact, damages those who use it, the more severely the more powerful are the spells cast, and during the battle Taleq and his men had performed the Rite of Gordius twice. Barely a year later, he would have resigned as High Director to retire to the countryside to write his Chronicle.

The Battle of the Black Sun is one of the best documented battles in history, and for this reason we can reconstruct with certainty every moment of that day. However, we are not able to answer the biggest question of all: why did the eclipse happen? The great astronomer Ubraade has shown whitout doubt that at that time of the year and at that latitude it would not have been possible for the moon to pass in front of the sun, it was therefore not a natural phenomenon. Religious have always maintained that it was divine intervention, but I am a Magister of the Imperial University, and I cannot accept such a simplistic explanation. Perhaps, however, Callum's diaries contain the answer that the official chronicles are not able to give us:

"I don't know if I really saw her or if it was just a joke of my exhausted mind, but at the end of the battle, while I was wandering through the piles of corpses looking for Rayla, I seemed to see Claudia. It has been only a moment: when I turned to look better, she had already disappeared. Is it possible that it was just a hallucination?"

Historians who have dealt before me with these events (I cite among all the monumental monograph "The Last Battle: an accurate account of the campaign of 1244", by Magister Salimbenius) tend to minimize, if not to completely ignore, this testimony, since there is no evidence to support Claudia being in Katolis at that time. Many historians are even convinced that Claudia died during the Battle of the Storm Spire.

I, however, believe that this is the only theory able to explain the eclipse: remember that Claudia had come into possession, in 1238, of the Staff of Lux Aurea, a powerful artifact that contained within it a Sun Primal Stone. With the help of such an object and the appropriate preparation a skilled and powerful dark mage like Claudia would theoretically have been able to darken the sun, even if only for a few minutes.

Enough to change the fate of the battle, and with it, of the world.