The moment Maxwell’s quiet declaration swept through the shattered sanctuary, every soul inside stood frozen, thunderstruck. Even the marble pillars seemed to tremble beneath the weight of his words.
Enaricus stared wide-eyed, unable to reconcile the plain middle-aged man before him with the fabled founder of the Celestial Palace.
Across the blood-streaked floor, Esorin, too, felt his breath stall. Of all foes he had imagined, he had never pictured the Palace’s first hall master. Celestial Palace had endured for tens of thousands of years; clearly, so had its creator.
A hard swallow shuddered down the elder’s throat. His knees quaked. Instinct drowned every shred of courage with one primal order, run!
A thin, metallic whistle sliced through the air, keen as a freshly drawn blade. Esorin spun and bolted, streaking away like living lightning.
“He’s escaping! Stop him!” Onneas shouted, her voice bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. Jared’s chest lurched. Reflex yanked him forward, ready to give chase.
Maxwell did not stir. He did not spare the fleeing elder a single glance. A strangled scream burst from the void overhead. It was Esorin’s cry, and it ended far too quickly.
No one saw what claimed him. Maxwell alone might know.
Terror emptied Enaricus’ bowels. His body convulsed with dread.
“Please, sir, spare me!” he sobbed, slamming his forehead against the floor. Maxwell never looked his way.
Color drained from Maxwell’s face, his outline wavered, turning quietly translucent.
“S-Sir?” Onneas cried. “What is happening to you?”
“Your body, it’s fading!” Jared shouted, panic snapping at his spine.
“Mr. Chance, leaving the void passage carries a price,” Maxwell replied, smiling with gentle resignation. “I sensed your danger. How could I do anything but come?”
“If you abandon that passage, will your soul be torn apart?” Jared demanded. He lunged to grasp Maxwell’s arm, but his fingers closed on empty air.
“Not entirely… I left a fragment of myself inside the passage. When the Celestial clan leader one day releases it, I may forge a body anew.”
His words fluttered like wind-borne ash, Maxwell was already gone.
“Jared, what just happened? Where is he?” Onneas asked, her eyes still searching the thinning air.
She frowned, dark brows knitting as she lifted her face to Jared. A note of raw bewilderment slipped into her voice, spilling into the charged air between them.
“Your ancestor was imprisoned inside the void passage after offending the Chieftain of the Celestials long ago… If I had not broken into level eight today, had that channel not been tampered with, we never would have laid eyes on him again. He forced his way out, and the moment he stepped beyond, his body scattered like dust on a storm wind.”
Fury, and something more desperate, flickered behind Jared’s eyes, a heat so sharp it could have melted steel.
Maxwell might have carried Celestial blood, yet he had also sworn himself to Jared, serving as the proud hall master of Dragon Sect.
No price felt too steep. Jared would hunt down the celestial clan leader, drag him back in chains, and command him to rebuild Maxwell’s fallen flesh.
“Maxwell, hear me. I will bring that leader before you myself, and he will loosen every shackle he ever tightened around your soul!” Teeth grinding, Jared sealed the vow deep inside his chest where it thrummed like thunder.
Across the ruined courtyard, Enaricus watched Maxwell disappear and felt his own pulse gallop with panic.
While Jared and his comrades weren’t paying attention, Enaricus gathered every trembling tendon and leapt for freedom.
Jared’s voice cracked through the rubble like a whip. “Running, are we?”
Still blazing with anger, he raised his Dragonslayer Sword high and cut the air in a single, ruthless arc. A thousand sword gleams burst outward, carving the sky and the very void into trembling ribbons of light.
Enaricus had no time to scream. One heartbeat, he was whole, the next, he dissolved into scarlet mist, shredded to nothing by the storm of blades.
His followers collapsed in perfect unison, knees slamming stone as they begged for permission to keep breathing.
Jared stared at their bowed heads and understood, they were soldiers, nothing more, puppets tangled on a dead man’s strings.
