“Ms. Vale, our pact was forged for profit. If you insist on slaying that monster, then our paths part here,” said one deputy.
They were from several minor factions that had banded together merely to survive on level nine. They never meant to challenge giants. If Sylvia insisted on slaying the Soul Devourer, the rest of them would rather not get involved.
Sylvia’s shoulders stiffened. Her turquoise eyes flashed with outraged disbelief, yet words tangled in her throat. She might wear the mantle of the leader, but in truth, these men were her equals, not subordinates, and that reality chained her tongue.
“Silence. Come to me.” The command drifted across the mountain air, an aged voice, dry as parchment, heavy with an authority that brooked no delay.
“Elder…” Color drained from Sylvia’s face. Her lips parted, but no protest escaped. One breath earlier she had been the alliance’s spine, now she looked like a child summoned to the headmaster’s office.
Jared angled his head. “Your elder?”
She nodded once, grabbed his wrist, and the world folded. Stone paths, pine scent, moonlight, everything shuttered into darkness, then bloomed again somewhere entirely different.
They stood inside a cavern that smelled of wet granite and age-old secrets. Echoes fluttered like trapped bats in the gloom. Before them waited a figure whose silver hair spilled all the way to his bare, dust-smudged feet.
The man’s skin clung to bone; his eyes were twin wells of black water. In that dim torch glow, he resembled a hungry specter that had only just remembered life.
“Why do you wish to butcher the Soul Devourer?” The elder’s voice cracked like splintering jade, yet it filled every hollow of the cave.
Sylvia flicked a guarded glance at Jared.
“Mr. Chance intends to end him,” she said, honesty ringing through each word, “So I am bound to help.”
The elder’s gaze sharpened. “You shared your body with him?”
One look had revealed everything.
She dipped her chin, making no attempt to hide the truth.
“Why? Why surrender yourself, then pledge murder on his behalf? Are you so ignorant of the Soul Devourer’s terror? A full ten thousand years ago, he stained level seven with nightmares.” The elder’s indictment cracked against the cave walls like distant thunder.
“I know,” Sylvia admitted, voice soft but unwavering. “Yet someone stands behind Mr. Chance, someone mightier than the Soul Devourer himself.”
The elder scoffed, lips curling around contempt. “He’s a Human Immortal. Whoever shields him is nothing beside the Soul Devourer, less than dust, less than…”
Boom.
The word never finished. The elder detonated like fragile porcelain struck by a hammer of heavenly wrath.
Light flared, bone and memory atomized, and in a heartbeat, the cavern held only drifting motes that glimmered, then winked out forever.
Sylvia stood rooted, eyes wide enough to swallow worlds. Her mind clawed for any hint of energy, any sign of an attacker. Nothing, only the echo of the explosion and the icy realization that the elder was gone as though he had never drawn breath at all.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jared said, his tone light, almost casual, as though the cavern behind them had not just witnessed a soul-shattering calamity.
He turned on his heel without waiting for an answer, calling for Sylvia to follow, as if the outcome he had engineered were no more surprising than dust on his boots.
“M-Mr. Chance, our elder…” she asked, the words catching in her throat like splinters.
“He should never, ever, have dared to insult the figure who stands behind me.” Jared shook his head with leisurely regret, a faint sigh escaping him as though he mourned a child who had ignored simple instruction. “That insolence was the price of his annihilation.”
Sylvia swallowed hard, her fingers wrapping around Jared’s arm before she had time to think.
In that instant, she swore, wordlessly, irrevocably, that she would follow Jared to the death.
Just how powerful can Jared’s backer be to unleash unseen power and erase our elder, a Heavenly Immortal, in the span of a heartbeat without even showing his face?
Don’t even imagine it, Sylvia…
Leaving the cavern’s gloom behind, Jared led Sylvia toward Nethergate Sect. If the remaining members of the Earth Fiend Sect refused to follow her, so be it.
The Earth Fiend Sect could crumble, and that was fine by her. She now carried Heaven Gate’s legacy in her veins and would soon wear the mantle of its new master, a destiny far brighter than any petty alliance.
As for Jared, ruling a sect, or remaining forever on level nine, had never been part of his plan. This realm was only a temporary canvas for his wider design.
What neither of them knew was that, while they confronted the doomed patriarch, someone from the Earth Fiend Sect had slipped away to warn the Soul Devourer.
Restored to full strength, the Soul Devourer laughed at the notion that Jared or Sylvia might come for his head. In his eyes, they were ants. Now that he had returned to level nine, his single ambition was clear: bring the entire tier to its knees.
***
Meanwhile, in Nethergate Sect, every elite gathered inside the great hall, tension hanging thick as incense smoke.
Neville stood at the center, yet his own seat was occupied by a middle-aged man whose dark gaze burned like coals, none other than the fully restored Soul Devourer, flesh and spirit renewed.
The Nethergate Sect held a pivotal place on level nine, and the Soul Devourer intended to make it the first to bow, the example that would break all others.
