Confronted by the Soul Devourer, no one in the Nethergate Sect dared an impetuous move. Neville’s disciples flanked him, faces set and bloodless, stunned that the monster had chosen their sect as his throne.
“Well?” the Soul Devourer asked, voice unhurried yet sprawling like shadow across the marble floor. “Will you submit, or will you die?”
Neville’s brow tightened. He had witnessed, firsthand, the unseen force behind Jared, power capable of wiping an entire sect from existence with a passing thought. Yet refusal here meant slaughter at the hands of the Soul Devourer.
Caught between two cataclysms, Neville hovered on the blade of an impossible choice, his mind racing for a path that did not end in ruin.
“Soul Devourer, would you grant us just one day to deliberate?” Neville kept his voice steady, though his chest felt tight against the dark figure’s gaze.
“The Nethergate Sect is not mine alone to command. Several patriarchs remain in secluded cultivation. Should I decide without consulting them, they would emerge in fury, and that would profit none of us.”
Having played his last card, Neville invoked those imaginary patriarchs like ghostly elders lurking in the shadows of the sect’s history. In truth, not a single forefather still cultivated behind Nethergate walls; Neville himself now sat at the summit of its power.
The lie was a gamble, one meant to make the Soul Devourer think twice before crushing the sect where it stood.
“Very well. You have one day,” the Soul Devourer said, his words falling like iron chains in hell. “But when the sun sets tomorrow, if no answer reaches me, the Nethergate Sect will vanish from level nine.”
The moment the ultimatum landed, the Soul Devourer’s form blurred into a swirl of ink-black mist and winked from sight, as though reality itself had swallowed him whole.
Only after the darkness thinned did Neville let out a breath he did not know he held. It hissed through his teeth, raw and shaky.
Around him, rank and file disciples trembled so hard that their knees buckled. Some collapsed outright, the marble floor echoing with the clatter of fear.
A millennium earlier, the Soul Devourer had carved his legend across level nine, a nightmare whose name still chilled storytellers at dusk.
The Nethergate Sect had bled under his hand before. They survived only because they were all Demonic Cultivators; back then, the Devourer had spared enough lives to keep a future throne of fear intact.
A sudden, invisible pressure crashed over the hall, an aftershock of the fiend’s presence. Air thickened to stone; every candle guttered.
One by one, disciples hit the floor in forced reverence, foreheads scraping marble. Armor rang, bones cracked, prayers died in throats.
Neville bit down until blood filled his mouth, refusing to bend. If the sect master knelt, the sect itself was already broken.
He understood at once: the Soul Devourer had left an unseen hand behind, a lingering warning that the devil could return at any heartbeat. Even the boldest disciples stared at their quivering palms, horror dawning in wide, unblinking eyes.
Neville muttered, looking outside the gates, “Jared, where are you? If you do not return soon, we are finished.”
Hope now rested on one man. Jared might not match the Soul Devourer blow for blow, yet Jared had a backer. If that backer chose to intervene, even the ancient fiend would falter.
Between the Soul Devourer and Jared, Neville chose Jared. In front of Jared’s backer, the Soul Devourer was only another monster beneath the boot.
As if summoned by desperate prayer, Jared reached the Nethergate Sect with Sylvia beside him, their auras slicing the clouds like twin comets.
Neville’s composure shattered. Moisture glazed his eyes, and he nearly wept in relief.
“Mr. Chance, you are finally here!” he cried, stumbling forward, half-bow and half-embrace colliding in awkward gratitude.
Jared landed in the ruined hall and inhaled sharply.
“The Soul Devourer has visited?” he asked, tasting the lingering dread the way a wolf scents fresh blood.
Neville nodded, throat tight. “Yes. He came to force Nethergate’s surrender.”
His head dipped once more, the motion small yet heavy with everything that still hung in the air.
Jared leaned toward Neville, his voice calm but edged with steel. “So what did you say to him?”
“Refuse him, of course. The Nethergate Sect follows you, Mr. Chance; there is no universe in which we kneel to the Soul Devourer.”
Neville squared his broad shoulders, recalling the moment. “I cursed the devourer to his face and wagered every life in my sect on that answer. He told me to think it over, then vanished into the night.”
Sylvia’s eyes widened. “You cursed the Soul Devourer, out loud?”
“The Earth Fiend Sect may tremble at his name,” Neville shot back, chin lifted, “But the Nethergate Sect is one of the oldest orders in the Seventh Heaven. We do not scare so easily.”
The fear that had haunted him minutes ago was gone, replaced by raw, unyielding pride.
