Still, the Soul Devourer had once been a giant on Level Nine. After ten millennia as a disembodied mind, his command of soul arts was peerless, and this remnant had been crafted as his last, most vicious safeguard.
Even with Jared’s reflexes—sharp as drawn steel—several stray soul threads still slipped through his mental net. They were the light ones, wisps that held nothing but noise and harmless memories, scattering like ash across the air.
The principal shard of the Soul Devourer’s consciousness detonated on itself, vanishing in a grit of psychic dust and taking most vital memories with it.
Jared flooded the ruin with his own spiritual sense, stooping, in a sense, to sift the debris. Each broken image he caught was held, studied, then filed away before it could fade.
What he saw was a clutter of information: minor cruelties inside Skyfiend Sect, schemes the dead lord had dangled before Elder Bonewick like poisoned bait.
Anything truly important—especially the memory of where Soul Devourer’s true body hid—had been locked behind a curse that shattered the moment the remnant died. Yet a single glimmer survived the self-destruction.
One half-spoken landmark repeated itself: “Nether… Blood Sea… Edge… Soul-Graves…”
Nether Blood Sea. Jared knew the name. It lay along the lowest rim of Level Nine, a forbidden stretch of crimson water said to be an ancient battlefield of gods and fiends.
Endless blood. Endless wailing spirits. Chaos etched into the very law of heaven. Even Heavenly Immortals kept their distance. Hiding a true body there suited the Soul Devourer’s venomous craftiness.
“Nether Blood Sea… Soul-Graves…” Jared mouthed the words, eyes narrowing to a hunter’s edge. “Looks like I have to pay that place a visit…”
Down on the fractured plain, the battle’s thunder dwindled to its final growls.
Elder Bonewick watched the last fleck of the Soul Devourer’s soul remnant flee, and hope left him like blood from a cut vein. His apparition lost cohesion; Coall’s claw sheared an arm from it, fire dragon breath and lightning dragon wrath following hard until the phantom screamed and burst apart.
With the apparition gone, Bonewick and the surviving elders buckled. Blood gushed from their mouths, their auras guttered to dying coals.
“We surrender, please, we surrender!” one elder shrieked, flinging aside his treasure and dropping to his knees.
That single collapse broke the rest. The remaining Skyfiend disciples folded like wet paper, kneeling, shivering, unable even to meet their conqueror’s gaze.
Jared drifted down through smoke and shattered bone. The field, littered with bodies, cracked banners, and cooling dragon fire, fell silent under his shadow. His stare locked on Elder Bonewick, now pinned beneath three draconic titans, face gray as old ash.
“Where, exactly, in the Nether Blood Sea is Soul Devourer hiding? And what comes after Soul Graves?” His voice was winter—clean, cold, implacable.
Elder Bonewick let out a ragged laugh, blood zig-zagging from the corner of his mouth. “Heh… Jared, you’ve won… Yet you think you can outwit the master? Dream on! His foresight spans ages; you’ll never trace it! I know nothing. And if I did, I would die before telling you!”
Madness flickered behind his eyes; the last of his resolve, but hard as iron.
Jared was not surprised. Giants of the demonic path, especially Bonewick, feared disgrace more than death. And surrender, to them, was only a slower form of execution.
“You will talk…” Jared’s voice came out quiet and level, the kind of steady menace that made the skull-strewn wind over Bonewither Cliff seem to hush in agreement.
A moment later, the miniature Beast-Subduing Tower shimmered into existence above his palm. Cold silver light spilled from every tier, and the very air curved inward as a tide of soul-suction wrapped itself around Elder Bonewick.
The tower could refine, interrogate, and devour a spirit all at once. Voluntary confessions took mere heartbeats, but a captive who resisted, especially one steeped in wicked arts, had his agony measured out grain by grain.
“No! Never!” Elder Bonewick shrieked, terror splitting his cracked voice.
Feeling his own soul tearing away, he tried the last refuge of a cornered fiend: he ignited his soul, hoping to explode into oblivion before Jared could take another morsel.
“Suppress…” Jared’s single word landed like a divine verdict.
The tower’s glow surged, drowning the cliff in argent brilliance. Bonewick’s rebellion folded in on itself; his spirit was pinned, peeled apart, and drawn upward in wisps no thicker than spider silk.
Memories, battle plans, forbidden rites, secret allegiances—all floated out as fractured embers and vanished into the tower’s hungry tiers.
