Grotesque beasts born of this hell occasionally surfaced-misshapen things forged from gore and resentment. Most felt the army’s might and sank back, yet a few charged and were torn apart with casual brutality.
The search crawled on-long, monotonous, yet steeped in peril with every heartbeat. Every so often, the heavens ripped apart, spawning blood-red storms loaded with wild spatial energy and soul-shattering force
Each time, Jared flashed the Demon Seal Tower, anchoring the torn void while his indomitable spiritual sense shielded the Draconian army, without it, dragons would have been mutilated-or erased entirely
They later drifted into a soul expanse, a colorless, scentless miasma that crawled into hearts, teasing out primordial terrors and weaving hallucinations darker than a moonless night Several dragons, wills untempered, nearly tore each other apart before Jared summoned illusion nascence and blew the toxin away.
Ten days crawled by while they scoured the endless Nether Blood Sea, yet the entrance to the Soulgrave Abyss refused to appear.
Even my patience thins-this Soul Devourer hides like a fox in midwinter.
Coall vented a column of dragonfire, scattering the shrieking shades ahead “Mr. Chance, drifting aimless won’t do. This sea is endless, and it’s draining us,” he rumbled.
Jared halted above the crimson waves, eyes hard, the tower blooming from his palm like a miniature star. “If he won’t come to us, we’ll haul him into daylight!”
Essence surged into the tower, and soft yet boundless light rolled outward in widening rings. The glow carried a lure meant for corrupt spirits-comfort on the surface, shackles underneath
In a sea thick with resentment, the tower burned like a lighthouse. For the Soul Devourer, its call was irresistible.
Moments later, the summons was answered. A bass hum vibrated across the bloody water
Far ahead, the sea frothed, and a vortex hundreds of miles wide opened, sucking the abyss into itself. From its center rose a chill, malign, immeasurable pulse-an ancient beast of spirit slowly waking.
Jared recognized the aura at once. It was the Soul Devourer.
“Found him,” Jared whispered, eyes glinting.
He dismissed the tower and shot toward the maelstrom, the Draconian army streaming behind like scales on a single dragon. The thousand-mile gulf vanished in a heartbeat.
The whirlpool spanned several hundred miles, its spinning bloodwater a gaping throat that promised only oblivion. Yet deep inside flickered a muted, dusky glow hinting at another world.
“The Soulgrave Abyss… this is it,” Jared murmured. He sensed a sealed dimension barrier lurking beneath the swirl-an unseen door waiting to be kicked in.
“Down we go!”
Jared moved first. Confidence and audacity fused into a single blazing motion as his body became a streak of silver-white light that plunged straight toward the whirling core
Coall, Cyanna, and the rest of the Draconian vanguard hesitated only a heartbeat before following, scales rippling, wings beating, their combined roar swallowed by the rushing current
They pierced a gelatinous curtain of dark blood and a second skin of warped space. The moment they broke through, the pressure vanished-vision burst open like a torn veil.
The scene was nothing like the lightless abyss they had imagined. Instead, they hovered inside a cavern vast enough to dwarf kingdoms, its air vibrating with an ancient, maddening hush.
Overhead stretched a wine-dark sky, thick as congealed blood. There were no suns, no moons, no stars-only a weak crimson glow that bled from nowhere in particular.
Beneath them sprawled a black landscape of twisted, serrated stone. Each breath carried stench tenfold stronger than above-metallic blood, tortured souls, old resentments ground into dust.
At the very center rose a throne the size of a temple, built from interlocked skulls-thousands of them, jaw to crown, eye sockets still screaming.
Upon that grotesque seat rested a figure not of physical body but of shadow so dense it seemed liquid.
A thin halo of black soul fire licked his outline, and within the blur two eyes burned-twin emerald lanterns brimming with venom, avarice, and an ageless, glacial indifference.
