The soul banners caught the wind and swelled to a thousand-foot sheet. One ripple, and an unending flood of ashen vengeful spirits poured out like a dam burst, filling the sky with a river of hate. Denser and fiercer than any specters birthed from the bloody sea below, they knitted themselves into a cyclone of sheer soul force and slammed into the golden dragon’s claw.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The collision thundered louder than worlds colliding. Two powers capable of unmaking continents crashed head-on, each refusing to yield an inch.
For a heartbeat, it looked as if the end of Soulgrave Abyss had come. A globe of annihilating force expanded outward, grinding jagged stone ridges to dust and gouging the blackened floor dozens of yards lower. Even space buckled—hair-fine fissures of spatial rifts forked like ebony lightning, flaring and vanishing before the eye could follow.
The golden dragon let out a wounded scream. The massive claw, woven from the strength of hundreds of Draconians, was eaten away, nearly half its radiant talons dissolved by that soul storm. Yet swaths of the vengeful spirit horde evaporated under the claw’s blazing positive energy, purified in great sizzling swirls.
The clash ended in a deadlock, neither side able to dominate, both forced back on trembling currents of power.
“How… How is that possible?” From a ledge cloaked in drifting ash, Jared felt his pulse slam against his ribs.
He had watched the Ten-Thousand-Dragon Godslayer Array tear seasoned Immortal Realm cultivators to mist, yet that impossible wall of force was now held at bay by one figure, Soul Devourer, alone. The revelation felt like a fist of ice closing around Jared’s throat.
*Just how strong is this monster?*
“Don’t let up, pour everything in! Wear him down and break him!” Cyanna shouted, blood streaking the corner of her mouth, yet fire blazed in her storm-green eyes.
Pain lanced through Cyanna’s veins with every glyph she forced to burn, but she still drove the array harder.
Above her, the golden energy dragon roared back to life. Its tail, broad as a city street, cracked through the clouds like a primordial scourge, whipping storms into spirals as it lashed toward Soul Devourer.
The dragon’s jaws yawned wide. From that molten throat erupted a column of searing gold, a river of stellar fire more than three hundred feet across that spilled downward like an overturned galaxy.
“Keh-keh, excellent! Then let the heavens taste oblivion. Soul Devourer World-Bite!” Soul Devourer rasped, his laugh scraping across the battlefield like rusted chains.
The sable banner in his grasp writhed.
Soul Devourer snapped it in a vicious arc, and a tide of wailing spirits flooded free. Instead of mindless skirmishers, they fused, bone to bone, hate to hate, until nine colossal specter-dragons coiled beside their master, each one as large as the golden energy dragon itself.
Their bodies were sculpted from the purest malice. Scales glimmered like oil-slick midnight, talons curved like scimitars, and from hollow eye sockets burned emerald hellfire. Though their throats made no sound, the shriek of their souls thrashed the air as they charged the gilded behemoth.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ten titans collided above Soulgrave Abyss, ripping open night itself.
Claws shredded scales, torrents of energy detonated like thunderheads, and invisible currents of soul venom gnawed at every fragment of light.
Pure yang draconic fire clashed with the absolute negative energy of vengeful spirits. Each element devoured the other, grinding the very laws of creation into a raging, whirling meat-grinder of cosmic force.
Coall chose a different hunt. Forgoing the array’s rhythm, the black-scaled dragon relied on brute muscle and battlefield instinct, darting through the chaos like a midnight dagger. He circled Soul Devourer’s true spirit form, striking in blur-fast ambushes and vanishing before retaliation could catch him.
“Mangy relic! Eat my claws!” he bellowed, voice rumbling like boulders down a gorge.
Seizing a sliver of opening, Coall folded his serpentine bulk with impossible grace, blinking into existence behind Soul Devourer’s exposed flank.
Black light condensed over his talons; space itself split as those razors hurled toward the spirit core pulsing at the lich-lord’s spine.
“Hmph! Ignorant worm…” Soul Devourer hissed, refusing even to glance backward.
A mere thought from the necromancer birthed a storm of midnight shields, each forged from condensed soul energy.
Screech!
Coall’s talons scraped the barrier, sparks scattering like meteors while metal-on-stone shrieks split the air. Hairline fractures zigzagged across the shields but held.
A retaliatory chill, vicious, invasive, snaked up through Coall’s forearm, stabbing lightning-cold needles straight into marrow and mind. His massive frame jerked, a strangled roar of pain clawing free of his throat as the venomous backlash tried to freeze even a dragon’s heart.
He slashed at the air, yet a film of midnight ice suddenly glazed the great black claw. The frost did not merely numb flesh; it drove splinters of agony straight into the dragon’s soul, forcing his colossal body to stall.
“Soul-freeze?” Coall’s roar cracked out, part disbelief, part rage, icicles already hanging from his fangs. It was the first time the ancient drake had faced an attack that ignored his iron hide and struck the spirit chained within.
