Across the shattered field, Malcolm looked already half dead, his gray-green skin now the hue of cold ash. His skeletal fingers dug into the armrests of the bone litter, knuckles bleaching with strain.
As keeper of the Door of Reincarnation, Malcolm understood the shape of power better than scripture. What poured from Jared was the antithesis of every cycle he commanded. Chaos met reincarnation the way blazing noon met shadowed midnight, and chaos sat the throne.
“Chaotic celestial energy…” Malcolm spat, “The ultimate predator of reincarnation power.”
“Quit hoarding your strength, Morven. If we don’t tear him apart right now, when he matures we’ll all be ashes, every realm, every sky!”
The plea slammed into Morven’s hesitation, cracking it like thin ice. He had flinched at the idea of alliance for longer than he could justify. Resolve gathered, cold and metallic. Nearly sixty millennia weighed on his bones; the sand in his hourglass was a stingy whisper now. Every hope for endless life knelt at Malcolm’s Door of Reincarnation. If Jared walked away, that door would slam shut forever, and Morven’s story would end in dust.
“Fine…” The word left his lips like a drawn blade. He threw a hard nod toward Malcolm; darkness boiled inside his pupils, hungry for finality. “Then we erase the brat. Completely…”
For the first time, the two pinnacles of the High Immortal Realm stood shoulder to shoulder. Morven raised his arm, and the torn night screamed forward at his command. His fingers braided in front of his chest, faster than Jared’s eye could track. Each new knot of bone and tendon birthed a syllable so old it felt bruised by time. The sound crawled out of some Ninefold Nether pit, thick with rancor and tomb-cold silence; gooseflesh prickled up Jared’s scalp before he could brace.
“Ninefold… Nether Styx! Open!” Morven’s shout cracked the air like iron splitting stone.
Space behind him ruptured—no light, no bottom, just a jagged mouth that inhaled color from the sky. From that wound poured the screams of a million orphaned souls, and with them a blast of Ninefold Nether Demonic Aura that frothed upward, thickening, searching for a shape. One serpentine shadow hardened, then another, until nine in all coiled above the battlefield like newly forged chains. They stretched longer than city towers, every scale a black mirror washed in metallic glare. Fanged maws gaped; in the hollows where eyes should rest, green ghost-fire burned with patient hunger.
Jared felt them think—nine cold intellects braided to Morven’s will, each radiating a power that rivaled the strongest celestial lords he had ever faced.
“Ninefold Nether Demon Dragon! Devour the Heavens!” Morven’s voice tore at Jared’s eardrums.
The nine beasts answered in unison; their roar became a physical wave that hammered the mountains below into sliding rubble. Claws shredded air from every flank, venomous breath scorched escape paths, and the nine trajectories laced themselves into a living Ninefold Nether Sky-Locking Array that tightened around Jared’s chest like iron twine.
A heartbeat earlier, Jared had watched only Morven; now Malcolm stepped forward, eyes glossy with resolve. Without forming seals, Malcolm bit through his own tongue and spat a clot of almost black blood that hissed in the open air. The globs hung, dark red shading into pitch, each drop reeking of the grave—corrosion born of years serving the Door of Reincarnation. Mid-air, the blood twisted, folded, and resolved into a palm-sized rune veined with impossible patterns.
The moment the sigil solidified, every thread of reincarnation aura on the field vibrated and funneled toward it in wordless devotion.
“By my blood, I summon the Door of Reincarnation, bind their souls, erase their fate!” Malcolm rasped, slamming the rune upward.
A detonation answered, louder than thought. High above, a three-hundred-foot phantom gate of bone gathered like a storm cloud taking shape. It looked cruelly solid—more real, more merciless than the true doorway Jared had glimpsed once in nightmare. Columns and panels were nothing but pressed skulls; ghost-white flames licked the sockets and grinned through the seams. Thick chains coiled the frame, their ends yoking writhing soul-shadows, warriors the Door had swallowed but not yet digested. The enormous gate eased ajar, exposing a breath-width slit.
Beyond the crack waited no radiant paradise, only depthless dark eager to swallow everything with it. Darkness pressed in, thick as ink. Out of it, pale arms spilled forward—hundreds, maybe thousands, stretching and clawing like a tidal wave aimed straight at Jared. He caught their differences only when they drew closer; some were thick as marble columns, others thin as winter branches, yet every one reeked of damp graves, a stench that curled inside his lungs.
The claws scraped against one another, a shrill grind of nails on bone. The sound chased a shudder up his spine while the mass kept crawling toward him, fury and sorrow driven by Malcolm’s cruel summons. Even before the tide reached him, Jared felt the second assault descend: one attack colder than moonless winter, the other heavier than a sealed tomb, both intent on ending everything warm or living inside him.
He stayed motionless in midair. The stillness was not calm; it was the tight coil of a bowstring waiting to release.
Below, Gerald met the other elders’ eyes. Without a word, they hurled their gathered force into Jared’s back, the impact blooming through his ribs like a second heartbeat. The borrowed power ignited the righteous aura inside him. It rose fast, blistering, and his flesh swelled until the seams of his robe strained.
He understood the math; alone, he would break under Morven and Malcolm’s combined weight. Knowing it did not invite fear, only urgency. That urgency became a silent agreement. The elders poured everything they had, trusting his chaotic celestial aura to anchor their gamble and muzzle the lurking darkness.
Jared lifted his right hand. The five-color sigil on the back flared, stabbing light through the gloom. Gold, wood, water, fire, earth—five-element power raced through the lines, funneling into his palm until it knotted into a pearl no larger than a pigeon’s egg.
He felt at once that the pearl had changed. The separate colors were gone, replaced by a single, swirling gray that hinted at storms before stars ever learned to shine. Closer inspection revealed filaments running across the surface. In those tiny currents, worlds were born, burned, and begun again. An ancient breath leaked from the sphere, older than anything that still dared to remember its name.
