Blood already streaked Rowena’s left arm. A gash so deep the bone flashed white poured scarlet down her sleeve, soaking half her robe. But the invaders were stronger, and they had numbers.
The black-robed Skyfiend cultivators struck with unsettling techniques—acidic shadows and ripping vortices, every blow reeking of ruin and plunder.
One by one, Nethergate disciples were caught. Their vital energy shattered, bodies either corroded to chalk-white bone or torn apart by savage energy, their blood misting the night sky.
Their screams of agony, braided with the furious wails of the dying, rose into a dirge of utter despair.
A gaunt man in a black hood let out a rasping laugh. “Rowena, why cling to hopeless resistance? We tread the same demonic road. Your Nethergate Sect grovels beneath a human guest like a whipped cur. You have disgraced every demonic cultivator!”
“Stuff it, Skyfiend scum!” Rowena battered two attackers aside and glared at the skeletal commander. “Mr. Chance is our honored guest, our benefactor. Even demonic cultivators can keep their honor. Thieves like you will never understand that!”
The taunting speaker was Gideon Marrow, commander of the Skyfiend raid, nicknamed “Master Marrow”—and the name fit all too well.
“Honor? How much is that worth?” Gideon sneered. “Power alone is eternal. Surrender, hand over Neville and that Jared fellow, and I may spare you. Refuse, and the name Nethergate Sect is erased today!”
“Dream on, you bastard!” Rowena’s demon essence flared, pain forgotten.
She leveled her spear and charged. “Disciples of Nethergate, better to die on our feet! Kill!”
“Stubborn fools! Slaughter them all!” Gideon flicked his wrist, and the Skyfiend assault redoubled.
Blades, curses, and shrieking spirits crashed over the courtyard like a hurricane.
The Nethergate Sect’s shattered line buckled. One defender after another fell.
Rowena’s circle of comrades had dwindled to a desperate handful. She herself swayed, bleeding from fresh wounds, demon essence guttering. The final breach loomed only heartbeats away.
In that breathless instant when death seemed certain, the battlefield hung on a single, fraying thread.
A primordial roar, long, jagged, and impossibly fierce, ripped across the heavens.
The cry was pure dragon wrath, a blade of sound that split the sky like thunder hurled from the Ninth Firmament. Everything below shuddered. Shields rang, spears trembled, and every mortal heartbeat faltered beneath the roar’s crushing cadence.
Then came another, and another—hundreds of dragon roars fusing into one tidal wave of ancient, untamed power that rolled outward to drown the world in sound.
The daylight itself recoiled. In a blink, all brightness fled. No storm clouds blotted the sun. Instead, titanic, fanged silhouettes, scaled mountains with wings, layered over one another until the sky became a living, coiling canopy of dragons.
At their forefront drifted Jared, his teal robe snapping around a frame straight as a spear. His chiseled features were calm, yet the cold gleam in his eyes promised ruin.
He strode through thin air as though each invisible step pressed upon the planet’s own pulse, and every heartbeat below answered in startled pain.
To his left loomed Coall, a black drake the size of a mountain range, scales glittering like iced obsidian, eyes burning red as twin blood-moons. To his right glided Cyanna, her scales smooth as jade, a wreath of frosted azure aura curling around her lithe form.
Beyond them followed a legion of Draconians, each radiating a sovereignty that made lesser beasts crawl.
Great bodies jammed the firmament, layering shadow upon shadow until the entire Skyfiend Sect camp lay buried beneath a curtain that felt less like shade and more like an imminent death sentence.
