A chorus of warped human faces stirred inside the barrier, wailing in grief so sharp it stabbed the marrow. Dense resentment oozed across the shield like black oil, birthing a soul-corroding tide and a brutal countershock aimed straight at Coall’s oncoming skull.
Every disciple of Skyfiend Sect felt their hearts crawl into their throats, breath snagging as fate hung on that single collision.
Boom! Day and night flipped; sun and moon vanished in a pulse of white. Coall’s head met the Wailing Soul Barrier, now swollen with the full might of Skyfiend Sect, in one deafening, absolute smash.
The blast ripped outward in expanding rings, rattling every mountain around Bonewither Cliff. Pebbles, ribs of ancient bones, whole slabs of rock sheared from the cliff face and rained into the abyss.
At ground zero, a searing flash bright enough to blind a god flared, followed by an ocean-sized surge of energy that howled across both sides of the shield, clawing at space itself.
Crack!
The sound was sharp enough to set teeth on edge, a brittle shatter like stained glass exploding, echoing in every ear among the Skyfiend Sect disciples who stared, unblinking, at the point of impact.
In the hopeless gaze of Elder Bonewick and his gathered elders and acolytes, the Ten-Thousand-Soul Grand Array, pride of their sect and said to withstand a full strike from a fifth-grade Heavenly Immortal, began to fail.
Centered on Coall’s battering head, spiderweb fissures raced across the barrier, spreading so fast they swallowed every inch the eye could see.
The once-radiant shield dulled. Faces of wailing spirits, painted in sick green fire, melted like frost under noon sun and bled away into nothing.
One blow. That was all it took to push the barrier to the brink of ruin!
“No, this can’t be!” Elder Bonewick’s voice cracked, horror flooding eyes that had witnessed too much and still understood too little. His knuckles whitened around the Bone Sceptre as he watched salvation unravel before him.
*Just how monstrous is that black dragon’s brute strength?*
“All hands, tear away this last scrap of dignity!” Jared’s words landed cold and final, the tone of a judge passing sentence.
The chill in his voice rolled across the battlefield like winter wind, promising that no appeal would be heard.
At his command, the hundreds of Draconians at his back could hold themselves no longer. Their collective roar split the sky. The mingled dragon cries fused into a single primeval battle hymn, echoing as though it had risen out of pre-dawn history itself.
A heartbeat later, their innate powers erupted. Multicolored torrents—the raw, ruinous essence of the Draconian race—poured downward like an overturned galaxy, like judgment day itself.
Columns of dragonfire roared, white-hot and wide enough to scorch the sky.
Bolts of storm-born lightning lashed, each stroke thicker than city walls. Invisible wind blades screamed, cleaving open seams in the very air. Glacial cataracts crashed—cold enough to freeze breath and soul alike.
Tides of virulent poison hissed, dissolving stone before it touched the ground. And avalanches of earth and iron thundered, weighty as mountains, rolling in relentless waves.
Elemental dragon magic braided together, weaving a death net that slammed without mercy into the already-fractured Wailing Soul Barrier.
This was no longer an assault. It was a verdict!
Boom!
A single, earth-shaking concussion rolled across Skyfiend Sect, and the sect defense formation, strained to its last filament by several hundred true dragons, burst like an overfilled bubble.
Shards of runic light and rancorous soul-energy scattered, only to be scoured away by righteous dragon breath and crackling thunder. With a sickening squelch, Elder Bonewick and the dozen elders feeding demonic force into the array spat clots of blood and torn viscera.
Their auras collapsed, leaving them gasping, gray, and half-broken before the battle had even begun. The formation was shattered, and the gate was open.
“Kill!” the three commands thundered in swift succession, a war drum hammered by countless dragon throats. At the very instant the barrier gave way, Jared vanished from Coall’s broad scaled back.
A blink later, he materialized inside the sect grounds, standing nose-to-nose with the nearest Heavenly Immortal elder, still dazed by backlash.
The Dragonslayer Sword slid into Jared’s palm, its steel exhaling a chill that smelled of moonlit iron.
