With a fingertip as black as midnight ink, Soul Devourer traced the archaic grooves embossed on the Ritual Manual’s lid.
He whispered syllables older than kingdoms, and living shadows spiraled from his hand, coiling around the book, striking its golden glow like snakes against glass.
A sharp hiss cut through the air. Pages fluttered on their own, then flared open. Lines of ancient script, each a narrow blade of light, burst forth and assembled in the sky as a single titanic sigil that radiated a suffocating, holy pressure.
“Shatter!” His roar cracked across the gorge. He slammed the Ritual Manual against the boulder, palm first.
Golden scripture met the older sealing glyphs in an explosive collision. For one heartbeat, the two forces twisted together, then the whole of Celestia City quaked. Fissures ripped through the earth, and stone chips rattled down like hard rain.
The runes on the boulder warped, splintered, and died. Their frail light was devoured piece by piece by rolling black mist.
An instant later, a detonation, deeper than thunder, ripped through the canyon. The monolith disintegrated, revealing the lightless throat of the Netherworld Abyss.
A breath of air colder than grave-ice erupted from the pit. It carried a chorus of distant howls, restless, deranged, and older than memory, the voices of souls that had simmered in darkness for ten millennia.
Soul Devourer leaned forward, peering into the abyss. Suspended at its heart hovered a vast golden barrier, etched with primeval runes. Inside, countless ink-black phantoms slammed against the light, each collision dimming the shield by another shade.
“That is the true seal,” said, voice low, almost reverent. Spathe, the elder standing to Soul Devourer’s right, could not contain himself.
“The founders of Celestia bled themselves dry to build that ward,” cried. “Break it, and every single demonic soul will be ours to command!”
Soul Devourer’s answering chuckle was ice on metal. He lifted the Ritual Manual once more. This time, let the artifact off its leash.
Blinding gold surged from its covers, spilling over the abyss like a newborn sun. Hundreds of luminous characters tore free of the pages and streaked downward-each one a spear of written light aimed at the weakening shield.
Every time a character struck, one of the ancient runes on the barrier fizzled out, and a hairline crack crept wider across its surface.
“In the name of Soul Devourer, by the power of this Ritual Manual, I dissolve the seal and unleash the legion within!” His proclamation echoed through the abyss, a command no prisoner could ignore.
The final glyph was hammered into the shield. A crisp snap rang out, and fractures webbed across the golden dome before it shattered like brittle glass.
An even fiercer wave of cold and corruption blasted upward. In its wake surged scores, then hundreds, then legions of shadowy spirits, a black tide screaming toward the sky, finally free after an age of night.
Anepan, stooped yet sharp as a hawk, held the Ritual Manual beneath the crook of one arm.
With his free hand, pointed at the dark mist rising from the Netherworld Abyss and began to count, voice cracking with a fevered thrill. “Ten thousand… Twenty thousand… Fifty thousand!”
Each new figure burst from his throat louder than the last. Then half-turned, breath hitching in wicked delight.
“My Lord, Soul Devourer!” shouted, “We have already summoned fifty thousand demonic souls, and the surge shows no sign of slowing!”
The first of those souls crashed onto the shattered rim of the abyss. Its bulk alone could blot out a campfire. Bone spurs bristled across hide like broken spears, crimson lantern-eyes glared from a skull with fangs that jutted past its lips, and the murderous heat of its aura squeezed the very air.
The creature landed hard enough to split the stone.
A single knee struck the ground, head bowed, and a chorus of gravel-thick voices rasped in unison, “We salute you, My Lord!”
Soul Devourer let the praise wash over like warm rain. He nodded, slow, pleased, a tyrant savoring the first taste of conquest.
“Rise…” he commanded. “From this moment, you serve beneath my banner. Together, we will flatten level six until every cultivator kneels at my feet!”
“As you command!” the demonic souls roared. The answer rolled through the Netherworld Abyss like thunder, and the chasm itself shivered.
More black figures clawed free of the depths, endless, unstoppable, as though the pit had been opened straight into some infernal ocean.
Some emerged gripping bone staffs that dripped with curses capable of rotting flesh at a whisper. Others darted through the gloom like wraiths, lean bodies bent for slaughter.
A third breed, no larger than a child, slipped through cracks of light, hungry to tunnel inside living hosts and drink their souls bone-dry.
The torrent thickened until the entire sky above the abyss churned with inky shapes, then spilled outward, a spreading stain racing toward every quarter of Celestia City.
When the one-hundred-thousandth soul burst from the chasm, blackness drowned the capital completely; daylight vanished as though snuffed beneath a lid.
This last arrival was different. Gold smoke coiled over its skin, vast black wings unfurled from shoulders shaped almost human, and bottomless eyes glimmered midnight. It hovered, then descended.
