When the glare and soot finally thinned, those still alive risked a glance toward the ruined heart of the battlefield and choked on despair. The colossal hand that blotted out the heavens still hovered above the crater.
Jared’s peerless strike had carved a deep fissure through the palm. Dark vapors hissed from the wound, yet the hand—blurred, translucent, wounded—remained intact, radiating slaughter.
At the bottom of the newly born crater, Jared knelt on one knee, exactly where he had once stood tall. His robes were nothing but rags. Crosshatched wounds crisscrossed his frame so deeply bone flashed white beneath blood. He looked like shattered porcelain glued together by sheer will.
The Dragonslayer Sword, once ablaze with draconic light, now stood planted beside him like a grave marker. Its glow had dimmed to a dying ember, its dragon-song a rasp one could barely hear.
With every ragged cough, Jared expelled fresh blood and pieces of his own organs. His breath came thin, flickering, precarious, as though the lamp of his life had run out of oil.
That last swing had gathered every shred of his strength, and more. All it had done was injure one casual strike from the Soul Devourer; it could not smash him.
The gulf between their realms was too vast, so vast it smothered even the thought of hope.
Hovering above, the Soul Devourer studied the figure in the pit, surprised for a heartbeat that a mere Human Immortal had survived.
“You are the first Human Immortal to take a blow from me and live,” the fiend murmured, voice colder than permafrost. “Unfortunately, this is as far as you go…”
The mammoth spectral hand drifted lower once more, not fast, but with the lazy malice of a cat pinning a broken mouse. It intended to erase Jared and the crater both from creation.
At the pit’s rim, Sylvia dragged her battered body upright. Blood and tears blurred together as she watched the crimson-stained silhouette below. No sound escaped her, yet her heart howled.
Wedged deep in a fractured wall, Neville twitched a single finger. Lifting an arm was beyond him. Fury and helplessness warred in his eyes, endless and raw.
The remaining disciples of Nethergate Sect, ashen-faced, hearts hammering, could only stare upward as the demonic palm descended like an executioner‘s blade.
Gazing at the lone figure in the crater, they felt a chill coil around their hearts, a serpent of dread that tightened until even breathing became an act of courage.
It was over. Utterly over. Even Jared, the man who had walked among them like a living legend, lay defeated.
Who else could possibly save them now?
Despair gathered like a star-eating night, blotting out every last spark of hope.
“Jared, call the power behind you, now! If you don’t, we all die here!” Neville shouted, bleeding and swaying, each syllable torn from a chest already rattling with defeat.
At those words, every battered survivor fixed their gaze on Jared. Their futures, life or oblivion, hinged on whether he could summon aid.
“I’ll even give you the chance,” the Soul Devourer scoffed, voice dripping contempt. “Fetch your hidden guardian if you dare!”
Jared rose slowly in the crater’s dust, drew out the jade pendant Zevon had entrusted to him, and crushed it between trembling fingers.
The once unremarkable trinket fell away as silver dust, each grain whispering of a hope now gambled.
Time seemed to freeze; only the huge hand kept descending, heavy with death.
A wider sneer curved across the Soul Devourer’s lips; he was already savoring the sight of Jared ground to pulp.
The clawed shadow was a breath from Jared’s hair when a resonance, neither clap nor thunder, thrummed out of the unseen void. It was as though the very laws of heaven had been plucked like a harp string, and the world hummed in answer.
