Chapter 1234: End at the Serpent’s Blade

"Don’t." The Blood Elf’s voice stopped him.

The Gorgon looked towards her.

She stood two paces away with four skeletal wings partly folded behind her. Crimson mist curled around her pale legs and flowed through the scarlet chains upon her body, yet the earlier bloodline hostility had vanished from her gaze.

Calculation had replaced it.

The Gorgon grinned. "Why?"

"Because you’re a fool."

His grin widened.

The Blood Elf glanced towards the crater where Bromgar lay, then towards Valerius’s soulless body sprawled farther across the mirror winter.

"He is a puny Mortal Realm," she said, disbelief and irritation weaving through her voice, "yet that puny Mortal has already removed two World Transcendents from this battle! Single handedly and faster than we can blink."

The Gorgon’s thumb paused beneath Phei’s eyelid.

"I think he can also free us now with the bastard not here... nothing can stop us."

Something changed around them.

The Undead Queen turned her pale face towards Phei.

Behind her, the invisible empire of corpses stood across overlapping layers of existence. Thousands of dead soldiers, kings and skeletal monstrosities watched the same broken body through a silence deeper than burial. Even the nameless horror chained beyond the furthest ranks had stopped moving.

The Gorgon considered Phei for another moment, then chuckled and released his face.

"Right." He rose. "My apologies. I became excited."

The Blood Elf’s crimson eyes narrowed. "Your excitement nearly petrified our only possible key."

"Possible?"

"Still more than we possessed yesterday, isn’t it?"

The Gorgon retreated one step, serpentine hair twisting restlessly around his shoulders.

Consort had already drawn closer now that the five had stepped away from her, she floated several dozen metres away with her katana bared, its edge reflecting black-white radiance from the mirror winter. No aura surrounded her or killing intent escaped her body, yet every Chained between her and Phei felt the quiet certainty inside that blade.

If the Gorgon touched him again, Consort would move.

This time, there would be no warning smile.

Her gaze passed over the Blood Elf, Undead Queen and Gorgon before settling upon Phei’s broken body between them.

The Chained did not attack.

Neither did Consort.

The second male demon arrived before the stillness could settle... Cassian, he was called, he flashed across the battlefield and appeared beside Seraphine.

His gaze found Valerius, then the crater containing Bromgar.

His face hardened: "What do you think you’re doing?"

The Blood Elf barely looked at him.

Cassian pointed towards Phei. "He took Valerius. He took Bromgar."

The Undead Queen rolled her completely black eyes, the gesture looked so unexpectedly human upon her deathless face that even the Blood Elf glanced at her: "Oh, please~" he voice was deathly soothing.

Cassian’s expression darkened.

The Undead Queen turned towards him, funeral-white robes floating beneath a law untouched by the blizzard. "Don’t pretend you’ve suddenly discovered brotherhood because two men happened to suffer before you did. We shared chains, as prisoners Cassian. We shared masters and imprisonment; that does not make us some tender little family."

His jaw tightened. "Valerius fought beside me for—"

"And he would’ve drunk you dry tomorrow if freedom required it."

Cassian fell silent.

The Undead Queen looked back towards Phei. "We are prisoners!"

Age burdened those three words and it carried centuries of collars, orders, mutilated wills and masters who had mistaken prolonged obedience for loyalty. The chains around the Chained had always answered with a faint metallic tremor each time as they bit into their souls each time they tempted to disobey.

The Vampire Lady appeared beside Cassian a moment later.

Unlike him, she looked directly at Phei.

Her crimson eyes studied his mangled body before rising towards the Blood Elf. "Besides, if you care for them so deeply and truly want them returned, killing him would be the stupidest thing you could possibly do. Why do you think I ddidnt when I could’ve?

Cassian’s gaze sharpened.

Seraphine pointed one pale finger towards Phei. "My lady is right, he’s the only one here who knows where their souls went."

That silenced him properly.

The Blood Elf’s skeletal wings shifted.

The Gorgon’s serpents quieted.

Even the Undead Queen’s empire seemed to lean closer from the darkness behind her.

Bromgar and Valerius were alive and their bodies still breathed with hearts beating; their souls had vanished beyond perception, dragged somewhere no one the battlefield could reach.

And the unconscious mortal lying at their feet was the only door.

For several breaths, uneasy stillness settled across the mirror winter.

Then Eira saw the Naga.

Her face went white.

Everyone had been watching Phei but the Ancient Naga had been watching opportunity.

His chains made him a prisoner like the others, but Danton’s authority over him had never depended upon metal alone. Jörmungandr flowed through the bastard prince’s blood, an ancestral supremacy carved too deeply into serpentine instinct for centuries of enslavement to erode.

The other Chained could resent Danton and they could bargain against him, dream of escape or consider the freedom the mortal promised.

The Naga’s marrow bowed; there was little Danton desired more fiercely than the death of Phei Ryujin Tiamat.

The Young Dragon lay unconscious with his very bone in him were shattered, yes Primordial Blood and his regeneration labored to rebuild him, yet even that monstrous regeneration needed time.

There would never be a cleaner chance.

The Naga’s enormous serpentine body had vanished and his oceanic pressure struck the others steps away from Phei’s body first.

The mirror winter sank across kilometres as the crushing weight of a primordial sea descended upon the formation. Seraphine, Cassian and the Gorgon were driven half a step into the ice. The Blood Elf’s four wings snapped open, while the dead empire behind its Queen bent beneath a depth that had never known sunlight and the female demon and the vampire lady were pushed away as the Naga appeared over Phei.

His one hand drove downward as a dagger entered Phei’s chest straight through the heart.

The blade carried his serpentine ability of dense poison enough for oceans; it pierced Dragon flesh, split ribs and punched through the organ Primordial Blood had protected above everything else. The point emerged from Phei’s back and struck the mirror beneath him, sending dark-green fractures through kilometres of flawless reflection.

Eira’s scream broke.

"NO!"

Her scream tore across Anactica.

Too late.

Consort moved, the Blood Elf’s wings opened, Seraphine’s eyes widened as the Naga twisted the blade and Phei’s body jerked once beneath him.

Blood spread across the mirror winter, too red against the white, and the pulse inside his Primordial Blood faltered.

Phei’s body jerked once beneath him.

His second hand was already moving as another dagger flashed into his grip, its edge carrying enough power to sever flesh even hard as still, bone and even the soul itself. The Naga caught Phei by the hair, wrenched his head back and swept the blade across his exposed throat to sever the Young Dragon’s neck—

"NOOOOO!" Eira’s whole voice grew deep and encompassing and her aura exploded out wards throwing everyone away and burying them deeper as Phei drew his last, everyone but Consort, while something dark opened behind her and beneath him and the whole reality they stood within suddenly collapsed:

The mirrored winter turned black beyond darkness... every reflection across Anactica vanished all at once. The Titan disappeared from the ice, the mountains lost their mirrored twins and the heavens ceased to exist beneath anyone’s feet.

Infinity Control died and billions of snowflakes fell as the blizzard lost its voice, its ancient violence silenced so completely that the Dead Winter Realm seemed to have been struck deaf.

Something opened beneath reality.

The first crack tore in reality opening Earth to another dark dimension and it spread through the now completely dark winter world without touching the ice. It travelled through distance, through light and through the invisible structure holding one position apart from another. A second followed, then thousands, black fractures raced across the frozen plain, the glaciers, the Titan’s colossal corpse and the vault of heaven until Anactica resembled a world painted upon glass, bringing with them the very corrosive darkness that made everything in the surrounding winter die but the cultivators.

Something behind creation broke it.

The fractures widened:

Mountains split without falling... light poured into the open cracks and vanished while color bled out of the winter... the laws holding matter, motion and distance together buckled as the blackness beneath the mirror deepened beyond every layer of existence that Mortal or Transcendent perception could reach.

Then something breathed below the world:

Its inhale dragged every darkness it had brought with it and shadow in Anactica towards Phei...

...its exhale extinguished the heavens from being sensed much less seen and it bracketed the wholeness of Earth extinguishing any light and only left complete darkness where no senses worked!

All of it originating from where a Young Dragon lay and his fairy had disappeared to!

The Void had awakened and flooded the world before it tore everything out of existence.