She collapsed into Idan’s arms, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
The sound like that of an impending storm caught the trio’s attention as another wave of wights descended on them.
Molan leaped back into the fray, sending bolts of energy and glimpsing their spectral spines, giving the pair behind them cover.
Not sure how much more I can hold them off,he growled into their neural nodes.
‘Salkia, this is your moment,’ Idan rasped.
With an inhale, Sheba knifed up and staggered to her feet, still clinging to the dagger.
She bent over the sarcophagus, staring at the shackled King Saitoni whipping against his bonds, his undead limbs clicking like dry wood.
Idan gripped her shoulders, his gaze a steady, burning light that fought back her terror. ‘Finish it,salkia. Grant him the silence. Take the handle and drive it home.’
Idan lunged forward, using his divine mass to pin the thrashing king on the altar.
Sheba stood, her hands trembling, but her grip on the dagger was tight.
The shiv, hungry and sensing the old King’s soul, thrummed with a rhythmic, greedy thud-thud in her palms, growing hotter until it was like she was holding fire.
With an inhale, Sheba droveThe Shadow-Drake’s Tonguein, burying the blade deep into Saitoni’s chest, right through the heavy, ancient links of his armor.
With a gasp, she let go, and the dagger buried itself deeper.
For a heartbeat, the world went dead silent. Then, the dormant violet pulse in the hilt exploded.
A sound like a thousand glass bells shattering at once tore through the room, followed by the guttural, subterranean roar of a dragon’s ghost, and Saitoni’s phantasmic shrieks.
The dirk freakin’ irradiated, as a violent fire that bled out from the puncture, tracing the veins across Saitoni’s gray skin in glowing, electric purple.
Sheba’s breath hitched as the ‘shackled king’ arched his back.
The shadow-drake’s energy began to inhale his essence.
There was no blood, only a swirling vortex of motes, black smoke, and lilac sparks being sucked into the crystal blade.
With a final, agonizing hiss that sounded like steam hitting dry ice, the light in Saitoni’s eyes flickered and died.
His massive frame began to crumble into fine, obsidian ash, eviscerating all of his body, until the heavy clatter of his empty shackles crashed to the floor.
The dagger remained in Sheba’s hand, the violet pulse now satiated, luminous with a smug, dark shimmer.
A vertical pillar of white-hot light erupted from the altar, incinerating the shadows and leaving only the glowing, heavy Chains of the Old King coiled on the stone.
The temple groaned, the structural integrity failing as the protection hexes inverted into a vortex of imploding energy.
‘Chains! Now!’ Idan shouted.
Sheba sheathed the lethal blade as Molan abandoned his defense against the wights and seized the incandescent links, the heat of them charring his gloves.
Idan scooped Sheba into his chest, and the brothers ignited their Sacran god-energy.
They launched themselves toward the crumbling roof, tearing through the obsidian ceiling as the sepulchral cathedral collapsed into the lava.
They leaped into the toxic sky in a desperate arc of flight.
Above them, Mirage held theMáashìiin a vertical hover, the rear deck yawning open like a hungry maw.
