Blood threaded across the Black Dragon's scales, darkening them from obsidian to a wet, bruised red.

Electric currents crawled from its mouth and eyes, a cracked blue at first, then shading toward a smoldering crimson that salted the air with the faint iron taste of blood.

"This is not enough." Sevrak lifted both hands.

The chamber answered with thin, ghostly cries that rose from the stone like steam. He spoke again, his voice coming like a rite. "Without destruction, there is no rebirth." The cries deepened into a single, ragged scream that swelled until it pushed through the palace walls and fled into the night.

Between the 2 mountains, where the palace hung like a bridge, the scream ran along the cliffs and spilled down their flanks. It slid through the sleeping streets at the foothills, crossed doors that had been bolted for the night, and seeped into Umbraen homes like a cold draft that could not be stopped.

"What is that sound?" A middle-aged Umbraen unlatched his window and leaned into the night, trying to see who could be screaming at such an hour.

Nevertheless, he never found the source, but the source found him.

"Ah… ahhh." His face tightened as if a hand closed around it.

He clutched his head with both hands and tried to cage the noise with his palms, yet the scream pressed through his weak fingers.

Blood welled from his ears and eyes. Beads first, then turned to threads. It slicked his sickly pale skin, then forced itself out through the pores as if commanded from within.

His ribs cracked, breath snagging in his throat until his body could no longer bear it. Then came the rupture—a wet, violent detonation that shredded skin and splintered bone. In an instant, the man ceased to exist, his remains painting the walls in a crimson bloom that dripped and pulsed like something still alive.

The blood did not lie still. It gathered and crawled, then streamed over the sill, down the outer wall, and onto the empty stone street.

There it joined other crimson streams spilling from nearby windows, merging into a single tide that crawled across the cobblestones. Each rivulet moved with eerie purpose, sliding over stone and pooling together before flowing onward—as if obeying a silent summons, drawn to something calling from deep within the mountains.

Everywhere in the kingdom, from kitchens and bedrooms to alleyways and workrooms, wherever the scream reached, Umbraen bodies began to leak from their weakest seams: noses, gums, and the corners of the eyes.

The trickle thickened until organs sagged, and one by one, each body ruptured under a pressure no one could see.

Within seconds of the scream crossing the first roofline, thousands had already fallen. More followed with each heartbeat.

Streets were drowned in red, as if after a cloudburst, yet the flood refused to obey gravity. It slid uphill along carved steps, climbed walls in braided veils, and veered around corners, all of it streaming toward a single destination.

Overhead, the palace between the 2 mountains loomed like a black tooth set in the night. Every road of blood bent toward it, and every gutter poured upward into its hanging courts.

Inside, the Black Dragon's scales burned a deeper red, the air was still salted with iron, and Sevrak's raised hands did not tremble. The scream kept feeding him, and the city answered, house by house, until the only thing left moving in the dark was blood.

The Black Dragon's scales had finally deepened to a glistening crimson, and its aura surged past Rank 4, climbing higher with each heartbeat until it slipped entirely beyond perception, as if it had crossed into another tier no mortal could sense.

But as that power grew, so did the destruction. The palace started to tremble violently; fractures webbed across the obsidian floor and crawled up the ancient walls like spreading veins of doom.

"All worth it," Sevrak murmured, unmoved by the ruin around him. He had known this would happen.

The palace was never truly a palace. It was a treasure—an ancient relic unearthed by his grandfather, the ruler before him, and later studied by his father.

That treasure possessed a divine property: it could elevate a Spark to the next level using the blood of others.

The price, however, was catastrophic. The relic demanded an impossible amount of blood, enough to drain an entire kingdom dry. That was why neither his father nor grandfather had ever dared to use it—they refused to sacrifice their own people.

And even so, its power came with another flaw. The Spark it enhanced would not fully transcend its current rank to Rank 5, and the relic itself would crumble after one use, reduced to dust and forever lost.

But for Sevrak, that was enough.

He had already lost his grandson and the face he once protected so fiercely. Losing his people meant nothing now, not if it granted him strength equal to what had been taken.

With this new power, he would rebuild both his honor and his kingdom from the ashes, for in a world like this, only power truly mattered.

—

"Something's wrong here."

Adyr hovered high above the Umbraen capital, his white and black wings spreading against the night as his crimson eyes swept across the city.

Below, lights still burned in windows, streets remained untouched, and every structure stood as if time itself had frozen. Yet the silence was deafening, heavy with the metallic scent of iron.

He knew this feeling and smell. His instincts told him the entire city was an abandoned crime scene, as if countless victims had fallen to a serial killer, yet his eyes found nothing.

He considered using his Gaze and Presence in tandem to scan the entire area, to uncover what hid beneath this unsettling quiet. But he held himself back. If he used them now, Sevrak and the Practitioners loyal to him would sense his aura instantly, destroying any chance of a surprise assault.

"What are we doing now?" Liora asked from beside him, gliding on her pale, misty cloud. Her expression mirrored his unease; she, too, had sensed something deeply wrong.

Adyr didn't answer immediately. He reached into the side pocket of his pants, pulled out a transmitter, and pressed the button. "Selina, do you hear me?" His voice broke through the static, rough and distorted.

After several seconds of garbled interference, a faint reply came through. "Yes, we've reached our positions. Any new orders?"

Adyr's eyes narrowed as he glanced down once more at the motionless city. "Abort the mission and pull back. We're retreating."

Static swallowed the line again. No response followed.

"Do you hear me?" Adyr repeated with a sharper voice. "Mission canceled. Return to the Velari Kingdom and await further orders."

He still got nothing… only the hollow hiss of interference, as if something unseen were deliberately smothering the signal.

"What's happening?" Liora's voice tightened beside him, her cloud shifting nervously under her feet.

"I don't know." Adyr slipped the transmitter back into his pocket, his calm mask giving way as his brows drew together.

Then he made his choice and let his Presence unfurl. A faint vibration rolled through the night, bending light and shadow until the streets were blanketed under his existence. "But we'll find out soon enough."

His Presence spread swiftly, crawling over rooftops and seeping through windows, draping the streets in an unseen grip.

Then he blended his Gaze into it. The entire image of the Umbraen kingdom poured into his mind, deepening the furrow of his brows.

"Looks like we have a problem," Adyr muttered as he examined the still-living vision playing before his eyes.

He could see nothing alive within the city—no souls, only mangled remains scattered across homes and streets.

The strange part was the absence of blood; despite the countless shredded bodies, not a single drop remained, as if a twisted mind had drained every ounce before tearing them apart.

Wanting to uncover what had happened, he extended his Presence toward the palace nestled between two mountains, confident it held the answers he sought.

But the moment his invisible aura touched the palace walls, a sharp pain tore through his head and eyes, forcing him to withdraw.

"Are you okay?" Liora asked, seeing him suddenly clutch his head as if struck by a sudden migraine.

After a few steady breaths, Adyr spoke. "There's something inside that palace."

Just before the link broke, his vision caught a glimpse of cracks forming on the palace walls, spreading fast as though the entire structure was about to collapse. Then his senses went dark, his mind struck by a searing wave of pain.

The conclusion was clear—whatever dwelled within that palace was powerful enough to block even his bloodline's sight.

"Do you want me to go and check?" Liora's voice carried a mix of concern and impatience. She had come here eager to test her new power, and smashing a palace sounded like a perfect warm-up.

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