The breath wasn't just heat. It was the universe unmaking itself, a silent roar of energy that pressed in, threatening to flatten the air in Vadim’s lungs. His vision blurred, blinded by the furnace brilliance swelling inside the apex leviathan's gullet. Dragos was gone, swallowed, the tether to his loyal protector severed. Vadim’s chest burned with an emptiness more profound than any phantom pain, a raw lesion where the link had been. He had zero shields. Zero. Then a thought, sharp as a shard of obsidian, pierced through the encroaching panic. The link cut both ways; the conduit transferred violence in either direction. Dragos was still connected, even if broken. Dragos was *inside* the beast. “Dragos!” Vadim screamed, a purely mental shout that clawed at the edges of his consciousness, overriding the apex leviathan's psychic static. “Unleash! Every last drop! From the inside!” [SUMMON: Dragos, Death Knight, processing command. Necrotic Burst initiated.] A low growl, like grinding tectonic plates, vibrated through the cavern. The beast's rib cage, distended to the scale of a bunker, heaved violently. The blinding white light in its throat flickered, turning an ugly, bruised yellow. A dark miasma, putrid and thick, started to seep from every scale and fissure on its body. The ancient terror shrieked, not a roar of dominance, but a sound of pure, unexpected agony. Then the phantom pain hit Vadim. It wasn't the searing burn of fire, or the crushing impact of stone. It was a thousand tiny, burning pinpricks, escalating to a million searing stings, then the sensation of his own organs dissolving. His blood felt like acid, his bones like crumbling chalk. He choked, a dry, rattling cough that tore at his throat. This wasn't Dragos taking a hit; this was Dragos *destroying* from within, and Vadim was feeling every agonizing, atom-splitting moment of it. His knees buckled. A thick, coppery taste filled his mouth. He was dying. He was actually dying. His vision tunneled to a pinprick of black, the world twisting into a kaleidoscope of green and grey. His life force, represented by a dwindling bar in his mind, flickered. One pixel. Two pixels. Just barely holding on. “Vadim!” Borys’s voice, for once devoid of any humor, was a distant echo. “What’s happening? You look like rotten stew!” Zoya hauled herself up against a shard of rubble, watching black rot spiderweb across the scales, stripping hide down to green muscle. She could see Vadim, convulsing on the ground, his face grey, a thin stream of blood escaping the corner of his mouth. The colossal serpent thrashed, slamming its bulk against the cavern walls and shuddering the bedrock. Dust and rubble rained down. Its roars grew weaker, strangled, replaced by wet, gurgling sounds. The putrid miasma intensified, turning the air thick and unbreathable. Its massive head drooped, its eyes, once burning with primeval rage, glazing over with a milky film. With a final, concussive shudder, the rift titan collapsed. Its immense body crashed down, shaking the entire chamber, then lay still. The oppressive aura of raw power vanished, replaced by the stench of decay. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the trickle of falling debris. Vadim lay gasping, his body wracked with tremors, his mind a wasteland of pain. He dragged himself onto an elbow, his muscles screaming. His health gauge lingered at a razor-thin sliver. Yet the horror lay motionless. [BOSS SOUL DETECTED: Rift Dragon, Ancient Terror. Absorb?] “Yes,” Vadim croaked, the word a raw rasp. A torrent of raw power, hot and invigorating, surged through him. The phantom pain receded, replaced by a dull ache, then an incredible rush of vitality. His health bar snapped back to full. The colossal soul, primal and unyielding, settled within his core like a star of black glass. “Borys, Zoya,” Vadim said, his voice still hoarse but gaining strength, “Stand clear.” He raised a hand, clenching it into a fist. The Core Rift pulsed behind the fallen behemoth, ignored. He was looking at the mountain of dead flesh. Tendrils of dark light, imbued with Mirela’s necrotic essence, erupted from his palm, snaking across the ruined carcass. Its blackened scales began to knit, corrupted bones shifting and reforming with disturbing speed. The flesh dissolved, leaving behind a colossal, skeletal frame, empowered by a dark, glowing energy. The reanimated leviathan, now a frame of calcified ivory and shadow, hauled itself upright with a guttural roar. Its eyes, hollow sockets, burned with a cold, blue necromantic fire. It was twice as terrifying, twice as large, its wings of sheer skeletal membrane unfurling to scrape the cavern ceiling. It was his. [SUMMON: Rift Dragon, Terror Mount, resurrected. Damage Redirect: 100%] "No… no way," Borys whispered, clutching his crooked tin-foil liner. “He just… he just raised it.” Zoya froze, pale and motionless. The monster that had almost killed them all, now a loyal guard. The sheer power on display was incomprehensible. Meanwhile, miles above them, in the command center of the Hunter Guild’s Novagrad Forward Operating Base, Guildmaster Kaelan Rostova watched the readouts. His mouth set in a thin, merciless line. Protocol Omega was too slow. Zoya had failed. He wouldn’t risk the Gravewalker escaping. He manually punched in the launch codes. “Target confirmed: Novagrad Spire Core. Launch in three, two, one…” A pillar of fire ripped into the pre-dawn sky from a hidden silo in the outskirts of the quarantined zone. The missile, a screaming spear of white-hot vengeance, arced towards the Ruined Spire of Novagrad, a tiny, glowing speck against the bruised pre-dawn sky. Its target was not just the Gravewalker, but everyone in the blast radius, Zoya included. [Undead Army Limit Reached: 100,000. Apotheosis Unlocked.]