The Grand Elder’s words rasped against the obsidian walls. Beside Yuthra, Roshkar went rigid, a twitch running through the cord bound between them. Kevi hung suspended over the violet vortex, small boots kicking empty air as soot gathered beneath his fingernails.
“Release him,” Yuthra said, stepping forward until the cord snapped straight, dragging Roshkar half a pace with her. Her gaze locked onto the claw buried in the boy's collar.
The Grand Elder’s bloodless lips pulled back. “Impudent child. The countdown ticks toward zero. When the dark tide washes clean, the vessel belongs to me.” His fingers tightened around Kevi’s arm, black veins swelling under the boy’s skin as the core below greedily drank his life.
A whistling shriek cracked the chamber’s threshold before she could calculate an approach. Sanjea vaulted into the vault, a luminous polearm blazing in both hands while the constellation mapped across her forearms pulsed with pale silver fire.
“You butchered my village, old fiend!” Sanjea shouted, the sound cracking the glassy slag beneath her boots.
The Elder barely glanced her way. “Insects.” With a flick of his wrist, three ironclad sentinels stepped from the rock clefts, blades sizzling with solar rot.
Sanjea drove her palm forward with a harsh shout. Silver radiance sheared through the lead guard's solar-plated breastplate, dissolving the metal into slag before stripping the spiritual pathways from his chest until he crashed face-first onto the obsidian.
The second guard swung, but her spear pivoted in a whistling arc that caved in his skull and shattered his meridians. The third raised a warding barrier, but her astral beam punched straight through the glyphs, boring a charred void through his breastplate.
The Elder’s jaw tightened. “Insolent stray.” He raised his free palm, gathering pitch-black threads between his knuckles.
A splintering howl tore through the chamber—not from the guards, but from Roshkar’s throat, raw and hollow. His irises drowned in pool-black tar as his glare bored into Kevi.
“My… rival’s… child!” The words were ripped from him, distorted and guttural. The black lines across his skin, a constant presence since his poisoning, now exploded into a network of throbbing, coiling tendrils that snaked across his face, his neck, his hands. His muscles bulged, tearing through the fine silk of his cultivation robes. His frame elongated, bone grinding against bone with sickening pops, growing taller, broader, his form contorting into something monstrous and powerful. Jagged obsidian spikes erupted from his shoulders and elbows, and his nails sharpened into wicked, elongated talons that scraped against the volcanic floor. The Abyssal Weave, once an external force he commanded, now coursed through his very being, transforming him into a living embodiment of the Abyss itself.
The backlash along the cord hit Yuthra like a battering ram, nearly wrenching her shoulder from its socket. The text of the lore scrolled behind her eyes—this was the calamity mode the novel had chronicled, triggered by an obsession that had warped into wild instinct.
With a roar that shook soot from the cavern roof, Roshkar sprang. His claws carved a trench through the basalt floor, tearing away a three-foot slab of obsidian that slammed down inches from Sanjea’s boots as he lunged straight for the Elder.
Sanjea took one look at Roshkar's mutated silhouette, clamped her jaw, and swung her spear into a guard stance between the melee and Yuthra.
The Elder dodged the rake of talons, dragging Kevi back toward the rim of the void. He could not complete the harvest while a rabid beast tore the cavern apart around his ears.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling, showering them in glass gravel. Below, the pit began to boil into frantic, foaming purple waves as Roshkar’s wild presence threw the subterranean ley lines into chaos.
Yuthra braced her feet against the shuddering floor, channeling her mental impulse hard along the cord: *Kevi. Take Kevi.* A low snarl answered her in her skull as Roshkar pivoted, pinning the Elder in his sights.
The pool below swelled upward like an infected blister. The Elder looked from the wild monstrosity bearing down on him to the taut band uniting the creature to Yuthra’s wrist.
“Nimra!” the Elder barked over the roaring pit. He hurled Kevi toward Sanjea, who scooped the boy into a ward of silver light. In his freed hand, the Elder summoned a golden knife of solar fire, extending the hilt toward Yuthra. “Cut the link! Kill the brute before he ruptures the pit and swallows us whole!”