Sade kept his eyes shut in complete silence as he focused. He couldn’t care less about the determined young mortal battling beasts and his member, Silva, in an attempt to reach him.

  The fragment lay buried deep beneath the water under his force bubble, rising steadily toward him. Once he fully deactivated its defenses, it would be bye-bye time.

  Tee’s eyes returned to their usual pale hue as she crouched atop the dead monster Lilith had mercilessly slaughtered before it could reach full form. She hesitated to move or even look away from the grotesque sight of Lilith’s head, which had replaced the upper half of the creature she’d sliced apart. There was no room for humor in that situation.

  Tee’s mind was split—half focused on keeping Lilith in her sights, waiting for her to attack, and the other half sharpening her hearing for the creatures forming around her. Miko was no longer there to knock them out. But where had Miko gone? For her sake, she had better not have ditched her, leaving her alone with Lilith.

  Miko, during her desperate sprint between Tee and Lilith, had been struck by Lilith’s sword. To her surprise, she wasn’t split in half. She leaned up from the ground, marveling at her waist—spotless, barely aching. She didn’t recall moving her swords to defend herself and was utterly dumbstruck. Maybe she’d moved so fast that she avoided the full strike, but the power of the blow had sent her flying.

  Unknown to her, she had unconsciously created an energy shield over her waist, which shattered the instant it absorbed the impact of Lilith’s attack.

  Miko then felt something poke hard into her body from beneath. Her heart sank as she realized she was being lifted by something rising under her. Large, slender fingers the length of her body emerged, encaging her in the center.

  In a split second, they bent sharply and darted toward her, aiming to impale her with long metallic nails. She tucked her feet in and leaped upward, barely escaping through the narrow space. The crown-shaped monster beneath her plummeted to the ground, its structure collapsing from the force of her escape.

  A tingling sensation raced over Tee’s head. She sprang off the monster’s corpse just as several blades Lilith had conjured came down where she’d been standing moments before. They pierced the remains of the creature with such force that thin fountains of purple blood burst in every direction.

  Tee was drenched by the rain of blood. For a moment, panic threatened to take over, until she realized it didn’t burn like lava. She wasn’t out of the game yet.

  Landing on solid ground again, she summoned her sword, slashing through the monsters that began to rise, before stopping to face what could only be described as the living embodiment of death—Lilith.

  With a single step, Lilith appeared right in front of her. A spike of dread pierced Tee’s heart as she realized Lilith’s full attention was on her and there was no one left to back her up. Lilith stood taller, balanced on floating slabs of metal. Tee didn’t have the fragment, and the plan to lure and overpower a member of the Harbingers with group coordination was shattered. Lilith, it seemed, had her own plan. A plan that didn’t require anyone else.

  Tee stepped back and to the side, stamping hard into the ground to summon more monsters between them. Lilith would have to cut through them first. The idea almost drew a smile to Tee’s stiff, stone-like face.

  Lilith’s sword lashed out in rapid arcs, cutting down the monsters like weeds. The fiery blade sent warm blood splashing across Tee’s body.

  When Tee had to raise her swords to shield her face from the nonstop spray of blood and shredded flesh, she realized she had made a terrible mistake.

  Lilith had already closed the distance. There was no space left for Tee’s monsters to form properly. The floating slabs beneath Lilith’s feet sliced through heads and torsos as they tried to rise. With nothing left between them, Lilith’s next strike came for Tee herself.

  Tee swung her swords to parry Lilith’s blows. The impact wasn’t strong enough to shatter her blades, only to knock them aside, forcing her backward. The long reach of Lilith’s flaming sword seared through monsters to either side, hurling them away, roasted and twitching.

  Lilith’s eyes were completely black with a single white dot at their center. She stared into Tee’s eyes—not her hands, not her weapons. She said nothing, unlike Legion, whose mouth never stopped moving. Lilith’s face was pale, emotionless, a mask that might as well have been hidden under a hood.

  Meanwhile, Zod discovered that the water grew deeper the closer he moved toward Sade—and that was exactly where the fragment was. He had to face the grim truth. He needed to retreat. The beasts within that depth were far beyond his capability to handle.

  His feet splashed violently through the knee-high water as he turned back from the danger zone. One of the water beasts lunged onto land after him, snapping its massive jaws shut with a sound like cracking stone. It bit into nothing but wet dirt kicked up from Zod’s escape.

  He had fled one hell only to run into another. The faster monsters ignored the bandaged one to chase him, even as that same creature chopped them down effortlessly with its two arms, keeping itself airborne.

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  It became clear the monsters were attacking whatever had formed them—meaning him. He became even farther away from reaching the evil sorcerer holding Saeda captive.

  With no path left but forward, he summoned two swords and prepared to face his doom. He couldn’t return to the deep waters. Pain had stepped through the door, and he was running to meet it.

  Every hair on his body stood on end. He roared as he charged headlong into the swarm of vicious beasts. Claws reaching for him were sliced clean off. Gaping jaws lunging for his legs were smashed aside with bone-breaking kicks.

  Soon, the only light left came from above—dim and flickering through the canopy of writhing creatures closing around him. He kept summoning swords, but each one was bitten and held fast between monstrous jaws.

  He had to endure everything. His ears bitten, hair yanked, countless sharp fangs piercing his clothes but failing to break his skin. All that agony, all that chaos, just to stay awake—to resist slipping into the deep sleep that would mean game over for him and destroy any hope of getting Saeda back.

  No. He would not waste another second with those abominations!

  He channeled every ounce of rage into a single, guttural yell. His arms stretched wide, and a massive burst of force erupted from him, blowing the creatures away in all directions. One of their twisted bodies went flying—straight toward the bandaged one.

  The bandaged one swung one of its spiked arms, slicing at the thing in its path.

  “Misssssssed,” it hissed, its voice high-pitched and crackling — the kind of sound that could blend perfectly with the screech of a chainsaw tearing through metal.

  Zod realized too late that he had only cleared the way for the bandaged one to reach him. Unlike the other monsters, its blood burned, and that kind of pain could send him straight into a deep sleep.

  The demon unhinged its lower jaw, slammed its spiked arms into the ground, and bolted toward him.

  Zod had had enough. A furious yell tore from his throat as he launched himself toward the creature charging at him. His fist met the demon’s face before his thumb could even press down to trigger his weapon. What happened next wasn’t his sword forming inside the bandaged one’s head as he expected—it was something far more astonishing.

  Raw Ultramana energy burst through him, forcing his thumb and fingers open as it shot from his palm. The two green eyes of the bandaged demon widened in shock as the blue blast ripped through its head and exploded out the other side. The beam didn’t stop there. It continued forward, tearing through the air toward the purple force shield surrounding Sade.

  The demon’s scream died as quickly as it began, but when Zod’s feet hit the ground, he realized it had deafened him.

  The blast from the mortal had been completely unexpected. The red vortex Riven created to intercept it missed its mark. Sade sensed the surge of energy speeding toward him. He remembered the time Lilith’s redirected blast had struck his shield, but that was different. That was compacted, raw Ether energy—Ultramana. Most of his strength was focused on deactivating the Sealed Bond, leaving him no choice. Whatever progress he’d made, he’d have to sacrifice it to survive.

  He poured his will into strengthening the force shield just in time before the Ultramana blast hit. The explosion was deafening and smoke billowed.

  The silence that followed made the rush of excitement in Zod’s head almost unbearable. His mouth hung open as he turned from his hand back to the bandaged corpse lying still.

  Black smoke rose from the bandaged remains, drifting through the air toward Legion. Before it could reach him, the smoke dissolved into nothing. Zod finally shut his mouth and gave a firm nod. The torn bandages lay limp on the ground, empty of any body to give them form. That was enough to satisfy him.

  Then, something stirred beneath his feet. He lost his balance and tumbled down what felt like a hard, ridged spine. Before he could push himself upright, a massive tail whipped around and lashed across his face with searing heat. For a brief instant, he saw his mother’s face and then darkness filled his left eye.

  Above, Legion stopped firing chains of metal down at Kie, whose annoyed expression had amused him just moments before. His grin vanished instantly, snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

  Kie, separated from Legion by a skeletal barrier, growled in frustration but decided to take advantage of the pause to cut down the monsters crowding him.

  Legion, meanwhile, felt the connection to his member, Silva, disappear completely. He turned his gaze to where her white bandages once floated in the air. She was gone. Just a little girl—and the Sentinels had done it.

  With a deep, soundless rage, Legion made the barrier between himself and the red-eyed mortal vanish. He raised both arms, spreading them wide. Black smoke seeped from every inch of darkness on his body, rising upward and solidifying into a dome of bone.

  From within the swirling darkness, hundreds of human skeletons emerged—torso-only, hand in hand, sealing the dome shut around him. Playtime was over. Legion would show that young mortal why he was called the master of all dark spirits.

  The smoke fully faded and Sade stood untouched, his robes immaculate. But his shield was gone. Disintegrated. The left corner of his mouth twitched. His eyes snapped open, the irises fully black.

  He immediately sensed it—the fragment that had been deep beneath the water was gone, teleporting to another lost location. Worse, the destruction that followed a reset was already underway. The water around him began to churn violently, spilling over his feet as he hovered above the surface. A massive whirlpool spiraled open beneath him.

  Something enormous was coming—something that would annihilate everything in that pocket dimension. But before that, Sade had a lesson to teach. No one interfered with his Seal breaking. And, he was aware of Silva’s demise.

  Sade’s gaze locked on the mortal who had destroyed her. His black eyes glowed as he studied Zod—the pathetic fool who’d dared to use Ultramana against them. Yes, he had trapped the wrong Sentinel, but he wasn’t going to trade. That mortal wanted his teammate back? Then Sade would grant his wish. He’d let them both spend eternity together.

  Zod, blind in his left eye, snapped to alertness. He spun, swords drawn, slicing through the monster lunging for him. As his feet hit the ground again, he barely had a moment to breathe before more beasts closed in. His chest burned from exhaustion, his hands ached from the punch that had unleashed that blast—and with each swing, his fleeting smile faded.

  He couldn’t recreate it.

  A shadow crept across the ground, wide and growing darker by the second. The monsters lunging at him suddenly froze, their bodies pulled down into swirling purple holes that opened beneath them.

  “What the—!” he blurted out, stepping back as the ground devoured his enemies.