Chapter 1238: {Now... Come to Me}

Something appeared behind her immediately afterward and the next an arm seemed to encircle her from within the darkness itself.

The hold carried no violence.

It needed none; the intimacy of that presence subdued her more completely than physical force ever could, and even the female Demon’s soul became motionless when that beautiful voice whispered beside her ear.

{Tiamat Slave Mark.}

A finger touched her forehead and a mark appeared for barely an instant before sinking beneath her flesh chains threaded through the demon’s soul before settling somewhere foundational, far below the depths Danton’s chains had ever reached and snapped the stupid weak chains that had imprisoned her.

The female Demon lost consciousness and vanished from the Void.

The white eyes moved towards another target.

The Dragonkin was already shaking when he saw the eyes.

His terror had begun long before the gaze fully settled upon him from the moment Phei’s Cosmic Dragon blood first pressed his own, something ancestral inside the World Transcendent had recognised a hierarchy that made no sense beside their cultivation and had known Phei’s existence all along but had said nothing!

While the young Mortal had been pitifully weak compared with him, his blood had recoiled anyway.

Whatever now occupied the all-consuming Void seized that ancient discomfort and deepened it into terror so atavistic that the Dragonkin began bleeding before anything touched him.

{Fear me, little dragon: Cosmic Dragon Face!}

The white eyes changed, and something older looked through them.

The Dragonkin screamed... blood burst from his nose, ears and mouth before gathering at the corners of his eyes. His inaccessible cultivation offered no shelter while his lineage reacted as though a primordial Dragon had descended into the foundations of his existence and commanded every inferior ancestor within him to remember its place.

His knees weakened, his soul contracted, and instinct buried intelligence beneath contradictory demands to kneel, flee or tear the Dragon blood from his own body before those eyes recognised him any further.

The Dragonkin’s soul ripped itself free in blind panic and fear and attempted to escape faster than thought.

Something caught it effortlessly.

The escaping soul was forced back into his body before a finger touched his forehead.

{Cosmic Dragon Slave Mark.}

The words alone seemed sufficient.

There was no mighty contest between a World Transcendent soul and the mysterious master of the Void. The Dragonkin had already been stripped of every layer from which meaningful resistance could emerge. His soul lay exposed beneath eyes capable of reading every secret it contained, and the mark sank into that naked existence with the permanence of chains forged directly into destiny and tore the chains already there:

Before the same binds and chains that already carried by Jonathan and Kyle engraved itself upon him.

Childhood, cultivation, victories and humiliations memories opened beneath the mark. His hatred of Danton, secret ambitions, fears, every person he had killed and each thought he had believed safely buried became accessible, his entire life spread open like a book with nowhere left to hide its ugliest pages.

Then the Void released him.

The Dragonkin disappeared from Anactica and landed upon soft carpet inside an immense, luxurious space where warm light immediately struck his eyes.

His senses returned with his cultivation and bloodline abilities, all of them rushing back so violently that he remained motionless for several breaths, almost stupefied by the sensation of possessing himself again.

No physical chain restrained his throat, wrists or soul, and for the first time in what felt like another lifetime, his enormous World Transcendent cultivation circulated without suppression.

Only after the first shock receded did he feel the mark buried far deeper than the old chains had ever reached. Its power was infinitely more absolute, yet his Dragon blood answered with uncanny familiarity instead of revulsion, as though the power that had enslaved him also carried something his lineage recognized as kin and his superior he was supposed to only serve.

A faint sound nearby made him turn.

The female Demon lay several metres away, equally free of the physical restraints that had accompanied them into Anactica. She eventually opened her eyes, examined her body and touched her forehead before searching inward and finding the mark attached to her soul.

For a while, they stared at one another in silence.

Two World Transcendents had escaped a darkness where ancient beings were dying one after another faster than insects under a boot, and the female Demon finally spoke the thought neither could quite trust.

"We survived."

Considering what remained behind them, the Dragonkin could only agree.

***

Within the Void, sight returned to the Gorgon.

His molten-gold eyes brightened immediately and an ancient instinct overcame wisdom as petrifying power surged towards the white gaze before him trying to petrify the Void itself.

Nothing happened.

The Gorgon tried again, concentrating enough power into his eyes to petrify mountains under ordinary circumstances. The fathomless darkness did not tremble, and those impossible white eyes continued watching him with growing amusement.

A laugh rolled through the emptiness:

{You wanted me dead, Gorgon, didn’t ya? You’re cute too trying to kill me again, huh?}

The Gorgon’s confidence faltered as the eyes drew nearer.

{Fine, I’ll let you in on a secret since you’re going to die anyway. I hold the most powerful eyes in existence. Too bad the current me can’t really use them yet, but hey... pathetic:}

The warmth vanished from the voice so abruptly that the Gorgon’s soul chilled.

{That doesn’t mean some insect gets to borrow a pitiful little ability descended from something beneath mine, point it at my eyes and expect me to become a fucking statue!}

Whatever pride had convinced the Gorgon that his gaze might accomplish something finally collapsed. His serpents could no longer be felt. His cultivation remained inaccessible, and the molten eyes that had turned Anactica’s glaciers to stone now seemed painfully small beneath the white gaze studying him.

The voice remained cold as it searched for whatever desire might be buried inside such a stony heart and gravel-filled soul.

The Gorgon died shortly afterward with one final, remarkably sensible regret.

He really should have developed a few more brain cells before attempting to petrify the Void itself.

Another presence vanished.

The surviving Chained felt the loss, and the pattern had become impossible to ignore. The Ancient Naga was gone, Cassian had followed, one male had disappeared, and now the Gorgon was dead. Valerius and Bromgar, the Half Behemoth-Dwarf, had been taken before the Void ever swallowed Anactica.

An escort carrying enough World Transcendents to make nations irrelevant was being dismantled by something that barely needed to move.

The white eyes found the Blood Elf.

Sight returned around her gradually, although the battlefield did not return with it. The Blood Elf stood alone within the limitless dark, unable to feel the four skeletal wings that had stained Anactica crimson or the mighty authority that had fought against her restraints moments earlier.

Unlike the others, she did not recoil immediately.

Her crimson eyes narrowed... pride survived even here as she waited to discover whether death had finally chosen her.

The voice changed when it addressed her.

{Oh, now you...}

Amusement remained, but the murderous contempt that had greeted the Naga, Cassian and Gorgon softened into genuine interest.

The white eyes passed through her soul and entered the ancient Blood Elf bloodline resting within it. They examined the roads her cultivation had travelled, the portions of that race’s bloodline crippled by captivity and the greater potential her chains had prevented from blooming.

The Blood Elf felt herself being understood with terrifying completeness.

For the first time, the violation carried no immediate promise of death.

{Look at you. Do you even know how much you’ve been wasting? How much you could become if someone finally stopped putting chains around your throat and calling suppression cultivation?}

Something stirred inside her.

Her bloodline answered weakly at first, then with enough vehemence that the Blood Elf’s crimson eyes widened.

Another pulse came from somewhere within the Void.

Primordial Blood.

It carried the same impossible Dragon authority that had challenged her bloodline earlier in Anactica, yet the sensation was far closer now and incomparably deeper. Her own blood answered before pride could forbid it.

The voice softened.

{Come to me. Reach what those pathetic chains never allowed you to touch and become what your blood has been trying to become all these years. Become a bane to my enemies, and I’ll give you something no one ever could.}

The Void shifted and permitted another surviving Chained to see.

The Vampire Lady appeared nearby, her pale features composed despite everything she had heard happening around her. Crimson eyes moved first towards the Blood Elf and then towards the white gaze, while the strange pressure inside the Void passed through her soul with the same effortless intimacy.

The eyes studied them together.

Two ancient bloodlines. Two women who had entered Anactica in chains. Two World Transcendents whose cultivation had carried them to astonishing heights, yet whose races still possessed roads beyond anything captivity had allowed them to reach.

Primordial Blood called to the Blood Elf again.

The Vampire Lady felt something similar, although the response within her lineage carried a different and far more sanguine hunger. The white eyes noticed both.

{My Blood would make you what you’re meant to be!}

The Blood Elf’s unseen wings trembled somewhere beyond the separation of the Void. The Vampire Lady’s crimson eyes narrowed as the promise sank into her blood and refused to be dismissed.

Fathomless darkness surrounded them like a throne room without walls, its only light still pouring from those impossible white eyes. When the voice spoke again, all anger had vanished, leaving an invitation delivered with enough certainty to feel perilously close to a command.

{Now... come to me.}