The crushed lump of gold hit the marble floor. It rolled to a stop at King Carlos’s feet.

Lucifer stood over the broken monarch. The King of the human realm wept silently with his face buried in his trembling hands. The Royal Protectors lay paralyzed across the throne room, completely neutralized by the Sovereign’s Eclipse aura.

Lucifer had secured absolute victory on the ground.

Then, his system interface exploded!

It was not a calm blue notification. A massive jagged blood-red alert completely covered Lucifer’s vision! A deafening piercing siren blared directly into his mind and bypassed his physical ears.

[CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT: Spatial Breach Detected!]

[Location: Zephyria - Deep Vault Level 1.]

[Target Proximity: Void-Core Reactor.]

[Warning: Sanguine Grid Integrity Compromised.]

Lucifer’s void-swirling eyes narrowed sharply.

He did not look at the weeping King. He tapped his comms rune instantly.

"Vexia!" Lucifer barked. His voice was a low dangerous rumble.

Static hissed through the connection. The Sanguine Princess did not answer.

"Elara. Sarah," Lucifer commanded and switched channels. "We have a breach in the engine room. Someone bypassed the outer Cryo-Pylons and the blood wards."

High above, standing on the golden observation deck of the Spire, Sarah gasped. "I see it, Lucifer! A massive spike of dark magic just bypassed the atmospheric leylines. It didn’t fly in. It tore a hole from the inside. A Shadow-Step ritual."

"I am moving," Elara’s voice crackled through the rune. "I am diving for the Aether-Forge."

"Hold," Lucifer ordered.

He activated Void Step. He attempted to teleport directly into the reactor room.

The spell failed!

A sharp painful feedback loop slammed into Lucifer’s chest. The Warlord staggered slightly. His boots ground against the marble floor of the King’s throne room.

[System Error: Teleportation Denied.]

[Reason: Hostile Anti-Spatial Ward Active in Target Area.]

Lucifer gritted his teeth.

The infiltrators had not just bypassed the defenses. They had deployed a jamming field around the Void-Core Reactor! Lucifer was standing thousands of feet below Zephyria on the mortal plane.

Without a clear spatial tether, he could not instantly warp through his own heavily fortified Sanguine-warded bedrock.

He was too far away!

"They jammed the spatial coordinates," Lucifer stated coldly. "I am locked out. I have to fly back up to the city."

"The reactor is completely exposed!" Sarah cried out.

"Vexia is in the grid," Lucifer said with his eyes burning with absolute terrifying focus. He turned and sprinted out of the Royal Throne Room, leaving the broken King behind. "The defense of the core falls to the Vanguard. Do not let them touch the engine."

***

Ten thousand feet above the burning capital.

Deep inside the dark cavernous belly of Zephyria.

The Aether-Forge was silent. King Thrain had taken his dwarven workers to the upper armories to celebrate the forging of the Titans.

The massive blast furnaces were banked. The only light came from the colossal ten-foot sphere of the Void-Core Reactor pulsing steadily in the center of the room.

The shadows in the corner of the forge violently twisted.

A pool of pitch-black liquid magic boiled on the stone floor. The smell of burning sulfur and rotting meat filled the air.

Two figures stepped out of the shadow pool.

High Warlock Xoroth leaned heavily on his twisted petrified staff. His luxurious midnight blue robes were scorched and smoking.

Half of his gauntlet face was completely burned away, exposing the skull beneath.

Isolde had eaten him on the Shattered Plains. But the Dragon Queen had eaten a flawless blood-magic homunculus.

The real Xoroth had been hiding and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

He had used the deaths of the three hundred million Coalition soldiers to fuel a forbidden Mythic-tier Shadow-Step ritual!

Beside the Warlock stood a towering horrifying monstrosity.

It was Lord Vorian of Iron-Heart!

The Warlord had executed him. Lucifer’s True Damage blade had severed his head. But the Abyss did not surrender its champions so easily.

Vorian was no longer human. He was a Revenant! His severed head was reattached to his neck with thick glowing green stitches of pure necrotic magic.

His skin was pale and rotting. He wore his heavy iron-gray plate armor, but his eyes burned with mindless absolute purple Abyssal fire.

Xoroth had salvaged the Lord’s corpse from the battlefield. He had pumped Vorian full of Void magic and turned the disgraced noble into an undead siege weapon driven by singular unadulterated hatred.

[System: Hostile Entities Deployed.]

[Name: High Warlock Xoroth (Level 50 - Dark Magus)]

[Name: Revenant Lord Vorian (Level 55 - Abyssal Knight)]

Xoroth coughed and spit a wad of black blood onto the pristine floor of the forge.

"The ritual held," Xoroth rasped with his voice a wet scraping wheeze. He looked up at the massive pulsing blue and purple sphere of the Void-Core Reactor. "We bypassed his absolute zero ring. We bypassed his dragons."

Vorian did not speak. The Revenant Lord simply drew his massive rusted broadsword. He glared at the engine with his undead muscles twitching with violent anticipation.

"The Warlord thinks he won," Xoroth sneered. The Warlock pulled a heavy jagged black crystal from his robes. It was an Abyssal Charge.

"He dropped his entire army on the capital. He left his heart completely undefended."

Xoroth limped toward the raised dais holding the Void-Core Reactor.

"We place the charge directly on the primary conduit," Xoroth instructed the undead noble. "When it detonates, it will shatter the spatial anchor keeping this mountain in the sky."

Vorian dragged his heavy broadsword across the floor and left a deep scratch in the stone.

"The city falls," Xoroth continued with a manic desperate smile stretching across his half-burned face. "Millions of tons of rock and steel will drop directly onto the Sanctum of Solaris. Lucifer, the King, the Saintess... they will all be crushed flat. We burn the board."

Xoroth reached the base of the dais. He raised the jagged black explosive.

"Hold him back, Vorian," Xoroth commanded. "I need thirty seconds to prime the detonator."

Vorian stepped in front of the Warlock. The Abyssal Knight raised his rusted shield and formed a heavy undead barricade between Xoroth and the entrance to the forge.

The plan was flawless. The execution was silent.

But they had made a critical miscalculation.

They thought the Void-Core Reactor was unguarded. They did not understand how Zephyria’s magical infrastructure worked!

A single drop of red liquid fell from the high dark ceiling of the cavern.

It landed directly on the center of Xoroth’s bald burned head!

Hiss!

The drop of liquid was not water. It was highly concentrated boiling blood!

Xoroth shrieked and dropped the Abyssal Charge. The blood burned through his scalp like pure acid and ate into his skull! He fell to his knees and clawed at his head.

"What is that?!" Xoroth screamed.

"You tracked mud on my grid," a cold aristocratic voice echoed from the shadows above.

Vorian raised his broadsword and his purple eyes scanned the ceiling.

Vexia dropped from the rafters!

The Sanguine Princess landed gracefully on the metal catwalk overlooking the reactor. Her massive translucent red bat wings folded tightly against her back. Her crimson silk dress fluttered in the ambient magical currents of the engine room.

[System: Defending Entity Engaged.]

[Name: Princess Vexia (Level 65 - Epic Blood Sorceress)]

"A vampire?" Xoroth gasped and scrambled backward away from the dais. He looked at her glowing red eyes and elongated fangs. "The Warlord allied with the Sanguine Court? Impossible!"

"I am the Architect of this city," Vexia corrected him smoothly. She walked to the edge of the catwalk and looked down at the scarred Warlock and the rotting stitched-together noble.

She raised her pale hand.

The deep pulsing crimson network of magical veins she had woven into the bedrock of Zephyria suddenly flared to life! The walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the Aether-Forge glowed with blinding red light.

"You didn’t bypass the defenses, Warlock," Vexia sneered with her fangs fully bared. "You teleported directly into my web."

Vorian roared. The Revenant Lord did not care about the blood magic. He bent his massive armored knees and launched himself into the air!

He cleared the thirty-foot vertical distance in a single leap! He brought his rusted broadsword down in a brutal two-handed overhead strike aimed directly at Vexia’s skull.

Vexia did not flinch. She did not draw a weapon.

"Blood Tether," Vexia commanded softly.

Four thick solid spikes of hardened crystallized blood erupted from the metal catwalk! They moved with supersonic speed.

The blood spikes slammed into Vorian mid-air! They pierced his heavy iron-gray armor effortlessly. Two spikes drove straight through his shoulders, and two more blew through his thighs.

The Revenant Lord’s forward momentum was instantly and violently arrested!

Vorian hung suspended in the air over the catwalk. He was completely immobilized by the hardened blood. He thrashed and roared. His undead muscles tore against the spikes but the Sanguine magic held him in a perfect unbreakable grip.

Vexia casually stepped around the suspended thrashing zombie.

She looked down at Xoroth.

The High Warlock realized he had made a fatal error! He was Level 50. The vampire hovering above him was a Level 65 Epic Boss. The power gap was insurmountable.

"I am going to bleed you dry," Vexia promised. Her red eyes burned with manic delight.

Xoroth scrambled to his feet. He grabbed his twisted staff and pointed the glowing amber crystal directly at the Void-Core Reactor.

"I don’t need to fight you, leech!" Xoroth shrieked.

He began chanting frantically and funneled all his remaining dark mana into a massive volatile fireball aimed directly at the delicate runic shielding of the Mythic engine! He intended to manually trigger the reactor’s meltdown.

Before the spell could leave his staff, a streak of violet fire crashed through the heavy iron doors of the forge!

Elara had arrived.

The Eclipse Valkyrie did not land. She threw her spear like a javelin.

The celestial weapon crossed the massive cavern in a microsecond! It struck High Warlock Xoroth directly in the chest and pinned him forcefully to the stone wall behind the dais.

The violet twilight fire detonated! Xoroth screamed as the holy and void magic simultaneously burned and crushed his mortal shell.

"The reactor is secure," Elara announced and stepped fully into the forge.

Vexia looked down at the Valkyrie. The Sanguine Princess smirked and crossed her arms.

"I had it under control, bird," Vexia huffed defensively.

"I know," Elara replied smoothly. The Valkyrie looked at the thrashing impaled undead Lord Vorian suspended in the air. "But the Warlord is flying up from the capital. He is going to want to personally deal with the rats."