Prologue – Volume II: Sands of Blood and Shadows
The desert wind roared like a choir of damned souls, but the sound was eclipsed by the thunder of the collision.
In free fall from the bow of the Void Herald, Samael Morningstar brought down the Odachi of the Ravenous Eclipse with all the brute force of his newly forged Void Dragon Physique. The Shattered Moon Slash, a massive blade of crimson and black energy, struck directly against the skeletal palm of the Bone Path-Devourer rising to crush his ship.
BOOOOOOM!
The shockwave swept across the dunes below, kicking up a tsunami of white bone dust. The Heaven Grade energy of the Odachi bit into the petrified bone of the Grade 3 Superior Beast, opening a smoking, five-meter-long fissure in the massive claw.
A deafening shriek, akin to the grinding of tectonic plates, erupted from the depths of the sand. The beast's massive, spectral blue eye, the size of a carriage and surrounded by ancient runes, locked onto the tiny figure falling toward it. Millennia of slumber had taught it that humans were easy prey, but the golden blood pulsing in Samael's veins awakened the creature's memory of old primordial predators.
Samael landed heavily on one of the beast's massive bone phalanges. His bare feet cracked the fossilized surface. He didn't waste a single second. With the Odachi vibrating in his hands, thirsty for the dark energy animating the abomination, Samael began to sprint along the massive skeletal arm toward the swirling sand that hid the monster's core.
"Covering fire! Do not let the beast rise!" roared Grand Elder Lilith from the deck of the ship, still trembling in the air.
With her only hand, Lilith traced an arc of fire, and a pillar of ash flames descended from the sky, striking the creature's joints. Beside her, Kael leaned over the rail, his golden eyes shining as he channeled the Wind Essence.
"Gale Slash!" Kael unleashed gusts of compressed air that whistled like blades, crashing against the tendrils of solid sand the beast was trying to launch at the ship's masts.
Inside the cabin, Seraphina fought the ironwood helm. The ship creaked dangerously from the immense spiritual turbulence generated by the Path-Devourer. Near her, Violeta dragged herself across the shaking deck, ignoring the fever of her Taboo Red Destiny, until she intertwined her fingers with Eris's.
"Don't let go, sister," Violeta whispered, gritting her teeth. "We won't let him fight alone."
Below, in the chaos of the sand, the Path-Devourer writhed. The beast, endowed with tactical intelligence, understood that destroying the ship would cost it too much as long as that lethal, white-haired, violet-eyed plague was running across its body. The monster violently thrashed its buried arm, raising a wall of black sand and sharp bones to impale Samael.
Samael did not dodge. He invoked the Evolved Shadow Step, becoming intangible for half a second, passing through the solid barrier as if it were smoke. Upon reappearing, he plunged the Odachi deep into the monster's main joint, injecting a concentrated burst of pure void.
The void did not cut; it simply erased a cubic meter of the joint's bone.
The beast let out another agonizing shriek. Its colossal structure destabilized. Evaluating that the prey was too dangerous and that the wound inflicted by a Heaven Grade weapon would not heal easily, the massive blue eye blinked with hatred. With a seismic movement, the Path-Devourer withdrew its shattered claw, violently submerging itself into the ocean of dunes, kicking up a storm of white and red dust that concealed its escape into the desert depths.
Samael landed gracefully on the sand, enveloped in the dust storm. Through his Spiritual Sense, he felt the monstrous presence of the Grade 3 beast rapidly moving away toward the south, fleeing, at least for now.
They had survived the threshold of hell.
While the Void Herald stabilized its altitude over the smoking southern dunes, thousands of kilometers away, on the opposite end of the continent, the glacial North knew nothing of the desert's scorching heat.
The massive Throne Room of the Valois Ancestral Hall was plunged into a bone-chilling cold, dimly lit by macabre torches fueled by the fat of heretic cultivators. The Patriarch of the Valois Family stood before a heavy obsidian table, contemplating a gigantic map of the continent. His fingers, gloved in black leather, tremblingly traced the route south.
Beside him, seated on a lesser throne but radiating a crushing authority, sat the Hidden Ancestor. The "Great Uncle."
The old man with translucent skin and completely silver eyes remained in a sepulchral silence. He didn't need to move; the mere presence of his cultivation base at the peak of the Saint Realm and his brush with the Law of Blood Frost caused the room's temperature to drop below freezing. Blood threatened to crystallize in the veins of anyone who wasn't strong enough.
"The Morningstar clan survives..." muttered the Valois Patriarch, unable to hide a toxic mix of fear, wrath, and a dark fascination. "Silas and fifty of our best men were erased."
"They survive... for the moment," corrected the Hidden Ancestor. His voice sounded like cracking ice, tearing through the stillness of the room. "They have fled toward the Dragon Bone Desert. They think they have found a refuge, but they have entered a prison without walls."
The silver-eyed Ancestor looked up at the map.
"Nine out of ten sects that venture into that sea of bones die devoured or driven mad by the echoes of the past. But..." the old man narrowed his eyes, a murderous glint shining in them, "if by some dark miracle that pup of Samael and the twins manage to escape from there alive and stronger, the entire Sovereign Concord of the North will tremble to its foundations."
The Patriarch nodded stiffly. Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, freezing before it touched his collar.
"Activate the Blood Hunters," ordered the Ancestor, rising slowly, his aura distorting the torchlight and filling the air with red frost. "No one who bears the Eye of the Dragon must leave that desert."
Back in the white hell, Samael flexed his knees and, with a burst of energy, leapt back onto the deck of the Void Herald.
He landed with a heavy thud, shaking the sand from his shoulders. The disciples surrounded him, looking at him with a mixture of terror and adoration. The beast was gone, but the air remained suffocating.
Samael pushed his way to the bow, gripping the Odachi in his right hand. His violet eyes reflected the hostile immensity opening up before them.
"We didn't cross half the continent massacring families and generals just to die devoured at the entrance of a damn sandbox," Samael said. His voice, polyphonic and charged with an iron will, cut through the howling wind so the entire clan could hear him. "If the desert wants blood... we will give it the blood of our enemies. Prepare the ship. We are descending into the ruins."
On the horizon, a storm of red and black sand rose like an impenetrable wall into the sky, hiding millennial secrets, primordial horrors, and, perhaps, the only key to the ultimate redemption of his bloodline.
Volume II Begins: —Sands of Blood and Shadows—