NOVEL NEXT Chapter 220: Disappeared
Time dilated.
The swamp around him, a festering sprawl of blackwater and mangroves, rippled, then changed.
The air thickened with phantoms.
He saw them now: faint afterimages flickering at the edges of reality.
A Narathi foot soldier collapsing with an arrow through his eye, his death-cry trapped in the mud. A water hag dragging a drowned child into the depths, both their faces twisted in mirrored despair. Centuries of deaths, layered like sediment, each a fossilized tremor of fear or rage.
Damien turned to Hei Tian, the Iron General who'd watched this experiment with arms crossed and eyes unreadable.
The man's aura now burned in Damien's heightened sight.
A column of molten gold fraying at the edges, threads of mortality unraveling with every heartbeat. He could see the general's death, not as prophecy but as a tapestry of possible ends: a sword thrust here, a poisoned cup there, a fall from a horse in ten years or twenty.
Power settled into him, cold and inevitable.
His body adjusted with eerie fluidity. Lungs drew breath in slow, tidal rhythms. Blood moved like mercury, each cell steeped in necrotic potential.
Even the swamp's stench, a miasma of mildew and rotting fish, sharpened into a symphony of data: fungal spores in their trillions, nematodes wriggling through decay, the metallic tang of hemoglobin from some recent kill.
Hei Tian stepped closer, boots sinking into peat. "How do you feel? Can you control the legions in this swamp?"
Damien closed his eyes. Reached.
A dozen soul-flickers responded, flaring like votive candles in his mind's eye. He chose one at random, a wolf's snarl, teeth bared mid-leap—and let it rise.
The air before him warped.
For an instant, the beast materialized: translucent, snarling, hackles raised in eternal defiance. Then it struck an oak trunk ten paces away, phantom fangs stripping bark in a spray of splinters.
The general grunted. "A skill? Just that?"
"Patience old man." Blackie chuckled.
She knew Damien was merely trying out some things.
They stood in the failing light as Damien tested his limits.
He learned that soul-flickers he unleashed faded quickly, only a few seconds of potency at best.
But their strength was astounding. By his estimation, even the weakest soul-flicker could destroy a powerful S rank beast. It was afterall, the manifestation of the peak strength of the dead being's power.
He learned that the echoes retained slivers of their source's consciousness: a spearman's prayer to a forgotten god, a thief's desperate lie. Most crucially, he learned that his body was now a bridge.
Every death feeds the Core, he realized. Every end, a beginning.
When Hei Tian finally gestured for them to leave, Damien lingered.
The swamp's whispers followed him, promises in dialects older than man. He wondered, with a chill that had nothing to do with the coming night, what would happen when he next stood before a true battlefield. How many echoes he might harvest.
How loud they could scream.
They traveled quietly for a few hours, each lost in their own thought.
But the silence did not last for long.
A strange keen suddenly filled the air, the kind of vibration that made birds fall silent and even insects hesitate mid-flight.
Damien's gaze snapped upward, calm but alert.
Above the tree canopy, the clouds parted like prey before a predator's shadow. Something moved, fast, jagged, and wrong.
A streak of shadow spiraled downward, wings folded tight to its sides, claws glinting with pale gold light. Its body was draconic, but leaner. Meaner.
No scales, just armored bone plates that rattled like a storm of iron. Its eyes were glassy and blood-red, each slit pupil locked onto Damien with a hunger that bordered on obsession.
The beast screeched, a horrible, serrated sound that stabbed through the air like a butcher's hook. A crimson aura flared around its body as it twisted midair, diving with unnatural precision.
Blackie stiffened.
Hei Tian's eyes narrowed. His voice dropped low and grim. "The Bonewing Wyrm."
Rage Monkey blinked. "The what now?"
"The Bonewing Wyrm," Hei Tian repeated, stepping back instinctively. "A swamp denizen. Old as the swamp itself. It killed two dozen black dragons during our last expedition. Their bones are still in the canopy somewhere."
Rage Monkey stared at the descending monster, then turned to Damien with genuine panic.
"Why are there so many powerful things here?! I thought this was a minor battlefield! This is a major funeral!"
Blackie didn't answer. She was too focused on the descending threat, claws out, tail tense.
The Bonewing Wyrm dropped from the sky like a divine punishment. Its wings snapped open—jagged, bone-pierced sails that shrieked as they cut through the air. The sheer pressure of its descent sent shockwaves through the swamp. Trees split. Water exploded upward. Mana crackled and twisted around its aura.
Damien raised his head slowly.
He didn't run.
He lifted one finger—focused, calm.
Death energy surged upward in a spiral of black and bone-white, forming layered sigils around him. Runes etched from pure intent shimmered like frost on glass. A single death-glyph hovered at his fingertip, vibrating with power drawn from his Core.
But the moment the Wyrm entered range—nothing happened.
It didn't slow.
It didn't unravel.
It accelerated.
What?
Damien's eyes narrowed. His glyphs didn't even graze it. The death energy—refined and sharpened by the Lotus—passed right through the Wyrm like wind through smoke.
Then it was on him.
He dove.
Claws the size of tree trunks tore through where he'd stood a breath earlier, gouging a crater into the earth. The impact flipped the ground like a tablecloth. Shockwaves sent Fatty and the soldiers tumbling. Trees snapped. Roots exploded. Water turned to steam.
Damien landed hard, skidding across the mud.
The Wyrm twisted in midair—impossibly fast for its size—and lashed its tail.
Crack.
Damien's silver-grade ribcage cracked open.
He flew backward, flipping twice before slamming into a half-submerged stone. His breath left him in a hiss. Blood filled his mouth.
Silver-grade physique. Breached.
"Master!" Blackie screamed as she pounced on the Wyrm with all of her strength. Next to her, Rage Monkey was doing the same thing.
But the Bonewing Wyrm was much too powerful for them. With a simple tail strike, it sent them flying off, completely out for the fight.
General Heitian had disappeared without a trace.