Warden Krahl’s burned fingers gripped the jagged astral jade disk, pulling the blinding seal toward his gaping mouth.
His bloodshot eyes bulged with suicidal mania, dark veins pulsing across his scarred neck like thick cords.
He was less than two inches from swallowing the concentrated core-essence of forty-eight cultivators.
Mina Vance did not wait for an order.
Her pale linen sleeves whipped through the sulfur haze as she thrust both palms toward the magma pit.
Crack.
A jagged spear of Absolute Zero frost shot across the basalt floor with terrifying speed.
The primordial frost slammed into Krahl’s heavy iron boots, freezing them instantly to the stone platform in eight inches of solid, diamond-hard ice.
