The silence following Princess Ling’er’s steam purge didn’t last thirty seconds.
From the dark, jagged maw of the 100-mile void deep gap, the bedrock began to shiver with an unnatural back-and-forth swing. It wasn’t a physical rumble of falling boulders, but a crystal-clear, high-pitched hum that clawed directly at the nervous systems of every living being within twenty miles. Up on the stone castle walls of the border castle, veteran soldiers dropped their spears and grabbed their heads. It screamed in agony.
Blood dripped from their ears and the corners of their eyes. Protective magic charms pinned to their breastplates—hundreds of grade-three jade wards—shook like wildly plucked violin strings before fracturing into cloudy white dust.
“My skull is splitting!” a royal lieutenant shrieked, thrashing against the flat stone slabs. “A demon is scraping glass against my brain!”
Commander Zhao dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth as he forced his eyes open to gaze down into the depths of the smoking rift. Climbing from the dark deep pit was a sixty-foot horror floating on rippling ribbons of violet shadow. Its segmented torso looked like a rainbow-bright fine china mannequin. But its head was a bulbous flower of four upright jaw-flaps lined with thousands of shaking, needle-thin sound tendrils swaying at impossible speed.
