The burning hull of the flagship slammed into the boundary ridge half a mile to the north with a bone-shaking blast wave that nearly threw the team off the dais.
A column of black, spirit-fuel smoke billowed into the thin air, choked with burning silk and melting bronze.
From the flaming wreckage stepped a single figure.
Magistrate Kui’s clean white judge robes were reduced to charred rags.
His ornate golden headdress was gone, his long black hair whipping wildly in the gale like cut serpents.
The three-mile golden eye in the sky had collapsed, but on his forehead, his living third eye was wide open. Pulsing wildly, leaking thick, glowing golden fluid that ran down the bridge of his nose and into his snarling mouth.
He was a Body Integration Late-Phase fighter.
Even stripped of his sky-high dreadnought, the sheer physical and energetic thickness streaming from his vessel was choking.
