The air tasted of tin foil and dead teeth.
Across the shattered shelf of Shard 09, the black deep gap was not empty anymore. Thousands of pale, featureless limbs—arms, torsos, and jawless heads carved from untextured white void—were crawling up the dark rock cliffs like maggots boiling out of an open wound.
Where their pale fingers brushed against the outer edge wooden wall, the hardwood stakes didn’t shatter.
They simply un-existed. A six-foot gap in the wooden defensive wall opened every time a lesser horror touched the timbers. That left behind neat, impossible sharp-angled voids where solid matter used to be.
“Form the Celestial Phalanx!” a vanguard captain bellowed, raising his golden battle-axe-spear. “Pour your True Essence into the front ranks! Lock your shields!”
“No, you fool!” Lin Ke wheezed, stumbling forward against Meng Shan’s massive arm. “Break that formation! Don’t create a dead wall!”
It was too late. Thirty heavy-infantry fighters slammed their round shields together. They formed a linked wall of solid spiritual bronze.
Three pale horrors collided with the shield wall.
