The bronze gate crumbled under Raine's palmprint, revealing a corridor of dragonblood skeletons—kneeling sentinels with blade-like spinal spikes, azure phosphorescence flickering in their sockets.
"Your ancestors had shit decor taste." Garret poked the throne's golden relief of a dragonblood self-strangulation. "Performance art?"
Serena's stilettos crushed black ooze seeping through tiles. "Shut your muzzle, mutt. They're listening."
Ellen's starlit scales fanned out, scanning glyphs. She gripped Raine's vambrace. "Don't touch the throne! The rite's a—"
Too late.
As Raine's palm met the armrest, all skeletal heads swiveled. Phosphorescence erupted, projecting his shadow on the dome—a chained figure without wings.
"Unpurified bloodline." "Traitor!"
The sentinels' sword-taps synced with Raine's heartbeat. His scales peeled, revealing raw muscle. Serena slammed a crown fragment onto his brow, its dark gold engravings clashing with phosphorescent flames.
"Elaina's crown trumps your mongrel blood," she licked scorched fingers.
The throne plummeted, revealing an abyss. Twelve star-iron clad Bone Sentinels emerged, floating hearts chained in darkness.
"C'mon grandpappy!" Garret tore open a Sentinel's chestplate, only to be choked by chains. "Fuck! These things are—"
Raine's Blade sparked uselessly against the chains. Glyphs liquified, rearranging into draconic scripture:
「Abyss is our original sin」「Chains born of blood」
Ellen slashed her wrist, splattering starlit blood. The glyphs convulsed into Night Citadel's sigil.
"They're not guards..." Her pupils slithered. "...prisoners."
Serena's wings obliterated three Sentinels, her gown aflame. "Just dismantle them!"
As Raine pierced a Sentinel's heart, visions flooded him—
The First Dragonblood plunging the Blade into his kin. Black ooze coalescing into a horned Dreadlord.
"The Dreadlord... is us?" Raine's grip nearly shattered the hilt.
The Sentinels knelt. Chains retreated underground as gears groaned below. Garret collapsed, coughing chain shards. "This count... as passing?"
Serena shoved Ellen against the glyphs. "Explain."
"Living contracts..." Her scales consumed the sigils. "...hearts modified by the Citadel..."
Scraping metal echoed from the abyss. A horned shadow climbed the chains—mirroring the vision.
"Congrats," Serena's wings blazed. "Ancestral reunion time."
Raine's scales bristled. The Blade's eye wept blood, revealing Elaina's phantom. She touched his reversed scales, soundless words forming—
The abyssal claw shattered the glyph wall.