The wind stopped.
Not slowed. Not shifted.
Stopped.
Even the birds, long vanished since the last clash, did not return. A silence deeper than death settled over the land as the clouds above twisted into a black spiral, bleeding streaks of silver light like a torn wound across the sky.
Vaen stepped back, eyes narrowing. "They're here."
From the eye of the spiral, six beams of blackened gold shot down, striking the earth like divine spears. Each one birthed a figure clad in white and red robes, faces masked in living bone, a single eye glowing at the center of their forehead.
The Reapers of the Temple.
Each carried a relic—some shaped like swords, others like flutes, or even rusted chains—but all pulsed with forbidden power drawn from fractured realms.
Jin Tao's mouth dried. "So. What's the plan when ancient executioners show up five at once?"
"Run," Wang Lin said without hesitation, already moving.
Vaen threw up a hand, and a blast of void energy spiraled out, buying them a split second. "There's an array beneath the shrine hall—buried under twenty meters of collapsed stone. I can activate it. If you can hold them off."
"Do it," Wang Lin ordered, eyes glowing with the sigils of the Abduction Path. "Lian Hua, with me."
She didn't argue.
The Reapers advanced without sound, gliding over the ruined earth. One raised a hand—cracked bone fingers curled in a silent command—and the ground shattered beneath Wang Lin's feet.
He spun midair, releasing a pulse of his stolen cultivation arts—lightning from the Eastern Peaks, fire from the Crimson Lotus sect, and shadow from the Broken Moon domain. All three surged together, forming a spiraling dragon that roared toward the Reapers.
The attack struck one cleanly.
The Reaper didn't flinch.
It raised a hand, caught the dragon's jaw, and crushed it with a single twist. The fragments turned to ash.
Jin Tao flung a barrage of enchanted daggers from the left, but another Reaper exhaled, and wind itself turned the blades aside like falling leaves.
Lian Hua growled. "We're not strong enough."
"We don't need to win," Wang Lin shouted. "We just need time!"
Behind them, Vaen's voice echoed in a foreign tongue, ancient and harmonic. Glyphs swirled around his body as he knelt beside a shattered stone slab. A spiral of golden light expanded outward, melting through rock and dust to reveal an ancient teleportation array, long-buried and half-dormant.
But the Reapers were closing in.
One raised a flute to its lips and played a single, cursed note.
Blood leaked from Wang Lin's ears.
Lian Hua screamed and dropped to her knees, clutching her head.
Jin Tao collapsed, coughing up a mouthful of crimson.
But Wang Lin stood.
Barely.
The Abduction Path roared through his body, instinctively absorbing the vibrations, devouring the sound itself. His skin shimmered, veins glowing.
With a cry, he unleashed a punch laced with void essence.
It collided with the Reaper's flute, shattering it.
A second Reaper moved to strike, but Lian Hua, bleeding from the nose and eyes, rose and hurled her short blade. It embedded in the creature's mask—and for the first time, one of them staggered.
Vaen shouted, "It's open! NOW!"
Golden light erupted from the array.
Wang Lin grabbed Jin Tao with one arm and pulled Lian Hua into the light.
As the Reapers surged forward, hands reaching through the glow, Wang Lin gave them one final glare—and the light swallowed him whole.
BOOM.
The ground exploded.
The ruins vanished in a flash of collapsing energy.
The Reapers stood in silence, staring at the place where their quarry had disappeared. One of them looked down at the shattered flute, then up at the sky.
A whisper echoed among them.
> "The Abduction Path… has remembered how to devour the divine."