At exactly midnight, the fortified dimensional gates surrounding Drak'thar remained completely silent, heavily guarded by the bridge-tier vanguard. But Kael'thar's remaining loyalists hadn't marched on the gates. They had weaponized the cosmic substrate itself, tearing rifts and ruptures directly into the airspace above the floating islands.
Owen felt the intrusion a fraction of a second before the physical breach. It wasn't a sound; it was a sickening drop in ambient pressure, a tremor that rattled the tectonic plates of the islands.
He was out of his chambers and fully manifested before the first alarm even shrieked.
"Pull back to the palace!" Owen roared, his voice acting as a psychic battering ram across the defender network. "They aren't at the gates—they're bleeding through the substrate! Defend the core!"
The sky above Drak'thar shattered into violet chaos, and the five original dragons met it with absolute fury.
