THE RACE AGAINST TIME
june 27, 3111 BCE
10 Days Until the World Ends
The mountain wasn't stone. It was a wound.
Kai's fingers tore open on the cliff face as the rock sealed itself behind him. The higher they climbed, the more the mountain remembered—and it remembered dragons.
Veyra's phantom limbs, usually death itself, now hung limp as hanged men's ropes. "It's eating them," she whispered, watching her soul-arms wither. The Silent Apostle coughed up teeth—each one inscribed with a forgotten word of power.
And the cold—
Gods, the cold.
It wasn't weather. It was the absence of time. Rook's star-forged dagger shattered in his grip, the shards cutting his palms into bloody runes. The Empty Prophet's mirror finally showed a reflection:
A door.
Not at the summit.
Inside them.
The Climb That Wasn't a Climb
Day 3:The air turned to glass. They breathed splinters. Kai's lungs became kaleidoscopes. Day 5:The Apostle's voice returned. He spoke a single syllable. A village in the valley below ceased to have ever existed. Day 7:Veyra's stumps grew new hands—not hers. They strangled her in her sleep. She let them.
Shambala's Secret
Himanchu pressed his forehead to the Zenith Diamond—and saw the truth:
The mountain wasn't a barrier.
It was Seraphina's first prison.
"You were human once," the vision hissed. "Before the diamonds. Before the wings. Before you forgot the taste of your own blood."
Drakthar's shadow darkened the chamber. "They'll reach the door."
Seraphina's diamond heart flickered. "Let them."
Because the door didn't lead in.
It led out.
And what was coming through—
Well.
It had been hungry for ten million years.