CHAPTER 73.

Chapter 73: The Word That Should Not Be Spoken

Antares did not fall.

Not yet.

Eclipsion and Solstice both sank into his obsidian-scaled flesh—divine and ancestral steel biting deep—but it was like cutting into a mountain that had chosen to burn.

The Dragon Lord let out a cry that shattered mountains. The skies above the battlefield cracked with lightning not born of storms. His wings beat once, and the air detonated, sending Jean flying like a comet across the shattered plains.

She struck the earth in a crater of light and dust. Whitney was beside her in an instant, snarling, shielding her limp body with his divine frame.

Antares straightened.

Both blades still impaled in his spine.

> "The blade of Martin," he said, his voice like ten thousand voices speaking in unison. "And still... it is not enough."

The runes on his scales shimmered with primordial power. Wounds closed. Magic flared around him in a sphere of annihilation. Even as Jean rose again, blood running from her forehead, she saw the truth in his stance.

He had been holding back.

Now, he would not.

Across the battlefield, Emissaries gathered what strength they could.

Seraphine Durnstahl, the Emissary of Flame, hovered in the sky with wings of living fire, channeling solar flares into the sky above.

Illyana Veyr, the Emissary of Ice, whispered to the frozen winds of the north. Frost crept along the burning soil, as titanic ice spears launched from the heavens.

Karen, the Emissary of Thunder, and Raigen, her stormhawk, carved through the clouds, unleashing cyclones of divine lightning.

But even together… they were barely delaying him.

Ryan Magus stood alone amid the rupture he had created. The Word of Unmaking spun around him like a vortex of fragmented logic. Reality frayed, time trembled.

> "I need more," he said, trembling. "Jean… I need the full Codex."

But the true Codex was unreachable. Locked away in the vault, sealed in a pact with a being whose name should not be spoken.

Unless—

> "Unless I break the pact."

Across the battlefield, Vaelros the Hollow emerged from a rift of pure shadow, his relic—the Broken Black Egg—cracked and pulsing with forbidden energy. Shadow tendrils whipped from his form, amplifying his presence tenfold.

> "You're all late," he rasped, eyes glowing violet. "I've already begun to die. Let me show you what that means."

He unleashed his shadow form—towering, inhuman, ancient. The relic screamed as his essence unraveled, transforming him into a wraithlike figure of pure void.

And he leapt at Antares.

They clashed—dragon and shadow.

A blast of power rippled across continents. Kingdoms felt the tremor. Oceans recoiled.

Jean rose again, gripping Solstice. Eclipsion had fallen from Antares' back and embedded itself a hundred meters away in scorched earth.

She limped forward, bloodied and broken, toward the sword that once struck a god.

> "It's not enough," she murmured. "Not unless we all burn together."

The Dragon War had truly begun.

And humanity was on the edge of extinction.

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