Lord of the realm

Chapter 256 256: The seal is breaking

She directed the dark mist toward the wall, and it penetrated. Not through the stone; the physical barrier was irrelevant but through the energy structure itself. Finding the gaps between the layers, the spaces where different types of power met and created infinitesimal weaknesses.

She could tell that there were many seals attached to these walls, and they were not done by the strongest beings. She could tell just by probing them. As she was working, pouring her energy continuously, she suddenly felt it, a mysterious energy was poking from inside it.

A wide grin appeared on her face as she kept breaking the seals.

The being inside was fighting too, trying to break the seal of the goddesses as she had done from the outside.

The sealing had been done with such meticulous care by three different beings: Dark Origin, Origin, and the Divine Power. It would have been impossible for her alone to break this, but she had laid the crack that would make all the seals crumble, like a small crack breaking a whole big mountain.

The being had been silent all these years but now, two of them worked to break the seal placed by the gods themselves.

The mist spread through the seal like ink through water, subtle at first, barely noticeable. Jannahvi poured more power into it, forcing the penetration deeper and wider, seeking the core of the seal where all the layers converged.

The ground beneath her feet trembled slightly.

She smiled, her obsidian features showing savage satisfaction.

It was working.

The seal was responding to her intrusion, trying to repel her power, but in doing so, it was creating stress and building pressure.

Jannahvi increased her energy, channeling everything she had into the attack. The dark mist became a torrent, a flood of dark power hammering against Sovereign authority, chaos eroding order atom by atom.

The trembling became a shake, followed by a violent quake.

The chamber itself was stable, formed from solid bedrock, reinforced by geological time, but the seal was fighting against her intrusion, and that fight was creating seismic energy that had to go somewhere.

It went up first, the surface, and then spread everywhere.

*

Martha was reviewing the latest survey data with Kiera when the ground lurched beneath her feet.

She stumbled, caught herself on the table edge, and her coffee cup toppled and spilled across the maps.

"A seism!" someone shouted unnecessarily.

The entire camp was shaking. Equipment rattled, tents swayed, and people stumbled out into the open, following the instinctive need to get away from anything that could fall on them.

But Martha's attention was locked on the western cliff face. In the area where she'd found the narrow passage last night.

She could feel it.

The same pull, the same resonance she'd experienced when the voice had called her name.

But this time it wasn't gentle.

This was violent.

Something was happening at the sealed wall, and whatever it was, it was tearing at the foundations of reality itself.

No, she thought with sudden terror.

The shaking intensified. Rocks tumbled from the cliff face. One of the equipment tents collapsed as its support poles buckled.

"Everyone away from the cliffs!" Martha shouted, her voice carrying with surprising authority.

"Get to the center of the valley! Stay away from anything that could fall!"

Her team obeyed, running toward the open ground where the excavation grids were laid out. But Martha moved in the opposite direction, toward the western cliff, toward the passage.

"Dr. Buchanan!" Kiera screamed.

"What are you doing?!"

Martha didn't answer.

She couldn't explain the certainty that gripped her, the absolute knowledge that she needed to reach that chamber, needed to stop whatever was happening.

She reached the cliff face just as a crack appeared.

Not in the passage, but in the solid rock beside it. A fracture that spread upward like lightning frozen in stone, splitting the cliff face, creating a wound that wept dust and small rocks.

The ground heaved again, throwing Martha to her knees. The shaking was continuous now, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. Like something massive was stirring beneath the earth, responding to the attack on its prison.

Sofia appeared beside her, grabbing her arm.

"Martha, we need to get clear! The whole cliff could come down!"

"Something happening inside this space!" Martha shouted over the rumbling.

"What are you talking about?"

But there was no time to explain. The narrow passage entrance was visible now, dust pouring from it like smoke, the aversion ward that had hidden it completely disrupted by the seismic violence.

And from deep within, Martha could feel power building. Not the cold, suppressive energy. It was darker, and that made her skin crawl with primal wrongness.

Demon power. Though she didn't know it was demon power.

Something demonic was in that chamber, attacking the seal with everything it had.

And if it succeeded, if it actually managed to break through those barriers...

Martha didn't know what would happen. Didn't know if the being sealed within would be grateful for freedom or furious at imprisonment. Didn't know if releasing him would save the world or doom it.

The ground shook again, the most violent tremor yet.

The crack in the cliff face widened.

The chamber air was thick with dust and the acrid smell of ancient energy being violently disturbed.

Martha pressed herself against the passage wall, moving forward despite every rational instinct screaming at her to run. The ground shook beneath her feet in continuous rolling waves. Rocks fell from the ceiling. The narrow passage groaned around her like a living thing in pain.

She wanted to go to the wall, desperately. She wanted to be there.

She emerged into the chamber and stopped dead, and what she saw made her shiver in fright.

The huge wall, which I saw before and which seemed to be impenetrable, was now bleeding.

There was no other word for it.

Deep rivers of light poured from the cracks that now spiderwebbed across the massive stone blocks. Gold and purple, impossibly vivid, impossibly beautiful, flowing down the face of the barrier like luminous blood from wounds that went deeper than stone.

The symbols carved into the blocks were burning. Each mark blazed with concentrated energy, fighting desperately to maintain integrity against whatever had attacked from within and without. Some had already gone dark, their power exhausted, their purpose ended.

Jannahvi was gone.