CRACK! Another beam of concussive light from a ceiling crystal shattered the ground where Adam had been a moment before, showering him with shards of pale stone. The Domain of the Bleached Sovereign was a relentless, intelligent opponent in itself.

"This isn't working! We're just reacting!" Adam roared through their telepathic link, dodging a wave of liquefying floor. "We need a new plan, now!"

«The creature's control is tied to this cavern's unique mineral formations, likely channeled through that central monolith it was coiled around!» Lilith's voice was sharp, analytical, even as she skittered up a wall to avoid a grasping spike of bone. «It is multitasking—healing its wounds, fighting us, and maintaining this domain. We must overload its focus!»

«How? Every time we get close, the floor eats us or a laser cuts us off!» Ignis yelped, shaking off the last of the petrification from her scales with a fiery burst.

«We don't all get close,» Lilith countered, her crimson eyes fixed on the central crystal monolith, which was now pulsing in time with the Revenant's movements. «We split its attention. A feint and a true strike. Adam, you are the only one who can potentially withstand its direct assaults for a short period. You and Ignis launch the most aggressive, noisy, destructive frontal assault you can muster. Aim for its face, its eyes. Make it believe the main attack is coming from you. Make it pour its defensive focus there.»

"And what? You and Alice will just waltz up to the crystal?" Adam shot back, even as he unleashed a Tempest Fang to intercept a flying shard of crystalline debris. "It's not an idiot! It'll see through that!"

«Not if we are not 'there',» Lilith purred. «Alice will cloak us both in her most potent void shroud. We will move not through the open, but through the micro-fractures in the stone itself, using my silk as vibrational guides. We will be ghosts within the ghost's domain. While you are the thunder, we will be the silent knife at its back.»

"That's insane!" Adam argued. "The concentration required… one slip in that environment and you're both crushed or crystallized!"

«It is also our best chance!» Alice's voice cut in, decisive. She had been silent, observing the patterns of the crystal attacks. «The Revenant's control is absolute, but it's also rhythmic. It tracks movement, heat, and mana spikes. Lilith's plan uses misdirection. Adam, you and Ignis must be loud enough, threatening enough, to be the only thing it perceives. My void can mask us, but only if its 'sight' is elsewhere. The plan has a weakness—it relies on the Revenant taking your bait. It's worth a try.»

The plan hung in the air between bursts of hostile magic. It was risky, dependent on perfect execution and the enemy's predictable arrogance.

Adam looked at the Pale Revenant. The serpent was watching them, its head weaving slowly, the cracked scales on its neck already sealing over with a fresh, opalescent layer. It was confident. It was in control. And arrogant creatures hated being challenged directly.

A grim smile touched Adam's mind. "Alright. We do it. Ignis! Time to make some noise! Lilith, Alice, you get one shot. Don't miss."

«We have no intention of missing,» Lilith replied, as she and Alice melted back into a deeper shadow, their forms beginning to shimmer and fade from sight, wrapped in a cocoon of void energy that even the light of the crystals seemed to avoid.

Adam drew a deep breath, the mana for his most spectacular, wasteful attacks coiling within him. Ignis flared her wings, her entire body becoming a beacon of solar fury.

"Hey, you overgrown shed skin!" Adam bellowed, his telepathy laced with deliberate, taunting contempt. "THIS IS HOW A REAL SERPENT FIGHTS!"

He unleashed not one, but a continuous torrent of Ember Shard Shots, peppering the Revenant's face. Ignis, with a joyous, ear-splitting roar, took to the air and began circling, raining down not focused lances, but wide-area Solar Flares that washed over the Revenant and set the very air around it ablaze.

The Bone-White Canyons erupted in thunderous light and fire. The Pale Revenant's eyes narrowed, and with a contemptuous flick of its will, the domain focused. Crystals re-oriented. The floor beneath Adam turned to grasping quicksand. A storm of razor-sharp bone shards materialized and shot towards Ignis.

The decoy had been cast. The true dagger, invisible and silent, began its deadly glide through the stone.

The canyon became a maelstrom of light, sound, and searing heat. Adam and Ignis played their parts to terrifying perfection.

Adam was a whirlwind of violent motion. He used Mirage Cascade not to retreat, but to advance in a series of confusing, dazzling bursts, each reappearance marked by a Tempest Fang or a blast of Fire Breath aimed at the Pale Revenant's head. He didn't aim to kill—he aimed to infuriate, to blind, to demand every ounce of the serpent's attention. Scales glowed red-hot under the assault, and smoke rose from its horned crest.

Ignis was a circling comet of wrath. She obeyed the 'noise' directive with draconic enthusiasm. Solar Flares bloomed against the Revenant's body and the canyon walls, filling the air with deafening concussions and waves of heat that made the very stone sweat. When the serpent tried to track the silent daggers it sensed lurking, Ignis would dive, shrieking, forcing its gaze back to her with a Sun Lance aimed at its eyes.

The Revenant fought back with lethal, precision-born fury. It could not ignore the damage. With a hiss that vibrated through the stone, it performed a maneuver Adam had never seen—its body seemed to ripple. Dozens of its largest, shield-like white scales lifted at the edges and then shot forth like a barrage of crystalline sawblades.

[[[ Scale Volley ]]]

Adam roared, tucking his wings and twisting desperately. Several scales glanced off his Monarch's Aegis with showers of sparks, but one bit deep into his flank, and another sheared through the membrane of his wing. Ignis yelped as a scale sliced across her thigh, grounding her momentarily.

"KEEP ITS EYES ON US!" Adam bellowed, ignoring the pain, and charged again, bleeding but relentless.

While thunder and fire reigned above, two shadows moved through the roots of the world. Wrapped in Alice's most profound Void Cloak, they were not invisible—they were absent.

Lilith led, her sensitive legs and Sovereign Silk probing ahead, feeling for the vibrational signature of the central monolith's power core through micro-fractures in the stone. Alice followed, maintaining the void field, her every sense focused on negating their presence.

They emerged from the base of the glowing monolith like nightmares from a dream. The crystal pulsed above them, a conduit of pale energy connected to the Revenant. Without a word, they struck.

Lilith's Crimson Gaze focused into a single, searing point, burning into the crystal's base. Alice summoned not a bolt, but a Void Rend—a spatial tear she had been conserving her mana for. A slash of absolute darkness met the beam of psychic fire.

CRACK-KABOOM!

The sound was not of shattering crystal, but of a silencing implosion followed by a shockwave of released energy. The central monolith's light died instantly, fracturing into a million dark shards. The Domain of the Bleached Sovereign stuttered. The crystal beams winked out. The grasping floor stilled.

A psychic scream of pure, unparalleled rage and pain erupted from the Pale Revenant. The connection had been severed. It wasn't just an environmental tool broken; it was a part of its sensed body violated.

Its head, bloody and scorched from Adam's assault, snapped towards the source of its agony. Its instincts, honed over centuries, overrode strategy. It ignored the raging serpent and the drake. It saw the two smaller creatures at the base of its shattered throne. Its maw opened, not to bite, but to vomit. A concentrated sphere of swirling, abyssal black energy—[[[Void Corrosion]]]—gathered and then shot towards Lilith with the speed of a falling star.

Lilith saw it coming, but her momentum was spent. She had no time to weave a shield.

A blur of darkness interposed itself.

Alice Void Stepped directly into the path, but not to dodge. As the sphere of annihilating energy filled her vision, she did the only thing she could. She opened her Void Locker not to store, but to retrieve and intercept. The massive, enchanted Tower Shield they had looted from human materialized directly in front of her, summoned from storage to reality in the blink of an eye.

The Void Corrosion met the magically reinforced steel.

The shield did not shatter. It dissolved. The metal vaporized, the enchantments screamed and died, erased from existence in a silent, expanding sphere of nothingness. The concussive backlash of the negated magic hit Alice like a physical wall.

She was flung back, crashing into Lilith, and they tumbled together in a heap. Alice's Void Cloak failed. She gasped, blood trickling from her nose and ears, a deep, resonant ache in her very core from the violent destruction of a linked storage item.

"ALICE!" Adam and Ignis shouted simultaneously.

Alice stood unsteadily. The fur on her left side was singed, and she looked to be in pain, but her wounds immediately began to fade thanks to her high-level monster regeneration. She shook her head.

«I'm fine... it's just... a little hot.»

Lilith, who had been thrown back but was not seriously hurt, stared at Alice. A strange emotion churned within her. «...You... you protected me.»

«Don't make a big deal of it,» Alice hissed, still half-annoyed from the pain, «Save your thanks for later. That ugly snake,» she pointed at the Pale Revenant, who now looked utterly exhausted, its breath ragged, «is still standing.»

She was right. Although its domain was shattered and its counterattack had failed, the Pale Revenant was still alive. The wound on its shoulder and the internal damage from the collapse of the monolith were severe, but they could see its pale white flesh moving slowly, sealing the wounds at a frustratingly slow pace.

Its regeneration,though sluggish, was still active.

But the light in its eyes had dimmed. Its arrogance was gone, replaced by weariness and sharp wariness. It had lost its home, and its enemies still surrounded it, wounded but not dead.

Adam landed between the snake and his friends, his wings spread. The battle had shifted. Now, they faced a wounded, angry monster, not an untouchable domain lord. And wounded monsters are often the most dangerous.

"Change of plan," Adam said, his voice cold and steady. "We destroyed its home. Now we finish it. Don't give it time to breathe."

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