"Good attempt," Malus whispered — yet the sound did not come from Lilith's throat. It came from the air itself.
Lilith's figure unraveled where she stood; the Manifestation of Shadow and Aether dissolved into black smoke and golden motes the instant Theron's Golden Web struck. The Scepter caught nothing but cold air.
Malus did not reappear on the ground. His form materialized high above, hovering just beneath the clouds. The Shadow's presence was so condensed that it dimmed the very sky — the daylight of the Aether Continent turned heavy and suffocating beneath his aura.
The Elite Magi looked upward, their fear renewed.
Malus raised one elegant, pale hand — a brief, costly manifestation of pure power. He unleashed several orbs of demonic force, pulsating spheres of anti-matter, hurling them toward the four Luminares.
"Protection!" Theron shouted, defying his own terror. He and Lyra lifted their scepters and staffs, while Kaelus and Sorin channeled their energy. Together, the four Magi forged a massive Joint Aether Barrier, which shimmered and groaned under the crushing impact of Shadow.
The assault was nothing but a desperate distraction.
"I think that's enough for today, my friends," Malus said, his tone laced with weary irony. "I've not much power left to waste on you."
While the Joint Barrier focused entirely on resisting the demonic orbs, Malus wove the cold, dark smoke born from the collision of Shadow and Aether. He gathered it along the edge of the continent, shaping it into a cloak of concealment for his final act.
The War General then used the last remnant of his strength to tear through the veil of reality, opening a chaotic, razor-thin portal — wide enough for only one body to pass.
Without wasting a single second, Malus stepped into the portal — and it sealed shut the instant he vanished within.
Theron and his companions had lost. They stood in silence, staring at the sky where the portal had just been.
"I didn't know that bastard could open a portal on his own here…" Theron muttered through clenched teeth. "Damn it. I've failed."
Lilith's body was hurled out of the rift into the freezing air of the Lower Realm.
She was falling—plummeting through the clouds, miles above the ground—toward the scarred wastelands of Draconia.
At that moment, Malus's control over her slipped.
"Seems I'm out of power, my dear… your turn now."
His voice echoed inside her mind, hoarse and fading—like the sputter of a dying engine.
The darkness drained from her eyes, and Lilith was herself again.
Panic hit her instantly.
"Oh, come on! Not another fall?!" she shouted against the wind. "You cursed demon! You just had to drop me from the sky again, didn't you?!"
The ground rushed toward her—a vast, gray wasteland, bleak and merciless. If she hit it, she'd end up as nothing more than a tragic crater with great hair.
Then something strange caught her eye.
The air below shimmered with a deep electric blue—not the silvery glow of Luminar Ether, but something wilder, volatile… alive.
"Oh, great. Glowing death. Just what I needed," she muttered through gritted teeth.
The instant her body touched the blue current, gravity vanished.
Instead of crashing, the energy wrapped around her like liquid lightning—
and in a single blinding flash, she was gone.
The storm swallowed the space where she had been, leaving only the echo of the thunder... and a trail of blue sparks fading into the wind.
Lilith was expelled from the blue rift with the same violence with which she had entered the dimensional tear.
The world hit her with a wet, disgusting thud.
She wasn't on solid ground, but in a shallow pool of stagnant, viscous water.
Still dizzy and disoriented from the chaotic passage, Lilith pushed herself up, staggering.
She was in a place that was the very opposite of the geometric order of the Ether Continent—
no marble, no silver light; only mud, dampness, and near-total darkness.