The sandworm’s vast, pitch‑black bulk plunged from the heavens like a fallen cliff. Its unknown tonnage slammed into the dunes, a wave of grit roaring skyward. Dust burst like a dry tide and even spattered up to where Lilith and the other two hovered, stinging the throat until the Little White Dragon couldn’t help coughing.
The god‑wrought body hit and went still, like a dead star. Dust that had hung in the air drifted down in thin sheets, and the wind‑whipped sand settled like tired snow. Even the death‑dust fell in a gray ring beside the Little White Dragon.
“Uwah, why is there so much death‑dust?” Fear came first, like a cold hand on the heart, because Lilith still remembered losing her long‑time system and her familiar powers to a sudden bloom of that same dust. Reason came after, cool and late: she was a full Divine Fragment now—maybe the most intact Divine Fragment on this land. She held the Taint, a threat equal to the death‑dust, and her body wouldn’t be infected. But the body remembers what the mind explains away, and panic rose for no reason at all.
There was no time left to be afraid. As the haze thinned, the fallen divine construct stirred like a buried leviathan waking.
A shadow likely hundreds of meters long lifted its forebody, an obsidian hill rearing against the pale sky. It raised its head and looked down from on high, those two black beads at its tapering tip narrowing—if those were eyes.
“Ah. Two divine constructs,” it said, voice like wind through a dry grave. “One once bowed to my power. Have you come seeking a rematch? Of course. I’m generous. I grant every defeated foe a chance to reclaim their honor. But the ending won’t change. Your strength, your glory, everything you pride yourself on will flow back to me.”
“And a new face as well. Naturally. Every junior who’s heard my name comes to challenge me. I’m happy to give newborns a chance—a chance to witness true power—so they grasp how small they really are. Most won’t have time to change. In the end, they become another body segment of mine, then a grain of dust in the sands. And you, nameless newborn, I’m curious what surprises you and your servant can offer.”
The Divine Fragment’s voice sounded old, brittle as sun‑baked bone. Age clung to it like dried mud, and the Little White Dragon guessed that even among Divine Fragments, this giant was one of the ancients.
But the way it talked wasn’t old at all. It strutted like an edgy schoolboy with delusions of grandeur, every line thick with pomp so greasy it made you queasy.
“He just called you my servant,” the Little White Dragon said, amused first, then playful. The scorn didn’t dent her mood; a creature like this, if you got serious, you’d already lost. Better to treat it as entertainment. She had a lifetime of experience dismantling oversized foes. This arrogant, stick‑shaped monster? If she unleashed the Primordial Ark, she could hack off three lives in a minute. No need to get worked up.
But calling Nidhogg Lilith’s servant? That hit the Little White Dragon right in the sweet spot. At last, someone understood who led and who followed. She tipped up her chin, smug as a cat, and shot a hum toward the Black Dragon at her side.
Nidhogg leaned in. Instinct sent a tremor through Lilith’s body when the Black Dragon came close, and she tightened up without fighting back. She let him catch the tip of her sensitive, pink earlobe between his teeth and leave a line of breath that ran warm as summer wind.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he murmured, his voice a velvet claw. “Typhon told me she’s been working on a new ‘magic.’ She’s short on field reports. I’m sure you won’t mind being a test subject for your dear sister, will you?”
His breath carried the faint, heady scent of the Black Dragon, and it steamed Lilith as if tossed into a bamboo steamer, turning her red as a dumpling and weak as melted wax. But the meaning of his words hurled her into an ice cellar. Chill raced down her spine, and even breathing felt like a luxury; fear nailed her in place.
I’m so dead. Every time the Black Dragon decided to punish her, it was hell tailored for the Little White Dragon.
Not good! I’m doomed to be punished!
The die was cast. No matter how much she regretted mouthing off at Nidhogg, she couldn’t change being caught between ice and fire.
Mortified and mad, the Little White Dragon went hunting for a lightning rod—the great divine construct—and forced her focus into a blade.
“You there! Big mouth!” she shouted, anger the spark, words the thunder. “No sense of your own limits, huh? Think everyone knows your name? Cut the crap and report it already!”
“Someone doesn’t know my name?” it said, genuinely taken aback, like thunder missing its echo. “You are truly ignorant.”
“Are you supposed to be famous?” she shot back, quick as a thrown dagger. “Why should I care? Even if you are, that’s not a reason I have to know you. I’m way more famous than you. Why don’t you know me?”
“Insolent brat,” it snapped, its voice picking up a storm’s edge. “Let me teach you respect!”
“I! The lord of the Realm of Yellow Sands!” it declaimed, chin lifted like a dune crest. “The most ancient ruler of this land, with lifespan and might to rival the gods. My legends are told in every region. They call me the destroyer hidden beneath the sands, the divine construct who governed storms in the age of gods—Thousand Legs! I permit you to apologize. Tell me you now understand my power.”
“Don’t listen to him blather.” As Thousand Legs marched forward on a tide of its own rhetoric, the Ancestor of Ice Spirits appeared behind the Little White Dragon like frost blooming on glass. “He’s just some old relic who slept too long and woke to a world that moved on. He couldn’t keep up, so he squatted in another’s nest, seized someone else’s land, then stole their power. That’s all.”
“All right, Lilith. Ready your hand,” said the blue‑haired girl, fingers closing around a blade of hard ice that gleamed like winter lightning.
“Show her who’s stronger.”
