The embers of destruction slowly drifted in the void. The wreckage of the Frostbone fortress dissolved into a chaos of stardust, amidst which the cold laws of order flickered like dying fireflies. The molten-gold giant claws uncurled their five fingers, and the chaotic black flames and Entropy Welding red light twined around them, licking like living things at the fragments of floating metallic ice drifting between the fingers. The moment the ice fragments touched the tongues of flame, they turned into a wisp of blue smoke, failing even to emit the echo of their very existence being completely erased.
The Core of the Abyss hovered in this newborn silence.
That massive body, covered with the structure of smelted stars, heaved slightly at that moment, like the brief, quiet settling-down of a slumbering behemoth after awakening. Across the surface of its shell, amidst the mixed textures of solidified star-skeletons and chaotic tar, newly cast, scorching-gold bone armor was slowly cooling, its edges gleaming with a dark red residual-ember luster akin to molten steel being quenched. With every rise and fall of the giant body's breath, fine dark-red metal powder crumbled from its surface, like the scorching oxide scale peeling off after a blacksmith's beating, which quickly extinguished and drifted away in the cold void.
Chapter 125