Dust Turns to Gold

The air in the hall stopped flowing.

That grand voice fell, carrying the power of an inviolable law.

"Dust."

Monk Huineng was raising his golden alms bowl, ready to defend himself.

His movement froze halfway.

A withered gray hue appeared along the rim of the golden bowl.

Then it spread to his fingers.

His fingertips, once full and glowing with golden light, disintegrated without warning.

No blood spilled, and no bones cracked.

Skin, flesh, and finger bones all turned into fine gray grains of sand in that instant.

The sand pattered down onto the floor, piling into a small mound.

"My hand..."

Huineng stared at his vanished fingertips, his eyes nearly splitting with rage.

The sandification rapidly spread upward along his palm.

Wrist, forearm, elbow.

In no more than a breath, his entire left arm became a cloud of drifting dust.

On the other side, Elvira's four wings began to crumble as well.

Her snow-white light-feathers fell away in great swaths like paper ash scorched by flame, vanishing into the void.

She raised the Sword of Light and Shadow, attempting to sever that force, but the instant the blade touched the air, it turned into a sky full of motes of light.

"Get back!"

Lilith shouted sharply.

She flung open her right hand, and a dense mass of purple-black demonic energy surged from her palm.

The demonic energy condensed in midair, forming a massive black canopy that covered Huineng and Elvira beneath it.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

A dense chorus of corrosion rang through the air.

That law of order that returned all things to dust struck the canopy, scattering countless gray sparks.

The black canopy's surface rapidly mottled and peeled away.

Lilith's face turned deathly pale, bloodshot veins filling her violet eyes.

She was using the Abyss Monarch's origin power