Rafa drove her red crystal heart to its limit. The blood sacrifice energy permeating the surroundings had already set her scales ablaze with black-and-red flames.
Azathos had also retrieved Isara. Nourished by the blood sacrifice energy, the scales shattered in his brutal collision rapidly fell away, replaced by thicker, sharper armor. His molten-gold slit pupils still burned with the will to fight.
Isalorn and Dreamfyre circled high overhead, absorbing blood sacrifice energy while keeping a wary watch on the increasingly dense shadow beneath the sea.
"That thing is getting closer!"
Ishys shouted a warning to everyone, her hands instinctively tightening around Isalorn's Dragon Saddle.
The sea had fallen terrifyingly still. Apart from the Blood Sacrifice Blazing Flame covering dozens of kilometers and the still-unstable newborn island, almost no trace of life remained nearby.
Only the increasingly dark water betrayed the approach of something horrific beneath the surface.
Splash-
The seawater parted soundlessly, and a shape several times larger than the gray-blue behemoth slowly rose.
At first, it was no more than a blur of darkness, but its details became clearer as it approached the surface. It was a serpentine monster over three hundred meters long, covered in dark-purple scales, each engraved with twisted runes.
Its head had no eyes, only an enormous mouth packed with spiraling fangs. Dozens of pairs of clawed legs sprouted from either side of its body, making it resemble a cross between a centipede and a sea snake.
Strangest of all, a miniature coral palace was embedded in its back. A beating heart floated at the palace's center-a pitch-black heart that constantly oozed viscous fluid, its surface covered in glowing, vein-like patterns.
"The Drowned God!"
Rafa's voice exploded in everyone's minds.
"The Drowned God worshipped by the Ironborn of the Iron Islands?!"
Ishys and Isara cried