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Power.

Beneath the earth, it surges through them, a white-hot energy that scathes their blood in its extremity. The serpents scream as they battle, as their sparkling teal scales shift and ripple, turning from that ocean blue to a molten gold, the color seeping over their bodies as if they are being painted by some phantom hand. Burning, glittering, bright, the gold shines in the darkness of the Bonseyo Shadowshafts. Sinuous bodies bulge and lengthen, growing larger, larger—four black-clawed feet tear through the flesh at their sides, bursting outward with wet, sickening noises. Flat heads begin to ripple and shift, hair—silken, flaxen hair—bursting from their scalps, beards erupting underneath gaping maws, jagged horns sprouting from atop their skulls.

Shin Lina’s Imugi unleash earth-rattling roars as they transform into Yong, into the extinct dragons of old, the power of Fulfillment reaching within them and changing all that they are, all that they should have remained.

The gods stumble back, eyes wide as they watch, defeat heavy in their bones as Sonagi bellows out a victorious war cry, stretching toward the earth above, rocks tumbling onto the army below. “The tunnels!” Haemosu roars. “It won’t hold them!”

There is barely room for the soldiers to breathe, to move, as the Imugi transform, widening, lengthening. Iseul the Gumiho shifts back to her human form, breathing hard, backing away from the serpents—as their teal scales are slowly gilded with gold, as they thrash in triumph, magnificent and towering.

“FALL BACK!” Kang shouts, tightening his grip around Kim Chan, whom he has rescued—but his voice is lost beneath the roars and the thundering of the earth as rocks fall, splitting into twos, as the Yong lurch upward—breaking through the earth above, bringing avalanches of dirt and rocks down upon the opposing army. Kang does not see Chan jerking to consciousness and snatching a fallen firesword from the ground. The advisor’s mouth tastes too much like terror and tears to notice, and he grabs the nearest soldier he can find—Iseul—and steps back into a portal of his making just as the earth begins to cave in around them, as the Yong plow upward through the tunnels, intent on reaching the night sky far above.

Jeon Eunwoo screams as his sight is enveloped by darkness and earth. He forces himself to keep flying through the sea of soil, unable to breathe, unable to see where the underearth ends and the surface world begins. Dragons shoot upward all around him, and he flaps his wings faster, desperately hoping to make it out alive. To not be buried like the troops below him. He chokes on soil, yet desperately he flies, relying on instinct more than sight to dodge the tumbling rocks that fall upon him. His father must be dead if the Prophecy has been Fulfilled. Dead, before he could learn to love his bastard son. As Jeon Eunwoo finally breaks into the world above, he unleashes a primal scream of hatred and grief.

The twin gods, the moon and sun, grab each other’s hands as the broken earth crashes down, a monstrous wave against humanity. They cannot save them, these humans, and it is with heavy hearts that Dalnim and Haemosu vanish, leaving hundreds of soldiers to die in the Bonseyo Shadowshafts. Wretched and winded, they collapse before Hwanin—Sang-je, the Heavenly Emperor, King of the Gods, who sits upon the star-dotted throne amongst the clouds.

Hwanin’s eyes widen as he glances below, where terror and chaos reign.

And somewhere, fingers lazily strumming a red thread of fate, Gameunjang smiles.