He suddenly pushed off the dragon saddle, using the force to leap up and hover in the air.

Behind them, eleven dragon knights leaped up from the backs of the dragons at the same time. The eleven silver dragons flapped their wings and rose, forming a two-layered circular formation, with the outer layer of silver dragons and the inner layer of knights.

Twenty-two figures stood in mid-air, surrounding the apostle in the very center.

The silver dragon wings and silver armor formed a burning halo in the dim light of the day.

The apostle was surrounded, but it did not move.

It simply hung there, the vertical cracks slowly sweeping over everyone, every dragon.

Then the apostle opened his arms.

An invisible force field emanated from it, like an unseen giant hand grasping the entire sky in its palm.

All the dragon riders fell at the same time.

It wasn't an injury, nor was it exhaustion; it was that the ability to fly had been taken away.

Dragunov felt that all three of his attributes had dropped below 60, and every bit of awakened power had been drained, as if everything had been emptied from his body in an instant.

He plummeted from a height of four hundred meters, the wind whistling like knives in his ears, the earth rapidly enlarging, the black, cracked ground drawing ever closer.

Not only him, but all eleven dragon knights fell at the same time.

The silver dragons swooped down; their ability to fly came from their wings and innate physique, not from an awakened agility.

Eleven silver dragons drew eleven paths, precisely catching their respective falling knights.

Frostbone's back slammed heavily into Dragunov's chest, the impact causing him to cough up blood, but he grabbed the dragon saddle and flipped back onto the dragon's back.

In the sky, the apostles hovered above the black tide, and the vertical cracks turned towards them.

Then it raised one arm.

Black energy condensed in his palm, not slowly building up, but without any process from "emptiness" to "fullness"—the energy was already there in the time it takes to think.

Dragunov didn't know what it was, but he knew it was death.

Attacks at the level of laws cannot be dodged, blocked, or defended against.

Just as one cannot avoid the "fall" itself, cannot block the "cold" itself, and cannot defend against the "time" itself.

Then the attack landed.

There was no sound, no light, only an invisible ripple spreading from the apostle's palm, sweeping across the entire sky.

Its speed was too fast for consciousness to grasp; by the time Dragunov realized it had been launched, it was already in front of him.

That's too fast.

It was so fast that he didn't have time to utter a single word, so fast that the ten dragon knights didn't even have time to react, so fast that the ten silver dragons hadn't even had time to adjust their angles after spreading their wings.

Then Frostbone stood in front of him.

Six hundred and forty-seven years of fighting instinct, faster than thought.

Over the long years of fighting alongside seven knights, its body has long since etched the words "protect the knight" into every bone, every scale, and every heartbeat.

When that attack, which even consciousness couldn't grasp, landed, Frostbone didn't think; it simply moved.

Its dragon wings suddenly spread open, blocking Dragunov's entire field of vision.

The black ripples struck it, but Frostbone made no sound.

Its dragon scales lost their luster piece by piece, starting from the tips of its wings; the silver turned gray, the gray turned deathly white, and then it scattered in the wind like ashes.

Its eyes were still open, the silver pupils still reflecting Dragunov's face, but the light had gone out.

Behind it, the ten silver dragons and ten dragon riders made no sound and made no reaction.

Black ripples swept across their bodies, and life was completely drained away in an instant.

The dragon scales lost their silver color, the armor lost its luster, and eleven silver dragons and ten knights fell from the sky, crashing heavily onto the scorched earth with a dull thud.

Then all fell silent.

Dragunov crashed to the ground, the massive body of Frostbone lying beside him, silver blood gushing from its wounds and pooling into a small lake at his feet.

Frostbone, the last dragon king of the Silver Dragon Knights of Elderland, lived to the age of 647.

He fought alongside seven knights, flew over the farthest mountain range on the continent, and fought for ninety days in the Black Tide for the land behind him.

Its death was not marked by a spectacular explosion, nor by a tragic last word; it simply collapsed, like a wall that finally could not hold on any longer.

Dragunov knelt before the head of Frostbone.

The helmet had fallen off at some point, and his gray hair had fallen down, covering half of his face.

His left hand gently stroked the frostbone dragon horn, his hand trembling.

It wasn't out of fear, it was out of anger.

His left arm was broken and hung limply at his side, blood dripping continuously from the gaps in his armor. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The helmet was lost, the shield was shattered, and the sword was broken.

Behind him, the corpses of ten dragon knights and eleven silver dragons lay scattered on the scorched earth, like silent tombstones.

He was the only one left in the entire dragon rider legion.

But he also had a dragon spear.

It was forged from the dragon's teeth of Frostbone, and the spear is named "Dragonfall," meaning "the fall of the dragon."

He still remembered Frostbone personally selecting the longest tooth from his own fallen old teeth, bringing it to him with silvery ambergris still gleaming on it.

He had always felt that the name was unlucky, but now he thinks it might not be unlucky, but a prophecy.

He gripped the dragon spear tightly and turned around.

The apostle hovered in mid-air, less than two hundred meters away from him.

It didn't pursue, didn't finish off the ant, but just watched quietly, like a person watching an ant trying to climb onto the edge of a table.

Dragunov began to walk, one step, two steps, the broken bone grinding against his flesh, leaving a long trail of blood.

He walked faster and faster, and his third step was twice as long as his first. After fifty meters, he was running.

At eighty meters, he began his sprint.

The dragon spear was held horizontally, its tip aimed at the vertical crack on the apostle's head.

The runes on the gun lit up, one, two, three, like stars being ignited and blooming one after another.

One hundred meters, the last ten steps.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, yet everyone could see the shape of his lips.

"Dracos, charge!"

There were no dragons, no cavalry, only one person.

A blood-soaked old soldier, barely able to stand, raised a dragon spear heavier than his own body and launched a final charge towards an apostle of a god.

He rushed into the black circle of light.

The apostle did not move; it merely tilted its head slightly, the vertical crack pointing towards Dragunov's direction.

The image faded, the light slowly receded, and the outline of the sinkhole solidified again in the field of vision.

Lin Feng stood on the pile of rubble, looking down at the memory crystal in his hand, its golden patterns now completely faded.

"apostle."

He repeated the word in a low voice, the sound echoing in the empty sinkhole before being swallowed by silence.