Back on Mount Everest, Elijah was screaming. His body arched backward in the snow. He was still holding his own glowing heart. The fourteen Ley-Lines did not just shoot across the sky anymore. They all rushed toward the Himalayas. They all plugged directly into Elijah. He was running the power of fifteen million souls, and the Earth's magma, through his own chest. His black glass armor turned blinding white. The heat was so intense that the top of Mount Everest literally melted. The ancient rock turned to glowing orange lava beneath his boots. "WEAVE IT!" Elijah roared to the system. [SYNCHRONIZATION AT 100%.][DISTRIBUTING LOAD.][INITIATING THE GREY WEB.]High in the atmosphere, the global gray shield was only one second away from breaking. The Father’s golden beam had pushed almost all the way through. But then, the Pulse hit the sky. The thin, stretched gray balloon suddenly shattered. Elijah intentionally broke his own global shield. For one terrifying second, the Earth w

Adam laughed. It was a cold, mean sound. "He cannot save you, my dear," Adam said. "Because if he turns the power off, the gray shield falls, and the World-Eater burns the planet. And if he leaves his spot on the mountain to come fight me, the web crashes. He is stuck. I have put your King in a perfect trap. He gets to sit on top of the world and watch his family burn."The glass floor of the chamber began to crack. Gray steam shot up from the ground. The Surge was reaching its peak. "Enjoy the heat, ladies," Adam smiled. He sat down on a nearby chair to watch the fireworks. Back on the peak of Mount Everest, Elijah dropped to his knees. He was dying. Not from a physical attack, but from the inside out. His soul was connected to the entire world. He was the central router for the Grey Web. All the magic was passing through his chest before it went to New York. And the magic was fighting him. "SYSTEM," Elijah screamed. "HOW DO I STOP THE SURGE IN NEW YORK?"[THE ONLY WAY TO STOP T

Far above the dark, storm-covered Earth, there was a place of perfect light. It was the Seventh Sphere. It was the home of the Archangels. In this place, there was no dirt. There was no pain. There was no cold rain or howling wind. Everything was made of pure, shining gold and smooth white marble. The clouds were perfect and fluffy, smelling like sweet vanilla and clean lightning. In the center of the Seventh Sphere was the Great Harvest Room. It was a room so massive that a whole city could fit inside it. The floor was a giant mirror of polished gold. On the walls, there were thousands of giant, glowing numbers. These were the Harvest Counters. The counters acted like giant clocks or scoreboards. They tracked the souls that were being pulled up from Earth. For ten years, the numbers had always gone up. The Archangels ate human joy, human faith, and human souls to keep their golden home perfect. Today was supposed to be the biggest feast in the history of the universe. The giant

Ares stepped closer to Sofia. "But this thing does not follow rules," Ares whispered. "It does not have a computer brain. It does not have code to be hacked. It only has one command: “Eat and Grow."Sofia’s brass eyes widened. She slowly began to understand the terrible plan. "You cannot drop that inside the Grey Web," Sofia said. "The Web is too thick. It will burn up before it hits the ground.""I am not going to drop it inside his safe little cage," Ares-Prime laughed. He turned and pointed his giant sword at the Earth branch on the Tree of Law. He pointed to the parts of the branch that were not covered in the gray and silver circuitry. "The boy only covered 40% of the planet," Ares said. "He protected his favorite cities. But he left the other 60% totally exposed. He abandoned the deep oceans. He abandoned the dead deserts of the South. He left more than half the world outside his door."Ares looked back at the pulsing piece of flesh in the box. "I am going to drop the Crimso

Because Elijah had connected the massive power of fifteen million souls and the Earth's magma to the Ley-Lines, the air itself was over-charged with magic. The Grey Web in the sky was so full of power that it was literally leaking pure, clean mana. The mana turned into physical flakes of ash and fell to the earth. Elijah, Sarah, Lyra, and Marcus walked out of the heavy front gates of the Obsidian Spire. They stood in the courtyard, watching the Grey Ash fall. Thousands of people began to walk out of the Spire. They stood in the falling ash, laughing and crying with joy. They raised their hands to the gray sky. Elijah watched a single flake of Grey Ash fall past his face. It landed on a patch of dead, red mud on the ground. HISS.The moment the ash touched the mud, the evil red dirt was instantly purified. The mud hardened. It turned into smooth, clean gray stone. Then, a tiny miracle happened. Out of the clean gray stone, a small green plant pushed its way up. It did not have gl