"Nick, don’t be foolish... You are too close to the Phoenix," Tyrese warned sternly. "You might wake it up."
"That’s what I am planning to do if these Heliodorians refuse to sign a contract ensuring that we get at least 20% of the treasury... 20% for the Sun Amulet. Sounds more than fair to me."
Upon hearing his threat, Arthur and the girls’ expressions turned frigid instantly.
"Nicky... you don’t want to do this."
Nurah summoned her shadowy daggers with a faint smile, but not an ounce of emotion was in it... The moment Mira, Blake, and the rest of Tyrese’s team saw this, they swiftly summoned their weapons too... their expressions turned grim.
"I guess that’s a no..." Nick said, unfazed by weapons being drawn.
"Nick! Don’t you dare..." Tyrese shouted furiously, not fond of his teammate going against his authority like this.
Alas, the warning came too late... Nick lifted the amulet from the Phoenix’s neck as gently as possible to avoid waking it up.
Then, he extended it in the direction of Arthur’s team. But just as he was about to ask them about the location of the treasury, using the Sun Amulet as a bargaining chip, he heard a faint shudder coming from within the Sun Amulet.
He knitted his brows in confusion as he leaned his head closer to the Sun Amulet to confirm if he heard right.
That’s when he heard it... No, when everyone heard it.
Crack.
The Sun Amulet cracked from the middle of the flower, and then a surge of golden flames escaped from the crack!
The moment the heat reached the slumbering Phoenix, her orange feathers moved slightly as she opened her eyes... she looked directly at the Sun Amulet in Nick’s hand, and once she saw the crack, her eyes filled with sadness, not anger.
Kraa...
A soft, mournful chirp escaped its beak. The sound wasn’t loud, but it cut through everyone’s chest, leaving them with a bad, bad feeling.
"W-what’s happening?" Nick whispered, backing away from the throne.
He thought that the Phoenix was the danger.
He thought that the Phoenix was going to assault him.
Sigh, how wrong he was...
The Sun Amulet caught fire instantly... bright orange flames that burned his gloved hand and started crawling up Nick’s arm like he was drowned in gasoline.
"AAAAAAAAA!!!"
His scream pierced through the chamber as the fire spread over him. His first instinct was to throw the Sun Amulet away, but alas... no matter how hard he tried to drop it, his hand wouldn’t let go!
"NIIIICK!!"
Tyrese and his teammates shouted with grim expressions, but only Tyrese dared to rush in Nick’s direction to save him.
However, before he could clear half the distance, the Dawn Phoenix let out another faint, pained cry, and then it collapsed on the chair...
The moment this happened, the orange flames grew stronger and reached further, wrapping around both the Phoenix and Nick until they were covered in a blinding light.
Everyone shielded their eyes and retreated multiple steps back, feeling the insane heat assault their skin.
When the light faded, both were gone.
Only ash remained... and the Sun Amulet dropped on the ground, now cracked and shaking with unstable energy.
All Arthur, Nurah, Evangeline, and the rest of the Daywalkers could do was watch in stunned silence as the Sun Amulet split open from the middle.
They had no idea what was happening, and no one was there to clear their confusion, leaving them to watch with bated breath as the orange flames began to take the form of a tall, humanoid bird.
But as the details started to emerge, many Daywalkers felt their skin crawl in pure dread at the abomination before them.
What stepped out of the broken Sun Amulet didn’t look like a regal Phoenix at all. It looked like something that had been burned and twisted for a very long time.
His body was a mix of melted metal and scorched, cracked flesh... thin lines of red light ran through his skin like cracks in cooling lava, and every time he moved, smoke came out from them.
His wings were ruined... One was broken and covered in pointy, dark spines instead of feathers... the other was only a skeleton, with pieces of metal and burned bones still stuck together.
His hair was gone too... in its place, a burnt crown had melted into his skull, looking like the remains of the royal crown he once wore, now fused into his head.
Arthur and the girls felt their hearts skip a beat after the abomination’s face was reconstructed from the flames... their reaction was understandable.
Half of his face still showed what he might have looked like before... proud, strong, and royal. However, the other half looked destroyed, burned so badly that part of his jawbone showed through the melted skin. When he moved his beak briefly, sparks came out of his mouth, like his words were made of fire.
Yet, his eyes were the worst part... one glowed gold, faint and weak. The other was nothing but an empty hole, gazing into the darkness within him.
Soon, the reconstruction was completed after a beating heart of fire was born from the middle of a gaping hole in his chest.
When Nurah and the others saw the pieces of his old, melted armor still stuck to his body, their pupils thinned in dread after recognizing the faded royal symbols on it... It was the same as they saw in the temple’s mural!
"Pharaoh Azhukar..." Jojo mumbled under her breath what was on everyone’s minds.
Hearing his name called, the abomination lifted his head and glanced in their direction...then, he tilted his head slightly, seemingly incapable of understanding what was going on around him.
But as he looked at the walls, the pillars, the statues, and finally turned his head to the throne and the pile of ash on it, memories came gushing back, akin to an unstoppable flood.
He massaged his temple, his expression somewhat disturbed. But then, the pain went away, and what remained was the truth.
"Ahh... so the seal has finally broken," he uttered in ancient IIthorian.
Almost everyone understood what he said... they swiftly stepped back again while raising their weapons on instinct... none of them spoke, their raging heartbeats were the only thing resounding in the throne chamber.
It was for a good reason... besides his harrowing appearance, none of them were able to pick up on his spiritual aura.
This was always a bad sign rather than a good one, as it meant one thing... their spiritual vision was too low to even pick up on it!!
In simpler terms... the entity before them was no lesser than a Tier 8 nightcrawler or Radiant Daywalker.
’Dear god... what have we done?’
As fear was slowly chipping away at their minds, Pharaoh Azhukar’s eye moved across them one by one, studying their faces like they were strangers from another world... in this case, it was literal, as he couldn’t recognize their race at all.
"Tell me..." he said in a deep regal voice that echoed through the chamber, "Were you the ones who freed me from that cursed prison?"
No one answered... they kept staring at each other, many thoughts roaming through their minds.
But then, Nurah stepped forward after a few seconds, her expression calm... then, she took a knee and spoke with her head lowered, "Your Majesty... Pharaoh Azhukar, ruler of the Ashora Empire, Lord of the Radiant Flame... we have gone through great lengths to release you after we heard of your great achievement and heroic attempt to save your empire and people from the wrath of the traitorous Dawn Phoenix."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Arthur, Tyrese, Evangeline, and the rest of the Daywalkers went silent for a moment after hearing the nonsense Nurah had just spewed... but they figured out instantly what kind of angle she was relying on to save themselves from this damning situation. They swiftly got rid of their weapons and knelt on their knees one by one, lowering their heads as well.
Seeing this, Pharaoh Azhukar cracked a faint, pleased smile and lifted one arm slowly, as if addressing his loyal subjects.
"You, people of foreign skin," Azhukar declared, his voice deep and commanding. "You have rendered me a great service. As Emperor of the Ashora Empire, I shall see that each of you is rewarded in full measure."
Hearing this, a flicker of hope was restored in the hearts of the Daywalkers, feeling like Nurah’s strategy might work if they committed to it.
At the moment, they didn’t care about the Sun Amulet, the treasures, or the promised rewards... nothing. They just wanted to escape back to Earth in one piece, recognizing that the letter’s content was a crafted lie for the sake of freeing the Pharaoh from his imprisonment!
When they combined it with the Pharaoh’s current hideous appearance, and the hint of grief and sorrow from the Dawn Phoenix, the truth had cleared their cloudy eyes at last.
They still didn’t know what happened exactly in the past, but one thing they were sure about... the Pharaoh was no hero, and he had the strength to turn them into a pile of ash with a single order.
However, before the flicker of hope could grow, it was extinguished the moment Pharaoh Azhukar’s gaze went distant... his senses reaching far beyond the room, through the halls, the city, the ruins.
That’s when he saw it... the state of his empire, his people, everything. His eye widened to the limit in horror and grief.
"No..." he whispered. "My empire... my people..."
Whoosh!
A wave of rage erupted from him, his hidden spiritual aura surging wildly as orange flames burst forth, taking the shape of a massive, roaring phoenix.
Thud! Thud!
Everyone was slammed to the ground, their faces pressed into the yellow stone floor... the spiritual pressure made it impossible to move a single finger!
"Who did this!?"
His charged voice shook the whole pyramid. Evangeline gritted her teeth and forced herself to speak.
"The Shadow Dimension..." She said weakly. "The corruption consumed it. Your empire... your people... they were devoured and corrupted by it."
Hearing this, Azhukar went silent for a few moments... then he relaxed his spiritual pressure on them and asked, his voice devoid of emotion.
"What’s the date?"
"Year 534 of the 87th Millennium, Chained Era."