It reached past its own protocols and into his shadow reserves without asking, pulling from the Raikarndel bloodline at a depth he'd never accessed, and what answered wasn't his serpents or any shadows.
It was older than all of those.
[ESSENCE OF THE SHADOW IN EFFECT]
[BLOODLINE UNLOCKED TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL]
The raw nature of the bloodline before it became a technique. The darkness that had been in his father's blood before his father learned to shape it was fundamental and unrefined and vast in ways that classified abilities were not vast because classification was a refinement that cost something in the refining.
The shadow essence hit the entity from below, and the entity had not accounted for it.
The fight changed.
