The Starblade hovered at the precipice of oblivion, its hull groaning under the gravitational scream of the black hole. Before them, the accretion disk churned like a maelstrom of dying stars, its light warped into a kaleidoscope of fractured time. Elysium's armada orbited the void, their ships sleek and predatory, lotus sigils glowing crimson against the eternal dark.
Li Wei stood at the viewport, the spear shards in his chest pulsing in time with the black hole's pull. His skin had begun to crystallize at the edges, stardust bleeding through fissures that no longer healed.
"They're scanning for temporal anomalies," Kara said, her mechanical eye dissecting the fleet's formations. "The cloaking won't hold if we get any closer."
He didn't turn. "We don't need to. The Tenth Core isn't in the fleet."
Her gaze snapped to him. "Where, then?"
Li Wei pointed to the black hole's edge, where spacetime itself frayed like torn fabric. A structure flickered there—a jagged spire fused from Elysium steel and Prisoner-flesh, its apex piercing the event horizon. "Veyra's stronghold. She's using the Core to anchor herself to this reality."
Kara's jaw tightened. "Of course she's not dead."
"Not dead," Li Wei said. "Worse."
The Starblade plunged into the accretion disk, its shields shrieking under the onslaught of radiation. Kara wrestled the controls, her mechanical eye glitching as conflicting gravitational fields warped the sensors.
"If we tear apart here, even the Prisoner won't find our scraps," she growled.
Li Wei placed a hand on the console. Golden energy—tainted with threads of black—flared from his palm, stabilizing the ship. "Steady."
They broke through into a pocket of calm, the black hole's roar muffled. Veyra's spire loomed ahead, its surface writhing with organic circuitry. The Tenth Core pulsed within, its heartbeat a thunderclap that rattled the Starblade's bones.
Kara docked in a shadowed alcove, the airlock hissing open to a corridor lined with pulsating veins. The walls breathed.
"Charming," she muttered, priming her plasma pistol.
Li Wei stepped forward, spear shards flaring. "Stay behind me."
The throne room was a cathedral of flesh and steel. Veyra sat at its center, her body unrecognizable—a serpentine abomination of obsidian scales and bioluminescent lotus patterns. The Eighth Core's remnants pulsed in her chest, tendrils of void energy knitting her to the spire.
"Li Wei," she rasped, her voice a chorus of echoes. "I wondered when you'd come to kneel."
He ignited the spear shards, their light slicing through the gloom. "This ends now."
Veyra laughed, the sound like shattering glass. She unfurled, towering over them, her tail cracking the floor. "You think your shattered toy can harm me? I am ascended."
Kara fired. The plasma bolt struck Veyra's shoulder, searing scales to ash. The warlord hissed, regenerating instantly.
"You first, jailer."
The battle was a blur of violence.
Veyra moved with impossible speed, her claws shredding the air. Li Wei parried with the spear shards, each clash spraying sparks of gold and void. Kara darted through the chaos, targeting the spire's pulsing veins.
"The Core's in the spire!" she shouted. "Bring it down!"
Li Wei channeled his hybrid energy, the spear shards erupting in a nova of light. He slammed them into the floor, fissures racing toward the spire's base. The structure groaned.
Veyra screamed, her form destabilizing. "You dare—!"
Vision: The first Sovereign, weeping as he sealed the Prisoner into the black hole. "Forgive me," he whispered. "There was no other way."
Li Wei faltered. Veyra struck, her tail hurling him into a pillar.
"Pathetic," she sneered. "You're just a shadow of what you were."
Kara lunged, her mechanical eye overloading with golden light. "And you're a fucking puppet!"
The blast blinded even Li Wei. When the light faded, Kara stood with her palm pressed to the spire's central vein, jailer runes burning under her skin.
"Authorization recognized," a voice boomed. "Kin of the Wardens, awaken."
The Tenth Core's pulse stuttered. The spire screamed.
Veyra recoiled, her void tendrils fraying. "No! This is mine!"
Kara's eyes glowed with ancestral fury. "You don't get to take anything else."
She tore the vein free.
The spire imploded. The Tenth Core's light inverted, collapsing into a singularity that devoured Veyra's screams. The Starblade's engines flared, dragging them from the event horizon's grasp as the black hole reclaimed its prisoner.
In the aftermath, Li Wei lay broken in the med-bay, his crystallized skin reflecting the void outside. Kara slumped beside him, her human hand charred from the core's energy.
"You knew," he rasped.
She flexed her burnt fingers. "Not until it spoke. My blood… it's a key. And a curse."
A hologram flickered—Aria's face, fractured by static. "The Prisoner's rage has a new target. Find the Eleventh Core. It's the only way to end this."
Kara pulled up the star map. A single coordinate burned—a galaxy's heart, where Elysium's fleets gathered like vultures.