The light from the shattered petal faded, leaving Elysion's battlefield cloaked in an eerie twilight. Kael lay on the cracked obsidian ground, his breath ragged, the echoes of a thousand selves still whispering in his skull. Above him, the sky rippled like disturbed water, jagged cracks bleeding violet static. Selene crouched nearby, her silver hair tangled, hands trembling as the violet tendrils receded from her skin. For a heartbeat, her eyes met Kael's—silver, not void black—before she recoiled, clutching her head as if fighting a scream.
"Lyra…" Kael rasped, reaching for her.
She vanished in a swirl of shadows, leaving only a single silver bell clattering to the ground.
The earth quaked, rifts splitting wider as Void Titans clawed their way into reality. Faceless and colossal, their limbs oozed liquid shadow, warping the air where they passed. Flowers petrified mid bloom. A Synergist initiate froze mid scream, her body crumbling to ash before she hit the ground.
Lira dragged Kael behind a shattered pillar, her lute cracked but still humming with defiant energy. "We need to retreat! The Architect's fracturing Elysion's core!"
"Retreat?" Aria materialized, her form flickering like a guttering candle. "You'd abandon your sanctuary to that thing?"
"To survive," Lira snapped, plucking a dissonant chord that repelled a lunging Voidspawn. Her mismatched eyes locked on Kael. "Even you must see we're outmatched."
Kael's vision blurred. The Ascendant Tier's backlash gnawed at his mind, the merged alternates now silent but for the Scholar's cold calculus: Probability of survival: 12.7%. He gripped the obsidian shard beneath him, its edge biting into his palm. "No," he growled, forcing himself upright. "We fight."
Veyron emerged from the chaos, his armor cracked and smoldering. The alternates chained to him were gone, consumed in the petal's light. Yet his grin remained, sharp and feral.
"Sentiment again, Kael?" He gestured to the collapsing sky. "The Architect's done with subtlety. It'll devour us all unless we strike first."
Lira's fingers tightened on her lute. "You're proposing an alliance?"
"I'm proposing survival." Veyron tossed Kael a jagged black crystal, its surface pulsing with stolen Prime energy. "My Dominions can buy us time—if you reintegrate your Core."
"A trap," Aria warned, her blade materializing in Kael's hand.
But the Scholar's voice countered, cold and clinical: Efficiency rating: 89%.
Kael hesitated, the crystal's heat searing his palm. Somewhere in the fray, a Void Titan roared, its shadow swallowing a fleeing Synergist. He crushed the crystal.
Pain.
Raw, unending pain as the energy fused with his Prime Core. Veyron's stolen memories flooded him—a childhood in a frozen wasteland, a brother executed for treason, the first alternate he'd dominated. Kael screamed, but the pain birthed power.
Ascendant Tier: Reawakened.
Five alternates surged forth, then ten—Aria's blade, the Pyromancer's inferno, the Thief's shadows, the Diplomat's composure, and new ones: a blacksmith's resilience, a poet's cadence, a martyr's resolve. Kael became a symphony of selves, each note harmonizing into something more.
He moved, and the Void Titans faltered.
Aria's sword cleaved through shadow flesh. The Pyromancer's flames scorched the faceless voids. The Thief slipped between dimensions, severing tendons of dark matter. For a moment, the tide turned.
But the Architect's laughter boomed through the rifts.
"You think this is power?"
The sky shattered. A titan's claw slammed into Kael, hurling him across the battlefield. Blood filled his mouth as alternates fractured, their voices shrieking.
In the eye of the storm, Selene watched. The Architect's voice thundered in her mind, promising power, purpose, an end to loneliness. But Kael's cry—raw, human, flawed—pierced the static.
She looked at the silver bell in her hand, its chime faint but clear.
"No more lies," she whispered, and plunged her claw into her own chest.
Violet light erupted, not from the Void, but from her—a beacon that froze the Titans mid strike.