My Edict of Severance struck home. It was not a physical blow, but a conceptual one, aimed at the unstable seam of Alyssara's grafted divinity. There was no explosion, no thunderous roar. Just a profound, terrible silence as the Grey, fueled by Harmony's truth, unraveled the core of her power.
Alyssara's jade eyes, which had been blazing with divine, furious light, widened in shock. The overwhelming pressure in the sanctum, her "Complete Control," vanished in an instant, like a plug being pulled. The crimson light in her silks faded. The stolen power of Lust and Fantasy, now severed from the anchor of her will, dissipated like smoke. She stood motionless for a beat, a look of simple, human confusion on her face, before her knees buckled.
She fell, her body hitting the cold, alien floor with a frail, mortal weight it had never seemed to possess before. The woman who had warped reality, the Crimson Empress, the Scarlet Calamity, was now nothing more than a dying ember.
