The Blood-red bull struck first.
Its whip screamed across the sky—an incandescent vein of iron and fire that split the horizon in two. The impact came from the right, slamming into Cinerion's Reaper Sabre with a shriek of tortured metal. White sparks cascaded like burning rain as both weapons locked, their clash shaking the ash-choked plain—
—then the left side erupted.
The perversed purple lunged—pure speed and malice, its violet form a blur of claws and mirrored flesh, darting low toward the pair's exposed flank.
Hiss—CRACK!
The Ion Gauntlet flared to life.
A fractured shield burst outward in blue-white arcs, catching the daemon's blow mid-charge. The backlash hurled the fiend forward; its talons carved trenches through the earth as it fought to stay upright.
—
Thanatos wrenched free.
Warning glyphs flared crimson across his throne interface—heat, torque, overload.
The shared limb tore apart in a burst of steam and light, magnetic couplers snapping loose with the sound of rending iron.
The Ion Gauntlet ripped free from Cinerion's chassis, trailing sparks, before locking onto Thanatos' ruined mount with a thunderous clang.
For a single, shuddering second, the crippled Knight stood alone—sparking, incomplete, but armed—
—Obol seized the moment.
He diverted every remaining circuit of power from Thanatos' wounded systems, forcing the Gellar tether to surge. The cable between them blazed white-hot, molten light crawling through its length like veins of caged lightning.
Before him,
the violet abomination staggered—still smoldering from the Gauntlet's last discharge, its mirrored hide cracking under the heat.
Obol's hands tightened around the controls.
He turned the Knight's broken mass with sheer will, feeding the surge into the actuators.
Using the recoil, Thanatos moved.
The ground cracked beneath his stride, vents screaming, each motion a miracle of fury and faith. He turned his frame with a grinding roar, plating shrieking as the joints fought the shift.
The broken socket on his right side swung back toward Cinerion's left—mag-locks realigning, servos hissing in protest as they reconnected before their minds could fully separate.
For a heartbeat, both Knights froze—half apart, half one.
Then the Cognis-Braid caught the feedback.
Circuits screamed.
The battlefield pulsed with the hum of shared power as their movements synced again, imperfect but enough.
Two Knights.
One pair of arms.
One will—split across two fronts.
—
The red brute roared.
Flame gushed from its fanged maw, the light inside its skull burning orange-hot, throwing its skeletal silhouette in black relief through the haze.
The breath came like a storm—liquid fire and ash mixed into one, a furnace exhaled from hell itself.
Cinerion met it head-on.
He shifted his stance, Reaper Sabre dropping low into a defensive guard.
The molten gale struck the blade with a sound like metal screaming. Heat waves rolled off in concentric ripples, splitting around him in violent arcs.
The air burned white.
Warning runes flared.
Servo joints hissed under the temperature spike.
Still, Cinerion held his ground—locked in the firebreather's inferno, every motion shared through the tether that bound him to Thanatos.
Behind him, he could feel the recoil—the Ion Gauntlet charging, its hum building into a storm through the shared circuit.
One fought flame.
The other wielded lightning.
SZZHK—KLASH—CRACK!
Every strike from the violet fiend met a wall of ion fire. The Gauntlet clenched; then its field erupted outward in a shockwave that hurled the creature back.
It stumbled—dazed, its elegance momentarily shattered—but before it could recover, Thanatos lunged—the Gauntlet's claws clamped around its neck, plasma arcing across the contact points.
Cinerion moved in the same breath.
Both Knights turned as one—two titans sharing a single will—pivoting right in perfect unison.
The violet abomination was torn from its footing, hurled bodily through the ash and into the path of the fire-spewing crimson brute.
The collision detonated like artillery—two titans of corruption crashing together in a storm of flame and flesh.
The violet monstrosity shrieked, its flank blackened and hissing as molten flesh sloughed away, it staggered upright, snarling its displeasure.
While the red, horn-crowned beast beat its wings once and lifted clear of the ground, its claw traced the length of its whip, igniting it anew in coils of living fire.
Before them, Obol's grin was audible through the vox—a rasp of defiance and exhaustion both.
Beside him, Maeric shook burning residue from his sabre, the Reaper's edge glimmering white-hot in the haze.
—
The flaming whip came down like a meteor.
Thanatos' Gauntlet rose to meet it—fingers closing around the broken earth itself.
Chunks of rock and shattered plating tore free from the ground, caught in the magnetic pull of the Ion field—they glowed, then melted—their surfaces crawling with blue fire, turning to clouds of molten, ionized debris.
The Gauntlet hurled them upward.
The makeshift barrage met the descending whip midair—shards and slag bursting into arcs of plasma that split the darkness like a storm of falling stars.
Each collision lit the sky with violent brilliance.
Fire met lightning; rock became light.
From the haze, the violet monster lunged forward—
BOOM!
The Ion Gauntlet detonated on contact, its shockwave ripping through the air and hurling the creature backward.
The explosion tore the smokescreen apart, clearing the field in a blinding flash of blue-white fire.
Obol seized the moment, both Knights moved as one—driven by a single will through the Braid.
They surged forward, titans of metal and fire cutting through the storm.
Thanatos caught the raging bull mid-charge—mass colliding with mass.
His Gauntlet clamped down on the beast's hoofed leg, servos screaming as he twisted.
With a burst of reactor thrust, he dragged the crimson brute off balance and hurled it aside, the impact shaking the plain.
Obol anchored Thanatos' stance, feet digging deep into the ashen ground.
He turned, sideway, fluid even through ruin—his Ion Gauntlet rising like a hammer of light.
The violet horror lunged.
Thanatos' fist met its scissor claws in a flare of blue fire. Metal shrieked; air split.
The shockwave cracked through the battlefield, scattering the warp-spawn tide in a wave of pressure.
At the same instant, Cinerion's sabre screamed—biting through the Bloodthirster's flaming whip as it struck, sparks cascading like molten rain.
Two fronts. One rhythm.
The Knights of Kharon held the line.
—
Within the Bastion, the storm outside was only numbers.
The relay-shrine shuddered under the strain, light bleeding through every conduit seam.The lattice hummed at a pitch that made mortal ears bleed; sigils along the walls flickered between gold and red like a pulse under siege.
Thale Serekin stood at its heart—anchored in a web of light and cabling, his optics burning with cascading runes.
Every equation told him the same thing.
POWER DISTRIBUTION: ESCALATINGLATTICE STABILITY: DECAY VECTOR – ACCELERATINGFEEDBACK RISK: CRITICAL THRESHOLD
—
He voxed across all Knight channels, his voice flat, deliberate—cutting through the thunder and distortion.
"High-Scion, Lord Maeric—be advised. Lattice current has reached ninety-three percent flux capacity. Any further resonance will breach containment harmonics."
Static crackled; sparks leapt from the relay behind him.
"The Cognis-Braid is amplifying the strain."
"Shared cognition compounds feedback exponentially—each mirrored impulse doubles the load."
He paused.
Binharic sub-processors translated cold probability into the human tongue.
"Prolonged synchronization will result in cascading failures across both systems.
Physical strain—guaranteed injury. Neural saturation—fatal within minutes.
Mechanical instability—progressive servo collapse."
—
Obol answered amidst the chaos,
"I get it, death. We have faced death countless times, Magos."
He paused, exhaling.
"Will the Lattice hold?"
—
"No," Thale said at last, the word landing like iron dropped into silence.
"The Lattice will not hold."
His voice was stripped of all pretense of machine calm.The harmonizers behind him howled, conduits bulging under the pressure as the Bastion itself began to tremble.
"If the Cognis-Braid continues, its instability will bleed into the Gellar framework."
"The field will begin to feed upon itself—each fluctuation amplifying until containment and warp inversion collapse into a single point."
He turned toward the relay, mechadendrites locking deeper into the shrine.
The light around him pulsed in erratic rhythm—gold, red, black—like a dying heart.
"When that happens, everything caught within the Lattice's geometry will be consumed. Not merely erased—absorbed. The field will fold inward, devouring all physical and psychic matter to sustain its own false equilibrium."
Static filled the vox.
Even the Bastion's walls seemed to hesitate.
Then Obol's voice cut through—ragged, certain.
"Then start erecting the last two walls now, Magos."
"Before it collapses."
Thanatos' gauntlet crashed forward, punching the violet monstrosity's head sideways in an explosion of smoke and force.
Obol clenched the fist, detonating another shockwave that sent the crimson beast reeling backward.
Cinerion's Reaper Sabre flashed a moment later, cleaving through the red brute's jaw in a single, brutal stroke.
Steam and bloodlight mingled in the air.
The two Knights turned toward each other—ash rising between them, reactors screaming in unison—and exchanged a single nod of acknowledgement.
Then, through shared vox and a single, braided will, they spoke as one:
"Do it, Magos Dominus."
—
"Affirmative."
Thale obeyed without hesitation.
He turned back to the shrine, mechadendrites sliding into the relay ports with a chorus of metallic clicks. The conduits flared to life, lines of gold running from the Bastion's heart toward the lattice pylons outside.
"Diverting primary flow—Kaelthorn to lattice junction nodes two to three and four to one," he intoned, his voice half-buried beneath the thunder of power transfer.
The chamber shook as the current surged.Sacred seals ignited across the relay floor, lines of binary prayer spilling into the air as glowing script.
Without looking away from the storm of light, Thale spoke again—flat, deliberate.
"Navigators—commence harmonic tuning. Bring the frequencies to phase unity."
—
"Are you sure, Magos? They would surely perish," Lady Seraphine asked, her voice trembling beneath the hum of rising power.
—
Thale gave no answer.
Lysan and Seraphine stepped forward at once, veils fluttering in the charged air.Their hands pressed to the sigil-plate, gold light washing over their faces as the harmonic resonance began to build.
Twin voices rose—a hymn woven of human tone and warp resonance—guiding the flow of reality itself back toward symmetry.
The air thickened; gravity itself seemed to bend around their song.
Thale's optics flared as he scanned the lattice feed.Something resisted.
He focused on the secondary node—Kaelthorn's channel—where the harmonic readouts flickered with discordant light. The refusal wasn't vocal. It was felt—a denial in the Noosphere itself, like a hand pressed against divine command.
He tilted his head slightly, his mechadendrites twitching with mechanical agitation.
Behind him, the Noosphere around Kaelthorn shimmered—a storm of machine-thought filled with tentative sorrow and the silent roar of defiance. It was emotion transcribed in data, grief expressed as code—something no mortal eye could see, no human ear could ever hear.
Thale's tone hardened, cutting through the hum of the Bastion.
"Lady Vaerin," he said, each syllable precise, metallic, and absolute.
"You are disobeying a direct order from your High-Scion."
—
Both she and Kaelthorn resisted.
Their defiance resonated through the Noosphere like twin chords struck from the same dying instrument—raw, desperate, alive.
Their song echoed in Vaerin's voice, carried across the vox with unfiltered conviction:
"No! We can still get them out before the Lattice closes! Let me talk to them!"
Her words wove through the static, half plea, half command, the kind of cry that could make even a machine pause.
—
Thale's optics dimmed for a moment, the faint flicker of something unreadable crossing his faceplate.
The Noosphere screamed around him—Kaelthorn's reactor-song spiking in refusal, Vaerin's own mind pressing against command code like a heartbeat against iron walls.
Then Thale's tone hardened, shorn of hesitation.
"Vox-communication is impossible, Lady Vaerin. They have blocked it."
The words cut through the Bastion like a blade of cold iron.
Vaerin froze, her gloved fingers hovering above the sigil-plate. Her breath caught behind her veil, half-formed prayers dying on her tongue. Kaelthorn's machine-spirit flared again in the data-field behind her—a silent cry of denial, a surge of defiant light that guttered and dimmed as Thale rerouted the flow.
—
Static hummed across the vox—a low, distorted chorus that carried both grief and resolve.
Morvhar's voice came first, heavy with static and sorrow.
"They already decided this when they merged their Thrones, Vaerin."
Thrykos' tone was flat, but behind the modulation, the ache was unmistakable.
—
"I share your sorrows, dear sister."
Vaeleen's voice came next, low and sharp, carried over the vox with the hum of plasma coils beneath her words.
"But even if they were to return, they would be branded heretics."
From below the ridge, Phorxys' lightning lances tore through the swarms that tried to engulf Thanatos and Cinerion beneath the Gate—each blast carving afterimages across the storm, each strike a silent act of mourning turned to violence.
The air was thick with ozone and grief.
—
Then came a long sigh from Isera—Morphael's Thunderstrike Gauntlet and Thermal Lance locked in motion, holding the top right corner against the tide.
"Men of Kharon…" she rasped, the vox crackling with strain and smoke,
"what a bunch of fools."
Her next words came softer, a whisper almost lost beneath the thunder and the scream of metal.
"Honorable death, my fist."
—
"Aye," came Caldrin's voice—steady, resolute, her husband's tone cutting through the storm.
"All we can do is honoring their wish."
Vorgane stood beside Morphael, his Siege Claw grinding through the tide, Battle Cannon roaring in steady cadence—each shot a declaration of defiance that tore the lesser creatures apart in waves of molten ruin.
"Better to die as faithful Knights," he added,
"than live as heretics."
—
Vaerin's grip faltered; her fingers slipped from the sigil-plate as tears streaked down her face. She tilted her head toward Thale, lips trembling beneath her veil.
"Fuck…" she breathed—a word half curse, half surrender.
Then she closed her eyes.
Both she and Kaelthorn yielded, their light dimming in the Noosphere as the last of their resistance bled away. The great engine's roar softened into harmony, and the Navigators began their work—tuning the lattice once more, their song threading reality back toward the edge of collapse.
—
Outside, the world brightened.
The ash plains trembled as the lattice's light climbed through the storm—gold and white beams piercing the clouded heavens, spreading in vast concentric rings.
Obol's optics narrowed against the glare.
Even through the scorched lens of Thanatos' helm, he could see the change—reality itself trembling at the edges, warping around the rising field.
"The Gellar lattice is climbing…" Maeric murmured, his voice low, awed, and grim all at once.
"Good." Obol replied.
Their frames stood amid ruin—both half-shadowed by the growing radiance.
For a fleeting moment, the battlefield went still. The smoke parted. The air held its breath.
Then the Gate pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
And the world screamed.
Warpfire burst from the rift like volcanic breath, tearing the sky apart.
The first shape to emerge was vast and rotted, its every movement shaking the air—the Green colossal reborn in a tide of filth and steam, its flesh reforming from the residue of its own annihilation.
Beside it, a cyclone of feathers and sapphire flame took shape—the Blue bird, its eyes a thousand burning suns, its wings unfolding like pages of a cursed scripture.
Reality bent around their presence, the lattice flaring and dimming as if in pain.
Obol and Maeric locked their gaze across the shared link.
"Two more," Obol said.
"Always two," Maeric answered, his tone almost a laugh—bitter, weary, defiant.
Thanatos raised the Ion Gauntlet, the coils sparking to life again. Cinerion lifted his Reaper Sabre, its edge a streak of blue lightning.
"One more toll," Obol muttered.
"Then we answer," Maeric finished.
The giants turned toward the light—and charged.
—
The two horrors advanced as one—rot and sorcery, decay and flame.
The Rot titan lurched forward, each step a quake that sank the ash into black tar. Pus geysers burst from its wounds with every movement, each droplet birthing crawling filth that swarmed at its feet.
Above, the Two-headed bird spread its wings wide—an archangel of madness haloed in sapphire fire. Warp-light rippled from its beak as it began to chant, a thousand voices overlapping in a single note that tore through the air like a psalm of unmaking.
The Knights moved.
The Reaper Sabre roared to life as he met the bloated titan head-on. Sparks and filth erupted at the impact, each swing carving through layers of living decay that simply reknit as fast as he could strike.
The daemon laughed, voice like grinding stones in a pit of bile.
Its swollen fist swung wide, shattering the ridge beneath their feet.
Cinerion's reactor screamed. His blade caught the blow—barely—metal grinding against unholy flesh that refused to yield. Hydraulic seals burst, smoke venting from his shoulders in black plumes.
At the same instant, Thanatos turned upward.
The Witch-bird exhaled.
A cone of warp-fire fell from the sky—a torrent of azure flame laced with screaming faces, each wailing as it burned.
Obol braced.
The Ion Gauntlet flared, its coils shrieking as the shield ignited—a dome of white-blue light expanding around both Knights.
The first wave struck.
BOOM.
The second followed, hotter, louder—ripping molten channels through the ground around them. The Gauntlet's barrier flared brighter, arcs snapping across its edges as the energy overload surged through its frame.
Cinerion swung low, cutting the Green one's knee from beneath it.
The giant collapsed forward, crashing into the warp-fire torrent. Steam and flame erupted as corrupted flesh met raw energy, exploding into a geyser of boiling ichor.
Thanatos' gauntlet opened.
The Ion coils discharged in a burst of radiant force, redirecting the warp-fire back into the heavens. The explosion split the storm above them—one side burning green, the other blue, the center gold with lattice light.
Between the colors, two Knights stood unbroken—shadows of will against gods of ruin.
Their movements blurred together—Cinerion's sabre carving through rot as Thanatos' gauntlet met sorcery with burning defiance.
And together—they fought—locked in clash against gods.
Ghe Gate split wider and vomited fresh nightmares.
Thanatos braced to one side, Ion Gauntlet raised—lightning rippling along its fractured coils.
Cinerion crashed shoulder-first into the mountain of rot, sabre biting deep. The blade tore through swollen flesh and burst a fistful of crawling, bile-wet hands that tried to anchor them in place.
The giant roared, a sound like mud drowning a cathedral choir. Filth and steam belched from the wound—but still it clung, its remaining claw crushing down on Cinerion's pauldron, trying to drag him into its plague-mass.
—
Then the world fell on them.
The warp burst open and a tide of shrieking spawn descended, wings and claws and dripping mouths, burying both Knights under living corruption.
Thanatos disappeared first—his gauntlet's arc flickering as bodies slammed into him, trying to smother the charge.
Cinerion followed, sabre hacking upward even as his frame vanished beneath rotting flesh and writhing teeth.
Warp-fire rained from above, clouds of screaming flame collapsing over their armored backs. Light fractured around them; ash turned molten underfoot.
The other Knights saw—and opened fire immediately.
Morphael's thunderstrike gauntlet hurled bolts like falling stars.
Vorgane's battle cannon shelled into the swarm, detonations ripping bodies skyward.
Phorxys' lances carved spears of blue-white energy through layered flesh and shadow.
Morvhar's avengers beamed pure tungsten into endless abyssal of flesh.
And Kaelthorn's artillery boomed the sky, painting it in chorus of colors.
But for all the fury they unleashed, it was like trying to empty an ocean with a blade.
The pair at the center—Thanatos and Cinerion—were no longer visible.
Only thrashing limbs, lightning arcs, and the deafening chorus of monsters proved they still fought beneath the tide.
—
Within the Bastion,
the ground trembled. The conduits thrummed in uneven rhythm, as if something vast and unseen was breathing through them.
Lysan flinched. His hands froze above the sigil-plate.
"Do you hear that?"
—
Seraphine's head tilted, veil rippling as her pupils flared with unnatural gold.
"I hear… echoes?"
—
"Warp interference?" Thale asked, turning to see the expression on their faces.
—
Lysan's eyes darted to the conduits.
"No, Magos," he said, voice low, uncertain.
—
Seraphine's fingers hovered over the control panel, trembling.
"They're coming from beneath the Gate."
She pointed toward the mound of writhing flesh being torn apart by fire and steel—where the two Knights still fought like twin suns caught in stormlight.
—
"The Braid is contaminating the Lattice," Thale intoned.
"You're hearing the echoes of their emotion. I will disconnect them to save the Gellar."
His mechadendrites struck the controls—hissing, sparking.
The shrine answered with a surge of feedback, lightning crawling up the conduits and searing his frame.
"Impossible," he hissed through distortion.
"Thanatos and Cinerion have seized the link. They are the anchor now."
His optics flickered, brows tightening as the cables settled, hissing smoke from the overload.
—
"What are they saying, Lady Seraphine?"
Vaerin's voice came from behind, breath tight with disbelief.
Kaelthorn's reactor hummed beside her—its burden eased, its power redirected.
—
Seraphine's veil trembled as she leaned closer to the sigil-plate, golden light spilling from her eyes.
Her lips parted. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, yet it carried through the chamber like a vow.
"This toll… is answered."
The Bastion flared.
A surge of golden brilliance raced across the conduits, arcing through the walls and out into the storm.
Outside,
the Gellar lines ignited—each beam blazing to full strength, folding inward until geometry met geometry.
The lattice closed.
A perfect box of radiant light sealed itself around the battlefield.
Then—
impact.
Reality struck like thunder.
A shockwave of pure existence tore outward, slamming every Knight and servitor to their knees. The Bastion itself groaned, sacred sigils flickering between gold and white as if the universe was holding its breath.
Within the cage,
the unreal convulsed.
Flesh that should not be flickered, spasmed—and then was gone.
Whole masses of impossible matter collapsed into dust and vanished, leaving only two Knights standing amid the aftermath, their joined frames locked in defiance.
Before them,
the rotting giant stood frozen.
Its body shuddered once—as if realizing it no longer belonged to the world.
Then Cinerion's sabre came down.
A single, clean stroke.
No tearing.
No blood.
No ooze.
The titanic form split neatly in two—
and inside, there was nothing.
Only blackness where life, or unlife, had once dwelled.
—
The Witch-bird shrieked—a sound like glass splintering through thought.
Its wings convulsed, feathers scattering into motes of violet fire as it clawed at its own eyes.It could not bear to look—
not at them, not at the light that denied its shape, not at reality itself.
Thanatos raised his arm.
The Ion Gauntlet flared—its runes burning white-gold, conduits sparking as the air around it turned molten.
A single orb of light formed within its palm, dense and perfect, humming with the lattice's resonance.
Then he released it.
The golden sphere arced upward—
silent—
before it struck.
The Witch-bird disintegrated mid-scream, its vast form bursting into a halo of dust and unlight that folded in on itself until nothing remained but the echo of its final cry.
—
Then the Gate roared—
a sound deeper than thunder, angrier than dying stars.
It refused to close.
The eight-pointed compass at its heart flared to life, each arm pulsing with frantic, uneven light.
Within that burning sigil, something vast began to move.
A pale figure stepped forward through the storm—tattered wings dragging shadow and starlight behind them.
In its hand gleamed a blade of impossible length, a weapon made from the reflection of all that had ever fallen.
Both Obol and Maeric saw it—the moment of truth drawn in silver flame and black wind.Neither spoke.
They already knew what must be done.
Obol's gauntlets tightened around the throne's levers, the feedback flaring bright enough to drown his vision.
He felt Thanatos rumble beneath him—ready, willing, accepting.
Then Maeric's voice came—soft, almost nostalgic beneath the roar of power.
"Do you see the memory I'm visiting, High-Scion?"
And as the Gate screamed and reality trembled, their minds began to slip—
the Cognis-Braid dragging them down,
not into death,
but into before.
—
The world around them shifted.
Children ran across a stone courtyard, their laughter echoing between the marble pillars of the Kharon keep.
Wooden practice swords clashed in harmless rhythm, each strike punctuated by triumphant shouts and good-natured taunts.
And on a nearby bench, a familiar figure sat watching—younger, broad-shouldered, his face free of scars.
Thrykos.
Not the hardened veteran, not the pilot of Morvhar—but a man perhaps thirty years younger,his eyes bright, his smile unguarded.
He rose, clapping his hands once.
"Obol! Maeric!" he called, his voice carrying across the yard.
"Come on now, enough playing. Let's continue the lesson."
Thrykos stepped into the center, his stride confident yet kind.
As he passed the bench, his hand came down gently on a little girl's head.
"Isera," he said with a smile,
"keep an eye on your cousins, will you?"
The girl—barely more than ten—nodded, clutching the hand of a younger boy beside her.
Caldrin.
Both looked up at their mentor with wide, earnest eyes.
The scene was sunlight and laughter—a memory unspoiled by war.
"Let's go, Maeric!" Obol shouted, his boyish voice bright with challenge, his arm locked with
his cousin's—
just as Thanatos and Cinerion were locked together now.
Maeric grinned. "Roger that, Knight-Commander!"
They ran forward in tandem, trying to match pace—one always half a step ahead of the other.
But unbeknownst to young Obol, his next stride would meet a puddle.
—
"No—don't you dare, Maeric!"
Obol's adult voice roared through Thanatos' throne, hands scrambling across the controls.
All he saw was red.
—
"I told you I'd take you back to the Bastion."
Maeric's voice came through, steady and sad, as Cinerion's systems overrode the Braid.
Thanatos' Ion Gauntlet clenched—not in defiance, but in resolve.
The limb tore through its own chest plating, molten sparks spilling into the storm, and seized Obol.
—
"I have earned this death!" Obol shouted, his hands slamming against the gauntlet's burning digits.
He pulled, thrashed—futile against the will of another.
—
"Kharon needs you," Maeric rasped.
"I'm fulfilling my duty as your Knight."
Thanatos' Ion grip loosened—just enough to form a sphere of radiant energy around Obol's cockpit.
A shimmering field—the last echo of the lattice's strength.
Then,
with all the force left in his failing reactor, Cinerion hurled him backward—through flame, through ruin, through the half-collapsing Gellar wall.
The dome let him pass.
Obol struck the ground outside the barrier, skidding to a halt beside Morvhar.
—
Inside the storm,
Cinerion's systems bled white light.
His helm turned once toward the horizon, toward where his cousin had fallen safe beyond the line.
And in his final breath, Maeric smiled.
"Just like that puddle, Knight-Commander."
—
The world flashed—
The courtyard.
The laughter.
The echo of wooden swords meeting under the halo of the old Kharon banners.
Young Maeric pushed Obol away and stumbled forwardward into the puddle, splashing water high into the air.
He laughed even as he fell, droplets catching the sun like scattered glass.
Obol reached out to steady him—too late—but the two boys only grinned,mud-streaked and unashamed.
—
Back in the storm, the memory shattered into white fire.
The colossal sword of the pale god forced itself halfway through the Gate, shrieking against reality as its edges tore at the fabric of space.
The lattice screamed in protest.
Maeric slammed both hands down on Cinerion's controls.
All readouts spiked into blinding red.
The Cognis-Braid flared to full burn.
He overrode every safeguard, every sanctified line of code.
RECONFIGURATION: GEOMETRY—QUADRAL → INTERLOCKED.
The box folded.
The light bent.
The lattice shifted from a square to a cross—
a perfectX, with the Gate at its center.
A new pattern of gold burned across the sky,the intersecting lines sealing the wound in reality.
For the first time, the warp hesitated.
The sword stopped mid-descent—caught in the geometry's grasp,its edge trembling, devoured by converging radiance.
And within that cross of light, Cinerion stood alone.
Unbroken.
Unyielding.
His silhouette burned brighter than the Gate itself.
—
The Gate imploded.
For a heartbeat, the world inverted—sound, light, and matter collapsing inward as if reality itself drew a final breath.
Everything was pulled into the wound.
Warp-spawns. Fire. Stone.
Even the air screamed as it vanished.
Then—silence.
A single pulse of gold erupted outward, brighter than dawn.
And just as quickly—
it was gone.
Only the afterimage remained, burned into every lens and living eye,
a radiant cross, fading into the ash-dark sky.
—
What remained at the center was silence—so vast it felt like the world itself was holding its breath.
Amid the cratered plain, the silhouette stood motionless.
It was not Cinerion.
It was not Thanatos.
It was both—and neither.
A statue of a fallen god.
Its armor had melted into smooth, seamless plates, the old heraldry erased beneath layers of blackened gold.
Light pulsed faintly beneath the surface, like veins of trapped lightning trying to remember a heartbeat.
The lattice's radiance bled through the cracks in its frame, painting the surrounding ash in halos of white fire.
Wings of data-light shimmered behind it for a moment—echoes of its passage through the Gellar storm—
then vanished.
The fused Knight did not move.
It did not burn.
It simply was—
a relic of sacrifice, frozen between divinity and death.
Even the wind refused to touch it.
—
Obol ran.
Stumbling, half-blind from dust and tears, he forced his way through the wreckage until he stood before the fused titan.
"Maeric?" he called, his voice breaking.
The colossus did not answer.
Then—
hiss.
Panels shifted.
The chestplate unfolded like a blooming flower of metal and light, revealing what lay within.
It was wrong.
The cockpit was a shrine of ash and bone.
Maeric—or what had been Maeric—was everywhere.
His bones were arranged in perfect symmetry along the walls of the throne, fused into the control panel itself.
His skull rested at the center, fixed in place by veins of gold circuitry that pulsed faintly, as though still breathing.
Obol staggered back, bile rising in his throat.
—
Then the vox bead in his ear crackled—static and whisper in one.
"Maeric…" the voice said, distorted, layered, curious.
"Is that… our name?"
Obol froze, eyes wide.
The fused Knight's optics ignited again—one red, one blue—burning together into pale gold.
The voice came once more, clearer this time, calm and terrible.
"Tell me, Obol Kharon…"
"…what are we now?"