Fire-Blood had not stopped moving since the moment it woke. Heat poured off its body in waves that warped the air, bending distance until the horizon seemed to ripple. Its wings spanned wide as cathedral walls, dripping streams of molten stone that hardened into black spires as they cooled. The molten spear it carried glowed like it had been pulled straight from the planet's core. Every time the Titan lifted the weapon, the air burned white; every time it hurled, the battlefield collapsed into a new scar.
Iron-Bone staggered behind him, hammerless now, its back plates torn open. The swarm clung to it in desperation, climbing into the gaps he had carved, pouring their bodies into wounds they could never fill. Noctis left it to rage and turned his Omen Eyes to Fire-Blood.
The glow-lines drew themselves in patient arcs. Molten-iron straps bound the base of each wing; they pulsed red where the stress bent them thin. Seams across the belly glowed hotter than the rest, faint cracks betraying the magma sacs beneath. The right elbow joint flickered at intervals as if warning him that the spear's weight would one day be too much. The core burned deep inside the chest, a steady gold-red pulse that never stayed open for long.
He rose above the battlefield. Flyers broke rank to intercept him—dozens at once, wings folded for a dive. He lifted his hand, orbitals realigning into a crescent. They sheared the swarm apart in the span of a breath. Carcasses spun into ash-trails before they hit the ground. The sky cleared enough for him to angle toward the wing seams.
The Titan's attention tracked him. It swung the spear in a wide sweep through the air, a blade of molten energy cutting the sky into halves. He folded into shadow, Spectral Veil leaving an afterimage that met the stroke. He emerged under the weapon's arc, wings tight, orbitals humming.
The first strap glowed inches away. He struck it like cutting rope. The Reaver parted it clean, sparks of iron and magma spilling into the air. Fire-Blood screamed, its voice breaking the ash into a storm.
He didn't stop. The second strap waited just above, hidden behind a shield of climbing demons who clawed at his face and wings. He let his aura flare. Dominion weight pressed out of him, and the bodies lost their grip, flung into open air. He carved the strap in the same motion.
The wing lurched. Its span broke, the membrane tearing with the weight of itself. Fire-Blood staggered in mid-air, suddenly unable to hold height. It crashed into the field like a meteor. The impact sent slag rivers running, and the swarm broke in terror as the giant's fall incinerated its own formations.
Noctis followed it down.
The belly seams glowed brighter as the Titan struggled to right itself. He swept aside the zealots who tried to interpose, their chants unraveling under Crucible pulses. The seams lit like cracks in a furnace door. He drove the Reaver in, twisted, and pulled.
The sac burst. Lava sprayed outward, burning through the Titan's own flesh. The heat carried the taste of stone dust and ash-blood. The roar that followed bent the battlefield flat, deafening both demon and sky. Fire-Blood reeled, stumbling onto its knees.
Its hand tightened on the spear. The Omen Eyes showed the elbow joint already flaring with weakness. He lunged for it. Flyers intercepted again, throwing themselves on his blade. He cut through them without slowing. The Reaver met the joint with three strikes, each deeper than the last. The marrow-thread inside snapped, molten blood spraying as the arm convulsed.
The spear slipped.
The Titan tried to correct, swinging with its left, but the weapon's weight pulled wrong. It dragged across the ground, carving molten furrows. He stepped once more into its shadow and severed the last grip with a clean diagonal cut.
The spear crashed into the ash fields. Its heat tore open the ground, slag rivers pouring into the wound. Demons caught near it disintegrated instantly.
Fire-Blood roared again, more wounded than enraged. For the first time it fought with empty hands, swiping at him with claws that burned but carried no reach. The Omen Eyes burned bright across its chest. The core pulsed visible for a full breath, gold-red light spilling through the cracked plates of its torso.
He raised the Reaver and let the Arsenal bloom behind him.
Spear of Twilight formed in parallel, a lance of inverted essence brighter than fire. Eclipse Nova swelled in his veins, holy and abyssal light coiled into annihilation. The battlefield bent as he readied them all at once.
And then the air collapsed.
The Colossus had moved. The void-staff rang like a bell struck underwater, and suppression poured over the field. The Grid strained; the Tempest collapsed before it formed, the Spear flickered, the Nova dimmed in his grip. The core vanished behind armor plates, the window closed.
He cut the flow before it wasted more essence and let his wings carry him high, out of reach of Fire-Blood's swiping arms. He stared through the haze at the Colossus. The runes on its chest glowed steady, lines of abyssal script binding the battlefield in silence.
Fire-Blood staggered on the ground below, chest still cracked, one wing ruined, weaponless now. Its body smoked from its own ruptured sac. The Omen Eyes showed the core dimly, struggling against the void pressure that kept it hidden.
The fight had shifted.
One Titan disarmed, one Titan grounded, one Titan suppressing. And all around, the swarm still climbed and screamed, zealots still wove chains of void across broken plates, and flyers still swarmed like gnats over carrion.
Noctis let his aura expand until even the ash bent away from him. His Omen Eyes traced every seam, every rune, every crack in every god that stood against him.
"Next," he said, voice even.
And the Colossus turned its staff toward him.
The Abyssal Colossus moved without hurry. Its bulk did not need haste; suppression itself was its weapon. When it raised the staff, chains of black light extended into the air, and the battlefield bent to its will. The chants of the zealots grew clearer under its aura, their voices steadier, though their bodies trembled and cracked from the weight of standing too close.
Noctis felt the pressure against his Grid like an iron band drawn across his chest. Every dominion he reached for pressed back into him. His aura dimmed, narrowed, forced to settle closer to his body. Orbitals sputtered faintly before stabilizing under sheer authority.
The Omen Eyes burned through the suppression. Weak points still showed, though dulled: runes etched across the Colossus's chest and shoulders, thin cracks running through the helmet sigil, glow-lines across the staff's grip. Deeper, the abyssal nexus pulsed only when the runes faltered. Until they broke, the core would remain beyond reach.
The flyers shrieked and came in waves, harrying him whenever he moved closer. Climbers swarmed up the Colossus's legs, lashing themselves to its chains, carrying scraps of void-metal to repair what he destroyed. They climbed willingly into the pressure, their bodies splitting open under its weight, and still they climbed.
He angled downward, wings half-folded, orbitals tight around him. The runes glowed hardest at the Colossus's left chest, a lattice of abyssal script sunk into the plate. He drove toward it.
The staff moved.
It did not swing. It pointed. The air warped, and the world tilted sideways. Essence bent like water falling the wrong way. Noctis stepped, but the fold buckled under the pressure and flung him back into the field. He reappeared above a rank of zealots who had not expected him; his blade passed through them reflexively, their marrow spraying upward before he steadied in the air again.
The Omen Eyes flared on the rune crack. He tried again, this time in tight bursts—short folds, one after the other, not giving the suppression a wide gap to crush. The afterimages blurred across the Colossus's chest like phantom echoes. He came out at the seam itself, Reaver cutting down.
The rune shattered with a scream like glass breaking under water. The pressure thinned. For the span of a breath, the Grid breathed free.
He opened the Crucible.
The ground lit red. Demons collapsed into husks as their marrow tore loose. The suppression faltered harder under the flood. The Colossus shifted, staff sweeping, void energy lashing outward in arcs that split the ash field into trenches. Thousands of demons fell with the zealots who had tried to shield the rune, obliterated by their own master's counterstroke.
Noctis pressed. The Omen Eyes found the helmet sigil glowing brighter now. He rose against the Titan's face, orbitals clearing climbers from its cheek plates. The sigil burned violet-black, pulsing with abyssal energy. He struck across it with a Silent Rend, the blade leaving no sound. Cracks spread across the helm, and light poured through. The Titan bellowed without voice, a soundless shudder that rattled marrow. Its head swung wide, striking its own climbers from the chains, scattering them across the field.
For a heartbeat the suppression broke.
The nexus glowed deep inside the chest, a black-violet star, pulsing like an open wound. He brought the Arsenal to bear, lances converging, orbitals aligning. He hurled them all into the light.
The core flickered—and the suppression slammed back.
The runes reignited, glowing hotter. The staff throbbed, and void poured out again. The Arsenal lances disintegrated before they struck. The nexus sealed, light gone.
Noctis cut away, wings flaring hard, orbitals intercepting a new wave of flyers. They came screaming in desperation, claws and spears outstretched, only to be sliced into spirals of ash before they touched him. Below, climbers poured onto the Colossus's chest, bodies layering themselves over the cracks, chanting in broken voices to reinforce the runes with their own flesh.
The Titan lifted its staff. The air convulsed. A pressure wave rolled outward, flattening Iron-Bone where it staggered, tearing Fire-Blood's cracked chest wider. The swarm scattered as whole cohorts dissolved in the blast. Noctis held his wings tight, aura condensed to resist the crush. Even so, marrow in his arms thrummed with the pressure.
The Omen Eyes glowed again. Weakness still ran through the staff's grip—hairline fractures pulsing faintly. He dropped, cutting past flyers, weaving between chains of void energy, until the staff filled his sight. Climbers clung to it by the hundreds, their flesh smoking from the heat of the abyss.
He let his aura surge. The orbitals spun wide, cutting swaths through them, clearing the haft. He struck along the fractures with the Reaver, then drove marrow spikes into the gaps. The staff groaned. The Colossus shifted, grip tightening. He forced the Arsenal into volleys, hammering the same line until the fractures widened.
The staff slipped. Void energy spilled uncontrolled, flaring down its length. The blast struck its own hand, tearing fingers apart, marrow spilling black light. The Titan recoiled, and the staff crashed to the ground. A crater opened, sucking demons into its collapse.
The runes on its chest dimmed again, suppression faltering. The Omen Eyes blazed on the nexus inside, holding steady this time.
Noctis rose. His wings drew wide. The Reaver glowed crimson-black, orbitals arrayed like a crown. The Crucible pulsed across the field, draining every body not already ash. He steadied for the strike.
The Colossus brought both hands across its chest, trying to shield the nexus. Chains of void flared, linking shoulder to rib. The window narrowed. Demons climbed its arms, bodies weaving into the barrier, willing themselves to burn for their god.
Noctis did not hesitate.
He drove forward, aura pressed like a wedge, orbitals carving through the living shield. He struck the first chain with the Reaver and shattered it. He struck the second, severed it at the weld. The third broke under Arsenal lances. He forced his blade into the last, marrow singing as the void tried to resist. The chain split.
The nexus burned open, violet fire spilling into the night.
And then the suppression rolled again, stronger, sealing it before his strike landed.
The Titan was learning.
He hovered, wings beating against the ash storm. His veins sang with the effort. The Omen Eyes still burned, showing paths, but every one led into new chains, new swarms, new waves of void-born zealots throwing themselves into the cracks. The Colossus could be broken, but not with strikes alone.
The Grid whispered behind his eyes, a pull deeper than the Omen's sight. A node glowed faintly in his marrow, a forge turning. Sovereign Synthesis waited.
But he did not touch it yet. Not while the cores flickered out of time with one another, not while the swarm still had numbers enough to bury the field. He folded his wings tight, orbitals close, and stepped back into the higher air, surveying the chaos.
Iron-Bone staggered with its back torn, Fire-Blood burned from within, and the Colossus still stood with suppression chains alive around it. The swarm still climbed, still screamed, still fed their gods with their own deaths.
He let his aura spread again, heavy and absolute.
"Not yet," he said, to the forge inside his veins. "But soon."
And the three Titans roared together, the battlefield splitting open under their voices.
The Steppes were coming apart. Slag rivers changed course as Fire-Blood's body bled heat into the ground. Iron-Bone's hammer lay forgotten in a half-buried crater, its wielder staggering with chains torn from its back. The Colossus still stood unbroken, void runes binding the battlefield, staff humming with suppression like a slow drumbeat. Demons poured over everything—the ground, the sky, the Titans themselves—climbers weaving into living armor, flyers striking in shrieking waves, zealots screaming hymns until their throats cracked.
Noctis hung above it all, wings spread, Omen Eyes burning. Every seam and strap and rune glowed in his sight, every shifting weakness like a lantern in storm-dark. But the true cores flickered out of time with one another—Iron-Bone's marrow-heart bright for a breath, Fire-Blood's chest-core flashing when its body shuddered, the Colossus's nexus pulsing violet only when suppression dipped. The windows were too short. One Titan could be struck. The others sealed before the blow landed.
He exhaled. The Grid opened wider than it had since Ashara.
Inside his veins, nodes burned. Lines of blood and marrow and faith arced into one another, converging like rivers drawn toward the same fall. The skills he had wielded separately—the Spear of Twilight that pierced any defense, the Eclipse Nova that annihilated armies in sanctity and abyssal fire, the Abyssal Hymn that silenced rites, and the Barrage that had once been a storm of sanctified lances—turned inward. They broke apart into raw function.
The Grid reshaped them.
Where four once stood, one rose.
Eclipse Dominion IX
A sovereign synthesis of piercing and annihilation, sanctity and void, hymn and spear. Not a strike. Not a storm. An eclipse.
The nodes locked. Apex Essence burned. His marrow seared with the cost. The skill existed.
The battlefield dimmed.
The Titans felt it first. Iron-Bone's sockets flared in panic, as if blind to a light they could not resist. Fire-Blood's molten chest cracked wider, heat spilling uncontrolled. The Colossus's runes flickered, suppression breaking as a shadow fell across them that was not of this world.
Above the Steppes, a false sun formed.
It was not light. It was absence—the corona of a black sun, ringed in crimson fire. Its edges burned sanctity inverted, a halo that scorched void as easily as it scoured flesh. Shadows bent toward it, and so did marrow, and so did every chant on the field. The zealots fell silent, throats seared shut, their hymns broken by the hymn greater than theirs.
Noctis moved.
The Spear of Twilight rose, but it was not alone. The Eclipse Nova gathered around it, a sphere of annihilation chained to a lance. Abyssal Hymn wove through both, silencing every defense the Titans raised. Radiant Barrage flared as a crown around him, volleys bound to his will. He hurled them all at once, and the Eclipse Dominion fell upon the battlefield.
The Omen Eyes showed him the path. Iron-Bone's marrow-heart burned bright. Fire-Blood's chest-core flared gold-red, exposed where ruptured sacs could no longer seal it. The Colossus's nexus pulsed, runes shattered, suppression broken. Three cores, open together for the first time.
The eclipse struck them all.
The marrow-heart cracked. Iron-Bone convulsed, back bending until plates shattered outright. The chest-core burst, molten blood flooding the field as Fire-Blood howled. The nexus screamed violet, void energy tearing free of its host, the Colossus staggering under its own unraveling power.
The demons clinging to them died instantly. Flyers burned mid-air, reduced to ash before they fell. Climbers turned to dust across chains and plates, their bodies erased like chalk from slate. Zealots fell silent in rows, their staves breaking in their hands.
The eclipse burned for only moments. That was all it needed.
When the light faded, all three Titans staggered. They were not dead—not yet—but their cores had been struck together, their bodies wounded in ways they could not easily repair. They roared in unison, the sound shaking the Steppes into new fractures.
Noctis's wings folded as he hovered in their shadow. His aura was steady, though his marrow thrummed with the cost of the synthesis. The orbitals hummed low around him, ready to strike again.
"Three wounds," he said, his voice carrying over the broken chants. "Three deaths next."
The Titans lurched toward him, fury greater than fear, their bodies already contorting for another phase. The swarm screamed with them, even as its numbers burned to ash.
The battle had turned.
The Hollow Steppes burned.What had been an army was ash scattered into rivers of slag. Where zealots had stood, only bone dust drifted in eddies of hot wind. The three Titans still loomed, but they were broken—cracked cores pulsing unevenly, limbs ruined by their own rage. The eclipse had wounded them all together, and now their roars were less fury than desperation.
Noctis hovered above the ruin with his wings spread wide, orbitals circling in slow arcs. The Eclipse Dominion still pulsed behind his ribs, a black sun imprinted into marrow. Omen Eyes traced every weakness, glowing brighter now that their cores were unstable. The final windows were coming, and he would not let them close again.
Iron-Bone lurched forward, hammerless, its body collapsing under its own weight. Chains dangled loose across its back where he had severed them. The marrow-heart glowed red through vents torn wide, a beacon the Omen Eyes flared upon. Climbers still clung to its ribs, screaming devotion as they fed their lives into its cracks, marrow pouring from them like streams of pitch.
Noctis moved without haste. His wings folded, and the Dominion Step carried him across a dozen fractures in space. Each afterimage he left struck down another weak point: knees, elbow seams, spinal joints. The Titan staggered into itself, collapsing onto its side with the force of its own imbalance.
He landed on its chest. The Reaver flared black-red. Orbitals aligned into a crown above him. The Arsenal opened wide behind, a forest of lances pointed inward.
"Yield," he said.
The blade fell with the storm. Orbitals sheared through bone. Lances drove into cracks until the plates shattered. The marrow-heart lay exposed, a pulsing core of blood and iron light. He drove the Spear of Twilight through it, carrying Eclipse Dominion's weight in its wake.
The core burst like a sun imploding. Light sprayed outward, marrow-fire consuming every climber within reach. Iron-Bone's roar broke off halfway, and the giant collapsed into stillness, body splitting into collapsing towers of bone. The ground swallowed it whole.
The Inferno Titan staggered on its knees, chest cracked wide, molten blood pouring into the earth. Its ruined wing flailed uselessly, trailing sparks that burned out before they touched ground. Its hands clawed at its own chest, trying to hold the rupture closed.
The Omen Eyes showed the path. The chest-core glowed gold-red, exposed fully now that the flesh could no longer contain it. Zealots had once tried to bind it with chains, but those zealots were dust. The weakness lay naked.
Noctis rose high, wings beating ash into a spiral. The Eclipse Dominion swelled again, not as a sphere but as a spear of annihilation chained in fire. The Arsenal tightened behind him into a single lance, orbitals locking into alignment as its edge.
He fell like judgment.
The strike carried him through the Titan's chest, the blade piercing the core clean. The light exploded outward in a bloom of molten fire, rivers of lava coursing into the field. The Titan convulsed once, arms spreading wide as if to embrace its own death. The chest split apart, light pouring skyward. Then the body fell back into the slag, wings folding like broken banners.
The firestorm dimmed. The roar died. The Inferno was gone.
The battlefield fell silent as the last remained. The Abyssal Colossus stood unbowed, but its runes were cracked, its staff broken, its nexus bleeding violet light through fissures in its chest. It raised its head, sockets burning void-fire, and for the first time it stepped back.
The Omen Eyes flared crimson across its body. Every rune seam glowed, every chain link pulsed, every weak spot shone like a map of defeat. And in its chest, the abyssal nexus blazed steadily—no longer flickering, but holding open, daring him to strike.
Noctis spread his wings and let the Grid answer.
The Crucible opened at full breadth, veins of blood and marrow lighting across the field in a web a kilometer wide. Every corpse, every scrap of essence left in the Steppes bled upward into him. His aura deepened until the air itself bent, the pressure flattening the few demons who had survived.
He raised his hand. The orbitals screamed into alignment. The Arsenal bloomed into a storm of blades. Crimson Tempest gathered overhead, a sky filled with sanctity and fire. Sovereign Chains unwound from his marrow, coiling through the air like rivers of script.
The Colossus lifted its hands to shield its chest.
Noctis gave the command.
Chains snapped around its wrists, binding them wide. The Tempest fell, searing through climbers and burning the runes from its shoulders. The Arsenal stormed downward, lances splitting plate and piercing marrow. The orbitals drilled in patterns, sawing through every seam the Omen Eyes revealed.
The nexus blazed bare.
He descended in silence. Eclipse Dominion formed again, the black sun igniting behind his wings, its halo a ring of inverted fire. The Spear of Twilight extended through it, pure annihilation bound to a sovereign's hand.
The Colossus roared and pulled against the chains. Its body cracked with the force, but the chains did not break.
Noctis drove the spear into its chest.
The nexus imploded.
Void fire collapsed inward, dragging the Titan's body with it. For a moment the battlefield seemed to fall into the hole where its heart had been. Then the body shattered outward in a storm of black shards, each dissolving into ash before it struck the ground.
The roar ended in silence. The Colossus was no more.
The Steppes were still.No army remained. No zealot, no climber, no flyer. Only slag rivers and dust, and the broken remains of three Titans.
Noctis stood at the center of the ruin, wings folded, Reaver resting across his shoulder. The Omen Eyes dimmed at last, their glow fading as the battlefield went quiet. His aura pressed over the silence, and even the earth seemed to yield.
"Three cores broken," he said, voice steady, carrying into emptiness. "The rest will follow."
He turned his face toward the far horizon, where other kingdoms still waited for judgment. His queens and their armies would be cleansing those thrones already. The Steppes were his alone, and now they were done.
He let his wings lift once, and then he rose into the ash sky, leaving ruin behind.
The Hollow Steppes had fallen.