Voros the Eclipse was confused.
He was a LEVEL 95 Herald. He had eaten star systems. He had broken the spines of gods. When he struck, reality usually broke.
But right now, his spear—the Event Horizon, a weapon forged from a collapsed singularity—was stopped.
It wasn't stopped by a shield. It wasn't stopped by armor.
It was stopped by a hand.
Mali Alkahest stood on the wreckage of the Titan, holding the tip of the spear between his thumb and forefinger. He wasn't straining. He looked... bored.
"That's a nice toothpick," Mali said, his voice amplified by the sudden silence of the battlefield. "Did you bring it to pick your teeth, or were you planning to actually fight with it?"
Voros roared, his obsidian armor flaring with necrotic light. " Arrogant child! I am the End! "
He pushed. He poured the weight of a dying star into the spear.
Mali yawned.
"Anya," Mali called out, not looking away from the Herald. "He's pushing. Is that rude? I feel like that's rude."
Anya stood ten meters away, casually inspecting her fingernails while a Harvester walker tried to stomp on her. She sidestepped the three-kilometer robotic foot without looking up, causing the machine to lose balance and crash into a skyscraper.
"Very rude," Anya agreed. She looked at Voros, her silver eyes glowing. "He's violating the laws of thermodynamics. He's generating more heat than his core can sustain. Shall we fix him?"
"Let's."
Mali squeezed his fingers.
[SKILL: ALKAHEST DOMINION]
[TARGET: EVENT HORIZON SPEAR]
[ACTION: REVERT TO BASE MATERIALS]
SNAP.
The legendary spear, the weapon that had killed General Kaelen's Titan, didn't break. It dissolved. It turned into a cloud of harmless iron filings and helium gas.
Voros stumbled forward, his balance gone.
" Impossible! " the Herald shrieked.
Mali stepped in. He didn't use a sword. He used the back of his hand.
CRACK.
Mali backhanded the LEVEL 95 boss across the face. The force of the blow created a sonic boom that shattered the windows of the Imperial Spire three kilometers away.
Voros flew backward, smashing through a statue of Mali's father, skipping across the pavement like a stone on water, and finally crashing into the base of a fountain.
He tried to stand, but Anya flicked her wrist.
[SKILL: SYSTEM OVERRIDE] [TARGET: LOCAL GRAVITY] [VALUE: 500x]
Voros slammed back into the concrete, pinned by the weight of his own armor. He coughed black blood, his chest plate shattered. He couldn't move. He could only watch.
"Stay there," Mali commanded, his voice cold. "And watch what happens to your little fleet."
Mali turned to Anya. He walked over to her, stepping over the burning wreckage of the Harvester. The sky above them was still black, choked with thousands of Eclipse ships. Lasers rained down around them, vaporizing the pavement, blowing craters in the gardens.
Mali didn't flinch. He walked up to his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"So," he said, shouting over the roar of an orbital bombardment. "I was thinking. For the reception dinner? Maybe Italian?"
Anya smiled, raising a hand to deflect a plasma bolt that was aiming for Mali's head. The bolt bounced off an invisible geometric shield and blew up an enemy fighter instead.
"Italian is heavy," she mused, leaning into him. "I was thinking something lighter. Maybe sushi? We are near the coast."
"Sushi it is."
He kissed her.
It was a slow, deep kiss. Around them, the world was ending. Beams of anti-matter were carving up the city. But inside the Binary Star bubble, it was just them.
The enemy fleet, seeing the targets stationary, converged. A hundred Eclipsed Destroyers descended from the clouds, weapons charging.
Mali broke the kiss, but kept his forehead resting against hers. "They're interrupting again, Empress."
"They're very clingy," she whispered. "Shall we clear the room?"
"Ladies first."
Anya turned to the sky. She didn't look at the ships as threats. She looked at them as lines of code.
[TRAIT: OMNISCIENT EYE]
[TARGET: ECLIPSE FLEET - NAVIGATION SYSTEMS]
[ACTION: INVERT Y-AXIS]
She snapped her fingers.
High above, a thousand ships suddenly engaged their thrusters. But instead of flying up or forward, they all simultaneously flew down.
It was chaos. Ships slammed into each other. Frigates nose-dived into cruisers. The formation shattered instantly, turning the sky into a fireworks display of colliding metal.
"Nice," Mali complimented. "But you missed the Mothership."
He pointed at the massive, city-sized Obsidian fortress hovering in the upper atmosphere.
"Your turn, Sovereign," she challenged, biting her lip. "Show me that POW."
Mali grinned. The scary cat was dead and buried. The Dragon was loose.
He released her waist and raised both hands to the sky. He didn't aim. He didn't focus. He just opened the gates.
[SKILL: ALKAHEST... STORM]
He flooded the atmosphere with his aura. The golden light of the Primordial Anvil erupted from his body, shooting up into the clouds like a reverse waterfall.
The clouds didn't just part; they burned away.
The golden energy hit the Mothership. It didn't punch a hole. It infected it.
The black, obsidian hull began to turn gold. The corruption of the Eclipse was being overwritten by the authority of the Sovereign.
" BECOME, " Mali commanded.
The Mothership groaned. Its weapons powered down. Its engines flared. And then, it simply... dissolved.
It dissolved into billions of golden petals.
The massive, terrifying fortress that had blocked out the sun turned into a rain of golden light. It snowed gold over the entire city.
Mali lowered his hands. He looked at Anya. "How was that?"
"A bit dramatic," she teased, pulling him back in. "But I like the lighting."
[THE STREETS OF SANCTUM]
The citizens had stopped running.
A mother, clutching her child in a subway entrance, looked up. She expected to see death. She expected to see the black ships firing.
Instead, she saw gold.
She saw the sky clearing, the black clouds tearing apart to reveal the blue sun of the Thronecycle. She saw the terrifying enemy fleet crashing into itself, or dissolving into light.
And in the center of the city, on the Fourth Ring, projected on every surviving view-screen by the System, were two figures.
They weren't hiding in a bunker. They weren't commanding from a distant ship.
They were standing in the middle of the apocalypse, holding hands. Laughing.
"It's him," an old man whispered, dropping his cane. "The Heir. He came back."
"And her," a young woman pointed. "The Princess. Look at her eyes. She's... she's controlling the ships."
General Kaelen, his body healed by the Genesis Touch, pulled himself out of the wreckage of his Titan. He stood up, watching the golden snow fall around him. He watched the enemy fleet—the force that had destroyed his legion in an hour—being dismantled in minutes by two people on a date.
He started to laugh. It was a hysterical, joyous sound.
"They're showing off," Kaelen wheezed. "By the Throne, they're showing off."
[THE FOURTH RING]
The sky was clear. The debris of the Eclipsed Armada littered the outer rings, burning silently.
Mali and Anya stood over the broken body of Voros. The Herald was still pinned by gravity, his bones crushed, his armor ruined. He stared up at them with eyes full of incomprehensible terror.
" You... " Voros gurgled. " What... what are you? "
Mali crouched down. He looked fresh. He wasn't even out of breath. He brushed a speck of golden dust off his shoulder.
"We?" Mali asked, looking at Anya. "We're the management."
He stood up, looking down at the creature that had threatened his home.
"You wanted to take over my home with a force this weak?" Mali asked, his voice echoing across the silent city. He let out a short, sharp laugh. It wasn't cruel. It was dismissive.
"Go back to your Star-Eater," Mali said. He waved a hand, and the gravity holding Voros vanished. "Go back to the dark."
He leaned in, his eyes burning gold.
"And tell him to bring a bigger army. Because we're just getting warmed up."
Mali kicked Voros.
He didn't kick him across the street. He used [SYSTEM OVERRIDE] to alter the friction and velocity. He kicked him into orbit.
Voros launched into the sky like a rocket, a screaming streak of black light that vanished into the void.
Mali turned to Anya. "Too much?"
"Just enough," she decided.
Then, the sky rumbled.
It wasn't a ship. It wasn't a storm.
It was the Universe.
The Legacy System—now rebooted, optimized, and fully under Mali's admin control—activated every speaker, every screen, every comms channel, and every mind in the Aethel Imperium.
A voice, deeper than the ocean and older than the stars, spoke. It wasn't a computer voice. It resonated in the souls of trillions.
[ALERT: SOVEREIGN RETURNED]
The text appeared in the sky, writ large in burning gold letters.
[THE INTERREGNUM IS OVER.]
[ALL HAIL MALI ALKAHEST, THE GOLDEN SOVEREIGN.]
[ALL HAIL ANYA ALKAHEST, THE SILVER WEAVER.]
[THE KING HAS RETURNED.]
[THE UNIVERSE IS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.]
Mali looked at the words in the sky. He looked at the citizens emerging from the shelters, the cheers starting as a rumble and turning into a roar that shook the planet.
He felt the Imposter Syndrome try to crawl out of its grave. 'They're cheering for a fake.'
Mali looked at Anya. She was smiling at him, her hand gripping his tight. She saw him. She knew him. The scary cat and the dragon.
He crushed the thought.
He squeezed her hand. He looked at his people. And for the first time in his life, he didn't fake it.
He raised his hand and waved.
And the universe roared back.