Silence is not the absence of sound; it is the presence of everything at once, canceling itself out.
When the Star-Spire imploded, the physical world of Gaea vanished. Kaelen did not feel the heat of the explosion, nor did he feel the cold of the valley floor. He felt a sudden, violent expansion. His consciousness, tethered to the Core of the Eternal Spark, was dragged through the violet heart as it collapsed, pulling him into the Void-Network—the psychic highway used by the Star-Eaters to coordinate their harvest across the galaxy.
Kaelen stood in a place that shouldn't exist. The "ground" was a lattice of glowing white nerves stretched over an infinite abyss. Above him, there was no sky, only a swirling nebula of stolen memories—fragments of worlds the Star-Eaters had already consumed. He saw ghostly images of crystalline cities, forests of blue glass, and civilizations that had turned to ash millennia ago.
"DO NOT LOOK AT THE DEAD," Ignis's voice rumbled, but it sounded hollow here, echoing off the walls of the void. "THEY ARE MUD. LOOK AT THE PREDATORS."
Kaelen turned. In the distance of this psychic space, he saw the "Avatars" of the Star-Eaters. They weren't the spindly Husks or the armored Centurions. They were colossal, geometric shapes—octahedrons and spheres of obsidian light—that pulsed with a rhythmic, terrifying hunger.
One of the shapes, a jagged pillar of black glass, shifted. A massive, cold eye opened within the geometry, focusing directly on Kaelen.
"A CINDER," a voice boomed, vibrating not in Kaelen's ears, but in his very marrow. "A SPARK THAT HAS LEARNED TO WEAR TEETH. YOU ARE THE ANOMALY OF GAEA."
Kaelen felt his Starlight-Steel skin begin to flake away, turning into digital dust. The network was trying to "delete" him. He was a foreign virus in their system.
"I'm the one who's going to shut you down," Kaelen shouted, but his voice was thin. He reached for the Scepter of the Unspoken, but it wasn't there. In this realm, he had no tools—only his soul.
"YOU ARE A PARASITE, LITTLE DRAGON-HOST," the Star-Eater replied. "YOU CLING TO A DYING WORLD. WE DO NOT DESTROY; WE PRESERVE. WE TAKE THE CHAOS OF LIFE AND TURN IT INTO THE ORDER OF THE VOID. JOIN THE ARCHIVE. CEASE THE STRUGGLE."
Kaelen felt a seductive pull. The pain of the "One-Week Clock," the weight of leading the Company, the fear of the invasion—it could all vanish. He could simply become another memory in the nebula.
"HE LIES," Ignis hissed. "HE DOES NOT PRESERVE THE FIRE; HE COLD-COTES THE ASH. REMEMBER THE HEARTH, KAELEN. REMEMBER THE LIZARD-DRUID'S RAIN. REMEMBER THE GNOME'S GREASE. REMEMBER THE SPEAR-MAIDEN'S EYES."
The image of Ria flashed in Kaelen's mind. He remembered the way she looked at him before he forced the spatial jump—the raw, unshielded fear of losing him.
The "Starlight-Steel" on his chest flared. The emerald-orange fire didn't just glow; it roared. Kaelen realized that while the Star-Eaters controlled the Network, he controlled the Spark. And the Spark was the one thing their cold, mathematical order couldn't calculate.
"I'm not a memory yet," Kaelen growled.
He didn't fight the Network; he fed it. He opened the floodgates of his soul, pouring the raw, chaotic energy of the First Cinder into the white-nerve lattice beneath his feet.
The Star-Eater's eye widened. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU WILL FRAGMENT YOUR OWN ESSENCE!"
"I'm giving you a fever," Kaelen said.
He forced the "Expansion" power he had learned in the Weeping Grove into the psychic link. The Void-Network, designed for cold data and stolen souls, couldn't handle the heat of a living Sun. The white nerves began to glow orange. The geometric Avatars began to vibrate and crack.
Back in the physical world, on the valley floor of Gaea, the Company watched in horror as the crater where the Spire had been began to glow with an impossible light. The ground didn't just shake; it sang.
"Kaelen's still in there!" Pip yelled, his sensors melting in his hands. "He's... he's overloading the Spire's ghost-signal! He's hacking the entire fleet from the inside!"
"Can he survive that?" Ria asked, her knuckles white as she gripped her spear.
"No," Elara whispered, tears pricking her eyes. "Nobody can hold that much energy. He's turning himself into a bomb."
Inside the Network, Kaelen was fading. He was a silhouette of white fire against a collapsing darkness. The Star-Eater Avatar reached out a shadow-limb to crush him, but Kaelen was already gone—he had become the fire itself.
"NOW!" Ignis screamed.
Kaelen felt a snap. The connection severed. The feedback loop he had created traveled up the "umbilical cord" of the Star-Spire, through the atmosphere, and slammed into the Hive-Ship orbiting the planet.
Across the globe, every active Star-Spire flickered and dimmed. The Hive-Ship's shields buckled as a "Soul-Virus" of dragon-fire tore through its systems.
Kaelen's consciousness was flung back into his body with the force of a falling star. He slammed into the mud of the valley floor, his Starlight-Steel skin cracked and dull, his eyes dark.
Ria was the first to reach him. She skidded into the mud, pulling his heavy, metallic head into her lap. "Kaelen? Kaelen, breathe! Ignis, damn you, bring him back!"
For a long minute, there was only the sound of the wind and the distant hum of the Planetary Shield.
Then, Kaelen's chest hitched. A single, tiny spark of orange light flickered in the center of his ribs. He coughed, a cloud of violet ash escaping his lips.
"Did... did it work?" he croaked, his voice barely a whisper.
Pip looked up at the sky. The Hive-Ship was no longer descending. It was listing to the side, smoke pouring from its geometric vents. The Star-Spires on the ground had gone dormant, their violet glow replaced by a dead, stony grey.
"You stalled them," Pip said, his voice trembling with awe. "You didn't just hit a soldier, Kaelen. You gave the Hive-Mind a concussion."
Kaelen tried to smile, but his face felt like stone. He looked at his hands; the cracks in his skin were glowing with a permanent, faint violet hue. He had touched the Void, and it had touched him back.
"They'll be back," Kaelen said, closing his eyes as the exhaustion finally took him. "And next time... they won't try to talk."