The Deep-Vault shrieked.
As Lament bit into the bronze Energy-Sump, the golden pulse of the Celestial Heart didn't just fade—it was violently inverted. The sword acted as a black hole, dragging the stolen "Dawn-Light" out of the conduits with such force that the floor-plates buckled and tore.
The two filigreed Revenants froze mid-lunge. The white-gold etchings on their armor flickered, then extinguished. For a heartbeat, they stood as hollow shells, then a violent, violet fire erupted from their eye-slits. The "hypnosis" was gone. They weren't puppets anymore; they were the ancient, angry spirits of a conquered world.
They didn't look at Kiron. They looked at the Pale-Vane.
"Wait!" the Usurper screamed, his white robes fluttering in the localized gale of energy. "I gave you stability! I gave you a century of silence!"
"You gave us a cage," one of the Revenants rumbled, its voice a subterranean tectonic shift.
The Pale-Vane didn't stay to argue. He slammed his heel onto a concealed plate in the floor, and a section of the wall hissed open—a pressurized escape tube. "If I cannot rule a quiet grave, then you shall have no grave at all!" he snarled, throwing himself into the dark. "The 'Solar-Lance' is already slaved to my heartbeat. If I reach the panic-vault, the Sky-Isles will burn this entire cavern into glass!"
Kiron slumped against the Sump, his skin webbed with fresh, jagged cracks. The golden power he was siphoning through Lament was too "hot" for his Grave-Blood. It felt like drinking liquid sun.
"My King," the Revenant said, kneeling before Kiron even as the vault ceiling began to shower them with dust. "The city wakes. They are confused. They are tearing the Spire apart. If you do not lead them, they will scatter into the 'Taint' and perish. But the Usurper... if he signals the Heavens, we are all ash."
Kiron looked at the escape tube. He could feel the Pale-Vane's "Residual" heat moving fast toward the upper rim of the city.
"The city needs a heartbeat," Kiron rasped, blood—dark and thick with stone-dust—leaking from his lip. "But the Heavens need a blindfold."
Kiron forced himself to stand. He didn't chase the Pale-Vane into the tube. Instead, he gripped Lament with both hands and turned his gaze toward the Celestial Heart—the massive, vibrating engine that was now sparking and dying.
"I won't chase him," Kiron whispered. "I'll pull the sky down to him."
Kiron didn't use the sword to destroy the engine. He used the "Void-Link" to anchor his soul to the Heart's dying frequency. He reached out through the marrow-siphons, connecting himself to every lantern, every conduit, and every street-light in the Necropolis of Dis.
He became the city's nervous system.
"Rise," Kiron commanded, his voice broadcast through every speaker and stone in the metropolis. "Don't tear each other apart. Focus on the Spire's peak! The Usurper flees to the signal-array!"
High above, the Pale-Vane emerged onto a balcony, his hand hovering over a crystalline transmitter that aimed straight up through a mile of rock toward the Sky-Isles. He grinned, his finger descending toward the "Final Chime."
But Kiron, five levels below, twisted the blade in the Sump.
Every light in the city suddenly surged with a blinding, violet overload. The street-lanterns didn't just glow; they fired beams of concentrated shadow-matter upward. Thousands of violet tracers converged on the Spire's peak, creating a "Void-Shroud" over the transmitter.
The signal didn't reach the Heavens. It hit the Shroud and reflected inward.
The transmitter exploded in a shower of white glass. The Pale-Vane was thrown back, his white robes finally stained with the soot of his own failed betrayal.
Down in the Vault, Kiron's eyes went dark. The effort of puppeteering the entire city's energy grid had pushed his "Decline" to the absolute limit. His left arm was now solid, unmoving basalt.
"The signal is jammed," Kiron whispered to the Revenants. "Now... go. Stop the riots. Tell them the King is home, but the King is... tired."
As the giants rushed to obey, Kiron fell into the dark, the dying hum of the Celestial Heart the only lullaby he had left.