Far across the sky, facing Achilles with his cold gaze, the figure of the Lunaris Throne began to laugh.
It was quiet at first.
A chuckle that seemed more like a cough.
Madness was the color of his eyes now.
He was drenched in regret, in rage, in the slow-burning realization of what had truly happened.
He whispered, staring down at the Dark Star Scythe in his hands.
"I knew I might be discarded."
His voice was hoarse.
"But that's why I gave it everything. I razed my own capital. I opened wounds I cannot close. I let you in. I stood out- I made sure I stood out!"
"I wanted power. Even if it was borrowed. Even if I was being used. I thought… if I was useful enough, I'd be kept."
His grip tightened on the scythe.
He laughed again. A rasping breath.
"…I see it. I was already discarded the moment I picked you up."
A voice, as gentle as death echoed out in reply.
The words came from the scythe. From the Primordial Light of Darkness as if he were giving a lesson on something critical.
"A tool… is a thing used for a purpose. It is not meant to understand. It is not meant to last."
"A tool has only two fates."
"To be used. Or to break."
"You, Little Lunaris Throne… are now to break."
The scythe gleamed as its form began to melt, its obsidian surface fusing into the arms of the trembling man holding it.
"Because a tool is useful even when broken, so long as its purpose is fulfilled."
The Lunaris Throne's eyes widened.
Those were the last words he heard before the pain began.
Gamma Radiation- unstable, foreign, corrosive- began to surge from the scythe as it burrowed into his arms, into his chest, into his very being.
His body seethed with power not meant for it.
With the scythe fully fused, he began to glow.
He was becoming…a weapon.
A bomb of Neuronova might infused with the destructive chaos of obsidian gamma radiation.
Enough to flatten the entire Capital. Enough to end tens of millions in a single wave.
He laughed through the agony.
Tears fell now. Not from fear, but from the absence of anything left to lose.
But before he could scream, before he could curse…
The scythe shattered into splinters of black.
His body became rapture, became light, became an explosion of gamma ruin.
The skies turned white with death. The winds, red with loss.
A dying sun- obsidian in color, black and bleeding with ruin…exploded.
An eruption of Gamma Radiation, unstable and stellar in magnitude, expanded like a ravenous singularity set loose. The entire skyline, tall towers of skyscrapers and once-beautiful aerial domes, were about to be drowned in the unrelenting storm of black light. Reality itself seemed to tremble beneath the weight of it.
This was no ordinary energy.
Not even the greatest forces of the Astral Core Ascension Realm could withstand this.
Not a single Neuronova Stage entity within a thousand miles could survive what was now blooming like death incarnate.
It was total. It was inevitable!
And above it all, Selamira hovered.
Her fair, regal form shimmered under the growing light of ruin. Her robes shifted in the wind as her eyes remained half-lidded, glowing faintly.
Below her, distant cries echoed.
The panicked voices of Ancient Ones, from Royal Panthera Lions to High Elves, shouted her name in horror. They were already retreating, their faces pale and voices ragged.
A soft, wistful smile as the voice of her master curled into her mind like silk wrapped in steel.
"Sacrifice your clone, and make yourself a martyr. Your body will not show itself from here on out. From this day forth, the glorious Selamira has perished. It will feed the narrative. It will unite the Ancients… against this so-called Outsider."
Everything had been calculated.
Every piece on the board accounted for.
The Primordial Light of Darkness had foreseen even this.
Selamira's smile deepened as she accepted the end. Her eyes closed with peace, with meaning. She breathed in the scent of a world about to break, and exhaled purpose.
Tens of millions of lives down below- men, women, and children screaming in terror- would be the sacrificial kindling.
The necessary offering to light the pyre upon which their enemy would burn.
For the annihilation of the Outsider.
Even if Achilles Maxwell somehow survived- a ridiculous notion, given the scale of the blast- the two women with him would be ashes. He would be alone. Wounded. Blamed.
A monster in the eyes of all.
Yes… this would work.
Selamira welcomed it.
She spread her arms open to the heavens and whispered her farewell.
A flicker of confusion rippled across her face.
The explosion… didn't come.
The sensation of entropy swallowing her being never arrived.
Her eyes fluttered open.
And what she saw made her heart still.
The massive, chaotic bloom of Gamma Radiation- a circular sun of ruin meant to erase all life in its radius- had… stopped.
It was no longer expanding.
The obsidian brilliance was being pulled in. Bent. Reversed.
Like water into a drain, like light being stolen from the world.
And at the very heart of it…
The glow of obsidian brilliance flowed across his body like a mantle of wrath, but in his right hand, a terrifying gravitational phenomenon surged.
A singularity of will and power.
A black light poured into his palm with perfect order. With terrifying control.
What should have been an uncontrollable catastrophe- one that could have leveled nations- was now being devoured.
Selamira's lips trembled.
The impossible truth reflected in her wide, stunned eyes.
The storm meant to end all life…
Was being drawn into him!