"There's no trace of it going back to the void."
Staring at the monitor, one of the scientists spoke, a look of surprise and relief washing over him all at once.
The room held still.
A few seconds of pure silence.
Then it broke.
The eruption was immediate. Hugs and tears and voices overlapping, all of it born from years of trial and error, from loss that had compounded into something almost too heavy to carry. People were grabbing each other, some barely able to stand straight.
"This is good, this is good."
"Finally, those monsters can die."
"Ancestors, you will be avenged."
These people were the product of corruption's constant encroachment.
They had lost family. Generations. Entire planets.
A lot of them had been relocated to worlds pulled into the divine kingdoms, never knowing where they were truly from. Raised on borrowed ground with borrowed histories, carrying grief they couldn't even fully name.
To them, the destruction of corruption wasn't ambition or strategy.
