The Void-Stalker twisted the blade. A shockwave of indigo and black energy erupted from the wound, spreading across Moon 9. The Inquisitor's halos shattered. One by one, the neutron-rings fell to the ground, crushing the iron towers beneath them.
The Inquisitor began to dissolve. His white, holy light turned into grey static. "The Master... will see... the garden is lost..."
With a final roar, the Entity tore the shard upward, splitting the High Inquisitor from chest to crown. There was no blood—only a blinding explosion of white noise that temporarily blinded everyone on the moon.
When the light faded, the Inquisitor was gone. Only a pile of cold, rusted metal remained.
But the victory came at a price. The Void-Stalker entity collapsed. Kaelen and Zane tore apart from each other, falling into the dust, their bodies smoking and broken. They weren't heroes or rebels anymore. They were just two dying souls, held together by the thin, violet threads of a master who had used them to kill a God's messenger.
Lia landed the chariot nearby. She walked toward them, her eyes glowing with a dark, triumphant intensity.
"Well done," she whispered, looking up at the sky where the dimensional rift was still bleeding. "You've killed the Law. Now, the Master is coming to claim the throne."
Suddenly, the space behind Lia folded. A man in a simple green robe, with cold, indigo eyes and a calm expression, stepped out of the shadows.
Fang Yuan.
He looked at the broken Kaelen, the dying Zane, and the pile of Inquisitor scrap. He smiled—the smile of a man who had just won a bet against the universe.
"A perfect harvest," Fang Yuan said.