Three Wraiths descended upon them, their mirror-like bodies reflecting distorted versions of Fang Yuan's face. One strike from their claws could erase a decade of a person's past.
"Lia! Shield the Anchors!" Fang Yuan commanded.
He didn't try to weave a shield. Instead, he plunged his indigo threads directly into the chests of the unconscious Kaelen and Zane.
"SPACE-TIME OVERLOAD: VOID RESONANCE!"
Using the shards of the Inquisitor's neutron-metal he had saved, Fang Yuan turned the two heroes into Lures. He forced the "Luck" and "Wrath" inside them to vibrate at the same frequency as the Echo-Wraiths.
Kaelen's body suddenly arched, and from his mouth erupted a scream of golden-grey energy. Zane's eyes snapped open, glowing with a hollow, black fire. They weren't awake, but they were acting as Harmonic Conductors.
When the Wraiths struck, they didn't hit flesh. They hit a feedback loop of their own existence. The mirror-monsters shattered, their essence being sucked into Kaelen and Zane's empty shells.
Fang Yuan watched with cold precision. "Eat," he whispered. "In this realm of nothingness, the only way to survive is to become the Void itself."
As the two puppets began to absorb the wraiths, their forms started to change. Kaelen's skin turned a marble-grey, and Zane's shadows became solid, jagged spikes. They were evolving, not into heroes, but into Void-Sentinels.
But more Wraiths were coming. Hundreds of them. The grey sky was now filled with the screeching of the forgotten.