"Krow," Fang Yuan's voice crackled in the Elder's ear, cold as the void between galaxies. "The Inquisitors are here. Initiate Protocol: Solar Flare. Order the entire fleet to charge the Council's blockade head-on. Every ship, every soul. Do not stop until you hit their main Dreadnought."
"But... My Lord!" Krow's voice was a mixture of horror and disbelief. "That's ten thousand men! We'll be annihilated in minutes!"
"Exactly," Yuan replied, his eyes locked on the trembling Elia. "Your deaths will create a 'Mana-Void' so massive it will blind the Council's long-range sensors for precisely six minutes. That is all the time I need to extract the Primordial Spore and vanish. Die with honor, Krow. It's the only use you have left."
Without waiting for a response, Yuan severed the link. He grabbed Elia by the neck, her biological armor shattering under his Gravitational Anchor. With a flick of his wrist, he used Vacuum Flight to warp the space around them, disappearing into the deepest ventilation shafts of the station just as the first wave of Council bombers obliterated the residential sector.
Above, the sky of Terminus Station turned into a graveyard of fire. Ten thousand Shadow Weavers, driven by a mixture of fanaticism and the fear of Yuan's wrath, slammed their ships into the Council's golden fleet. It wasn't a battle; it was a massacre. A beautiful, indigo-tinted funeral organized by a child who didn't even look back.
In the dark, damp silence of the station's core, Yuan threw Elia to the floor. "The Spore," he commanded, his Binary Heart beginning to glow with a terrifying, rhythmic hum. "Give it to me, or I will peel it from your soul atom by atom."