The air in the Loom-chamber turned to poison.
Valerius stepped from his palanquin, his golden armor hissing with high-grade marrow-steam. His face was a mask of serene, terrifying authority—a face that had seen empires rise and fall within the ribs of the world. He looked at Kael with the hunger of a starving predator.
"The Seed has stabilized," Valerius spoke, his voice a melodic resonance that vibrated in Corvin's very soul. "The Silencer has performed his duty well. He has tempered the Void with his own suffering."
"Stay back," Corvin rasped, trying to stand, but his legs were lead. His ruined left arm hung uselessly, a constant, throbbing reminder of the price he had paid.
"You have no more Shaping left to give, Corvin," Valerius said dismissively. "You are a broken vessel. A tool that has outlived its purpose."
Valerius signaled to the Wraith-Guard. The smoke-warrior raised a hand, and the iron floor itself began to unspool, turning into ribbons of shadow that lunged for Kael like striking vipers.
"Kael, run!" Corvin shouted, his voice tearing through the ozone-thick air.
But Kael didn't run. He looked at the shadows, and then he looked at the Oscillator. "The song isn't a scream anymore," the boy whispered, his voice sounding layered, as if spoken by a thousand ghosts. "It's a command."
Kael reached out, and for the first time, he didn't just absorb energy. He pulsed.
A wave of absolute blackness erupted from the boy—a 'Black Pulse' that didn't just destroy, but 'erased.' The shadow-ribbons vanished instantly. The Justiciars' armor began to accelerate in its decay, rusting into fine dust in a single heartbeat. Even Valerius recoiled, his pristine golden plating pitting and turning a dull, necrotic grey.
The reaction was too violent for the Citadel's stabilizing tethers. The Loom-chamber began to buckle and collapse.
"The ship!" the Marrow-Priest shouted, pointing toward a secondary hangar where the Carrion Vulture—the Nomads' reclaimed and half-destroyed vessel—had been dragged for scavenging. "Get to the deck! The Citadel is purging its own core!"
The chaos was total. Corvin grabbed Kael, his body moving on pure instinct as the floor disintegrated beneath them. They tumbled through the falling debris of ivory and iron, landing hard on the dying deck of the Carrion Vulture.
Around them, the ship was a wreck—a skeleton of bone-plates held together by flickering, unreliable magnetic tethers. The Nomads were screaming in the dark; Juro, their leader, was shrieking in terror as the 'Black Pulse' from the Citadel's core began to infect the very air, turning it heavy and cold.
This was the epicenter. This was the moment where physics died.
Corvin stood, his vision a smear of violet and black, the 'Crimson Leak' pouring from his eyes and drenching his collar. He stood as the final barrier between a terrified world and the boy he had sworn to protect.
Kael stood at the center of the deck, his frame no longer that of a boy, but a trembling conduit of cosmic entropy. His hair was a void, sucking the flickering torchlight from the air until only the darkness remained.
And on the horizon, the three black needles of the Blood-Hounds were decelerating, their engines emitting a harrowing, biological shriek that signaled the end of the chase.