The explosion was silent. A dome of pure, colorless energy expanded from Livius's body, shattering the Guardian's claymore into a million shards of glass. The Protocol of the Void didn't just break; it reversed. The vacuum turned into a pressure cooker, and the violet runes turned into pillars of white-hot fire that incinerated the Guardian's armor where they stood.
Ganimard the Elder was thrown back against the palace gates, his gray plate armor glowing red-hot. He looked at Livius, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond death. "Impossible... no mortal can survive the Void's rejection..."
Livius stood in the center of the smoking plaza. He was no longer just a boy. His hair had turned a shimmering, metallic silver-black, and his eyes were no longer gold—they were a swirling, celestial white that seemed to contain the entire night sky. He had reached the Apotheosis of the Ghost. By giving everything away, he had gained the "Emptiness" that the Silver Dragons had always sought—a state where no magic could touch him because there was nothing left to grab.
"The First Emperor is a hungry ghost, Ganimard," Livius said, walking over the shattered remnants of the Guardian's shield. "And I am the one who brings the fast."
He looked toward the palace spire, where the violet vortex was dying out, replaced by a low, rhythmic thumping—the heartbeat of the Golden Throne.
"Cian," Livius called out.
The clerk crawled out from behind a fallen pillar, his spectacles cracked but his eyes burning with a fierce intelligence. "I'm here, Livius."
"The Guardians are finished. The city is ours. But the thing in the Throne Room... it's awake now." Livius looked at his hands, which were now translucent, like the leaves of the glass forest in his memories. "I have to go in alone. If I don't come out by sunrise... tell Vaelin he was right. Tell him to burn the records. Tell him to let the Argentine name die with me."
"Livius, wait!" Cian shouted, but the Ghost was already gone.
Livius walked through the palace doors, which dissolved into ash at his touch. He moved through the silent, opulent hallways, past the portraits of the kings who had been "harvested" before him. He reached the Throne Room, where the air was so thick with ancient, parasitic mana that it felt like walking through honey.
Sitting on the Golden Throne was a shadow. It had no face, only two pits of ancient, tired fire. It held a crown of thorns and stars in its lap, and as Livius entered, the shadow began to laugh—a sound like the shifting of a thousand years of sand.
"Welcome home, my perfect son," the shadow whispered. "I have been waiting for a vessel as beautiful as you."
Livius didn't flinch. He walked to the center of the room and stood before the thing that had haunted his bloodline for a millennium.
"The fast is over, Father," Livius said, his voice a cool, silver wind that blew through the stagnant heat of the room. "It's time for the Argentine line to finally... stop breathing."