"Soren, please, don't!"
None of Ego's attacks could even scratch Soren, every blast of energy bent and shattered against the shimmering space barrier surrounding him.
And now, with the last layer of the star-core armor destroyed, Ego's heart was exposed.
Soren hovered before the glowing sphere, its cerulean radiance pulsing like the heartbeat of a god. The energy within it was dense… yet exquisitely tempting.
Ego felt Soren's gaze linger. "…!?"
That single detail made terror twist deep into him.
"Soren!" Ego roared. "If you push me any further, I'll detonate the star core! We die together, do you hear me?!"
"I swear it!"
This was Ego's final card. His last threat… if he unleashed a Celestial core-detonation, the blast would annihilate everything within light-years.
"Self-destruct?" Soren only laughed softly.
"You think that can hurt me?"
To Soren, a spatial collapse was something that he could simply fold away into another dimension. Ego's threat was meaningless.
Still, Soren felt a flicker of interest. The power inside the core… this was divine energy refined over countless ages. A treasure worth taking.
The spatial blades around him dimmed and vanished.
Ego's hopes surged wildly.
Did my threat… work, is he reconsidering?
But before that fragile hope could settle, a golden light ignited on Soren's forehead.
A yellow gem appeared like a third eye~ opened.
The Mind Stone.
A strange, overwhelming power erupted from it. Before Ego could muster a defense, agony ripped through his spiritual world.
"—!!"
A deafening explosion detonated inside his consciousness. His mental sea buckled in on itself as if struck by a shovel.
Then another shockwave hit and another.
"STOP! AHHHHH!!"
Ego's screams echoed uselessly through the collapsing chamber. Soren did not stop.
The Mind Stone's power surged sending relentless psychic strikes deep into Ego's soul.
Ego's body the entire planet began to convulse.
The star-core's blue light flickered violently, dimming as the Celestial world-mind was torn apart.
Energy across the planet reversed direction, flooding back toward the core's channels as if the world were inhaling its final breath.
On the surface, the changes were catastrophic.
Forests shriveled into ash. Rivers evaporated. The ground split open in jagged chasms, exposing blackened stone beneath.
Towers and palaces that Ego had crafted over millennia crumbled like sand sculptures.
Boom!
The final mental strike landed shattering Ego's consciousness completely.
His spirit vanished and the living god-planet fell silent.
The star itself began to collapse. Without its consciousness, the internal structure destabilized, the world decaying from the inside out.
In the core chamber, the massive sphere of blue energy trembled, then began shrinking. Folding in on itself with a soft, crystalline hum.
Soren watched, intrigued.
The light compressed tighter… tighter… until finally, all that divine energy solidified into a single object, a flawless blue crystal the size of a human head.
Soren extended a hand.
The crystal drifted into his palm. Inside it churned a vast reservoir of pure Celestial power, refined to near-perfection.
A priceless treasure, born from the death of a god.
"…Not bad."
Forged into an artifact or used as a raw power source, Ego's crystallized core was priceless, an energy reservoir rivaling the might of a newborn star.
Soren closed his fingers around the gleaming blue shard, and the planet reacted instantly.
The surface cracked open like brittle bone. Whole continents split as shockwaves rippled outward.
The planet once alive, became a dying husk.
Soren didn't linger.
With a twist of spatial energy, he vanished. Space folded, and in the next heartbeat he reappeared beside the Ravagers' destroyer-class battleship, suspended in the void.
Behind him, Ego's planet writhed in its death throes.
…
On the ship, the Guardians and Freyja watched in horror as the colossal world collapsed in on itself.
"Soren… he's still in there!"
Even Freyja's certainty wavered. Her trust in Soren was deep… but watching an entire planet implode would shake anyone.
Just as the planet's shell ruptured… Soren materialized outside the ship.
Freyja exhaled sharply, tension melting from her shoulders.
And then the end came.
BANG!!!
Ego's planet exploded like an overripe fruit, shattering in a blinding flash. The blast hurled molten fragments and chunks of celestial rock in every direction.
The sky filled with burning debris as millions of meteorites screaming outward and flooding the starfield.
Soren extended one hand.
A vast space barrier unfolded like a dome, stopping the oncoming hailstorm of debris. Even the largest fragments… mountain-sized meteoroids trailing streams of fire, shattered harmlessly against the barrier.
Nothing touched the ship.
Only when the last shockwave faded did Soren lower his hand and dismiss the barrier. With a flicker of space, he stepped aboard the battleship.
"Soren!" Freyja moved immediately to him. "Are you unharmed?"
"I'm fine." He answered.
The others gathered around him. Awe. Fear. Gratitude. Curiosity.
All of it reflected in their eyes. Soren found himself briefly… embarrassed.
Then Peter Quill stepped towards him.
His expression was complicated… grief, anger, guilt, and something like acceptance, all tangled together.
"Soren… my father… Ego… he's gone, isn't he?"
Soren met his gaze. He didn't soften the truth, but neither did he make it harsh.
He nodded once.
"…" Peter closed his eyes.
The pain hit him… but it was a pain he'd already expected the moment the planet exploded. Still, hearing it confirmed… it settled heavy inside him.
Soren didn't speak further. Some wounds weren't meant to be touched. Some needed time, only time begins healing.