The white sands of the Glass Desert didn't crunch underfoot; they sang. Every step Kaelen took toward the Prime Guardian sent a high-pitched, crystalline vibration through the air, a harmonic resonance that felt like it was trying to shake his teeth loose. The suns of the West—twin orbs of pale gold—hung low on the horizon, casting long, distorted shadows of the Valkyrie and the surrounding golem army.
The Prime Guardian, a four-armed colossus named Talos-Rho, stood forty feet tall. Its body was a masterpiece of ancient stonework and brass clockwork, encrusted with salt and etched with runes that predated the First Cinder itself. In its upper hands, it held a massive sandstone halberd; in its lower hands, it clutched two shields that hummed with a defensive frequency.
"The terms are set, Anomaly," Talos-Rho boomed, the sound vibrating the very air in Kaelen's lungs. "If you prevail, the Guardians of the West shall recognize you as the True Spark and open the path to the Solar-Lens. If you fall, we shall entomb you and your 'infection' beneath these sands for another ten thousand years. Gaea must be preserved, even at the cost of its current inhabitants."
Kaelen didn't look back at his team, but he could feel them. He felt Ria's hand on her spear, her knuckles white; he felt Pip's frantic calculations as the gnome checked the mana-scanners; he felt Korg's silent, mountain-like presence. But mostly, he felt the cold, hollow itch of the Void-Scars on his arms.
"IT IS A TEST OF WILL, NOT JUST STRENGTH," Ignis whispered, his voice a low, emerald thrum in the back of Kaelen's mind. "THESE CONSTRUCTS ARE MADE OF THE WORLD'S BONES. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND CHANGE. THEY ONLY UNDERSTAND STABILITY. SHOW THEM THAT YOUR FIRE IS NOT A FLICKER, BUT A CORE."
"Begin," Kaelen said, his voice dropping an octave as he tapped into his power.
The Guardian moved with terrifying speed for its size. The sandstone halberd swept through the air in a horizontal arc, whistling with the force of a falling tree. Kaelen didn't dodge. He Blinked.
In a flash of emerald light, he reappeared ten feet higher, standing on the flat of the halberd's blade. He surged forward, his boots trailing sparks of Starlight-Steel as he ran up the weapon's shaft toward the Guardian's chest. His right hand ignited, a spear of pure dragon-fire forming in his palm.
"Emerald Burst!" Kaelen roared, slamming the fire into the Guardian's chest-plate.
The explosion was deafening. A shockwave of green flame rippled across the desert, turning the immediate sand into liquid glass. But when the smoke cleared, Talos-Rho hadn't moved an inch. The runes on its chest were glowing a deep, oceanic blue. It had absorbed the heat.
"FIRE IS THE BEGINNING OF LIFE, BUT THE VOID IS THE END," the Guardian stated. "YOU COMMAND THE FLAME, BUT THE PURPLE ROT WITHIN YOU COMMANDS THE HOST. SHOW US THE VOID, OR BE CRUSHED BY THE STONE."
The colossus swung its lower shields together. A massive pulse of kinetic energy—a physical wall of force—slammed into Kaelen mid-air. He felt his ribs groan under the pressure as he was tossed backward like a ragdoll. He tumbled through the air, crashing into a dune with a force that sent a plume of crystal dust fifty feet into the sky.
"Kaelen!" Elara shouted from the deck of the Valkyrie, her hand reaching out as if she could catch him from the distance.
Kaelen climbed out of the crater, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The violet cracks on his arms were pulsing angrily now. They weren't just glowing; they were hungry. They were feeding on his exhaustion, offering a cold, dark strength that promised to end the fight in a single stroke.
If I use it, I lose another hour, Kaelen thought, glancing at the invisible clock in his mind. But if I don't, I don't survive the next minute.
5 Days, 17 Hours, 45 Minutes.
"You want the Void?" Kaelen muttered, wiping a trail of glowing, metallic blood from his lip. "Fine. But don't blame me if the desert doesn't like the taste."
He stood tall and spread his arms. He stopped fighting the infection. He let the violet energy flow out of the cracks, wrapping around his Starlight-Steel like barbed wire. His emerald aura didn't vanish; instead, it began to swirl with the purple static, creating a terrifying, bicolor corona. This was Void-Ignition.
The air around Kaelen began to scream. Not a sound of wind, but a sound of reality being torn. The sand within five yards of him simply ceased to exist—not melted, not blown away, but deleted from the map.
Talos-Rho tilted its massive head. "THE ANOMALY ACCEPTS ITS NATURE."
The Guardian charged. Each footstep was an earthquake. It raised all four arms, bringing the halberd and the shields down in a coordinated strike designed to pulverize Kaelen into the molecular level.
Kaelen didn't blink this time. He moved.
He was a blur of violet-and-green light. He met the Guardian's halberd head-on, not with a weapon, but with a flat-handed strike. When his hand touched the sandstone blade, he didn't use force—he used Spatial Severance. A jagged line of violet nothingness cut through the ancient stone as if it were wet paper. The massive head of the halberd fell to the sand with a heavy thud, its connection to the handle erased.
Before the Guardian could react, Kaelen was inside its reach. He punched the primary shield, and the Void-Ignition rippled through the brass. The defensive runes turned black and crumbled into ash.
"I am the bridge!" Kaelen's voice was a chorus now, a terrifying blend of his human grit, Ignis's roar, and the humming silence of the Star-Eaters.
He leapt into the air, his hard-light wings manifesting—but they weren't the steady gold-green of Book I. They were jagged, flickering blades of emerald fire edged with Void-static. He soared above the Guardian, looking down like a vengeful star.
"Final Spark: Event Horizon!"
Kaelen dived. He became a spear of collapsing light. He struck the Prime Guardian's head, and instead of an explosion, there was an implosion. A sphere of absolute darkness flared for a microsecond, pulling the surrounding air and sand into a singular point before venting the pressure in a massive, horizontal ring of energy.
When the light died down, Kaelen was standing in the center of the desert, his knees shaking, his breath steaming in the cold air.
Talos-Rho was still standing, but it was changed. Its head was gone, replaced by a swirling cloud of glowing mana that slowly reconstructed itself into a new, smaller face. The Guardian dropped its shields. The blue light in its eyes shifted to a deep, respectful violet.
"YOU HAVE NOT SUBMITTED TO THE HUNGER," the Guardian boomed, though its voice was now a fraction of its former volume. "YOU HAVE HARNESSED THE SILENCE TO PROTECT THE SONG. THE WASTED GUARDIANS RECOGNIZE THE NEW MASTER OF THE FORGE."
Around the desert, the hundreds of other golems—the house-sized giants that had been threatening the fleet—all knelt simultaneously. The sound was like the world's largest temple bell being struck.
Ria ran forward, catching Kaelen just as his legs gave out. His skin was burning hot in some places and deathly cold in others. The Void-Scars had extended up to his neck, looking like a strangler's grip made of light.
"You did it," she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. "You absolute idiot, you actually did it."
"The clock..." Kaelen rasped, his eyes fluttering. "Pip... how much...?"
Pip ran over, his brass scanner clicking frantically. He looked at the screen, then at Kaelen, his face turning pale. "The Void-Ignition... it's a heavy tax, Kaelen. We just lost three hours in ten minutes. And the Hive-Ship... it's moving."
Kaelen looked up. Through the thinning atmosphere of the West, he could see it. The massive, obsidian Hive-Ship was no longer just firing beams. It was descending. It looked like a falling mountain, a jagged splinter of the night sky coming to claim the earth.
"They saw the flare," Elara said, joining them. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon, where the dunes met the sky. "They know we're here. And they know the Guardians are no longer standing in our way."
Talos-Rho, its head now fully restored, pointed a stone hand toward a jagged mountain range in the far West—the Spines of Gaea.
"THE SOLAR-LENS IS BEYOND THE PEAKS," the Guardian said. "IT IS THE ONLY WEAPON CAPABLE OF PIERCING THE HIVE'S HULL. BUT THE LENS REQUIRES A CORE OF PURE STAINLESS MANA TO FIRE. THE CORE IS IN THE HEART OF THE FIRST FORGE."
Kaelen forced himself to stand, leaning heavily on Ria. He looked at his hand—it was shaking, the Starlight-Steel flickering.
"Then we don't have time for a victory lap," Kaelen said. He turned to Commander Vane, who was watching the exchange with a mixture of awe and terror. "Commander, get the fleet moving. We need those airships to run interference. If that Hive-Ship reaches the Forge before we do, there won't be a world left to save."
Vane saluted—a real, soldier's salute this time. "The Guild follows the Spark. To the Spines!"
As the Valkyrie's engines began to roar, venting blue mana-steam into the desert air, Kaelen felt a cold shiver. It wasn't the Void. It was the feeling of being watched. He looked up at the Hive-Ship again and realized that the "One-Week Clock" wasn't just his death sentence anymore. It was the fuse on a bomb that was about to go off for everyone.
~Current Status~
The One-Week Clock: 5 Days, 14 Hours, 30 Minutes remaining.
New Ally: The Wasted Guardians (1,200 heavy automaton units).
Kaelen's Condition: Fractured (His physical body is beginning to show literal cracks; he needs the third Relic to survive the next transformation).