"A Frequency You Can't Unlearn"
Red.
Purple.
Blue.
They slam into orange all at once—violent, overlapping currents spiraling through Allium's chest like the universe has stopped asking permission.
Inside him, the tri-harmony begins to rotate.
Faster.
Faster.
His veins shift color in rapid succession—Solara red, Nexon violet, Virel blue—until the separation collapses into something brighter, tighter, more brutal.
White.
Not calm white.
Not holy.
White like a welding arc.
Allium shakes.
Not from power.
From the rage igniting in his body—the attachment, the grief, the sudden knowledge that something precious can bleed.
The gentle calm he had been learning to emit—careful, tentative—has a door slammed shut inside him.
Killing intent rolls out instead.
It spills into the Temple like smoke.
His eyes constrict.
Neon orange is overtaken from the inside, swallowed by the white.
Varos takes a step closer, satisfied grin widening like he can taste what's coming.
"Show me what you can really do, keeper."
Allium does not answer.
Allium roars.
"YOU—!"
The word is not shouted.
It is released.
The mountain shudders. The Temple cracks. Dust shakes free from ancient seams as shockwaves ripple outward, carried by the sound of his voice like a weapon.
The air thickens—heavy, glassy—until breathing feels like pulling through molten heat.
No one is looking at Varos anymore.
They're staring at the glowing thing in front of him.
Allium's jaw clenches.
His shoulders rise.
"WILL—"
Above them, the tri-suns subtly change color, their light flickering in response to what is happening below. Bits of stone lift from the Temple floor, rising weightless for a heartbeat—
and vaporize.
The Temple's ley lines ignite into the same white, like the structure is being rewritten from the inside.
Then the final word hits.
"PAY!"
Allium's hair shifts as if his body can't hold its own pigment—black strands bleaching all the way to white as power channels through every cell.
For one breath, the world seems to show what it usually hides:
Muscle tightening.
Bone screaming.
Structure cracking and realigning as if his body is being reforged mid-scream.
Weaver's voice cuts through the chaos, horrified.
"This is not good…" he whispers, staring at Allium like he's looking at a storm wearing skin. "That's… the real Overload."
Allium steps forward.
Each step shakes the mountain.
Stone splits.
The Temple floor crumbles at the edges where his weight meets it—not because he is heavy, but because the world can't agree with him fast enough.
White energy tries to spill from him, leaking in ribbons—
and is forced back in, compressed, contained by nothing but a will that is no longer sane.
Varos watches with reverence.
"Overload," he purrs. "Finally. The form you never finished. Go on… make me stronger—"
He doesn't get to finish.
Allium moves.
To everyone else, he disappears.
To Varos, it feels like getting hit by a star.
The first punch slams into Varos's jaw.
Bone and crystal crunch together with a deafening crack. Varos's head whips sideways and slams into a pillar so hard the Temple shudders.
Before the debris even begins to fall—
Allium is above him.
A heel drops into Varos's shoulder, driving him down into the floor.
Stone explodes outward in a crater.
Allium does not pause to breathe.
He becomes motion.
Fists.
Elbows.
Knees.
Feet.
Each strike faster than the last.
Each carrying the weight of three suns forced into a single point.
From outside, if anyone were watching from orbit, it would look like a wild white comet ricocheting around a single point on the planet's surface—light arcing off it with each violent impact.
Inside the Temple, it's all noise and violence and blinding flashes.
Varos tries to adapt.
He always does.
Neon-violet cracks flare, hardening, rethreading, rerouting around damage. Extra plates burst from under his skin. Additional limbs erupt, claws lashing through the air—
catching only afterimages.
He swings for Allium's head—
hits nothing.
He sweeps for Allium's legs—
catches only light.
He routes energy into his spine and lunges—
—and Allium's fist is already there, driving straight through mutated plating, into flesh, then out the other side.
Varos roars.
A second ago, he was the apex predator, watching Rose bleed out at his feet.
Now he is being ragdolled.
Allium grabs him and slams him upward through the fractured ceiling.
Stone bursts outward in a column of dust and white light.
The tri-suns glare down as Allium carries Varos into open air, punching him so hard both bodies streak upward—
leaving a burning white contrail through Fusion's sky.
Jax, Thane, Cassidy, and Weaver can only watch the streaks vanish.
Rose—wounded, half-conscious—turns her head faintly toward the bright line carved into the heavens. Her eyes still glow, refusing to go dark, but she says nothing.
Present.
Weaver's voice shakes.
"He's not himself," he says, horror tightening every word. "If this continues, the temple will fall."
Cassidy's chest rises and falls too fast. Fear and awe fight across her face like weather.
"You said attachment might make this happen," she whispers. "Is this it?"
Weaver's gaze stays locked on the sky, but his eyes look lost.
"I'm… unsure," he admits. "I've only ever suggested it could. I don't know if that's the Balance Keeper…"
His voice cracks.
"…or Allium."
High above Fusion, in the thin upper atmosphere—
Allium and Varos collide again.
Each impact sends shockwaves rippling through the clouds, circular distortions flattening and spreading like silent thunder.
Varos swings a newly formed spiked limb—
Allium isn't there.
He flickers—not teleporting, simply moving so fast the eye cannot hold him.
He appears above Varos, hands clasped together, and brings them down like a hammer.
Varos's back bends at an angle no living thing should survive.
He screams.
Neon-violet veins flash erratically, trying to compute the overload of data this beating is giving him.
Evolution requires time.
Allium isn't giving him any.
For the first time, fear flickers in Varos's molten eyes.
"You…" Varos snarls, voice breaking with rage and disbelief. "You are not meant to hunt like this—"
Allium answers with a low growl.
Not words.
Feral.
He drives his knee into Varos's gut, grabs him by one horn, and throws him downward.
Varos becomes a meteor.
He hits Fusion like a curse.
The impact rips open the land, sending jagged stone plates up in shrieking slabs. A circular shockwave tears through the forest around the Temple, snapping trees like twigs.
The Temple's already cracked pillars split further.
Portions of the ceiling give way.
Inside, debris rains down.
Thane throws his shield over Rose and Weaver.
Cassidy dives, Mark still throbbing, dust coating her tongue.
Jax braces against a support, teeth clenched, holding the collapsing world upright with his body.
A moment passes—
and then a deep line slams down out of the sky.
White.
Judgment.
Allium doesn't land.
He deepens Varos into the crater with immense force.
Then he reels back his fist.
And drives it down.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each punch sends Varos deeper.
Each punch makes the crater larger.
Each punch forces Varos's plating to evolve—
and fail.
Every time.
The blows do not slow.
They increase.
The mountain shakes harder.
The planet answers with tremors.
Weaver stares down into the crater, face white with dread.
"This isn't power," he whispers. "It's the planet's annihilation in physical form…"
Cassidy's voice is small.
Hope trying to exist inside terror.
"Is he… winning?"
Weaver doesn't look at her.
"If he finishes this," he says quietly, "it's far from winning if we can't slow him down."
In the crater, Varos is barely recognizable.
His imposing frame is a mashed ruin of shattered crystal and torn flesh, oozing neon-violet corruption and raw ley-energy.
But he doesn't die.
He changes.
Frantically.
Desperately.
The corruption in him fights to understand this new input—the Overload frequency pouring from Allium's blows.
Patches of his flesh begin to glow white.
Not clean white like Allium's.
Sickly.
Like a copy of a copy.
His neon-violet cracks twist, rethreading into new patterns, spiraling toward a core forming in his chest—unstable, pale, hungry.
Extra limbs form and retract, rejected mid-growth.
Eyes blossom across his chest and shatter into dust.
He screams.
"Too fast—too fast—too much—"
Forced evolution.
Breaking him.
Allium does not care.
He draws back for one final blow.
Every muscle in his arms tenses, white energy coiling tighter and tighter, his reconstructed system screaming as it channels a burst that was never meant to exist.
Weaver's head jerks up.
Fear spikes through him sharp enough to taste.
"Allium!" he shouts, voice cracking. "Stop! You'll shatter the temple!"
Allium doesn't hear.
He drives the punch down.
Varos makes a choice.
For the first time in the entire fight—
it isn't offense.
It is survival.
At the last possible instant—on the fraction of a fraction of a heartbeat before impact—
Varos slams his mangled claw into the exposed leyline at the bottom of the crater.
The world shudders.
The ley screams.
And Varos's entire body dissolves into the flow.
Not smooth.
Not controlled.
Jagged.
Panicked.
Violent.
As he vanishes, that new unnatural white core in his chest locks onto the Overload frequency pouring from Allium—
and takes it with him.
Right before the punch lands—
Allium halts.
Control returns like a gasp.
Too late to stop the force.
The shockwave still erupts, ripping outward through sand and stone.
The Temple groans.
Pillars quake.
But it holds.
Barely.
Dust explodes through the chamber.
Jax coughs hard, spitting grit.
Thane lowers his shield, blood still sliding down his temple, breath coming in broken pulls.
"Is it over?" he asks, voice hoarse.
Weaver stares at the crater.
Glass has replaced the sand, fused and blackened, the center still glowing faintly like an eye that refuses to close.
He turns toward Rose.
She lies unconscious, face pale, but Weaver's patchwork threads have held her together long enough for breath to continue.
Cassidy pushes herself up from the stone floor, mark dimmed, blood running from her temple. She looks at Rose with something raw on her face.
"Is she gonna be okay?" she whispers.
Weaver swallows.
"She needs medical," he says. "Now."
Jax stands, already moving.
His voice becomes command again because if it doesn't, everything else will collapse.
"Thane. Cassidy. Move her to the hovercraft. Now." He looks at Weaver, eyes hard. "And Weaver—can you reach him?"
Weaver's throat tightens.
He looks toward the crater.
Toward the white glow still moving under Allium's skin like something trying to escape.
"I will try," Weaver says, and there is fear in it he cannot hide.
Jax lifts Rose carefully, like she is both fragile and sacred, and steps onto the grav board. It hums and lowers him down the temple's face in a swift descent.
Thane and Cassidy follow, no words wasted, fear packed tight into motion.
They board the hovercraft.
Thrusters engage.
The craft rises.
And as it does—
they look down.
Allium is still in the crater.
He shakes violently, white energy twitching through him like lightning caught under skin.
He snaps his head toward the hovercraft.
His eyes are still full of killing intent.
No target left.
Only hunger for elimination.
Weaver descends alone.
No grav board.
Just careful, trembling steps through broken stone and dust.
Allium walks out of the crater.
Slow.
Silent.
White hair. White aura. White pressure.
He stops when he reaches the edge of the cracked floor.
And stares directly at Weaver.
Not blinking.
Not breathing hard.
Just staring.
Weaver's hands shake.
His threads rise, uncertain, like frightened animals.
"Allium," he says softly.
The name sounds small in the air.
Allium doesn't answer.
His gaze remains locked.
The Temple shudders around them, as if the world itself is holding its breath—
waiting to see whether the Balance Keeper returns…
or whether something else will step forward wearing his skin.