The black corrosion in the sky spread like ink dropped in a basin of milk. Where the darkness touched the violet aurora, the lights didn't just fade—they dissolved into static. Alicia stood on the battlement, watching as the first "Void-Tear" opened directly above the Great Loom.
It wasn't a hole; it was a mouth without teeth, a vacuum that began to pull the very air out of the Citadel. The Loom-Glass pillars groaned, their crystalline structures cracking under a pressure that shouldn't exist.
"Nelluru, get the survivors into the sub-levels!" Alicia shouted over the rising roar of the wind. "The Absolute Zero isn't holding! This isn't cold—it's nothingness!"
Nelluru didn't move. She was staring at her own hands. Her lime-green aura was being pulled toward the sky in thin, wispy ribbons. "Alicia... the light. It's taking the light back."
Alicia grabbed the raven-bone pen, but it felt dead in her hand. The connection to Clevatess—the steady, rhythmic pulse she had relied on—was being drowned out by the scream of the sky. Suddenly, the silver needle on her wrist snapped. It didn't break; it leaped from her skin, flying upward toward the black void like a compass needle found its true north.
"No!" Alicia lunged for it, but the needle was gone, vanishing into the darkness above.
Without the needle, the protective barrier around the Citadel vanished. The frost turned to ash. The stone began to flake away. But as the darkness descended to swallow the throne room, a single, booming chord of heavy metal vibration shook the earth. It wasn't a sound, but a physical strike.
A shadow slammed into the plaza between Alicia and the Void-Tear. It wasn't the elegant, refined King they knew. It was a jagged, towering silhouette wrapped in chains of frozen iron, wielding a needle the size of a spear.
Clevatess had returned, but he hadn't come back as a tailor. He had come back as a butcher.