The lava island cracked and fractured under the clash of energies. Blistering magma erupted like geysers from fissures in the ground, illuminating the battlefield like a scene from hell.
The battle between Athena and Amon had reached its peak, each exchange shaking the heavens and the earth.
BOOM—!!!
Streams of golden and violet-blue psionic energy collided in midair. The resulting shockwave swept across dozens of kilometers, leveling nearby volcanoes to flat wastelands.
Athena's Spear of Victory carved a dazzling golden arc, the very space around it shattering like glass to reveal pitch-black void beneath.
Amon, controlling the Queen of Blades' body, rapidly retreated. Her bone wings vibrated as psionic shields formed in layers before her, yet the aftershock of the spear's strike still tore multiple rifts through them. Streams of psionic blood rained down from the sky.
"Your struggle is meaningless."
Amon's voice squeezed from Kerrigan's throat, twisted and inhuman. "The will of the Xel'Naga is beyond your resistance."
Athena gave no reply. Her golden eyes locked on Amon. Her figure vanished in a flash and reappeared overhead, divine force behind her boot as it stamped down.
Amon hastily raised a claw formed of dark violet psionic energy to block—
BANG!!
The collision caused the island's bedrock to collapse. Waves of lava surged a hundred meters high.
The shockwave radiated in a ring. Char's atmosphere split open in a gaping wound, visible even from orbit where the fleet could clearly see the energy storm erupting from the surface.
Amon's body was slammed deep into the rock, but it spread its arms with a savage grin. Amber energy was forcibly drawn from Char's core, flowing along its fingertips to repair Kerrigan's ravaged body.
Simultaneously, the Zerg across Char sensed the call of their true "Master." Billions of Zerg self-destructed in unison, their biomass converted into pure energy that transcended space to surge into Amon's vessel.
"Do you see now?"
Amon's voice grew more distorted. Kerrigan's body swelled. Her bone wings sprouted more grotesque spikes. "As long as the Swarm lives, my power is infinite!"
"…"
Athena watched it all coldly. The tip of the Spear of Victory dipped—not in weakness, but in the gathering of terrifying power.
Her psionic energy blazed like a star. Golden light solidified behind her into a faint but immense silhouette—
It was her divine incarnation, a projection of the Celestial Realm: a Valkyrie clad in armor and wielding a spear. Her very presence froze the magma around her.
"Your power is built on consumption." Athena finally spoke, her voice like frigid judgment. "Mine comes from the faith of billions of living beings."
Before the echo faded, she hurled the Spear of Victory.
This strike transcended the concept of speed.
The spear pierced Amon's chest, carrying his body backward through multiple mountain ranges before pinning it to the depths of a fissure on Char.
In the instant it impaled Amon, time itself seemed to congeal.
Ancient runes along the spear's shaft ignited one by one, each releasing blinding golden light. Chains of void material coiled upward like spirit-serpents, binding Amon's limbs to the rift.
"You think this ends me?"
Amon's voice turned oddly calm.
At the site where Kerrigan's chest was pierced, amber energy writhed like a living thing, starting to corrode the sacred metal of the spear.
But the attempt to defile and seize the Spear of Victory was doomed to fail.
Even so, the void chains groaned under strain, cracks forming on their surfaces.
Athena saw the twisted grin stretch across Amon's lips. Kerrigan's body began to undergo a horrifying transformation—
Under her skin, writhing veins of energy bulged. The spikes on her wings branched into new thorns. Even the wound around the spear began to crystallize.
CRACK—!
The sound of the first chain snapping was like a death knell.
Then came the second, the third—Amon's right arm tore free. His hand spread wide, ripping the spear from his chest.
"False god!"
Amon sneered, and a torrent of amber energy surged from Char's core, flowing up through his arm.
Athena raised her right hand, recalling the Spear of Victory.
But more torrents erupted, condensing in the void into flickering, alien stars—like a reverse-flowing galactic river, re-injecting power into Kerrigan's body.
Athena instantly shifted tactics.
She swung both hands. Her divine projection mirrored her, lifting a great sword—but Amon was faster. He slammed Kerrigan's hands down.
BOOM. RUMBLE——————!!
The crust of Char wailed in agony.
From the rift they stood on, web-like cracks spread across the entire planet.
Lava oceans surged into thousand-meter-high waves. Hundreds of volcanoes erupted simultaneously, columns of ash and smoke rising like giant trees.
What Matt Horner had seen as a "high-energy space fold" was now a vortex devouring everything.
Tectonic plates shattered like brittle cookies. From the newborn abyss, amber energy torrents gushed upward, weaving into a massive neural network in the air. Each "nerve" connected to a collapsing geological structure.
"Can you feel it?" Amon's voice dripped with twisted delight. "This planet is my offering!"
What now spurted from his wounds wasn't psionic blood, but pure void energy. It crystallized midair into jagged shards and rained down on Athena.
The goddess swung her divine sword to block. Each fragment shattered, releasing corrosive void mists upon explosion.
Even more troubling, the energy unleashed from Char's collapse and the devoured Zerg were continuously empowering Amon—
His form had now expanded tenfold. Kerrigan's human features had nearly vanished, replaced by a monstrous state between matter and energy.
"Now, it's my turn."
Amon's body blurred.
When he reappeared, he was directly above Athena, mutated forelimbs transforming into massive energy blades that came crashing down.
Athena raised her spear. The clash of forces caused a localized collapse in space itself.
CRACK. CRUNCH—!
Their rocky footing shattered under the strain.
The two plunged into Char's molten core, still locked in fierce combat. Each clash between spear and energy blade hastened the planet's demise.
When Athena found an opening and kicked Amon from the magma pool, Char teetered on the edge of annihilation.
Its atmosphere began to escape. Uncontrolled core eruptions forced even orbiting fleets to retreat further to avoid being caught in the cataclysm.
"You've lost, false god."
Amon floated amidst the collapse, confident and triumphant. "The planet's destruction will provide me enough energy, and you… heh…"
Kerrigan's eyes, now under Amon's control, gleamed with greed—clearly targeting Athena's body as a vessel for moving freely in the material universe.
But Athena simply wiped the trickle of golden divine blood from her lips. The Spear of Victory once again lit up.
She gazed at the mad fallen god, then at the dying world, and suddenly… she smiled and shook her head.
BOOM—!
Before her smirk faded, her body erupted with supernova-like brilliance.
The divine projection no longer hovered behind her—it began merging with her physical form.
Every plate of her golden armor expanded and restructured. The Spear of Victory extended to a kilometer in length.
??!!
Amon's pupils contracted in shock. Athena's form was now breaking the bounds of physics, expanding geometrically.
BOOM—!!!
Char's atmosphere ruptured around her divine body. Clouds shredded like fragile silk.
Her greaves crushed tectonic plates. Knee-guards flattened mountains. Her pauldrons brushed orbital debris aside like dust.
When her head breached the atmosphere, the planet could no longer sustain her presence—
Her god-sized form matched the diameter of Char. The world below her looked like a clay ball about to be crushed.
The prelude of planetary collapse...
Char's doomsday had come.
Its core exploded under the pressure of her divine mass. Tectonic movements accelerated catastrophically.
Continents shattered like porcelain, magma spewed in kilometer-high columns.
Murky, viscous oceans of biomass vaporized. Steam and volcanic ash formed toxic clouds over the wrecked surface.
From afar, the fleet recorded terrifying data spikes—
The magnetic field vanished. The axial tilt shifted. Planetary stress passed its threshold.
Giant cracks spread from the point Athena's boots had struck, snaking across the globe. Char began unraveling like an overloaded engine.
"No… this can't be…"
For the first time, Amon's voice trembled.
It tried to pull its consciousness back into the void—only to find, in horror, that Kerrigan's body had become an inescapable prison.
Athena's divinity had sealed all exits. The psionic tethers once used to maintain its presence now became chains binding it.
The colossal Athena looked down at Amon, her gaze like a cold star.
She raised her right hand, palm covering the crumbling continent below. This simple gesture triggered a "tide" in the vacuum, drawing away the remnants of atmosphere into a spiraling cyclone.
"You thought parasitizing the material world made you untouchable?"
Her voice echoed across dimensions, detonating in the depths of Amon's consciousness.
As her fingers clenched, Char's last structural integrity collapsed—and the planet met its end.
The core, now exposed to space, exploded completely.
Quadrillions of tons of rock and magma blasted into the void, forming a spectacular and deadly "nebula." What was once the Swarm's nest and the Terran Federation's mining hub was now stardust.
Amon's consciousness crashed violently within Kerrigan's body—but it could only watch in terror as the divine hand closed in.
When her palm engulfed it—or more accurately, the Kerrigan body it controlled—all sensory input was drowned in pure golden light.
At the same time, deep in the void fissures of the StarCraft universe, a figure of black and gold emerged silently, transcending time and space.
The Human Emperor, Samuel Young, wore armor that shimmered like liquid stars. Each step rippled through the void.
His arrival triggered no energy readings.
His awareness condensed in the void, his black-gold armor glowing with galactic patterns.
His very existence was a paradox—
He did not belong to this universe, yet etched his presence into it with absolute force.
Athena's consumption of Amon had provided Samuel Young an interdimensional anchor, a key that completely unlocked the barriers of the void.
But the void began to "tremble."
An invisible repulsion surged from all sides, space itself attempting to crush the intruder like a living entity.
The void's energies grew violent. Twisting fissures yawned open, spewing star-rending chaos.
This was the universe's instinctual defense—a dimensional immune response.
But Samuel Young calmly raised his right hand.
HUM——!
A subtle tremor rippled outward from him.
It began as a ripple. In seconds, it became a golden tidal wave that devoured everything.
Where the light passed, the void's chaos was forcibly restructured. Darkness was coated in sacred markings. Entropy crystallized into geometric order. Even the fissures trying to attack him healed into polished mirrors.
This wasn't resistance—it was overwrite from a higher dimension.
The entire void began to collapse inward, converging on Samuel Young like light into a black hole.
In unnameable dimensional strata, Samuel Young's Celestial Domain expanded terrifyingly. Every purified unit of void became a new cornerstone of his realm.
Corners once tainted by Amon now bloomed with golden purity.
As the last piece of void was devoured, Samuel Young's figure blurred.
His awareness, carrying the universe's deepest secret, withdrew like the tide back to the main universe.
Meanwhile, on Char...
Athena's divine form had long returned to normal. Her golden armor still glowed in the starlight.
Floating before her was a cocoon wrapped in golden forcefield. Inside curled Sarah Kerrigan's human body—her pale skin now free of psionic markings, rising and falling gently with breath.
"It's over."
The goddess touched the forcefield. Runes flowed over Kerrigan's body, ensuring every trace of Amon's corruption was purged.
In the distant starfield, Char's remains formed a ring of asteroids. Occasionally, magma solidified in vacuum into eerie sculptures.
The fleet finally approached from afar.
The Hyperion took on the task of "recovering" the war goddess and the purified Queen of Blades.
As the hatch opened, Jim Raynor stepped out hastily. Upon seeing Kerrigan, safe within the golden field, the battle-hardened commander stumbled slightly.
"She'll need rest," Athena said calmly. "Amon's corruption runs deep. But…"
The goddess suddenly turned her head toward the depths of the void beyond the plasma valves, where a faint trail of golden light still lingered.
"Someone has already paid the ransom for her soul."
(End of Chapter)
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