The chaos energy found the line it needed and the tiger separated into two halves that came apart clean.
Orion's tiger had fallen.
Luna fell too… her knees giving before she could stop them, her reserves empty the moment her beast finished its work and dissolved.
Everything was spent.
Orion also went to his knees, bond broken.
But from the floor he drove his teeth together until they bled and screamed something into the space in front of him, and through the sheer force of whatever was in that scream he expelled the black pulse again anyway.
The white crystal in Luna's hands pulsed alone.
That warm light, not combat energy, not power assembled for damage, but something intense that came from a passion older than any of those things. Defending Luna from the pulse Orion had released toward her and Ren.
A barrier more intense and more solid than anything Orion had managed to extract even using seven corrupted crystals in synergy at his best moment.
"No!" Luna shouted.
