Zane, fully consumed by the protective fury of the blood-forged armor, slammed into the Shadow-Creature. His crimson claw met the void-like anti-vitality field, and the collision was silent, yet devastating. Instead of a loud crash, there was a sickening implosion of sound and light—a momentary vacuum where the heat of life-force met the cold of pure entropy. The air around the clash shimmered and died, the light from the corridor momentarily swallowed, throwing the room into an inky gloom.
The Shadow-Creature was thrown backward, skidding along the stone floor until its pitch-black form hit the far wall. The impact was minimal, absorbed by its unnatural anti-kinetic field, but the creature was clearly surprised by the sheer, uncontained vitality of Zane's attack.
Zane pressed the advantage, his speed and rage a terrifying blur. He didn't use finesse; he used overwhelming, targeted force. He manifested a series of long, needle-sharp blood spikes that shot from his knuckles, aiming to pin the creature to the stone.
The creature's white eyes narrowed. It didn't move to evade the spikes. Instead, it raised both skeletal claws, and the shadows in the room—the natural darkness around the edges of the light—seemed to coalesce and rush toward its form. The creature expanded into a churning, billowing sphere of dark matter, and the blood spikes vanished the instant they pierced the sphere, neutralized and absorbed by the void.
Lyra screamed a warning as she frantically constructed her defense. "Zane! It absorbs energy! Don't let it touch you or the water!" She had managed to summon a large, dense wall of churning, kinetic-dampening water between the combatants and the cot where Elias lay unconscious, creating a shield that shimmered with the effort of her concentration.
The creature turned its attention to Lyra's wall, its anti-vitality field radiating a cold, magnetic pull. It was testing the Stabilizing Medium. It reached out with one claw, and where its fingers touched the water, the liquid didn't splash or freeze; it simply ceased to be water, leaving dark, empty spheres in the shield.
"A machine of the void," Zane snarled, his voice distorted by the blood mask. He realized direct vital energy attacks were precisely what the creature was designed to consume. It was an anti-Zane.
He changed tactics instantly, recalling the brute-force, kinetic-based fighting he'd used on Xavier. He dropped the spikes and the blood armor, letting the crimson energy pull back just enough to focus his power on density and impact. His remaining blood-forged claw became a massive, sledgehammer-like fist, condensed and hardened to a substance far denser than steel.
He rushed the creature, not with a claw strike, but with a bone-shattering shoulder tackle, aiming to disrupt its shadow-form with pure, unyielding physical force.
The creature, seeing the change from raw energy to pure mass, responded by rapidly contracting its form. It shrunk instantly, becoming a densely focused point of darkness that slid between Zane's attack and the stone wall.
Zane's momentum carried him through the space where the creature had been. He slammed into the stone wall with a terrifying crack, the air rushing from his lungs. The blood mask cracked and dissolved as the pain momentarily broke his fury, forcing a surge of reality into his mind.
The Shadow-Creature reappeared behind him, having used its unnatural movement to cycle around the raging brute. It loomed over Zane's momentarily stunned form, its claw raised for a fatal strike.
"Inefficient," the creature hissed telepathically. "Control is optimal. Rage is waste."
Before the claw could descend, Lyra, seeing her partner vulnerable, roared a sound of pure desperation. She wrenched her focus from the defensive wall and channeled all the water behind her into a single, massive kinetic punch—a dense, liquid fist that launched across the room.
The water-fist didn't try to strike the Shadow-Creature; it struck the wall beside it. The massive, localized impact of Lyra's channeled water power achieved what Zane's charge could not: it shattered the stone, sending a spray of sharp, heavy granite shards flying directly at the Shadow-Creature.
The creature's attention was instantly diverted to the non-energy attack. It let out a soundless, grating hiss and expanded its shadow-form again, creating an instant vacuum field that absorbed the flying debris. But the momentary expansion, the brief focus on the scattered stone, was enough.
The creature's white eyes snapped back to Lyra, registering her as the strategic, destabilizing threat. It abandoned Zane, who was slowly pushing himself off the wall, and glided silently, relentlessly, toward the water manipulator.
"The Medium is unstable," the creature grated in her mind. "Neutralization is required."
Lyra's face was pale, but her resolve was absolute. She knew she couldn't engage it directly. She thrust both hands out, throwing the remainder of her defensive wall at the creature, covering it in a thick, choking sheet of water.
The creature entered the water shield, its black form vanishing entirely within the liquid. Lyra felt the awful, chilling sensation of her power being drained, absorbed, and corrupted—the water being converted into its polar opposite. The creature was using her power to power itself.
Zane, recovering from the blast, saw the catastrophic vulnerability. He had failed his attack. Lyra was now losing her power, its Stabilizing Medium being turned into a weapon against them. His own power, fueled by rage, was useless.
He saw the Shadow-Creature emerge from the collapsing water shield, its form more solid, its shadow-presence heavier, and its claw already reaching for Lyra's throat.
With a final, desperate act of will, Zane cut off his rage completely. He choked the crimson flow, forced his heart rate down, and, summoning the last vestiges of his mental training, he focused only on the Codex's Bio-Channeling principle—not to fight, but to sustain.
He channeled his blood energy not outward into a weapon, but inward, forcing his own accelerating life-force into his legs and spine. With a burst of pure, unadulterated, controlled speed, he launched himself between Lyra and the creature, a blur of grey tunic and flesh, not red armor.
He didn't attack. He grabbed Lyra and slammed his own body, a simple, un-armored mass, into the creature's chest.
The impact was minimal, a dull thud. But the creature, expecting a surge of blood-power, was momentarily confused by the lack of energetic discharge. It had no energy to absorb.
That fraction of a second was all Zane needed. He pulled Lyra back and roared, "RUN! GET ELIAS! GET KAELEN!"
Lyra needed no second prompting. She grasped Zane's tunic, her eyes wide with terror, and saw the utter hopelessness of the fight. The creature was designed to kill them both. She spun, snatched Elias's limp body from the cot, and vanished through the shattered doorway.
Zane was left alone, facing the terrifyingly efficient hunter. The creature tilted its head, its white eyes locking onto his exhausted, un-armored form.
"Target neutralized. Support eliminated. Subject is now isolated," the creature hissed, its anti-vitality field coalescing for the killing blow.
Zane stood his ground, his face pale, his breath ragged. The rage was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp fear, but his resolve was absolute. "You want the protector?" Zane whispered, his voice clear. "You have him."